Hello! Somebody out there?
By Maharaj K. Koul

IN an interview, Philip Morrison of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA, said there is no substance in the claims of people who have spotted extraterrestrial (ET) spacecrafts or having had a first-hand interaction with "beings from the outer space."

According to him, reports of sightings of ETs seem to be all mixed up with fantasies of people who propounded such theories. People seem to be doing it simply to seek attention. A few even make good money out of it.

Morrison said if such incidents were true there was no reason why "the beings" would not send signals or leave corroborative evidence of their visit particularly at institutions where they could be analysed or responded to. He said it was ridiculous that certain people claimed to have been "pulled out of walls and even operated upon by people from outer space." What is more intriguing is that such claims also received support from certain psychoanalysts. "While there may be no truth in such reportings, the fiction definitely spells good business."

Morrison has taught in the MIT since 1962. He said at one point of time he worked with eminent scientist to verify the truth in ET spottings but "things always fell apart in our hands".

Almost 50 years after the celebrated "Roswell incident, "the US air force published what it says a "final report", trying to solve once and for all one of the most resilient mysteries of 20th century America: The supposed crashlanding of a flying saucer complete with aliens in a farmer’s field in New Mexico, and a government conspiracy to cover it up.

The report, kept confidential until its release on July 1, 1997 in Washington, addresses for the first time claims by "eyewitnesses" that aliens were found in the wreckage and secretly removed by the authorities. The number of aliens has varied from three to five or more. But the description — that they were like people, but smaller, squatter and with round heads — has never altered and has provided that template for "aliens" since.

On July 2, 1947, a ranch manager, William Brazel, heard an explosion which he thought might have been lightning from a storm. The next day he found what looked like debris from an explosion scattered across part of his spread in the ranching community of Corona, about 120 km north-west of Rosewell in the state of New Mexico, USA.

Brazel immediately reported the incident to Sheriff George Wilcox at the Chaves county Sheriff’s office. Wilcox in turn, contacted the Roswell army air base. A team under one major Jesse Marcel, a staff intelligence officer of the 509 Bomb Group Intelligence Office, gathered the debris from the ranch. William Balanchard ordered Major Marcel to load it into a B-29 aircraft to be flown to Wright Field (later Wright Patterson air base) in Ohio.

Meanwhile, the public information officer of Roswell army air base, first Lieut. Walter Haut, issued a statement confirming that they had recovered a flying disc. This was immediately called "unauthorised" and retracted. A second statement was issued by Brigadier-Gen Roger Ramey, commander of the 8th air force in Fort Worth, Texas, saying, in effect, that the material recovered was of a Rawin weather balloon. As it transpired, wreckage from a weather balloon was, indeed, later shown to the media to support the claim.

The matter rested there for the next 30 years till a retired Marcel broke his silence to an NBC radio newsman. Marcel maintained that he was well-acquainted with the appearance of such weather balloons and that it was not what he had recovered. He also said that it was like material that he had never seen before, including objects with hieroglyphic markings.

Based mainly on this testimony and some research conducted by the controversial nuclear physicist Stanton Friendman, William Moore and Charles Berlitz ( of The Bermuda Triangle fame) wrote The Rosewell Incident. Although sketchy in detail and lacking solid evidence, the book became a bestseller because of its central premise that the US government had recovered, alongwith the crashed flying saucer, the bodies of four UFO nauts as well.

Yet nobody really paid any attention. But then seven years later, in 1987, Moore made public a document that he said supported his earlier crashed — saucer and government-secrecy claims; the so-called MJ-12 document which he said he had got access to after the National Archives officially declassified documents from Air Force Intelligence files.

The top secret document was allegedly written by then head of the CIA, Rear Admiral Roger Hillenkoetter on November 18, 1952 to brief President-elect Dwight Eisenhower about crashed flying saucers. It claimed that the majestic-12 (or MJ-12) committee had been set up by Eisenhower’s predecessor, President Harry Truman on September 24, 1947 as a " top-secret research and development/ intelligence operation responsible directly and only to the President of the United States."

Referring to the Rosewell incident it said: "On July 7, 1947 an aerial reconnaissance discovered that four small human-like beings had apparently ejected from the craft at some point before it exploded. These had fallen to earth about 2 miles east of the wreckage site. All four were dead and badly decomposed due to the action of predators and exposure to the elements during the approximately one week of time which had elapsed before their discovery. Although these creatures are human like in appearance, the biological and evolutionary processes responsible for their development have apparently been quite different from those observed or postulated in Homo sapiens."

The document concluded by saying, "It is for these reasons (of national security) that the MJ-12 group remains of the unanimous opinion that the strictest security precautions should continue."

In 1994, the British UFD Research Association (Bufora) announced that a US government film had come into its possession which shows evidence of the existence of alien life. Also, according to Bufora, the footage shows US military scientists examining the corpse of an ET on a mortuary table.

Philip Mantle, Director of Investigations for Bufora said: "They had flesh and blood and were like humans with overly large heads and no hair. Their noses, lips and ears were small and they had dark sunken eyes. It is the only known instance of aliens on film."

British documentary maker, Ray Santilli, who is supposed to have purchased the film from the original cameraman, gave it to Kodak to check and Kodak experts confirmed that the film is 50 years old. Which, of course, means nothing since hundreds of films are 50 years old or older and do not feature aliens.

