December 18, 2019

Yesterday, December 17, marked 50 years since the United States Air Force ended Project Blue Book in 1969. The project, which began in 1952, was an official research study of UFO’s (unidentified flying objects). A UFO is a light or object spotted in the air that has no obvious explanation. Some people believe UFO’s are spaceships from other planets.

Four unidentified objects appear as bright lights in the sky in this 1952 photograph taken in Salem, Massachusetts. Credit: © Popperfoto/Alamy Images

Project Blue Book began in part because of widespread public interest in UFO’s. Reports of UFO’s were increasingly occurring in the United States and around the world in the 1940′s and 1950′s. Officials in the U.S. Air Force felt obliged to investigate the phenomenon. Their reasoning was that they needed to determine where UFO’s came from and whether they posed a threat to national security. Investigators with the project collected thousands of reports and conducted many interviews with civilians and military personnel who claimed they had interactions with UFO’s in some form.

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A “flying disc” UFO was said to have crashed near Roswell, in southeastern New Mexico, in 1947. The Air Force said the mysterious craft was a weather balloon. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

Project Blue Book followed an earlier government project investigating UFO’s called Project Sign. This project began in 1947, following widespread media coverage of a UFO sighting reported by Kenneth Arnold, a civilian pilot. Arnold claimed to have seen a group of silvery, crescent-shaped craft flying at high speed near Mount Rainier, Washington, on June 24, 1947. His sighting led the press to coin the term flying saucer for UFO’s. A mysterious crash of what some people believed was a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, was also reported that same year.

Project Sign was disbanded after one year of investigations that found little of interest. However, one member of the project, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, argued that UFO’s were real and extraterrestrial in origin. Ruppelt is credited with coining the term UFO. Project Sign was shut down and the staff were reassigned. It was later reconstituted as Project Grudge. The investigators of this project produced a report that concluded that UFO’s were not real. However, by 1952, Ruppelt was once again asked to lead Project Blue Book, the final official government investigation of UFO’s. He was joined by the noted American astronomer J. Allen Hynek. The Project Blue Book team amassed a great number of UFO reports and sightings from many witnesses.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was tasked with evaluating the large volume of information collected during Project Blue Book. In 1953, the CIA organized a panel of scientific experts led by the physicist Howard Percy Robertson to review the material. The Robertson Panel concluded that most reported UFO sightings were worthless and declared that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most, if not all, sightings. Therefore, the panel said, the government should work to debunk (prove false) UFO sightings. However, critics argue that the panel obscured those reported UFO sightings that might have some validity.

In the years following the Robertson Panel, the directors of Project Blue Book were dismissive of most UFO reports and sightings. Publicly, the government saw UFO investigations as a waste of time. In the 1960’s, Congress established another committee to study the evidence for UFO’s. The physicist Edward Condon served as chairman of this committee. The Condon Committee issued a report in 1968 that concluded there was no genuine evidence for extraterrestrial UFO’s. The government used the report to justify ending Project Blue Book. The government took the position that UFO’s were misidentifications of known phenomena, hoaxes, or products of mass hysteria. The official records of Project Blue Book are kept at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The records are available to the public.

February 27, 2014

The number of known exoplanets in the Milky Way Galaxy has nearly doubled, thanks to a new method of confirming planet candidates discovered by the Kepler space telescope. Mission control officials at NASA‘s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, announced that they had identified 715 new planets, which raises the total number of alien planets to some 1,700. The research has also significantly increased the number of smaller exoplanets. About 95 percent of the new planets are smaller than Neptune, which is about 17 times as massive as Earth. Many exoplanets found previously were at least as massive as Jupiter, which is 318 times as massive as Earth. All of the newly discovered planets orbit one of 305 stars in a multiplanet system like the solar system.

Although Kepler’s original planet-hunting days are over–the telescope has been nonoperational since May 2013–mission scientists are still on the job. The new exoplanets were found in data collected during the telescope’s first two years in orbit, from 2009 to 2011. Kepler’s main mission was to search one section of the Milky Way for Earth-like planets in the “habitable zone.” The habitable zone, also called the Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star that scientists believe is neither too hot nor too cold to support life as we know it. In this zone, the temperature is cool enough to let liquid water form and warm enough to prevent water from freezing. Earth orbits in the habitable zone of the solar system. Although Kepler searched over 150,000 stars for signs of orbiting planets, its search zone was actually quite small. Scientists estimate that the Milky Way alone has up to 200 billion stars.

All of the newly identified planets orbit a star in a multiplanet system, like the solar system. (NASA)

The new method of identifying planets is called validation by multiplicity. This method, which relies on the logic of probability, allows scientists to identify exoplanets in groups, rather than one by one. NASA officials compared the technique to the behavior of lions and lionesses living on the savannah. “In our imaginary savannah, the lions are the Kepler stars and the lionesses are the planet candidates,” the agency explained in a press release. “If you see two of the big cats it could be a lion (star) and a lioness (planet) or two lions. But if more than two large felines are gathered, then it is very likely to be a lion and his pride (star and its planets).”

Additional World Book articles:

• Binary star
• In Search of Other Worlds (a special report)
• Space exploration (2011) (a Back in Time article)

The United States government has no knowledge that extraterrestrial life exists or that beings from other planets have made contact with humans, according to a formal statement issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In the statement, space policy expert Phil Larson declared, “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”

Some people believe UFO's are spaceships from other planets. However, investigators discover ordinary explanations for most UFO sightings. © Popperfoto/Alamy Images

The announcement was made in response to two online petitions addressed to “We The People,” a government website that promises to address issues raised by any petition with at least 5,000 signers. The petitions asked the administration of President Barack Obama for any government knowledge of contact with extraterrestrials (ET’s). One of the petitions insisted that, “The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.” Many people throughout the world believe that some unidentified flying objects (UFO’s) are spacecraft from other planets. Some people have even reported being abducted by aliens.

Larson acknowledged that the U.S. government has engaged in several projects to search for extraterrestrial life. In 2009, NASA launched Kepler, a space-based telescope designed to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting sun-like stars.  The SETI Institute in California also scans the universe for signs of intelligent life. In November, NASA planned to launch a new Mars rover named Curiosity. It is designed to search for evidence that Mars has had elements that could support microbial life. In 1952, the U.S. Air Force established Project Blue Book, a program to investigate about 12,000 UFO reports to determine whether UFO’s were a potential threat to national security. The project was cancelled in 1969, after scientists at the University of Colorado advised the Air Force that further study was not likely to produce useful information concerning a security threat.

Additional World Book articles:

• Area 51
• Roswell