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Unidentified Flying Objects
From cave paintings to the 20th century, evidence exists for strange craft visiting the Earth. This scientifically-based survey of UFOs looks at the technology, physics and chemistry involved, from the original "flying saucers" of the 1940s to crop circles in the 1990s.
- GenresNonfiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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June 18, 2012
One of the best things about this inspiring book, and there are a lot of good things, is that Alan Watts (not the Eastern philosopher by the same name) believes that the 1950s 'Contactee' George Adamski is genuine.
I was pleased to find a whole chapter titled 'Grappling With George Adamski', and instead of reading the usual dismissal of him as a fraud or delusional, and the host of other names he is routinely called by both skeptics and modern UFO experts, Watts writes, "The photographs that Adamski took of Leviathans (giant Mother ships orbiting the Earth like aircraft carriers for the smaller flying saucer scouts) in March 1951 and May 1952 are, I believe, genuine and some of the best ever taken."
I couldn't agree more. Adamski's 1953 masterpiece 'Inside the Space Ships' ranks second, in my estimation, only to Percival Lowell's 1897 'Mars' as the best study of the extraterrestrial phenomenon. And of course they are dismissed, at best, by so-called 'UFOlogists' today as eccentric early fantasies, despite the life-long studies by both men. Watts recognizes the difficulty of taking this position, which immediately marginalizes one outside of the accepted UFO community, not to mention the larger population that sneers at all the 'Men in black' as a joke.
"It is when you become convinced that a man who has been held up to so much ridicule by so many over such a long period is genuine that your problem begins."
"To me the significant point is not that Adamski made the contact - I believe the evidence suggests that he did - but how these space denizens managed to monitor him, and how many more of us are being monitored without ever being aware of it?"
He then goes on cite several other corroborating episodes of very similiar Sightings to Adamski's, including by Leonard Cramp in his 1954 book 'Space, Gravity, and the Flying Saucer', and Robert Charroux's 'The Mysterious Unknown' (1972). In 1963 Marcel Homet also wrote an archaelogical study of Amazonia, 'Sons of the Sun', in which he found rock inscriptions very much like those an 'Alien' gave Adamski in the California desert.
Watts describes himself as an instructor in Physics at a small English college. 'UFO Quest' is subtitled 'In Search of the Mystery Machines', and indeed the emphasis on the tight study is scientific, and exactly how the ships might work. As a member of the 'London Unidentified Flying Object Research Organization (LUFORO)', he say their purpose is " . . . to keep our feet firmly on the ground. To this end we decided to concentrate on one form of saucer of which we had good pictures. This was the device that George Adamski had photographed."
"Silpho Moor object looked uncannily like parts of the drawing that Cramp had made of the 35-ft-diameter Adamski saucer. . . magnetic aura that could be broadcast by a saucer and interfere with a car's electrics . . . Jacques Vallee christened a 'cloud-cigar' . . . If there is one constant feature of the UFO phenomenon, it is that these great craft act as 'aircraft-carriers' for the smaller saucers . . . When you have seen this great aerial 'submarine', as I have on more than one occasion . . . I believe that this surveillance became necessary because of our development of earth satellites. . . masses of satellites . . . Leviathans have been seen in earth space hundreds and hundreds of times!"
He writes in fascinating technical detail under chapters titled 'Progress towards Propulsion', 'Why Antimatter?', 'The Saucer - a Universal Flying Carpet', 'Strange Tricks of the Light', 'The Radiation Aura', 'Beams That Probe and Create', 'Hieroglyphics in the Corn', all of which conclude that magnetic fields with ultrasonic effects account, possibly, according to strict laws of nature, for the blinding, silent speeds and maneuvers that even the Ships and their wonderful Pilots must obey.
" . . . the radiation aura of the saucer can emit invisible rays to which the film is sensitive but not the eye . . . this apparent translucence is not of the saucer's skin but is an effect of its force field . . . The UFOs have strong magnetic fields about them . . . no one is very sure what electric charge is . . . magnetic sheath . . . synchrotron radiation . . . Tricks of Refraction . . . Refractive Index . . the saucer will stress its surroundings to make it wallow in a super-dense optical medium . . . ultrasonic emanations from the 'skin' of the UFO . . . magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) . . . Electromagnetic Wind . . . ionized air will be entrained by the magnetism, separating the air so the UFO can slide through it . . . "
"The idea that synchrotron radiation is a major source of the light from UFOs means that the visible light will come from a layer that lies above the UFO's surfaces but will not actually be on the surface. It is like sheathing the UFO in a blanket of light. From the layers inside the blanket will come the higher-energy radiations, like ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. From layers outside we will find invisible heat radiations being given off. The UFO's ability to contain its own radiation will act most strongly on the higher-energy radiations, but the light and heat will be broadcast more intensely."
" . . . the aliens are not hostile . . . Dr. Fontes imagined that the UFO denizens had perfected a means of modulating the ultrasonic waves so that they could 'play on the organism the way a musician plays on his instrument - creating emotional moods that strike too deeply for an untrained animal to resist. Dogs would be especially sensitive' (Lorentzen, 1966). . . some kind of cerebral disturbance . . . They do not provoke attack and do not want to be attacked . . . able to penetrate solid buildings and create EM effects within them . . . Lasers and holography . . . Victorian Close Encounter . . . molographic image. This would be like a holograph but the illusion would be fleshed out with real matter . . . UFOs which make close contacts do so because they want to . . . Crop Circles, fractal geometry . . . silvery bell-shaped craft. It was stationary and below it a spiralling vortex of 'aura-like' light was making a circle in the crop . . . Ionized air formed about a beam of strong EM radiation could produce a diffuse light like an aura. There was also the hum, which we can attribute to the skin waves in the magnetic shell surrounding the UFO playing on the surrounding air . . . when the UFO denizens directly intervened in the affairs of human beings (Drake, 1968) . . . "
I was pleased to find a whole chapter titled 'Grappling With George Adamski', and instead of reading the usual dismissal of him as a fraud or delusional, and the host of other names he is routinely called by both skeptics and modern UFO experts, Watts writes, "The photographs that Adamski took of Leviathans (giant Mother ships orbiting the Earth like aircraft carriers for the smaller flying saucer scouts) in March 1951 and May 1952 are, I believe, genuine and some of the best ever taken."
