Part 18

The electrical failures ascribed to E-M forces undoubtedly had a variety of causes. Automobile engines can stall for many reasons. Rain seeping under the hood of a car can soak the ignition and temporarily interfere with smooth operation. Sand or dust or a vapor lock in the fuel line can do the same. The body of an automobile is metal and completely encloses the ignition system and the motor. The engine stops if it is deprived of gasoline or oxygen, but it does not stop if lightning strikes the car. The metal body acts as a shield that electrical forces cannot penetrate.

Every driver knows that the reception on a car radio normally varies from poor to fair; it rarely remains constant. While moving beneath a power line, a car may receive no radio signals at all. A high-tension line can be surrounded by an electrical field that makes a radio set hum or buzz raucously and completely jams the reception. Static or a powerful interfering signal can easily jam a car’s radio, but no electrical field, static or oscillating, can kill a car’s motor or shut off its lights or stop the dashboard clock; it could not stop the driver’s wrist watch, and it could not stop a man’s watch without seriously injuring the wearer, even if he were standing in an open field.

Radio and TV sets may function badly for one of many reasons. They may simply need a good repairman! A passing plane, a more powerful transmitting station on the air, auroral activity, stormy weather, ultraviolet radiation, or clouds of ejected atoms from the sun--any of these can disrupt radio or TV communication, but they do not interfere with the operation of gasoline engines.

All meteors bright enough to be seen can cause some radio and TV interference--and in the first week of November the Taurid shower is approaching its maximum. Although meteors do not, by themselves, emit any appreciable amount of radio energy, the friction between the swiftly moving meteoric body and the atmosphere produces a train of hot gases that can momentarily reflect radio waves. The brightest meteors leave behind them a persistent cloud of luminous, electrified gas that can absorb radio waves and thus blanket incoming signals for several minutes after the meteor has passed. A spectacular fireball observed about 8:30 P.M. M.S.T. on April 18, 1962, momentarily turned off the street lights in the town of Eureka, Utah; it was so bright that it triggered the photoelectric control, just as daybreak does[IX-17a].

No imaginable single force--electric, magnetic, or gravitational--could possibly have caused _all_ the effects attributed to saucerdom’s miraculous electromagnetic force. An E-M field with the postulated powers is as improbable as a force that would lift fallen apples from the ground and draw them up to reunite with the branches of their parent tree.

Let us suppose for a moment, however, that the incidents in the Levelland epidemic might have occurred just as they are described by the NICAP committee. If UFOs had been visiting the earth that week, projecting a force field that performed as claimed, certain other events should also have occurred.

Thousands of automobiles should have been, but were not, temporarily disabled in the neighborhood of every car-stopping UFO. Fantastic traffic jams have sometimes been caused by torrid weather and consequent vapor locks in the fuel lines of automobile engines. In June 1961, for example, a sudden heat wave in Boston caused a vapor-lock epidemic that tied up traffic on the main highways for three hours. On some stretches of road so many cars were immobilized that, with their hoods up to cool off, they looked “like a convention of pelicans.” No such traffic jams were reported in connection with the 1957 UFOs. In South Springfield, Ohio, a car and a taxicab stalled but the vehicles around them experienced no trouble. One car stalled in Houston and another in Santa Fe, but the traffic around them proceeded as usual.

Hundreds of TV sets should have blurred, but did not, in the neighborhood of every TV-blurring UFO.

Equally surprising, no one complained of UFO interference with hi-fi sets, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines, irons, freezers, or electric razors. No airplane, helicopter, motorcycle, or ocean liner reported engine trouble.

At least two landings were reported, in New Mexico and Ohio. No physical evidence of landing could be found--shrubs were not crushed, grass was not scorched, ground was not disturbed.

Except for the _Sebago_, no radar reported the presence of a UFO.

Moonwatch teams, trained specifically to detect, observe, and plot the exact path of moving objects in the sky, were on the alert that week all over the United States and Canada. They did not see even one unidentified flying object.

