Untitled Document
Introduction to UFO-science
May 6, 2010
Introduction
The UFO phenomenon has been occurring on Earth for more than half a century. Before briefly summarizing the activities of our UFO-science group, we would like to start by recalling the different aspects of the phenomenon and its impact on our society.
The impact has been, let's say, almost nonexistent, at least in the social spheres accessible to us. As for the profit that advanced country military personnel may have drawn from it, that is another matter, but it is a different subject. Let's return to the question of impact. It is astonishing to note that a phenomenon that has led to hundreds of thousands of observations, some of which present a high level of credibility, has practically triggered no reaction in political, scientific, military (in what is accessible to us), and religious or philosophical spheres.
A phenomenon so omnipresent across the entire planet has become a new part of terrestrial folklore. In its overwhelming majority, the international scientific community, across all disciplines, vehemently denies any reality to the phenomenon in the most irrational way. The typical position can be summarized in the following sentence:
- Why should I give any attention to a phenomenon that has no foundation at all?
Due to the lack of serious scientific studies conducted by competent scientists, the subject is left to investigators alone, and the only material they can then produce is limited to a set of witness accounts, or photographs and films, always subject to doubt.
France has had a service since 1977, which has had several names over more than three decades: GEPAN (Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena), SEPRA (Service for the Expertise of Atmospheric Reentry Phenomena), and finally in 2005 GEIPAN (Group for the Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena). However, this service continues to limit its actions to collecting testimonies and field investigations, specifying that the launch of scientific studies is not part of its assigned mission (for over 33 years). Whether in this body (military, comparable to the American National Guard) or in the service itself (currently limited to two people: an engineer and a secretary), no one has ever had, and no one has ever had, a minimal scientific competence to deal with these issues, and nothing suggests that things could change.
Why have things evolved this way?
The answer is ultimately quite simple. Behind the UFO phenomenon lies the hypothesis, so disturbing, of incursions by visitors from other systems than our own. For decades, scientists have expressed a geocentric skepticism, preferring the hypothesis that life could only have arisen and organized itself on Earth. Many astronomers even doubted that other planetary systems could exist besides our own. But to date, observations have revealed the existence of what are now called exoplanets, of which there are now more than four hundred (May 2010). These detections correspond to systems relatively close to us, and the most resistant astronomers and astrophysicists are forced to admit that the universe must contain a number of planets capable of hosting life that defies imagination.
Observations suggest that the known universe contains 100 billion galaxies, each composed of hundreds of billions of stars, in which perhaps a million planets could host organized life.
This gradual but inevitable contact has obvious religious implications for all religious currents, monotheistic ones, which claim universality. If many scientists, like Stephen Hawking, to name just one, eventually conclude that organized life necessarily exists in the universe elsewhere than on Earth, they quickly moderate their statements, adding "that this life would probably be limited to a very primitive stage," which is fantastically absurd.
More than ever, the consideration of the idea that Earth could be visited by extraterrestrials represents an absolute taboo. In the scientific world, the UFO subject is the object of the same prohibition. On October 16 and 17, 2010, we will participate in an international conference whose theme is "Astronomy - Space - UFOs." It would therefore be logical to hope that astronomers will participate in these meetings. In this spirit, the organizer contacted professionals in this specialty hoping for their collaboration. Their response was:
- It's okay, provided that you remove all references to the UFO subject.
One could not better express the taboo that affects this subject, after more than half a century. The explanation lies in the extremely destabilizing nature of this idea of visits, which would automatically imply an immense scientific and technical superiority. This simple idea, breaking our fundamental geocentrism, calls everything into question: our current scientific knowledge (according to which such travels would be physically impossible), and our religious beliefs.
Any form of thought is nothing more than an organized system of beliefs. Viewed in this way, science is structured like a religion. The word religion comes from the Latin word religare, meaning to bind. Societies are held together by a common vision of things, whether it be religions, science, or belief in the virtues of a particular social or (and) political, economic system. Questioning this is equivalent to removing the cement that holds a building together.
Unconsciously, human beings are fully aware of the danger associated with the most destabilizing contact ever in human history. Throughout history, very different civilizations have found themselves suddenly in contact, such as the pre-Columbian populations with the Spanish conquistadors. Entire social systems have collapsed. We daily witness a similar phenomenon, for example, with Amazonian tribes, and the corresponding term is ethnocide.
A contact between the inhabitants of Earth and beings from another planet inherently carries an ethnocide risk. It is because our religious, scientific, political, and military systems unconsciously perceive the magnitude of this risk that these social groups display denial mechanisms, having the character of a psycho-socio-immunological reaction. This reaction not only should not surprise us, but was in fact highly predictable.
The problem is that this rejection mechanism is also at work within the professionals of science, who alone would be able to conduct a fruitful investigation on the subject. In the absence of such an approach, the continued collection of simple testimonies or the accumulation of photographs or films, as the French service has been doing for 33 years, is a perfectly vain and unproductive approach.
Scientific approaches to the UFO phenomenon
- Optical data
The phenomenon has different aspects. The most well-known is its nocturnal manifestation in the form of ...