I couldn't agree more. Adamski's 1953 masterpiece 'Inside the Space Ships' ranks second, in my estimation, only to Percival Lowell's 1897 'Mars' as the best study of the extraterrestrial phenomenon. And of course they are dismissed, at best, by so-called 'UFOlogists' today as eccentric early fantasies, despite the life-long studies by both men. Watts recognizes the difficulty of taking this position, which immediately marginalizes one outside of the accepted UFO community, not to mention the larger population that sneers at all the 'Men in black' as a joke.
"It is when you become convinced that a man who has been held up to so much ridicule by so many over such a long period is genuine that your problem begins."
"To me the significant point is not that Adamski made the contact - I believe the evidence suggests that he did - but how these space denizens managed to monitor him, and how many more of us are being monitored without ever being aware of it?"
He then goes on cite several other corroborating episodes of very similiar Sightings to Adamski's, including by Leonard Cramp in his 1954 book 'Space, Gravity, and the Flying Saucer', and Robert Charroux's 'The Mysterious Unknown' (1972). In 1963 Marcel Homet also wrote an archaelogical study of Amazonia, 'Sons of the Sun', in which he found rock inscriptions very much like those an 'Alien' gave Adamski in the California desert.
Watts describes himself as an instructor in Physics at a small English college. 'UFO Quest' is subtitled 'In Search of the Mystery Machines', and indeed the emphasis on the tight study is scientific, and exactly how the ships might work. As a member of the 'London Unidentified Flying Object Research Organization (LUFORO)', he say their purpose is " . . . to keep our feet firmly on the ground. To this end we decided to concentrate on one form of saucer of which we had good pictures. This was the device that George Adamski had photographed."
"Silpho Moor object looked uncannily like parts of the drawing that Cramp had made of the 35-ft-diameter Adamski saucer. . . magnetic aura that could be broadcast by a saucer and interfere with a car's electrics . . . Jacques Vallee christened a 'cloud-cigar' . . . If there is one constant feature of the UFO phenomenon, it is that these great craft act as 'aircraft-carriers' for the smaller saucers . . . When you have seen this great aerial 'submarine', as I have on more than one occasion . . . I believe that this surveillance became necessary because of our development of earth satellites. . . masses of satellites . . . Leviathans have been seen in earth space hundreds and hundreds of times!"
He writes in fascinating technical detail under chapters titled 'Progress towards Propulsion', 'Why Antimatter?', 'The Saucer - a Universal Flying Carpet', 'Strange Tricks of the Light', 'The Radiation Aura', 'Beams That Probe and Create', 'Hieroglyphics in the Corn', all of which conclude that magnetic fields with ultrasonic effects account, possibly, according to strict laws of nature, for the blinding, silent speeds and maneuvers that even the Ships and their wonderful Pilots must obey.
" . . . the radiation aura of the saucer can emit invisible rays to which the film is sensitive but not the eye . . . this apparent translucence is not of the saucer's skin but is an effect of its force field . . . The UFOs have strong magnetic fields about them . . . no one is very sure what electric charge is . . . magnetic sheath . . . synchrotron radiation . . . Tricks of Refraction . . . Refractive Index . . the saucer will stress its surroundings to make it wallow in a super-dense optical medium . . . ultrasonic emanations from the 'skin' of the UFO . . . magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) . . . Electromagnetic Wind . . . ionized air will be entrained by the magnetism, separating the air so the UFO can slide through it . . . "
"The idea that synchrotron radiation is a major source of the light from UFOs means that the visible light will come from a layer that lies above the UFO's surfaces but will not actually be on the surface. It is like sheathing the UFO in a blanket of light. From the layers inside the blanket will come the higher-energy radiations, like ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. From layers outside we will find invisible heat radiations being given off. The UFO's ability to contain its own radiation will act most strongly on the higher-energy radiations, but the light and heat will be broadcast more intensely."
" . . . the aliens are not hostile . . . Dr. Fontes imagined that the UFO denizens had perfected a means of modulating the ultrasonic waves so that they could 'play on the organism the way a musician plays on his instrument - creating emotional moods that strike too deeply for an untrained animal to resist. Dogs would be especially sensitive' (Lorentzen, 1966). . . some kind of cerebral disturbance . . . They do not provoke attack and do not want to be attacked . . . able to penetrate solid buildings and create EM effects within them . . . Lasers and holography . . . Victorian Close Encounter . . . molographic image. This would be like a holograph but the illusion would be fleshed out with real matter . . . UFOs which make close contacts do so because they want to . . . Crop Circles, fractal geometry . . . silvery bell-shaped craft. It was stationary and below it a spiralling vortex of 'aura-like' light was making a circle in the crop . . . Ionized air formed about a beam of strong EM radiation could produce a diffuse light like an aura. There was also the hum, which we can attribute to the skin waves in the magnetic shell surrounding the UFO playing on the surrounding air . . . when the UFO denizens directly intervened in the affairs of human beings (Drake, 1968) . . . "
May 19, 2015
I believe Mike Miley brought this and other books about UFOs to Chicago with him during what was one of his regular summer visits. It's a general survey of the matter, suitable for a neophyte.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews