[escepticos] La Universidad de Stanford y los OVNIS

["Victor R. Ruiz" <rvr@...>]

   Monday June 29 3:38 PM EDT 
   
Science panel says UFOs worth studying

   By Maggie Fox
   
   WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Some reports of UFOs might be worth a closer
   look, although there's no real evidence of little green men out there,
   a panel of scientists concluded Monday.
   
   Science has badly neglected the area of UFO study despite numerous
   reports and considerable public interest, the experts, who did what
   they call the first independent review of unidentified flying objects
   since 1970, said.
   
   "It may be valuable to carefully evaluate UFO reports to extract
   information about unusual phenomena currently unknown to science," the
   experts, headed by Stanford University physicist Peter Sturrock, wrote
   in a report released Monday.
   
   In other words, studying UFO reports might give science some insight
   into the Earth's own atmosphere and perhaps natural phenomena from
   space, said Thomas Holzer of the High Altitude Observatory in Boulder,
   Colorado, who helped chair the panel.
   
   Holzer said none of the reports he saw made him believe that
   extraterrestrials are watching us from flying saucers. "You can never
   rule anything out but we didn't see any evidence for that," he said in
   a telephone interview.
   
   "But it does seem that if there are phenomena that aren't understood,
   there should be some effort of mainstream science to figure it out."
   
   Nine scientists from institutions such as the German Aerospace Center,
   the University of New Mexico and France's University of Bordeaux,
   looked at evidence ranging from photographs of what appear to be
   flying saucers to a policeman's report that his car was stopped and
   scanned by a hovering object shining a bright light.
   
   "It was clear that at least a few reported incidents might have
   involved rare but significant phenomena such as electrical activity
   high above thunderstorms (e.g. sprites) or rare cases of radar
   ducting," the reviewers wrote in their report, which they posted on
   the Internet at www.jse.com and published in the Journal of Scientific
   Exploration.
   
   Radar ducting describes when radar bounces off the atmosphere in
   strange ways, making signals appear to be coming from elsewhere.
   
   "On the other hand, the review panel was not convinced that any of the
   evidence involved currently unknown physical processes or pointed to
   the involvement of an extraterrestrial intelligence. A few cases may
   have their origins in secret military activities."
   
   Von Eshleman, an expert in the atmospheres of other planets who helped
   chair the panel, admitted the report risked being ridiculed. "We may
   be opening a Pandora's box of some kind." he said in a telephone
   interview. "But I'm a professor emeritus. I don't care."
   
   They said some of the evidence presented to them was shaky, but this
   was in part because no one bothered to make a proper scientific
   investigation.
   
   A 1968 study concluded that nothing could be gained from studying UFO
   reports. But the panel said technology has advanced and something
   might be learned from such study.
   
   "Over the last 50 years people throughout the world have become
   familiar with UFO reports. These reports have been attributed to a
   wide range of causes including hoaxes, hallucinations, planets, stars,
   meteors, cloud formations, ball lightning, secret aircraft and
   extraterrestrial spacecraft," the report said.
   
   "Despite the abundance of such reports, and despite great public
   interest, the scientific community has shown remarkably little
   interest in this topic."
   
   This is in part because many scientists think UFO sightings have more
   to do with psychology than science, Sturrock's group pointed out.
   
   They said France's space agency funded further research into such
   sightings and recommended that an international review agency,
   probably privately funded, be set up to check out the most promising
   reports.
   
   "Not necessarily us, but someone," Holzer, who studies the sun's
   effects on the atmosphere, said. "I just have to set my priorities and
   quite frankly this wouldn't come up high enough."
   
   But, he added: "I did feel there was a social responsibility to do
   this sort of thing because I do think that UFO reports are important
   to our society."
   
   (Reuters/Wired)

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Víctor R. Ruiz                rvr en idecnet.com
    Agrupación Astronómica de Gran Canaria
   Sociedad de Meteoros y Cometas de España
 Asociación de Variabilistas de España - AVE
info.astro  http://www.astrored.org/infoastro
http://ccdis.dis.ulpgc.es:8086/AAGC/aagc.html
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