Another Look at UFO as in “Flying Saucers”

We’re not big on conclusions (or spell-checking) here at Brainsturbator.  We’re into savoring the flavor of ambiguity, you know, meaning without clarity.  But here’s an easy conclusion to make: flying saucers are real. 

So although we’re going to spend the rest of this week arguing that UFOs are not flying saucers and probably not extra-terrestrial either --- first we’re going to look at the cliches and the stereotypes.  As is often the case, there’s a lot of truth buried under them.

Begin with this photo, which was taken by an arial mapping team during a routine photo flight.  The image was shot over Lago de Cote in Costa Rica.  Nobody on the plane noticed anything until days later when the photos were developed from the 10” x 10” negatives.

This piece of evidence received extensive scrutiny from Jacques Vallee, because of the circumstances and especially the richness of detail the over-sized negative provides.  Vallee also did some digital analysis of the photography, which at the time—1985, although the photo dates back to 1971—was a flashy new toy.

“Background" from Vallee’s paper

On September 4, 1971 a mapping aircraft of the government of Costa Rica with a crew of four recorded an unusual disc-shaped image as it was flying over the region of Arenal. It took several years for this photograph to find its way into the hands of a Costa Rican investigator, Mr. Ricardo Vilchez who (along with his brother Eduardo) runs a civilian research group in San Jose. In 1980 Mr. Vilchez met in person with Sergio L. V., the specialist in aerial photography who was aboard the aircraft that day. They discussed the circumstances surrounding the flight and the photograph without reaching a conclusion regarding the nature of the object. One of the authors saw the photograph while attending a meeting in Costa Rica in 1985, and Mr. Vilchez was kind enough to provide a second-generation negative to be taken back to the United States for analysis. Later we requested and obtained detailed maps of the area in question, as well as copies of the immediately preceding and following frames, respectively numbers 299 and 301. These photographs did not show the disc that was present on frame number 300.

In spite of the lack of a first-generation negative, we felt several unusual factors justified a detailed analysis of this photograph, if only to refine our methodology in dealing with such evidence: (1) it was taken by a high-quality professional camera; (2) the camera was looking down, which implies a maximum distance, hence a maximum size for the object; (3) the disc was seen against a reasonably uniform dark background of a body of water; and (4) the image was large, in focus and provided significant detail.

From an interview with Vallee:

AT: What about other technologies that can help us analyze evidence better than we could, say, 10 years ago?

Vallee: Digital enhancement of photographs is very useful. In my book, Confrontations, I mention the photograph that I brought back from Costa Rica, which was unusual because the object was over a lake [Lago de Cote], so there was a uniform black background. Everything is known about the aircraft that took the photo. At the time the picture was taken [in 1971], nobody on the plane had seen the object. It was only after the film was developed that the object was discovered. The camera used was exceptional: It produced a very large negative--ten inches, very detailed. You can see cows in the field. The time is known; the latitude, longitude and attitude of the aircraft is known. So we spent a lot of time analyzing that photograph, without being able to find any obvious natural answer to the object. It seems to be a very large, solid thing.

I obtained the negative from the government of Costa Rica--if you don’t have the negative, analysis is a waste of time. I also obtained the negative of the picture taken before and the picture after, all uncut. I took negatives to a friend of mine in France who works for a firm that digitally analyzes satellite photographs. They digitized the entire thing, and then analyzed it to the extent that they could, and could not find an explanation for the object.

The corroborating evidence is also pretty weird.  People had been seeing strange objects for years in that area, and this case summary is typical:

On October 25, 1986 at about 9:00 am, by clear weather, two men saw an object at the surface of the Lago de Cote. They are Joaquin U.A., 40 years old, a farm manager, and Ronald-Alberto L.A., a 23-year-old farmer. Their sketch of what they saw is presented as Figure 11.

Interviewed at the site 2 weeks after the observation by Ricardo and Carlos Vilchez, they gave a detailed description of the events: First they saw, about 1,800 feet away, a row of three or four post-like cylinders rising to about 3 feet above the surface of the lake, which was quiet and flat as a mirror. These cylinders appeared to be attached to a structure that remained submerged. Later they again saw a series of objects sticking out about 3 feet above the water and 3 feet apart. By then they had driven their tractor much closer to the lake, and they could clearly observe the cylinders which were of a dark hue, either grey or coffee-colored.

After 5 or 10 minutes these objects disappeared, the emerged portions again tilting together as if they were attached to a single submerged structure, and the whole object disappeared back into the lake with significant turmoil and waves.

So What Gives?

No clue, my friends, no clue.  There are clearly two different tiers of UFO phenomena --- the covert military weapons on one hand, and the insanely weird Weirdness of the encounters that Vallee was investigating.

