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Britain Opens Up Secret UFO Files
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 
LONDON — The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking.
What they saw has never been explained. And they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official reports.
No one, they knew, would believe their claim that an unidentified flying object landed at the airfield they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed.
But that's what they reported happening at four in the afternoon on April 19, 1984, at an unspecified small airport near the eastern coast of England.
Their "Report of Unusual Aerial Phenomenon" is one of more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents released Wednesday by Britain's National Archives.
The air traffic controllers, each with more than eight years on the job, describe how they were helping guide a small plane to a safe landing on runway 22 when they were distracted by a brightly lit object approaching a different runway without clearance.
"Everyone became aware that the object was unidentified," the report on the incident said. "SATCO [codename for a controller with 14 years' experience] reports that the object came in 'at speed,' made a touch and go on runway 27, then departed at 'terrific speed' in a 'near vertical' climb."
The incident is one of the more credible in the newly public files because it was reported by air traffic controllers, said David Clarke, a UFO expert who has worked with the National Archives on the document release.
"They were absolutely astonished," he said. "It was a bright, circular object, flashing different colors, and after it touched down it disappeared at fantastic speed. The report comes from very qualified people, and it's one of the few that remained unexplained."
He said other incidents were at times reported by aircraft crews whose members also asked to remain anonymous because they did not want to jeopardize their careers by seeming to believe in UFOs.
In one case, the pilot of a commercial plane crossing the Atlantic reported an unidentified object just 1.5 nautical miles from his wing. He speculated that it might be a meteor or a missile.
Although there are some unexplained cases, there is no reported instance in which Britain's Ministry of Defense found any evidence of alien activity or alien spacecraft, said Clarke, who nonetheless expects conspiracy theories about a UFO coverup by the British defense establishment to persist.
"The Ministry of Defense doesn't have any evidence that our defenses were breached by alien craft," he said. "They never found one, no bits of one, that's all we can say."
Clarke said the documents released Wednesday, dealing with the late 1970s and early 1980s, are the first batch of a series that will be made public in the next few years.
The National Archives is releasing the files now because of numerous Freedom of Information requests seeking information about the government's UFO reports.
Officials said names of many individuals had been blacked out to protect their privacy and the entire files had been reviewed to make sure their release did not compromise national security.
Ministry of Defense officials indicate in the files that UFO reports were only investigated to make sure that no enemy aircraft had illegally entered British airspace. This was crucial during the Cold War when Russian planes posed an ongoing threat.
But officials say they did not try to solve the UFO riddles once an enemy attack had been ruled out.
The vast majority of the reports come from members of the public who see strange things in the sky and jump to the conclusion that a UFO is involved even though there is likely a logical scientific explanation for what they are observing, experts say.
"Mostly it's well-intentioned witnesses who are misidentifying things," said Nick Pope, another UFO expert who helped the Ministry of Defense investigate the phenomenon. "The most common things are aircraft lights, bright stars and planets, satellites, meteors, airships and things like that."
Some of the reports are fairly easy to explain — and quite possibly influenced by a pint or two of beer.
This was the case when a number of people leaving a Tunbridge Wells pub at 9:30 at night reported seeing a strange craft "with red and green" lights.
Asked by police where it seemed to be traveling, the pub crawlers said it appeared to be heading for London's Gatwick Airport.
Case closed.
It didn't take a scientist to figure out it was a commercial plane making a routine approach.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,355509,00.html
Vatican: It's OK for Catholics to Believe in Aliens
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
VATICAN CITY — There could be alien life forms and believing they exist isn't contradictory to having faith in God, the top astronomer at the Vatican said in an interview published Tuesday.
In the Vatican newspaper piece, titled "The Extraterrestrial Is My Brother," the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes said the expansiveness of the universe means there could be life on planets other than Earth.
"In my opinion this possibility exists," Funes, the director of the Vatican Observatory, told L'Osservatore Romano. "Astronomers believe the universe is made up of 100 billion galaxies, each of which consists of 100 billion stars. ... Life forms could exist in theory even without oxygen or hydrogen."
Funes said that there might even be other intelligent life out there, but believing in its existence doesn't pose a problem for those of the Catholic faith.
"It is possible. So far we have no proof. But certainly in a universe so big we can not exclude this hypothesis," he told the paper.
"As there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, so there may be other beings, intelligent, created by God. This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."
He said human beings could even consider another life form an "extraterrestrial brother" because it, too, would be one of God's creatures.
"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."
The interview covered a variety of topics, including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.
Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.
The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.
But he said he continues to believe that "God is the creator of the universe and that we are not the result of chance."
Funes urged the church and the scientific community to leave behind divisions caused by Galileo's persecution 400 years ago, saying the incident has "caused wounds."
In 1633 the astronomer was tried as a heretic and forced to recant his theory that the Earth revolved around the sun. Church teaching at the time placed Earth at the center of the universe.
"The church has somehow recognized its mistakes," he said. "Maybe it could have done it better, but now it's time to heal those wounds and this can be done through calm dialogue and collaboration."
Pope John Paul declared in 1992 that the ruling against Galileo was an error resulting from "tragic mutual incomprehension."
The Vatican Observatory has been at the forefront of efforts to bridge the gap between religion and science. Its scientist-clerics have generated top-notch research and its meteorite collection is considered one of the world's best.
The observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891, is based in Castel Gandolfo, a lakeside town in the hills outside Rome where the pope has a summer residence. It also conducts research at an observatory at the University of Arizona, in Tucson.
