Introduction

Certaines bases de données de PAN s1National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) s2UFOINFO s3Hynek J. A. & Imbrogno, P.: Night Siege – The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, Ballantine Books, 1987 ont été examinées pour essayer de vérifier à la fois qualitativement et quantitativement comment et si cette source d'information est utile ou non à une factorisation scientifique de la question. Cette analyse concernait les données testimoniales de janvier 1949 à juillet 2009 concernant les observations de PAN signalées dans les 3 régions de confinement nord-américaines suivantes : la province d'Ontario au Canada et les états de New York et du Connecticut aux USA. Nombre de centaines de "points de données" ont été utilisés pour élaborer plusieurs graphiques s4Excel Software, où les données des 3 régions sont comparées entre elles, afin de rechercher une éventuelle tendance similaire et des correlations qui pourraient être utiles pour comprendre un peu plus du phénomène des PAN dans son ensemble. Il n'y a pas de raison particulière pour laquelle ces 3 régions (au lieu d'autres) ont été choisies pour un examen approfondi : elles furent juste considérées comme un échantillon plutôt bien représenté statistiquement et, en conséquence, un manière de à priori adaptée de tester si, comment et à quel point les cas testimoniaux concernant le "phénomène des PAN" peut être effectivement sujet à à une forme d'analyse scientifique. L'auteur de ce travail n'est pas un ufologue [voir CV à la fin], mais un scientifique universitaire intéressé par le problème et des phénomènes semblables comme les "lumières sismiques" depuis longtemps s5Teodorani, M. & Strand, E.P.: "Experimental methods for studying the Hessdalen phenomenon in the light of the proposed theories: a comparative overview", ØIH Rapport, n. 1998:5, Høgskolen i Østfold (Norvège), pp. 1-93. s6Teodorani, M.: "Physical Data Acquisition and Analysis of Possible Flying Extraterrestrial Probes by Using Opto-Electronic Devices", Extraterrestrial Physics Review, vol. 1 (2000), n° 3, pp. 32-37 s7Teodorani, M.: "Physics from UFO Data", ICPH Articles, 2001, N. 2 s8Teodorani, M. & Strand, E.P.: "Data Analysis of Anomalous Luminous Phenomena in Hessdalen", ICPH Articles, 2001, N. 3 s9Teodorani, M.: "The Physical Study of Luminous Atmospheric Anomalies and the SETV Hypothesis", Open SETI Articles, 2002 s10Teodorani, M.: "A Long-Term Scientific Survey of the Hessdalen Phenomenon", Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 18 (2004), n. 2, pp. 217-251 s11Teodorani, M. & Nobili, G.: "Monitoraggio di Anomalie nell’area di Solignano", Galileo (sezione: “Ricerche”), 2004 s12Teodorani, M.: "Are there airplanes, as seen from Avalon Beach, playing with Mercury lights?", Northern Beaches Sightings, 2004 s13Teodorani, M.: "IEA 2003 Report: Optical Investigation of Anomalous Light Phenomena in the Arizona Desert", International Earthlight Alliance (IEA), 2005 s14Teodorani, M.: "An Alternative Method for the Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life: ‘The Local SETI’", 2006 in J. Seckbach (ed.): Life as We Know It, Ed. Springer, pp. 487-503 s15Teodorani, M.: Sfere di Luce, MACRO Edizioni, 2008. s16Teodorani, M.: "Need to Know vs. Need to Believe in Ufology", U.A.P.S.G., 09/2009. Par conséquent cette investigation n'est pas dédiée à l'étude d'incidents de PAN donnés, plus ou moins supposément proéminent ; en fait de tels cas individuels demandent très souvent un effort d'enquête type "police", en ce comme cela arrive normalement lorsque des ufologues pleinement dédidés enquêtent sur un témoignage donné s17Clark, J.: The UFO Book – Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial, 1997, Visible Ink Press s18"Close Encounter in Connecticut", The Night Sky, 4 avril 2009 s19Hendry, A.: The UFO Handbook, 1979, Doubleday s20Klass, P.: UFOs – Identified, 1968, Random House s21McCampbell, J. M.: Ufology (un livre important assez ancien aujourd'hui en ligne) s22Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) s23National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) s24Sheaffer, R.: UFO Sightings – The Evidence, 1998, Prometheus Books. s25The J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).

