DENVER, Colorado – With so much planet-hunting and -spotting going on, we are in a showdown to see whether the universe is perhaps chock-full of extraterrestrial life.
Distant
starfolk is one thing. Having ET stopovers here on Earth, via UFOs, is
another. And that was just the topic du jour here at the 38th Annual
International UFO Symposium, subtitled An Estimate of the Situation: The ET
Hypothesis, held August 10-12 and sponsored by the Denver-based Mutual UFO
Network, Inc., or MUFON for short.
As a yearly
affair, the symposium provides a platform for specialists and investigators
that delve into UFOs, purported military cover-ups and denials, physical
evidence surrounding UFOs, as well as those "high strangeness"
encounters with alien visitors.
The MUFON
summit brought together more than 500 people – a true gabfest for the flying
saucer devotee.
Passion
for the truth
James
Carrion, MUFON's International Director, said the organization is fervent about
resolving the scientific enigma known as unidentified
flying objects.
"To
me, it's all about the truth. I have a passion for the truth," Carrion
told SPACE.com.
Still,
after decades of pursuing "the truth" behind UFOs, Carrion admitted
that the quest is befuddling. "Why is it always within out of reach...kind
of there, but it's not there?"
A new
MUFON initiative being implemented this year is outreach to engage mainstream
scientists, Carrion said, to assist in taking a more detailed look at the data.
An open letter to the professional scientific community is now being drafted,
to be issued before year's end, he said.
"We
have to gain respectability here ... so we're trying to kick-start intellectual
curiosity out there," Carrion added. "We know that there are folks in
academia who have an interest, but they don't know what to do with it."
The MUFON
strategy initially centers on the hypothesis that UFOs are human-manufactured
and then evaluate the data amassed to date against that premise, Carrion
advised. "If this triggers your intellectual curiosity ... help us out,"
he said.
Carrion
said that MUFON is also forming two research teams: One to dive into the
history of "UFOlogy" and government archives, the other to probe into
the abduction encounters.
"I'm
a skeptical believer," Carrion pointed out. "I've never seen a UFO.
But I've read enough of our own evidence. There's something real to this. To
me, it's an issue of what is it?"
Tell it
like it is
For
nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman, there is no doubt that some UFOs are alien
spacecraft. Moreover, the subject of flying saucers, in his view, represents a "Cosmic
Watergate" – a colossal government cover-up.
Friedman
is a globe-trotting lecturer on UFOs and is the original civilian investigator
of the celebrated UFO crash case in Roswell,
New Mexico. That out-of-the-blue happening supposedly occurred some 60 years
ago, in 1947, involving no less than two crashed saucers, strewn debris and
recovered alien bodies, he reported at the MUFON meeting.
"I
come on very, very strong. I'm not an apologist UFOlogist...I tell it like it is,"
Friedman told SPACE.com. He senses that a "big sea change" is
taking place on several fronts.
"My
overall impression is that people are more ready to accept [UFO visitation]
because the world has changed...space travel being an important part of that,"
Friedman noted. "What I'm saying is that the notion that most people don't
believe in UFOs isn't true."
Also, the
media is giving UFO sightings a much fairer shake than in the past, Friedman
suggested, citing not only Roswell coverage, but the reporting of UFO sightings
made at O'Hare Airport late last year and more revelation concerning the Phoenix lights saga of March 1997.
"I
don't look for advocacy...I want fairness," Friedman added. "I feel the
world is ready. I'm outspoken, yes. But I try to make it a rule: Fact in hand
before mouth in gear."
Mind-bending
finding?
UFOs as
visitors from afar would be a simple, easy-to-grasp explanation, suggested George
Knapp, an investigative reporter for KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, Nevada. But he
wonders if there isn't a mind-bending finding waiting at the bottom of the UFO
barrel.
"It
seems to stay one or two steps ahead of what we can do...from airships to the
saucers, to giant flying triangles...almost teasing, taunting, or inspiring,"
Knapp told SPACE.com. Given cutting-edge physics, talk of the
multi-verse and parallel universes, along with threshold biological and
computer work, there are fundamental paradigm shifts ahead, he said.
"Although
we can't figure out a way to get there...doesn't mean they can't figure out a way
to get here," Knapp said. Involved in UFO reporting for some two decades,
Knapp said he's committed to the journalistic credo that the public has a right
to know.
"But
you know what? Maybe not! It goes against everything in my professional life
that I believe. What if it's not something we should know? That the truth is so
unsettling that our social institutions would, in fact, crumble," Knapp
confided.
Knapp
underscored the prospect that perhaps we Earthlings live in the middle of some
other kind of intelligence. Perhaps our planet is nothing more than a cosmic
drive-in theater, he added, and UFOs skim in and out of our skies just to watch
goofy movies.
"And
if it's something else – like they live here among us and everything we do is
like being in a glass shower – people are going to go crazy. So maybe there is
a reason for keeping this secret...and a need for government cover-up which I
believe there is," Knapp said.
Knapp's
on-air investigative work focuses primarily on government corruption and organized
crime. But asked about the angle that his next investigative piece on the UFO phenomenon
will take, he quickly responded. "Nothing I'm going to tell you about."
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