Welcome

UFO's

Where do you start with UFO's? There are about as many theories and ideas on the subject as there are pictures, reports and publications.
I think my favorite theory goes something along these lines: The government makes contact with them (UFOs) in the late 40's / early 50's.
An agreement is reached that in exchange for advances in technology the government would allow studies of our earth and life forms. Totally on
the Q T of course. Time goes by and sightings increase, not just from the lunatic fringe (no offense intended to those of us in that classification) but
also from government and military sources. Then the abductions began, Betty and Barney Hill opened the floodgates on that aspect of the phenomena.
People come forward with similar stories and similar descriptions of the event. Time goes on and every aspect of the UFO issue escalates. Wouldn't
it be a trip if the whole thing was out of the governments control now, and they no longer have a clue what the hell is going on, and they are too
embarrassed to cop to it all. That would be a fantastic press conference " Ah.. jeez America ah...we made this deal with aliens about 50 years ago
and ah....well ahh..they are all over hell and back now snatching people left and right and ah..we didn't think it would get that far and we can't stop them,
but it's probably ok because they haven't really ah... hurt too many of us yet"

Talk about creating a monster! "In the interest of national security" we ain't gonna tell you nothin'. Sure wish they would be up front with us about
whatever might be going on. Remember, I ain't sayin' it is..... but I ain't sayin' it ain't.

Almost every civilization that has kept a written history has recorded the sighting of strange objects and lights in the skies. Today, unexplained
aerial phenomena are generally referred to as unidentified flying objects or flying saucers.

Descriptions of UFOs have ranged from glowing wheels to colored balls of light to cigar-, disk-, or crescent-shaped objects. One of the first well
documented UFO sightings occurred in 1561 in Nuremberg, Germany. A broadsheet published that year describes red, blue, and black balls or plates,
crosses, and tubes that appeared to battle each other in the sky over the city.

The United States government has records of thousands of UFO sightings, including photos of alleged UFOs and interviews with people who claim to
have seen them. Since UFOs were considered a potential security risk, the report on these sightings was originally classified as secret. When the
report was later declassified it showed that 90 percent of all UFO sightings could be easily explained. Most of the sightings turned out to be celestial
objects, such as stars or bright planets like Venus, or atmospheric events such as auroras or meteors falling through the atmosphere. Many other
sightings turned out to be such objects as weather balloons, satellites, aircraft lights, or formations of birds. Often these sightings were accompanied
by unusual weather conditions.

In 1948 the United States Air Force began the government's first official UFO panel, Project Sign, which studied 243 sightings. It was replaced by
Project Grudge, which investigated another 244 sightings. In March 1952 the most ambitious of the UFO panels, Project Blue Book, was organized by
the Air Force. The panel employed a number of scientists, including physicists, engineers, meteorologists, and an astronomer. Project Blue Book had
three main goals: to explain all reported sightings of UFOs; to decide if UFOs posed a threat to the national security of the United States; and to determine
whether UFOs were using any advanced technology that the United States could use.

By the mid-1960s UFO reports were more numerous than ever. For the first time they were coming in regularly from places outside the United States,
including Canada, Sweden, the Soviet Union, and Australia. In February 1966 another UFO panel was convened. Like the others, this panel determined
that the vast majority of UFO reports were either natural phenomena or outright hoaxes.

A few scientists publicly disagreed with the panel's conclusions. This group, which included James E. McDonald, a meteorologist at the University of
Arizona, and J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University, maintained that since a few of the most reliable UFO reports had never been
clearly explained, this was definite proof that Earth was being visited by extraterrestrials.

The dissenting scientists' opinion was received coldly by the mainstream scientific community. In 1968 the United States Air Force asked Edward U.
Condon, a physicist at the University of Colorado, to head a panel studying the extraterrestrial hypothesis (see Extraterrestrial Life). The committee's
final report, 'A Scientific Study of UFOs', which covered detailed investigations of 59 UFO sightings, was reviewed by a special committee of the National
Academy of Sciences and released in early 1969. The 37 scientists who contributed to the report interviewed UFO witnesses and studied physical and
photographic evidence. The report, also known as the Condon Report, concluded that not only was there no evidence of extraterrestrial control of UFOs
but also that no further UFO studies were needed.

Based on the recommendations of the Condon Report, Project Blue Book was closed in December 1969. By the time the project was disbanded, it
had amassed some 80,000 pages of information on 12,618 reported UFO sightings and events, each of which was ultimately classified as either
"identified" with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial phenomenon, or as "unidentified," including cases in which information was insufficient.

