Science Column
can dazzle the eye, at times appearing
UFOs and ET Brothers
“If you’ve never seen a UFO, you’re not very observant. And if you’ve seen as many as I have,
you won’t believe in them.” Arthur C. Clarke
Madhuparna Bhattacharjee
“If you’ve never seen a UFO, you’re
not very observant. And if you’ve
seen as many as I have, you won’t be-
lieve in them.” Arthur C. Clarke
Just in the recent past, many of you
must have followed news channels
and newspapers across the world
carrying news of an UFO sighted in
Mexico. I watched it on TV and the
entire thing seemed to be pretty inter-
esting. Do most of us actually know
the real story behind these objects,
like what they are, where do they
come from, etc etc.?
According to layman’s term, an Un-
identified Flying Object or a UFO is
any flying object or phenomenon that
cannot be identified by an observer.
 June 08
The scientific study of it, called Ufol-
ogy can be described as the mythology
of the space age.
Just as fairytales talk of fairies and
angels, Ufology talks of extraterrestri-
als (ET), which seems to be a much
more familiar term. Can we call it the
product of the creative imagination?
It is not that UFO is a latest con-
cept. American Kenneth Arnold had
claimed a UFO sighting way back in
the year 1947 on June 24, near Mount
Rainier, Washington. Arnold claimed
to have seen as many as nine brightly
lit objects soaring across the sky at
speeds he estimated up to 1200 miles
per hour. He had also reported that the
objects appeared to have disc or ‘sau-
cer’ shaped. It is after this that the term
‘Flying Saucer’ became so popular.
UFOs became a major subject of in-
terest following the development of
rocketry after World War II and since
then were thought by some researchers
to be intelligent extraterrestrial forms
of life, visiting planet Earth.
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 coloured balls
of light to cigar-, disk-, or crescent-
shaped objects.
Just the other day, while surfing
through various websites, I came
across Ian Ridpath’s UFO page, where
TYPE OF UFO SIGHTING DESCRIPTION cross-shaped.
Lights seen at night A type of rotating reflective kite called
t Nocturnal lights Bright
the UFO SAM has also made its own
Usually oval or disc-like contributions to sightings. Further, small
t Daylight disks decorative hot air balloons called Sky
Those detected by radar Lanterns or UFO Balloons have joined
t Radar-visual the list of culprits, generating reports of
Visual sightings of an orange-coloured ‘saucer fleets.’
t Close encounters of the 1st kind
unidentified object If real alien spacecraft were whizzing
around in orbit they would rapidly be
Visual sightings plus physi- noticed both by amateur satellite spot-
t Close encounters of the 2nd kind cal effects on animate and ters and by defence radars.
inanimate objects A new breed of UFO culprits is a
series of satellites launched to relay
Sightings of occupants in or signals for the Iridium mobile phone
t Close encounters of the 3rd kind around the UFO system. There are over 70 of these,
launched since May 1997, and they
it was stated that, usually, a descrip-
tion such as “it seemed to hover for an
hour” is diagnostic of a star or planet
(people get fed up watching after about
an hour, or the object sets). Often there
are other descriptions such as “flashing
coloured lights” or “it appeared to be
rotating” which is how bright stars ap-
pear when they are twinkling, notably
Sirius on a cold, frosty night. Binocu-
lars do not always help identification
if they happen to be cheap and with
optical defects that produce spurious
colours and shapes.
An interesting thing is that many
people do not realize that stars rise and
set during the night. So, information
such as, ‘it wasn’t there before’ or ‘it
appeared to move slowly’ are still con-
sistent with characteristics of stars and
planets. Thin clouds can make stars
appear to dim and brighten, as if they
were receding or approaching.
Another delicate effect, technical-
ly known as the Autokinetic Effect,
makes natural movements of the eye
make stationary object appear to move
irregularly, sometimes zooming up and
down or swinging from side to side.
Interestingly, planet Venus, the big-
gest UFO culprit of all, popularly
known as the ‘evening star’ (although
it can also appear in the morning sky as
the ‘morning star’), is the biggest ob-
ject in the night sky after the moon. It