With the first tier in mind, take a look at prototype aircraft like EKIP, or the infamous V-173 “Flying Pancake” Also check out more recent public-sector tech like the Geobat.  Wikipedia also offers a relatively lucid account on Military Flying Saucers.

Complicating matters further is stuff like the painting that’s to the left.  The “flying saucer” apparently pre-exists human attempts at developing flying saucers.  (Worth noting that the same is true of DMT.)

We leave you with a uniquely creepy and compelling chunk from sociologist William Sims Bainbridge’s article, “Religions for a Galactic Civilization”:

Despite competition from science in the West and totalitarian oppression in the East, religion has a future. All human societies have possessed religion, because it serves universal human needs.[3] People want to feel that life is meaningful and that there is hope for future rewards even as the end of life draws near. The most recent theories argue that religion will arise in all intelligent species possessing society—a structure of social relations among individuals—and which are gripped by strong desires which the current level of technology cannot satisfy.[4]

Modern industrial society has been marked by secularization, an historical trend in which traditional religious organizations lose influence. This is caused by three main factors. First, the development of science has discredited some traditional beliefs to the general discredit of traditional systems of faith. Second, the development of political radicalism has offered deprived members of society the hope of triumph and glory here on earth, rather than in the supernatural Heaven where they previously sought it. Third, the geographical mobility which many persons experience in modern society tears them away from the congregation in which they were raised, without automatically affiliating them with a particular congregation near their new home.

These factors undercut traditional religion but open the way for novel cults, some of which will be the established denominations of the future. Contrary to what one might think, persons without current religious affiliation are not typically atheistic, secular rationalists. In fact, compared to other groups they are more open to deviant supernatural beliefs, and thus are potential recruits for novel cults.[5] Secularization does not mean a decline in the need for religion, but only a loss of power by traditional denominations. Studies of the geography of religion show that where the churches become weak, cults and occultism will explode to fill the spiritual vacuum.

Consider how near-Earth spaceflight was achieved. A small, dedicated social movement of space enthusiasts learned how to exploit the political and military tensions in Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States to develop launch vehicles in the guise of long-range weapons. A more risky and unlikely course could hardly be charted! Certainly, no one denies that the ICBM is a potent delivery system for atomic warheads. But the most efficient American missiles are incapable of placing anything but the lightest research satellites in orbit. Had not the Russians and Americans competed to produce ICBMs so early in the development of atomic explosives—when they were large and heavy—the big military boosters which got the space program started would never have developed.

Had Wernher von Braun’s V-2 project been a little slower, or had the German army been a little less easy to exploit by his wing of the spaceflight movement, then the ICBM would have been delayed considerably in its development. The strategic delivery role would have gone to cruise missiles in the 1950s, as it nearly did, and atomic warheads would have been refined to the point at which no rocket much larger than the Minuteman would ever have been built. Thus, as I have argued in my book, The Spaceflight Revolution, modern space rocketry was an improbable outcome of very unpredictable historical events.[10] To use an astronautical metaphor: the historical launch window for the space program was very narrow and the slightest delay in the spaceflight social movement would have missed it entirely.

Arthur C. Clarke has interpreted my analysis of the social history of spaceflight a little more optimistically, saying my book concluded that “space travel is a technological mutation that should not really have arrived until the 21st century."[11] Perhaps he is right. Perhaps all highly developed industrial societies will naturally exploit the space environment. But I think that such a delay of a century might be fatal. The static advanced societies (which I imagine all successful intelligent species will develop) may have some use for the space immediately surrounding their planets, but no use for space beyond synchronous orbit. Will they dredge iron and uranium from the reefs of space? No, they will shift to renewable resources and low-risk energy systems.

Few advanced technological societies will be able to afford transcendent goals—because such goals are never consensual but always involve radical social movements. Any species which continues to permit radical social movements will produce nuclear Nazis and blow itself up. Of course, the quicker a society goes into space, the better its chance of surviving until the task is completed, then evolving into a more peaceful state. Thus, the conquest of the galaxy demands mutation, as Clarke uses the term. It demands a great leap taken in a short period of history, rather than a slow, gradual development. The launch window which opened on the galaxy will soon close.

At the moment it seems we have stopped leaping. True, the following decades will probably see greatly expanded use of the near-Earth space environment for commercial and military purposes. But it is hard to see what form of ordinary, practical exploitation will take us beyond synchronous orbit. To become fully interplanetary, let alone interstellar, our society would need another leap—and it needs that leap very soon before world culture ossifies into secure uniformity. We need a new spaceflight social movement capable of giving a sense of transcendent purpose to dominant sectors of the society. It also should be capable of holding the society in an expansionist phase for the longest possible time, without permitting divergence from its great plan. In short, we need a galactic religion, a Church of God Galactic.