The modern UFO phenomenon began in 1947 with the eyewitness account of pilot Kenneth Arnold of nine flying disks near Mount Rainier in Washington. The newspapers called them flying saucers. UFO is the more technical term, standing for unidentified flying object. A sighting acquires this designation only after scientific attempts to identify it as a star, meteor, balloon, aircraft, or hallucination have failed. UFO refers to what is unidentified after attempts to identify it.

Types of sightings

As a phenomenon of perception, scholars study both the perceiver and the perceived, both the UFO and its witness. Sightings are classified as: (1) daylight disks; (2) nocturnal lights; (3) radar sightings or combinations of radar and visual sightings; (4) close encounters of the first kind, when the witness is within 500 feet of the object or craft; (5) close encounters of the second kind, when physical traces of the object or craft are left for investigation; and (6) close encounters of the third kind, when witnesses claim to encounter beings connected to a flying craft. Investigators give higher credibility to multiple witness sightings, especially when witnesses are independent of one another. Such categorizing is itself part of the UFO phenomenon, reflecting the scientific attitude investigators take to their work.

Government evaluations of UFOs

Seldom has the academic community taken up the subject of UFOs for research and analysis. The U.S. government sponsored various investigative programs from 1947 through 1969 such as Project Sign and Project Bluebook; but the government's interest was primarily national defense. Convinced that UFOs provided no threat to national security, these efforts deliberately sought to debunk public claims to UFO sightings in an attempt to reduce the quantity of reports various governmental agencies would need to process.

From 1967 to 1969, Edward U. Condon at the University of Colorado conducted a federally funded study, Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. What became known as the Condon Report concluded that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs" that would warrant "further extensive study." On this basis, the U.S. Air Force dropped Project Bluebook and ceased collecting data. J. Allen Hynek, the principal astronomer and scientific debunker for Project Bluebook, converted, so to speak, and began his own private research organization, the Center for UFO Studies at Northwestern University.

Social and cultural aspects

As a social phenomenon, since their first appearance following the Second World War, two elements have been present in public perception: an association of UFOs with the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent life, and vociferous criticism of the U.S. government for allegedly withholding vital secrets from its citizens and the world. In addition, UFO research organizations, such as the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), have been established, and new religious movements such as Heaven's Gate, the UNARIUS Society, the Aetherius Society, and the Raelians see great significance in UFOs.

The UFO phenomenon is frequently confused with science fiction, although no relationship exists between the two, which followed separate paths in the first decades after the Second World War. Science fiction literature and films generally depicted extraterrestrials as enemies, invaders threatening earth and against whom earthlings would have to unite in self-defense. In contrast, within the UFO community extraterrestrials were viewed as either benign or, in many cases, as benevolent, as celestial saviors coming to Earth to rescue humanity from self-destruction. Two notable Hollywood films portrayed the UFO experience as UFO believers interpret it: Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

For the first forty years of the phenomenon the space visitors were pictured as benign or benevolent. Then in the late 1980s reports were published of abductions in which the UFO abductors behaved much like abusers. Attributed to them were plots to impregnate earth women with extraterrestrial sperm to raise a hybrid race that unites heaven and Earth. After a decade of such reports, subsequent interviews of alleged abductees revealed a shift in interpretation. Abductees who originally reported a sense of violation by their space captors began to interpret extraterrestrial motives as spiritually beneficial and healing.

As a cultural phenomenon, UFOs have picked up surface and subtle sublimated meanings. On the surface, they are strange objects seen in the sky. Below the surface, UFOs function symbolically to bear religious meaning in a secular culture imbued by natural science and secular self-understanding. Sublimated religious meaning expresses itself in at least four forms: transcendence, omniscience, perfection, and redemption.

Transcendence. In many archaic religions the sky was a natural symbol of transcendence, and in the modern world outer space has replaced the sky in this role. Sky gods were powerful gods, wielding thunderbolts and scorching the earth with a blazing hot sun. With airplanes and weather reports mastering the sky, modern people have lost the sense of celestial transcendence. The apparent infinity of outer space, however, revives this lost spiritual sensibility. Because UFOs are seen in the sky and associated with outer space, they allegedly have mastered travel over unfathomable distances. They come from beyond, a physical beyond that easily slips over to become a spiritual beyond.

Omniscience. The worldview of modern society includes evolutionary theory in its self-understanding, and when the question of extraterrestrial life is raised, evolution is exported to outer space. Although biologists see no scientific basis for progress in biological evolution on earth, the popular mind identifies evolution with technological advance. When projected onto possible beings in space, they are thought to be more "advanced" than earthlings. Their technological knowledge is superior. In UFO religious groups, extraterrestrials are said to have gained telepathic powers so they can read earthlings' minds, a quality previously attributed to angels.

Perfection. Again, projecting evolution understood as progress infers that the extraterrestrials who have evolved for a very long time not only have perfected technology but have also perfected bodily health and social morality. They have conquered disease, live for extraordinarily long periods, and, most importantly, they are pictured as living in peace, especially peace with nuclear power and without ecological deterioration.

Redemption. Having achieved transcendent travel, ultimate technological knowledge, and social perfection, the space travelers are in a position to save the earth from the threat of nuclear war and ecological disaster. The extraterrestrials are Gnostic redeemers because, as new religious groups forming around UFO belief testify, their mission is to teach citizens of Earth to pull together into a single planetary society that lives in peace, prosperity, and harmony with nature. This entire belief structure is a modern myth—what Carl Jung called a "myth of things seen in the sky."

The UFO phenomenon, which includes both believers and what is believed, provides a gate into understanding the dynamics of a culture totally imbued with natural science, so much so that religious sensibilities must make their appearance in sublimated form.

See also EXOBIOLOGY; EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE

TED PETERS