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Invaders
From Space |
On June 24, 1947
Kenneth Arnold an American Midwesterner, claimed that he saw nine shining
saucer like objects in formation over Mount Rainier, a snow capped
peak in the state of Washington.
His claim was a sensation. Coming so soon after the Second World War,
it brought a flood of rumours about secret airborne weapons, and as these
rumours spread, the stories of more saucer sightings came flooding in.
The phenomena of Unidentified Flying Objects or UFOs, had begun. |
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Reports came
so thick and fast that the US Air Force set up a top secret probe to
sift and evaluate all the evidence. After several years of careful
study it concluded: UFOs are either illusions or natural phenomene.
Flying saucers do not exist.
In most cases it said, what had been seen were unusual cloud formations.
Other possible explanations were weather balloon, fast ircraft, ball
lightning, high flying birds, or something equally unexciting.
The ball lightning theory, put forward by an American science writer,
Philip Klass, has gained ground in recent years. Ball lightning is believed
to be a mass of air particles broken up by an electrical discharge. It
glows rather like a neon light. Because it is no more dense than the
air around it, ball lightning can move in the strangest fashion. It can
spin, wobble and hover, and then shoot off on an air current in any direction.
Ball lightning is not always round but can take on other shapes. It is
known to build up around power transmission lines, were many saucer sightings
have been made. It is also apparently able to stall car engines, just
as flying saucers have been reported to do. |
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