One of these three areas, the Ontario one, is quite well known to this author, who has kept track during many years for the sky-watching efforts carried out since 1997 by Project Orbwatch on the Ontario Lake shore [Refs. 10, 31]. The primary intent here was to make a preliminary wider study of the entire Ontario area in preparation of an instrumented mission on site, which has been then effectively carried out in Jul-Aug 2009. The results of this mission will be described in the last chapter of this paper. Clearly a preliminary statistical study of the Ontario cases was also very suitable for a comparison with the confining New York and Connecticut US states. NY and CT states are in themselves quite interesting as “potential UAP areas”, the first one due in particular to the well- investigated cases in the Hudson Valley [Refs. 28, 26], which is confining with the CT state, where very recent sightings were effectively reported in March 2009 [Ref. 9]. This introductory work on databases, in addition to its possible utility for the preparation of the mission to Ontario, was then expected to furnish some insights on the UAP phenomenon as a whole. In fact a thorough study of the UAP phenomenon could be carried out by comparing together well statistically populated databases. This opportunity was promptly caught. The attempt and the consequent result was just a “test” to see if some additional “UAP science” can be extracted from databases [Refs. 62, 90]. After all the procedural techniques used in this specific context are not so different, in principle, than the ones employed by an astronomer who tries to derive the laws of stellar structure and evolution by analyzing statistically a large sample of stars [Ref. 24], such as in the case, for instance, of the overpopulated globular clusters. Or, to make another example, I could also mention the approach used by astronomers when, using stellar statistics, they intend to study the structure of a galaxy by analyzing all the most relevant physical parameters (such as spectral type, colour index, absolute luminosity, radial velocity, proper motion, mass, density) characterizing all the stars that compose it. In few words, the intent here is to try to understand something general by analyzing all-together a large sample of data points.

Really, the attempt to apply this philosophy of approach to the case of UAP databases was mostly intended to verify if a witness case can be effectively used as a scientific datum or not. Certainly there was no presumption here to really derive physical laws of UAPs from databases cataloguing them. This (quite much time wasting effort) has been a pure and simple test to see how the information coming from this source may furnish some evidence on the reality and, in case, nature of the phenomenon itself. As it will be seen in the next pages the results emerging from this analysis show pretty well that when a scholar embarks in such an ambitious initiative he must be prepared to obtain a ratio * results / work done * that is less than one, even if not zero The same consideration is valid also for the on-site investigation (using measurement instrumentation), when, instead of monitoring areas where really a recurrent light phenomenon occurs [Refs. 1, 4, 14, 16, 34, 37, 54, 57, 58, 61, 69, 70, 99], a researcher carries out sky-watching operations at locations where UAP cases have been reported at several stages in the – more or less recent – past but not exactly in a spatially recurrent way. Reoccurring anomalous light phenomena, such as the Hessdalen one in Norway [Ref. 69] and UAPs seem to be two quite different stuffs. Despite the fact that both phenomena may occasionally overlap together in the same area, the so called Hessdalen-like “earthlights” [Refs. 30, 51, 54] offer a quite high probability to be observed and studied, while UAP cases – namely: mostly structured aerial phenomena – are a totally random and elusive phenomenon, even if it occasionally occurs in the form of “flaps” [Refs. 2, 8, 44, 46, 89]. In general, the fact that UAPs have been reported many times at a given location doesn’t mean at all that such a manifestation is more or less constantly localized there. But also this – doing a field-mission to one of the areas that were previously studied on databases – was another test to see what happens when someone is just on the field.

So, this paper is divided into two parts. The first much more extensive part deals with the examination of some selected high-quality databases. The second more specialized part deals with the results of the mission to several locations belonging to one of these three big areas – the Ontario province of Canada – which was also motivated by some evidence of “phenomenon recurrence” in the past years [Ref. 31].