Supposed signs of ET intelligence in our own times began with the sighting of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) , in the shape of shining disc-like forms, on June 24, 1947 by Kenneth Arnold who was flying his own private aircraft near Mount Rainer Washington state, USA. He was reported saying that they flew around the peaks of the Cascade Mountains with "flipping, erratic movements." Because of their disc-like shape, the objects came to be known generally as "flying saucers."

Then, on January 8, 1948, Thomas Mantell of the US air force, flying a P-51 fighter, was reported to have chased a strange "white object" climbing into the sky. The report said he passed out at 9,000 metres resulting in a fatal dive.

After this, the US air force authorities undertook an extended investigation code-named "Blue Book" which ended in 1969. An astrophysicist, Allen Hynek, who was also in the investigation project is said to have been sceptical to begin with, but to have changed his attitude as the inquiry proceeded. In a work done subsequently, The UFO Experience, he alleged from all accounts that the US investigation "was a cover-up."

Arnold’s sighting of flying saucers was by no means the first ever. Records are quoted about the sighting of a mysterious cigar-shaped flying object in 1800. Strange lights in the sky reported around 1865 were investigated inconclusively by a commission under Admiral Jack Collinson. A NASA official, Josef Blumrich recently did a close study of the assertion by Von Daniken (author of The Chariots of Gods), that Ezekiel in the story from the Bible had described a spaceship when he spoke of "a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were, gleaming bronze." After studying the entire passage in detail Blumrich concluded that Daniken probably was right.

From 1950 onwards many other studies were undertaken of UFOs by researchers, including Donald Keyhoe, Aime Michael, Jacques Vallee, Michad Jessup, Fred Hoyle and Raymond Drake. Raymond Drake’s God and Spacemen in the ancient East sifts ancient tests in a search for references to objects such as described by Ezekiel.

The psychologist Carl Jung is said to have initially theorised that the flying saucers were projections from the "collective unconscious." Eventually, however he was reported agreeing with those who thought that the saucers seemed "more factual than that".

Related to the UFOs seems to be the phenomenon, reported mostly in Europe from around the end of the 1980s of what has been described as "crop circles". Vast, complex though invariably circular patterns started to appear in crops growing in fields. These were reported forming overnight usually and were too large and well-formed to have been made by individuals or even groups of people in such a short time. Photographs published of these circles showed the standing crop patterned in places as if by a large revolving object that had settled on the field.

To add to the general mystery, pulses radioed by scientists into outer space in a single direction are said to have returned in echo. And at intriguingly varying intervals of time. Attempts are, reportedly, continuing to investigate why.

In California’s Silicon valley, a small group of astronomers is trying to establish contact with alien societies. If these researchers succeed, we will know for certain that Earth is only one of many planets that host intelligent beings.

Nearly four decades ago, Frank Drake, president of the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) pioneered the efforts to eavesdrop evidence of distant beings with large telescopes that could uncover in interstellar radio traffic. While no clearly alien signals have been heard, Drake’s prediction that "we might find ETs within 10 years" reflects the fact that today’s searches are far more sensitive than earlier experiments. Few scientists doubt that we have cosmic company. Hundreds of billions of stars sputter and shine in the milky way’s spacious realms, and one in 10 of these are clones of the sun.

Last summer, the SETI Institute transported its monitoring equipment to the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. There it will conduct the world’s most sensitive radio search for ETs as part of a long-running effort called "project Phoenix". The massive radio telescope at Arecibo, seen by many in the movie Contract will be aimed at several hundred star systems, scrutinising them one by one for artificial signals.

Situated in a natural limestone hallow near Puerto Rico’s north coast, the Arecibo antenna is by far the world’s largest, boasting of a diameter of 305 metres. This makes it an unsurpassed radio ear for picking out the subtle tones of any alien transmitters that might otherwise remain buried in the constant avalanche of natural static. Unlike the situation often portrayed in films, finding broadcasts from ETs involves more than donning earphones and patiently turning in the Cosmos.

The Project Phoenix radio receivers monitor 28 million channels simultaneously. And decisions about whether a suspicious signal is present or not are made by computers. Any signals found at Arecibo will trigger an automatic follow-up observation at the 76-metre Jodrell Bank radio telescope in England. By using a second antenna to check out interesting signals, astronomers can rapidly weed out interference caused by telecommunication satellites, radar and local broadcasters.

And the Australians are also listening for alien songs from the stars. Using the giant Parkes Radio Telescope, they have just started a five-year mission to seek out new life orbiting other suns. And hopes for hearing a galactic call from aliens are now higher than ever.

The new Australian programme is the first long-term effort to search for such ETs in the Southern Hemisphere and piggybacks other radio astronomy observations. As other scientists listen to the radio hisses and spits pouring out from the natural Universe, the instrumentation will simultaneously scan through more than 8 million radio channels every two seconds looking for a galactic greeting.

Despite the sensitivity of upcoming research, not all astronomers are as optimistic as Drake in anticipating a signal detection soon. Jill Tarter, the principal scientist for project Phoenix and the real-life equivalent of the Jodie Foster character in the movies Contact, says that "it may be my daughter or grand-daughter who first discovers the ETs. This might take a while".

That may be. But the scientists engaged in the search for other beings remains enthusiastic. If they succeed in their quest, they will irrevocably burst the bubble of isolation that has enclosed the earth for billions of years. Harking back to Christopher Columbus’ discovery of a New World, the astronomers toiling in the limestone hills of Puerto Rico hope they may soon discover a new civilisation!