Essay/Term paper: Ufo's

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science

UFO's


Outline

Thesis: We once believed that Earth is the only planet in the Universe
that supports life. Today there is overwhelming evidence that
not only suggests, but supports the very real possibility that we
may share the Universe with other intelligent beings.

I. Things in the Sky

A. The First Documented Sighting

B. The Fever Spreads

1. Pilot Encounters

2. The Lights in the Sky

II. Dents in the Earth

III. Unexplained Phenomenon

A. The Writing on the Wall

B. Geodes

IV. What About Religion?

A. The Christian Bible

B. The Ancient Greeks

C. The American Indian

V. Conclusion


We are not Alone.


On June 24th, 1947 while searching for the remains of a downed
Marine C-46 transport, lost somewhere in the Mount Ranier area, a young
Idahoan businessman named Kenneth Arnold spotted something that would
change his life forever. Just north of his position flying at an altitude of
9,500 feet and an unprecedented airspeed of 1,700 mph he spotted nine
circular aircraft flying in formation. According to his estimate the aircraft
were approximately the size of a DC-4 airliner ( Jackson 4).

This account was the first sighting to ever receive a great deal of
media attention. This sighting gave birth to the phrase "flying Saucer" coined
by a reporter named Bill Begrette. Although not the first UFO sighting in
history, Kenneth Arnolds account is considered to be the first documented UFO
sighting.

The following day Mr. Arnold discovered that in addition to his
sighting there were several others in the Mount Ranier area that same day
(Jackson 6).

When most of think of UFO sightings we picture an unemployed, half-
crazed, alcoholic hick living in a trailer park in the middle small town USA.
Often times this description, although a little exaggerated, seems to fit fairly
well. In the past when the average person spotted a UFO they were quickly
discounted as a kook or con-artist in search of either attention or monetary
reward. It wasn't until more reputable figures in our society began to come
forward that we that we started looking at this issue a little more seriously.
An article written 1957, entitled " Strange lights over Grenada" written by
Aime' Michel describes just such an account:

At 10:35 p.m. on September the 4th, 1957 Cpt Ferreira ordered his
wing to abandon a planned exercise and execute a 50 degree turn to
port. Ferreira was attempting to get a closer look at what he
described as brilliant, pulsating light hanging low over the horizon.
When the turn was completed he noticed that the object had turned
too. It was still directly over his left. There was absolutely no
doubt that the orange light was shadowing the F-84s. For another 10
minutes, it followed the jets without changing direction or
appearance. The pilots watched as four small yellow discs broke away
from the large red object and took up a formation on either side of it.

All at once the large luminous disc shot vertically upward while the
smaller discs shot straight towards the F-84s. In an instant the flat
disc sped overhead in a hazy blur and vanished. When Cpt Ferriera
was questioned by Portuguese Air Force Investigators he was quoted
as saying: "Please don't come out with the old explanation that we
were being chased by the planet Venus, weather balloons, or freak
atmospheric conditions. What we saw up there was real and
intelligently controlled. And it scared the hell out of us. (32)

This is only one of literally hundreds of pilot accounts that have been
documented and cross verified by other sources. To date the Portuguese
Government has taken no official position as to what the luminous discs
were.

The United States has had more than it's fair share of unexplained
aerial objects. In February of 1960 the N.A.A.D.S. (North American Air Defense
System) spotted a satellite of unknown origin orbiting the Earth. They knew
that it wasn't a Soviet satellite because it was orbiting perpendicular to
trajectory produced by a Soviet launch. It also had a mass estimated at 15
metric tons, no evidence of booster rockets and traveled at speed three times
faster than any known satellite. The satellite orbited for two weeks and
disappeared without a trace. Before its disappearance, the object which
appeared to give off a red glow, was photographed over New York several
times (Jackson 19).