_“G-Fields” and UFO Propulsion_

Even more fantastic than the E-M force that stops cars and silences radios is the artificial gravitational field or “G-field,” which saucer enthusiasts call on to account for all UFOs whose reported behavior clearly contradicts the laws of physics. Employing electromagnetic forces, the UFOs supposedly can create a variety of G-fields as needed, to be used as a defense weapon, a means to invisibility, or a method of propulsion[IX-18, IX-19].

Writers of science fiction have regularly utilized similar handy expedients such as “gravity shields,” “force fields,” “inertia drives,” and “space warps” to move their heroes quickly from earth to remote parts of the galaxy. Physicists, too, dream of revealing new aspects of nature that would allow man to nullify the effects of gravity and make short cuts through space, but they realize that such devices, even if theoretically not impossible, must await unimaginable discoveries about nature and are at least far in the future.

Unlike the amateur investigator of UFOs, both the storyteller and the physicist know that if and when such advances are made, they will enlarge our understanding of the cosmos, as did the creative insights of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, but new discoveries cannot invalidate what we have already learned about how the universe works. Many of the properties ascribed to UFOs imply a complete breakdown of physical law. They belong to the realm of magic, not science. Traveling at speeds approaching the velocity of light, reversing direction instantaneously, achieving maximum acceleration or deceleration in a fraction of a second, becoming invisible at will--such feats are impossible for a solid body moving either in an atmosphere or in space. Most of the serious proponents of the saucer hypothesis acknowledge that such actions are impossible, according to our present knowledge, but they argue that alien races more advanced than earthmen have undoubtedly found new sources of power and developed new methods of propulsion. Elaborate theories have been constructed, phrased in nearly incomprehensible scientific jargon, to show that UFOs do not flout the laws of physics but merely operate under laws that are still unknown to human beings.

To UFO investigators whose professional training lies chiefly in fields other than physics--business, the arts, entertainment, military science, government, the law, medicine, or religion--such theories might well seem plausible. But to the physicist they seem so irrational that they do not even deserve discussion, and he dismisses them as nonsense. Saucer believers thereupon denounce the physicist as a bigot, complain of his “closed mind,” and piously invoke the ghost of Galileo. They forget, apparently, that the persecutors of Galileo were specialists in theology and had only a nodding acquaintance with astronomy.

One of the earliest theories of UFO propulsion suggested that saucers got their motive power by tapping the lines of force in the earth’s magnetic field. One author wrote:

“The earth being simply a huge magnet, a dynamo wound with magnetic lines of force as its coils, tenescopically [the meaning of this impressive word is unknown to the present authors] counted to be 1,257 to the square centimeter in one direction and 1,850 to the square centimeter in the other direction (eddy currents), indicates that natural law has placed these lines as close together as the hairs on one’s head. And yet they never touch or cross each other if let alone. If done so by accident the catastrophe would spread like a searchlight and destroy everything in its path.”[IX-20, p. 139]

The same author asserts that such a “catastrophe” is the true explanation of Mantell’s death (p. 33). Supposedly objecting to his close approach, the occupants of the saucer he was chasing manipulated some of the lines of force until they crossed in front of Mantell; the resulting surge of power knocked the plane out of the air. Under some conditions, he adds, the crossing of the lines can produce desirable effects, such as the Aurora Borealis, when “we have magnetic lines of force that are crossing one another at or near the geographic and the magnetic poles and as a result we see those beautiful colored lights.”[IX-20, p. 141]

To the physicist, these statements are an unsavory verbal hash. Lines of force cannot provide a source of power and they cannot cause explosions--they are not even real. Created merely to describe the behavior of magnetic fields, they have no more objective existence than a train of thought. By using the convenient fiction that lines of force emerge from the north magnetic pole, spread apart as they flow around the earth, and then crowd close together again as they enter the south magnetic pole, the physicist is able to map observed variations in the earth’s magnetic field. In a similar way the geographer uses contour lines to map high and low areas on the earth’s surface.

A spacecraft could not propel itself by hitching to magnetic lines of force any more than a man could travel from Philadelphia to Peru by sliding down the 75th line of longitude.

