◆ SpookStack

——————— BEHIND. THE NEWS = By RICHARD CARTER The swift-moving celestial lumi- nosities which the American pub- lie has come to call “flying saucers” a@re phenomena with a recorded History dating back at least 200 Years and perhaps several thou- sind, | The Biblical Ezekiel’s airborne | wheels, for example, had some of the -earmarks of what modern /American science fiction readers, 'televiewers and “cold worriers” are on the verge of regarding as inter- planetary scouts or missiles from Moscow. Dr. Donald H. Menzel, profes- sor of astrophysics at Harvard University, made this point in n interview last month with | fime magazine. He produced ocumentary evidence that there yas a Saucer scare in Chicago sky-waichers ciaimed to hav seen two flying cigar-shaped ob jects. Cigar-shaped objects have be spotted skyward by innumerabPs participants in America’s postwar saucery. . Flying lights which differ in all apparent respects from shooting stars, meteors, and the like, have ‘been seen by multitudes of sailors over the centuries, and their ac- gounts of the phenomena diffe hardly at all from those contrib uted by recent viewers. Some people see white lights moving in formation; others <ee kelly green fire balls; others see orange fire balls; others See fly- ing disks; others see the cigar- shaped mysteries. Some of the objects seem to hover, virtually n Apnzil_10_1897, when manf#~+———Continued on Pagse—— ‘motionless, before darting into a cloud and disappearing forever others move at what seems t e an impossible rate of speed eversing direction instantane usly, swooping and climbing it manner which no man-made ,achine or human pilot. could survive. Since one of the foundations of modern science is to believe noth- ing that cannot be proved, moft #peories about the — skitteritfe. uhatizzits have to be rejectefl. any theories which have gainqd ylide currency are based on facts wWhich are “probably true.” But no scientist bases conclusions on things which only are probable. The closest anyone has 20me not only to explaining the phe- nomena, but duplicating them, is vof. Menzel. He believes tl daucers are fancy mirages—actuq] | ages of lights, but displacg| nrough miles of space by refrag- jon. He explains that light moves slower through a dense medium like cold air than in warm, air. When it passes from a layer of dense cold air into a layer of less dense warm air at an appropriate angle, it is bent, and may be seen Wines away, as if dis , moving atfg stie speeds, or just hovering, depending on conditions. Headlights, aerial searchlight, eyen street lights in a city can refracted by the atmosphere an become “flying saucers’ Out in th country miles away, he says. To prove it, he has produced startlingly similar phenomena in his own laboratory. Qne of the reasons the Air Force has felt impelled to take part jn he public debate on the subje fter having satisfied its hrough research that the sauce}: re something akin to what Men escribes, is that, radar scopes in ashington have been déscribed| as spotting the saucers at the same time pilots and ground observers were seeing them with the nakeq e. ‘ Until further returns are jy, the only explanation availah is one known to anyone who h ver had anything to Sy it adar—you see all kinds un- ceountable things on it. It w nsidered noteworthy that Aj orce radar in the same regio failed to pick up the impuls which the CAA now has adde to flying saucttfore.”