The only other official and relatively complete records of UFO sightings were maintained in Canada, where they were transferred in 1968 from the
Canadian Department of National Defense to the Canadian National Research Council. The Canadian records had totaled about 750 sightings and
events in the late 1960s. Less complete records have been maintained by scientists in Great Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Greece.

Since the closing of Project Blue Book, the United States government has not had any official programs for studying UFOs. In 1973, however, a
group of American scientists organized the Center for UFO Studies (now the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, in Chicago, Ill.). It is one of
several private groups that continue to study the phenomenon.

According to a United States Air Force guide published on the subject, the reliability of witnesses is one of the main considerations in all UFO sightings.
Also of note are the number of witnesses, how long they saw the UFO, how far away they were from the UFO, and the weather conditions at the time
of the sighting. One of the most common features of UFO reports is that witnesses often insist that the objects they saw were under intelligent control.
People frequently come to this conclusion because, like Kenneth Arnold, who saw flying saucers above Mount Rainier, they believe they see objects
flying in formation or toward another object or changing direction or speed dramatically.

People have a natural desire to explain and understand everything they see. This is why visual sightings of UFOs are the least reliable. The unaided
human eye can be tricked to the point of hallucination. A bright light, such as the planet Venus, often appears to move, though a clamped telescope
or a sighting bar shows it to be fixed. A visual impression of distance is also unreliable because it is based on an assumed size. Reflections from
windows or eyeglasses may provide superimposed views. Optical defects can turn point sources of light into apparently saucer-shaped objects. Such
optical illusions coupled with a desire to interpret visual images account for many UFO reports.

Radar sightings, while more reliable in certain respects, do not provide the information necessary to discriminate between physical objects and such
natural phenomena as meteor trails, tracks of ionized gas, rain, or thermal discontinuities. Furthermore, several effects can give false radar echoes:
electronic interference, reflections from ionized layers or clouds, and reflections from a region of humidity--for example, a cumulus cloud.

Even so-called contact events--in which activities besides sighting were reported--have been found most frequently to involve dreams or hallucinations.
The reliability of such reports depends heavily on whether there were two or more independent witnesses present.

These pictures were taken by Mr. Paul Trent on May 11, 1950, a farmer in McMinnville, Oregon. Mrs.Trent had been out feeding her rabbits
at about 7:30 in the evening when she saw the metallic, disk shaped object gliding slowly overhead. She yelled for her husband to get the camera.
Mr. Trent managed to rush out and snap two pictures of the object before it disappeared. The Trent's did not try to exploit the pictures and shared
them with a few close friends. Eventually word reached the local newspaper and they were printed about a month after the sighting. Edge enhancement
does not show any supporting wires or structures and color contouring confirms that the object is three dimensional in nature.

UFO

Picture Archives

Links

The Black Vault
One of the best links I have found on the net is one done by John Greenewald Jr. called The Black Vault. This guy is an expert in
Freedom of Information Act document procurement. Please take time to check his site. It is well worth the visit! Using John's methods
I have obtained documents from various government agencies, it works! Here is a link to his site: http://www.blackvault.com

SETI@home
SETI@home is a scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI).
You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data
                                                                                                                                                     

The National UFO Reporting Center
The web's most comprehensive and up to date UFO information source Provided by America's foremost UFO Reporting Agency
In continuous operation since 1974
                                                                

The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies
The Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) is an international group of scientists, academics, investigators, and volunteers dedicated
to the continuing examination and analysis of the UFO phenomenon.
                                                                                                                


Citizens Against UFO Secrecy
"Other worlds are in communication with the Earth. Proofs of this exist. Those which we think we can see are not,
perhaps, the right ones. But they exist..."
-Charles Hoy Fort in 1931

"...a unique natural phenomenon that somehow has remained unperceived by the collective body of human experience."
-Dr. J. Allen Hynek in 1967

"Somewhere on planet Earth, existing in some undiscovered domain, another intelligence shares this world with humanity.
Its intent, presently, is to remain on the fringes of human perception."
-Peter A. Gersten in 2001
                                                                      



Mutual UFO Network
MUFON's mission is the systematic collection and analysis of UFO data, with the ultimate goal of learning the origin and nature
of the UFO phenomenon. It has a map of current sightings on it's home page.
                                        

Alien Bases
Right here on Earth? Bases in Mexico, The Antarctic and Uruguay, just to name a few locations.