The more sophisticated students of UFO behavior do not propose magnetic lines of force as a source of power. In fact they skip lightly over the awkward question of how the saucers are propelled and vaguely assert that extraterrestrial vehicles obtain energy (apparently without doing equivalent work) by somehow plugging in to the cosmic rays and magnetic fields that exist in space. Thus having access to unlimited power, a saucer supposedly draws on E-M forces to create and enclose itself in a kind of cocoon of artificial gravity. This G-field cuts off the attraction of the earth and other heavenly bodies, enables the saucer to attract or repel any approaching object, and allows it to travel almost as fast as light without suffering an increase in mass or a transformation into energy[IX-18].

_The G-Field Myth_

To explain the alleged properties and behavior of flying saucers, a variety of speculations have been published on the nature and operation of the G-field[IX-18, IX-19, IX-21]. In the physicist’s view, most of these ideas belong more to the realm of magic than of science but we shall summarize them briefly, with a few parenthetical comments.

A UFO supposedly can travel at speeds of thousands of miles an hour and shatter the sound barrier without making any noise because the G-field would create a kind of protective envelope around the saucer. But if the G-field breaks down for any reason, so that the protective envelope is opened, then the ionized moving air hits ordinary static air and creates the thunderous detonation produced by some UFOs. (Even with an intact G-field, a boundary or gradient would always exist somewhere between the air that was dragged along by the saucer and the air that was not. A thunderous impact would certainly occur at this barrier.)

The “invisible” UFOs supposedly become so by using the G-field to bend or deflect rays of light. (It is true that starlight passing near the sun’s gravitational field suffers a deflection that makes the star appear slightly displaced from its actual position on the celestial sphere, but a shift in apparent location does not dim a star and does not make it invisible. Furthermore the amount of deflection is only 1.75 _seconds_ of arc, less than half of a thousandth of a degree! To produce even this small deflection, a covey of saucers would have to be able to increase its mass to equal that of the sun: 1.97 times 10^{33} grams! What this increase in mass would do to the rest of the solar system doesn’t bear thinking of.)

Angel hair (see _Chapter_ XI) is supposed to be a waste product from the operation of the G-field. The ionization of the air inside the G-field allegedly would create heavy atoms that reacted chemically with the atoms in ordinary air to produce a kind of precipitate that falls to the ground and disappears as the ionization decreases. (In the physics laboratory, ionization means taking an electron away from an electrically neutral atom. The resulting atom would not be heavier. The contact between ordinary air and that in the ionized trail of a meteor has never yet produced “angel hair.” No laboratory has ever reported that isotopes of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and other elements in the atmosphere can react with their normal analogues to produce precipitates. A change in ionization cannot make a chemical compound disappear.)

The envelope of air enclosed by the G-field is supposed to allow a UFO to accelerate or change direction instantaneously, even when flying at enormous speeds, because the UFO would not encounter atmospheric friction. (Vehicles moving in the earth’s gravitational field are also surrounded by a cushion of air, but they still must overcome friction.)

At this point the whole G-field myth falls apart. One of the fundamental laws established by Newton, to which no exception has ever been found in the laboratory, states that a moving object will continue to move in a straight line unless it encounters an applied force. Let us suppose, for the moment, that a gravity shield could suddenly be interposed between a spacecraft and the earth, and thus make the craft reverse its direction of flight. The occupants would still be subject to the law of inertia. They would be hurled against the wall of the craft with a violence far greater than that experienced by a plane crashing to earth from an altitude of 30,000 feet. There could be no cushioning of the blow.

Such dreams demonstrate an almost contemptuous disregard for reality. Physicists admittedly do not yet understand the basic nature of gravity, but they do know a great deal about how it acts. Gravity is the force that holds the universe together. It exerts a pull on all objects in the physical world--the earth, the moon, the planets, our sun, the distant stars, and even the stars in other galaxies. All these bodies without exception move according to the law of universal gravitation as formulated by Newton and refined by Einstein: Every particle in the universe attracts every other particle with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The magnitude of the force depends only on the masses of the bodies and on their distances from each other. It does not depend at all on the nature of the medium that separates them. It operates unchanged through stone, metal, water, air, or empty space. With a metal shield we can reduce electrical forces to zero; with a soft-iron shield we can weaken magnetic forces; but no substance existing in nature can act as a shield to shut out the force of gravitation.

