Showing posts with label Skeptic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skeptic. Show all posts

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Arthur C. Clarke and the Magic of UFOs

 

Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008) was a scientist who became the world’s most famous science fiction author, best remembered for writing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Clarke’s influence is enormous, but today we’re focusing on one single phrase.

Arthur C. Clarke himself helped associate the phrase with UFO. He had a letter published in Science magazine, Jan. 19, 1968, correcting a reader who had erroneously attributed a quote by him to Isaac Asimov. Clarke offered the comment: “Meanwhile, Clarke's Third Law is even more appropriate to the UFO discussion: ‘​Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’"

 Science magazine, Jan. 19, 1968

Clarke had a long-standing interest in UFOs, and while visiting the USA in 1952, he looked into the flying saucer issue. 

His 1963 essay “Flying Saucers” for the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society explained why he changed his mind. 

“Before going to the United States in the spring of 1952, I believed that flying saucers probably did not exist, but that if they did, they were spaceships. As a result of meeting witnesses whose integrity and scientific standing could not be doubted, and discussing the matter with many people who had given serious thought, I have now reversed my opinion. I have little doubt that Unidentified Aerial Objects do exist – and equally little doubt that they are not spaceships! The evidence against the latter hypothesis is, in my opinion, quite overwhelming...”

Clarke appeared on the Long John Nebel radio show in February 1958 and told of his own many UFO sightings, which all turned out to be identified or explainable. The discussion revealed a depth of his knowledge on the topic, including the books by Keyhoe, Menzel and Ruppelt. Clarke was open to the idea of visits by extraterrestrials, but he thought that reports of flying saucers had nothing to do with it. “Most of the confusion on this subject is caused by mixing up two entirely separate things. One, UFOs. I think UFOs probably exist, and the other, so-called flying saucers, which are vehicles, definite vehicles, which are a totally different thing, and which don’t exist.”

Clarke’s 1959 book, The Challenge of the Spaceship devoted an entire chapter to showing that reports of unidentified flying objects were mostly due to misinterpretation, but he was optimistic about space travel. “If you keep looking at the sky, before much longer you will see a genuine spaceship. But it will be one of ours.”


In the summer of 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey was in theatres. Time magazine, Friday, July 19, 1968, featured the article, “Science Fiction: Latter-Day Jules Verne,” a profile of Arthur C. Clarke. The article quoted the “the three premises of which Clarke bases all his writing, fiction and nonfiction alike,” since known as Clarke’s Laws:
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

"The only way to define the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
One week later, that quote about magic was first used in to promote UFOs. On July 29, 1968, six scientists spoke at the "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects" held by the United States government’s House Committee on Science and Astronautics. 


Dr. James E. McDonald said during his testimony:
“If we were under surveillance from some advanced technology sufficiently advanced to do what we cannot do in the sense of interstellar travel, then, as Arthur Clarke has put it quite well, quoted in Time magazine the last week, we have an odd situation. Arthur Clarke points out that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. How well that applies to UFO sightings.”
The United Press news coverage of the Symposium repeated it for the newspapers:
“McDonald said if the earth was being watched, it was being done by a society so advanced that its technology ‘would be indistinguishable from magic’ to earthmen.”


Indistinguishable from Magical Thinking

Clarke’s Third Law has since been quoted far and wide in everything from science fiction to computer programming discussions. It also became a fixture in UFO discussions.

In the textbook for the U.S. Air Force Academy, at Colorado Springs, Colorado’s third year Physics course, Introductory Space Science, Volume II, chapter 33, “Unidentified Flying Objects.” The Fall Quarter 1970 edition included this passage under the section, “Hypotheses to Explain UFOs.”
“Advanced terrestrial technologies (e.g. test vehicles, satellites, reentry phenomena, secret weapons). The noted space scientist Arthur C. Clarke has observed that any sufficiently advanced technology will appear indistinguishable from magic. Thus advanced terrestrial technologies are certainly the cause of some reports.”
Coral and Jim Lorenzen of APRO cited the phrase in their 1976 book, Encounters with UFO Occupants, saying, “…we may conjecture that we are ‘dealing’ with a very old and incredibly experienced galactic culture which has crisscrossed the vast spatial seas for probably thousands, perhaps millions, of years in starships that, to us, are ‘indistinguishable from magic’ (A.C. Clarke).”

