In obvious response to public disquiet regarding recent "flying saucer" reports, the Air Force is organizing a new approach to the problem.
It is seeking to contract with a leading university to undertake a program of intensive investigations of a certain number of such reports.
The identity of the university will not be made public until the arrangement is final, but Air Force sources said it was an institution of sufficient stature to guarantee n the public mind that its inquiry would be impartial.
The investigating teams are to include at least one physical scientist, such as an astronomer or someone familiar with atmospheric physics. Significantly, there will also be a psychologist, preferably one with clinical experience.
This marks a departure from past Air Force policy. It has not taken very seriously the thousands of reports of unidentified
flying objects
, or UFO's, that have come in during the last two decades.
These investigations have been termed Project Blue
Book
because the results are reported in such books. The attitude of the Air Force toward the problem is
reflected in the fact that the project staff has consisted of one officer, one sergeant and a secretary.
The blue-book analyses of 10,147 sightings from 1947 to the start of this year furnished a conventional explanation for all but 646 of them. The remainder were classed as unidentifiable for lack of adequate information.
The explanations have ranged from weather balloons to swamp gas. The latter was cited to explain strange glowing lights reported at two points in Michigan last March.
In both cases they were (...)
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