_Electricity, Magnetism, and Gravity_

No responsible scientist would assert that man has found out all there is to know about the universe, and few would insist that some kind of a shield for gravity is an absolute impossibility. As yet, however, no laboratory has detected any phenomenon that might be a clue to “negative gravity.” In recent years nuclear physicists have occasionally caught fleeting glimpses of what has been called “anti-matter,” electrons with positive charges and protons with negative charges--the reverse of their charges in the normal world. Some investigators have speculated on the gravitational properties of anti-matter, and have wondered whether it might exert a force that would repel instead of attract.

So far no one has been able to think of an experiment to test the idea. Even if someone could find a way to collect a thimbleful of anti-matter, when he brought it into contact with normal matter, it, he, and his surroundings would instantly detonate like a super-colossal neutron bomb. Many physicists believe that, since electrical forces operate independently of gravitational forces, interchanging the charges on protons and electrons would probably have no effect on the gravitational field. Theoretical study and computations may someday yield an answer.

For years scientists have been searching for a “unified field theory,” a single equation that would describe the interrelationship among electrical, magnetic, and gravitational forces. Such a mathematical statement would reveal the mysterious bond that holds together the atomic nucleus, imparts to atoms their unique structure, and keeps the stars in their courses. But this unifying equation, when it is found, will not make our present knowledge invalid. Enthusiasts are deluding themselves when they base their belief in flying saucers on the hope of overthrowing the laws of gravity and inertia. Gravity, magnetism, and electricity are actual physical forces, as real as light, air, houses, trees, or persons. They can act only according to the laws of nature which, unlike the laws passed by legislatures, are not subject to repeal. No juggling of words, no argument, no wish can change these laws any more than they can stop the rising of the sun or the waning of the moon.

If man is ever to learn to control the force of gravity, he will succeed not by denying the reality of the laws but only by finding out what they are and by trying to understand them.

[IX-1] Michel, A. _Flying Saucers and the Straight Line Mystery._ New York: Criterion Books, 1958.

[IX-2] Air Force Files.

[IX-3] El Paso (Texas) _Times_, Nov. 4, 1957.

[IX-4] Barker, G. “Chasing the Flying Saucers,” _Flying Saucers_ (May 1958), p. 20 ff.

[IX-5] Denver _Post_, Nov. 6, 1957.

[IX-6] Viemeister, P. E. _The Lightning Book._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1961.

[IX-7] Matthias, B. T., and Buchsbaum, S. J. “Pinched Lightning,” _Nature_, Vol. 194 (1962), p. 327.

[IX-8] Ritchie, D. J. _Ball Lightning._ A Collection of Soviet Research in English Translation (1961). New York: Consultants Bureau.

[IX-8a] Cade, C. M. “Thunderbolts as the X-weapon,” _Discovery_, Vol. XXIII (1962), pp. 23–28.

[IX-9] Kapitsa, P. L. “The Nature of Ball Lightning,” _Dokl. Akad. Nauk SSSR_, Vol. CI, No. 2 (1955), pp. 245–48. (Translated in [IX-8].)

[IX-10] Hill, E. L. “Ball Lightning as a Physical Phenomenon,” _Bulletin American Meteorology Society_, Vol. XXXXI (1960), p. 199.

[IX-11] Pierce, E. T.; Nadile, R. M.; and McKinnon, P. J. “An Experimental Investigation of Negative Point-plane Corona and Its Relation to Ball Lightning,” AFCRL-TR-60-354. Bedford, Mass.: Oct. 24, 1960.

[IX-12] Gold, E. “Thunderbolts: The Electric Phenomena of Thunderstorms,” _Nature_, Vol. CLXIX (1952), pp. 561–63.

[IX-13] Kogan-Beletskii, G. I. “The Nature of Ball Lightning,” _Priroda_, No. 4 (1957), pp. 71–73. (Translated in [IX-8].)

[IX-14] Schmidt, R. O. “The Kearney Incident,” _Flying Saucers_ (October 1959), p. 31 ff.

[IX-15] _UFO Critical Bulletin_, Vol. II, No. 2 (March-April 1958).