In The UFO Verdict: Examining the Evidence by Robert Sheaffer, 1981, he quoted Clarke, adding, “But from this it does not follow that all reports of magic represent artifacts of some advanced technology.”

Almost from inception, the phrase has been used and abused to the point of cliché. Clarke’s law was intended to open the imagination, not to be cited as justification for superstition, or to serve as dogmatic mantra for anti-science beliefs. Clarke’s second law is a better motto for ufology:



Friday, June 21, 2019

The First Several Saucer Solutions of 1947


In the weeks following the historic UFO sighting by Kenneth Arnold, many explanations surfaced for the reports of flying saucers. This was spoofed in a cartoon in the July 7, 1947 edition of The Times Record from Troy, New York:
The Times Record, Troy NY, July 7, 1947
The explanations offered ranged from the serious to the silly. STTF's Claude Falkstrom has collected some of the most notable ones from the summer of 1947.


The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 28, 1947

The Tennessean Sun, June 29, 1947 
The Vought  XF5U-1 "Flying Flapjack?" 


Daily News, July 5, 1947

The Montana Standard, July 5, 1947 
Atomic Experiments?


The Independent Record, July 6, 1947
Mass Hysteria?
Dr. Steckel v. Dr. Overholser
Two psychiatrists gave their conflicting opinions on saucers, Dr. Harry A. Steckel v. Dr. Winfred Overholser on flying saucers as mass hysteria:
The News-Press, (Fort Myers, FL)  July 7, 1947
Remotely-piloted Missiles, Corpuscles?

The Mexico Ledger, July 7, 1947, The Evening Sun, July 7, 1947
Optical Illusions and the Power of Suggestion?


The Milwaukee Sentinel, July 7, 1947
Meteors, Birds or Reflections? 


The Ottawa Journal,  July 7, 1947,  Tampa Bay Times and The Evening Sun, July 9, 1947
Airborne Radioactive Waste?

The Daily Courier, July 10, 1947

Grain Silo Reflections?

 The Sentinel, Carlisle PA, July 9, 1947

Several Silly Suggestions:

The Weekly Acadian, July 10, 1947
Entoptic Phenomena?

Tampa Bay Times, July 13, 1947
Fear-Inspired Folklore?

Messenger-Inquirer, July 20, 1947

Associated Press Science Editor, Howard W. Blakeslee wrote a long article on how the flying saucers might be a "new folklore in the making":
The flying disks are probably the first of a series of aerial puzzles, with others to come, in the opinion of Dr. J.L. Moreno, New York... Men have been seeing things like flying disks for centuries. Now these apparitions have a new meaning and some of them a new dreadfulness. 
The full text of the article can be found at Saturday Night Uforia, "in the news 1947," look for the story, Seeing of Saucers in Flight Is Phenomenon of Current Fears



Industrial Waste?
The News Palladium, July 30, 1947

The Saucers That 1947 Forgot

By August of 1947, the flying saucer sensation was over, and the topic was spoken of in the past tense. The Gallup Poll asked "What do you think the saucers are?" After months of conflicting explanations, no one could be sure, but of the respondents who thought saucers were real, the top answer was military "secret weapon."
Aug. 15, 1947
When saucers were discussed, the idea lingered that the UFOs could be a secret military weapon, but there was no consensus on who was flying them.

The Soviets thought they were ours.

St. Clair Chronicle, Aug. 23, 1947

Oregon Representative Harris Ellsworth got word that behind the saucers story we might find a rocket from Russia.
The Freeport Journal-Standard, Dec. 22, 1947

Stories of saucer sightings, and various explanations from the credible to the crackpot variety, continued to make good copy. The newspapers continued to provide stories about flying saucers for their curious readers. It didn't much matter to the newspaper editors what was being seen, or whether it was real; saucers were news, and they sold news. 