Lights in the sky aren't the only evidence that suggests we may have
cosmic company. In the book "A History of UFO Crashes", the author Kevin
D. Randal gives detailed accounts of numerous UFO crashes in history.
Perhaps the most famous of these crashes occurred on July 4th, 1947 in
Roswell New Mexico. The crash at Roswell was witnessed from
afar by over a hundred people. Until just recently, no one who was involved
in the recovery operation was talking, but thanks to continued pressure from
UFO enthusiast our government has begun to declassify much of its UFO
related material. Perhaps more startling are than the government documents
are the accounts given by local police and members of the recovery team.
According to one unnamed witness, a member of the Roswell recovery team:

The crash site was littered with pieces of aircraft. Something about
the size of a fighter plane had crashed, the metal was unlike anything I'd
ever seen before. I picked up a piece the size of a car fender with one
hand, it couldn't have more than a quarter of a pound and no matter how hard
I tried I couldn't even get it to bend. (10)

In my opinion the most fascinating piece of evidence to come out of
the Roswell crash is the alien autopsy film. Apparently there was more than
bits and pieces of spaceship recovered at Roswell. There is an Air Force video
account of an autopsy being performed on a life form that doesn't share the
common characteristics of organ development found in life forms on this
planet. The film is silent and labeled "Autopsy, Roswell, July 1947" (Randal
17).

As difficult as the Roswell evidence is to explain or discount it pales
in comparison to the physical evidence left by our ancestors. An Illustration
taken from a Nuremburg Broadsheet Tells how men and women "saw a very
frightful spectacle". At sunrise April 14th, 1561 "globes, crosses and tubes
began to fight one another", the event continued for about an hour.
Afterward they fell to ground in flames, minutes later a "black, spear like
object appeared". In a Basal Broadsheet dated August 7th, 1566 large black
and white globes are seen over Dasel, Switzerland. Both events occurred in a
time period when there should have nothing more than birds and bees filling
our skies. They each considered to be Divine warnings at the time (Gould
95-96).

Ancient physical evidence isn't limited to newspaper illustration and
sketches on cave wall. Perhaps the most astounding and unexplainable pieces
of physical evidence are a pair of geodes. Both are believed to be
approximately 1,800 years old and when carefully examined were identified as
electrical cells. One of the cells which was discovered in Iraq was tested and
produced 2 volts of electricity. The other, which was discovered by a pair of
Arizona rock hounds, was damaged when the sedimentary encrustation was
being removed and therefore couldn't be tested (Montgomery 221).

Since the dawn of time man has told stories of heavenly and demonic
beings coming to rule, teach, torment, seduce and provide salvation. Every
culture has myths of ancient gods who strode through the heavens. The
American Indians had the cachinas who taught them to farm and saved them
from numerous cataclysms. Greece had Zeus who threw lightning bolts from
his finger tips and Apollo crossed the sky in his golden chariot. The
Christians have Ecclesiastes who encountered the "ant people" and rode
through the skies with them from Babylon to Israel. Across the entire globe
we find drawings on cave walls that resemble men in space suits and objects
that greatly resemble flying saucers. The sacred artwork of the Hopi Indian
when is without a doubt a representation of the waves produced by modern
day oscilloscopes (Montgomery 225-237). The Hopis are also native to the
area where one of the electrical cells were found. It could be that these
things are no more than mere coincidence, but I doubt it. Man in his arrogance
is reluctant to believe that we may share Gods vast, glorious universe with
other beings of intelligence. We sometimes fail to realize that if the Earth
were a day old, the race of man would only have been here for 13 minutes.
If you couple that with the fact that there are Black Holes and White Dwarfs
millions of years older than our sun, it increases the improbability that we are
the only ones out here. In the preceding text I have produced a limited
sampling of the volumes of evidence available. I will close this paper on
a quote from Ecclesiastes I:9 "there is no new thing under the sun", and that
includes intelligent life.


Works Cited

Ecclesiastes. Holy Bible. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1976.

Gould, Robert. Oddities. New York: Bell PC, 1965.

Jackson, Robert. UFO's: Sightings of Strange Phenomena in the Skies.
New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1995

Michel, Aime'. "Strange lights over Grenada." Fate Magazine. Aug. 1957.
29-32

Montgomery, Ruth. Aliens Among Us. New York: G.P Putnum's Sons, 1985

Randle, Kevin. A History of UFO Crashes. Avon Books,1995