[IX-16] “The Case of the Radioactive UFO,” _Flying Saucers_ (February 1958), p. 30.

[IX-17] “Electro-magnetic Effects Associated With Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO’s),” Subcommittee of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), Washington, D.C. (June 1960).

[IX-17a] _Sky and Telescope_, Vol. XXIII (1962), p. 323.

[IX-18] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion Books, 1956.

[IX-19] Keyhoe, D. E. _The Flying Saucer Conspiracy._ New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955.

[IX-20] Scully, F. _Behind the Flying Saucers._ New York: Popular Library, 1951.

[IX-21] Cramp, L. G. _Space, Gravity and the Flying Saucer._ New York: British Book Centre, 1955.

_Chapter_ X

CONTACT!

All fields of human activity have their practical jokers. Elaborate hoaxes have been perpetrated in music, art, literature, history, religion, science--and in the world of flying saucers. Although the motives for such swindles are not always obvious, the trickster is usually trying to promote a cause, to gain fame and/or prestige, to make money, to satirize a folly, or just to have some fun at the public’s expense. Some hoaxes, such as Mark Twain’s petrified man, produce only harmless amusement. Others, planned as serious deceptions, can cause long-lasting damage. The celebrated Piltdown man was fraudulently created from an ape’s jawbone, a stray tooth, and a few chemical staining agents; it gained fame for the scientists involved but threw the study of human evolution into a confusion that lasted more than twenty years, until the forgery was revealed in every detail[X-1].

A few hoaxes live on and on even after they are exposed, apparently because people enjoy believing in them. The Jersey devil, described as a fire-breathing monster with huge wings and a long tail, was first mentioned in the columns of a small-town newspaper in New Jersey in 1906. Within a few days inhabitants of rural areas all over the east coast were reporting glimpses of the frightening demon and on one particular night it allegedly terrified citizens in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. The panic finally reached such heights that some towns closed their factories and theaters. This fantastic monster was quickly found to be a hoax, the brain child of the publicity manager for a Philadelphia museum of freaks; his sole purpose had been to drum up customers for the museum. Nevertheless many persons rejected this explanation and continued to believe that the creature really existed. It was reported again in 1926, in 1930, in 1932, and may reappear again at any time. Obviously the Jersey devil, though admittedly the product of a hoax, has become a permanent part of the local fauna[X-2].

Flying-saucer hoaxes are rarely submitted to the Air Force as bona fide sightings. Of 1500 UFO reports, only forty-two proved to be deliberate frauds or the delusions of unstable persons. The hoaxer may give his tale to the newspapers, to a lecture audience, or even publish it in a book, but he carefully avoids Air Force scrutiny. His story will not hold up under close investigation, and he knows it.

_Earthlings and Extraterrestrials_

The fantasies of the obviously deluded are a problem for the clinician and will not be discussed in this book. Typical is the case of “Dr. X” who writes to strangers, inviting them to accompany him on his next visit to the “Brothers” in space and to “join the side of righteousness.” Although Dr. X has several times set a date for the excursion, he has always had to postpone it for some reason. He himself, he says, has made more than sixty journeys on flying saucers and mother ships, and has often taken his automobile along--just why he needed it he does not explain.

Peculiarly hard to classify are the “contact” reports, in which a witness affirms that he has had one or more personal encounters with a spacecraft and that he has communicated with its occupants, who range in type from ordinary specimens of _Homo sapiens_ to hairy dwarfs and elephant-faced little men in space suits. He gives a more or less detailed account of the incident and sometimes offers “proof” in the form of alleged photographs or fragments of the vehicle. Ostensibly inspired by religious or humanitarian motives, these “contactees” wholeheartedly support the theory that flying saucers originate in worlds beyond the earth.

In general the contactees tell essentially the same story, with minor variations: Earthling (the witness) sees a flying saucer; saucer lands. Extraterrestrial occupant emerges, extends friendly greetings, confides his wish to help the human race solve its problems, takes Earthling for a cruise to another planet, brings Earthling back. After promising to maintain a sort of guardianship over the earth, the visitor says farewell and flies back to his home planet.