Friday, December 7, 2018

Astronomer Arthur L. Draper on The UFO Mystery

Arthur L. Draper (R) and two Buhl Planetarium visitors

Arthur L. Draper was an astronomer and the the director of the Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1940 until the time of his death in 1967. In that role, he was often asked to comment about UFOs, and was quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2, 1947. His professional opinion was that people were misidentifying things in the sky due to the contagion of excitement over flying saucers. 
"From our experience, we have found that one person can claim to have seen a phenomenon and countless other people will immediately 'see' it also. It is the power of suggestion."
Nevertheless, Draper  encouraged people to keep looking, and to be interested in what could be discovered in the night sky. In 1950, Draper put together a program put for the planetarium, "The Mystery of the Flying Saucers," and a short article appeared in The Pittsburgh Press accompanied by a stunning UFO illustration by Nat Youngblood.




The Pittsburgh Press July 2, 1950



Thanks to Luis Taylor the UFO researcher behind Information Dispersal, who sent of scans of the planetarium's flyer for Arthur Draper's presentation"The Mystery of the Flying Saucers."



Draper's program was a big success and ran weekly from July to September of 1950.














Friday, December 1, 2017

The Day Before Roswell, July 7, 1947: Between Something and Nothing

The day before the news about a recovered flying disc in Roswell, New Mexico, the newspapers were chock full of saucer stories, and many papers featured a cover photo of Jane Campbell displaying a Rawin target, scooping Mac Brazel and Jesse Marcel.

Madison Wisconsin State Journal, July 7, 1947
May Be "'Saucers' -- Near and Afar
Jane Campbell, 17, of Chillicothe, Ohio, exhibits an unidentified mechanism which fell from a balloon and landed on her father's farm. The father, Sherman Campbell, said the vaned object, through optical illusion, may have caused some of the reports of "flying discs." 

An Estimate of the Situation

The Fort Madison Evening Democrat from July 7, is a great example of early UFO news coverage. The UP story combines wire reports of the real and unreal, in an attempt to cover the emerging phenomenon. The confused position of the newspapers seemed to echo that of the military.
"We're not dismissing the possibility that there's something to it, and we're not dismissing the possibility that it's all a hoax."- Captain Tom Brown, Army Air Force spokesman, Washington, DC. 
Carnival searchlights, Ghost Rockets, the Loch Ness Monster and much more:
Fort Madison Evening Democrat, July 7, 1947


The barrage of conflicting stories in the news kept the public interested- and confused. In the absence of facts, speculation and rumor were king, and in those days, many UFO legends were born.

Real Life Comics #55, Jan. 1951

Friday, November 3, 2017

Unidentified Lights in the Ohio Sky, Sept. 1952




 "...deep red streaks which met with a scarlet flash." (Reconstruction)
1952 was an explosive year for UFOs, and the Air Force was unable to investigate all the reports. Here's one they missed from Ohio.

Points mentioned in the story, Lockbourne Air Force Base, Ashville and Circleville. Ohio.

Mrs. Gail Wolf and her sons spotted some strange lights in the sky over Lockbourne, Ohio. Previously she'd been skeptical of saucers, "most people are, until they see something like we did."


The Circleville Herald, Sept. 6, 1952.
 The news story prompted another independent witness to come forward with testimony a few days later.


The Circleville Herald, Sept. 11 1952.

The Air Base that Link Brown was referring to was the former Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, OH, known today as Rickenbacker International Airport.


As with so many of the most interesting UFO cases featured here at The Saucers That Time Forgot, Project Blue Book has no file on this incident.

A Lost UFO Film: Attack of the Flying Saucers

  From Fliegende Untertassen to Attack of the Flying Saucers This is a “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” story, one about flying s...