Article by JP PETIT in the magazine Top Secret, November 2004
Thirty years later
Jean-Pierre Petit
Former Research Director at CNRS
Published in November 2004 in the magazine Top Secret
I read, in issue 15 of the magazine Top Secret, a text about me and I found some sentences that led me to take a beneficial look at myself. The editor-in-chief writes that I am not very diplomatic and also clumsy. I believe, alas, that he is right. Having a strong character has not only advantages, by far. I have pursued, over thirty-five years, a path directed towards different research areas, including the UFO phenomenon. By implementing a very classic rationalism, which I now realize is narrow-minded, I completely missed the exuberant world of ufology. The sign of this mental rigidity I displayed is that, in the autumn of my life, I am 67 years old, and I still do not manage to discern its outlines.
Nevertheless, this approach had its fertility, even if it was expressed outside of a classical framework, outside of its peer-reviewed scientific journals. I remember that I had sent, some twenty years ago, to the magazine "The Journal for Scientific Exploration", founded by the American Peter Sturrock and the Franco-American Jacques Vallée, a very technical article (they used to say "nuts and bolts", meaning "screws and bolts"), oriented towards the possible link between UFOs, considered as machines, and MHD as a mode of propulsion and levitation. I take this opportunity to recall that, by sending this text, I had, in accordance with this clumsiness mentioned by the magazine Top Secret in the cited issue, forgotten to cite the true pioneers of such an approach, the American Stanton Friedman and the Belgian Auguste Meessen, which proves that when one has too many publications confined within the classical field and carried out within the framework of peer-reviewed scientific journals, one can be led to forget to mention ideas published in specialized, ufological journals, or in books devoted to ufology.
My article was rejected by the anonymous expert who was solicited by the editors of this publication. With a twenty-year hindsight, I now understand why such a rejection occurred. My paper did not meet the selective criteria of ufology, which I unfortunately did not know the main lines of.
Thirty years have passed. I missed the UFO train and I remain alone on the platform of the station, with my narrow scientific criteria and suitcases full of knowledge that were undoubtedly reductionist. Perhaps, after all, to approach such a new subject, it was necessary to do so with a fresh, light mind, not so burdened with perhaps inadequate knowledge. One must know how to recognize one's mistakes, know how to step back in time and let others speak on literary, journalistic levels as well as in forums and internet sites.
For thirty years I have monopolized the Ummo file in its French expression. Jean-Jacques Pastor had translated 800 pages of texts, which had initially arrived at their recipients in Spanish. Then members of GESTO, under the leadership of Gilles d'Agostini, later took possession of these documents, which, after compression, could be presented in the form of a 3-inch ¼ disk. Containing these 800 pages, GESTO made this available free of charge, people simply providing the support and stamps for shipping costs. Later, Nicolas Lecot set up the first Internet site where these documents could be presented. He requested my authorization at the time to use the GESTO disk and I replied that, since I was not the author of these texts, I could not exercise any prerogatives over them, nor claim any property rights or any copyright. A few years later, when Nicolas Lecot became a webmaster in a company, he had the wisdom to let André-Jacques Holbecq take care of this vast file, which he then handled as best as he could. When one sees the result of this work, one understands the purpose of the endeavor.
In the enthusiasm of our first exploration of these texts, we made errors, both in translation and transcription, as was later pointed out by André-Jacques Holbecq, who, through the site ummo.sciences that he created, applied a military-like rigor to the management of this file, and by "Pollion", a pseudonym behind which hides a man with a solid computer science background and, no doubt, a refined and relevant sensitivity as a ufologist, which we poorly perceive. I take this opportunity to salute his immense work regarding the Ummite language, even though it has not yet led to a truly functional communication tool. But perhaps we are witnessing the emergence of a new form of linguistic expression, according to a language that is not obsessively oriented towards communication but could correspond to criteria that are still beyond our understanding. The fact that a given sequence of characters can lead to varied and different interpretations would not it represent a new richness that our terrestrial languages do not possess?
Today, thanks to the work of André-Jacques Holbecq, the Ummite texts are classified with military-like rigor and are the subject of evaluation works entrusted to ufology experts. In a forum, carefully protected by pseudonyms, qualified ufologists can freely develop their theses and confront their opinions in debates of powerful vitality.
Some documents that I had published were harshly criticized. I admit that until these lines underwent the barrage of analyses and criticisms, I had not really questioned them, contenting myself with making them into "wild science" and publishing the results of my musings in scientific journals. But today, when I read the comments that ufology experts have made about these letters, I discover details and nuances that had escaped me until now, the result of an implacable ufological rigor honed by decades of meticulous study of the UFO file. This has led me to look at other letters I have received, bearing the signature of Ummo, documents that I have not yet disseminated and where I still believe I can discern new research paths that are currently under investigation. What value do these letters have from a ufological perspective? I do not feel competent to answer this question.
A formation as a "pure and hard" scientist can lead to very restrictive behaviors in certain analyses, creating the risk of missing major discoveries. In a recent book, engineer Claude Poher has developed his theory of "universes". At first, my intellectual impulsiveness led me to reject this approach. However, considering the filter related to current knowledge, I think it cannot be excluded that this could be an essential breakthrough, capable of relegating the works of Newton and Einstein to the dustbin. One can only be impressed by the simplicity of the idea proposed by the author, which perfectly accounts for the behavior of UFOs in certain observations. A violent acceleration, made possible by his theory, leads to an extremely clever escape into the future, in case the explorers were to face a sudden danger. Obviously, this kind of idea is what can emerge from a typically ufological approach, the result of reflections by a man who has matured his work away from the conventional scientific agitation.
I found reflections on antigravity by Jean-Marc Roeder, which I confess completely surpass me.
Reading texts of this kind, I realize... that I have aged and, like the UFOs of Claude Poher, my thoughts are left behind by the current intellectual acceleration of ufology, and I do not feel intellectually equipped to follow its lightning-fast flight. Let new ideas take the stage. One must know how to recognize that one is a man whose future belongs to the past. I will now leave to more youthful minds, less burdened by our old, obsolete knowledge, the task of introducing readers to all these new ideas, animating the forums that sprout here and there, and perhaps one day, international conferences.
For those who would be content with a more conventional thought, a classicism perhaps a bit outdated, there remains the association I am involved in, GESTO. Through it, we "old-timers" continue to disseminate scientific reflections and ramblings in annual reports. For a membership fee of 30 euros addressed to:
GESTO, at Jean-Pierre Petit, villa Jean-Christophe, chemin de la Montagnère, 84120 Pertuis
The current report, composed in small characters, representing about sixty pages, will be sent back. For 50 euros, we can add the reports from the previous three years. Fully aware of the limitations imposed by the use of geometry, group theory, quantum field theory and other similar antiquities, and unfortunately unable at the moment to join the current ufological boom, we will continue our efforts with the modesty appropriate to such an endeavor.
Jean-Pierre Petit