Culture and science
Scientific studies, academic projects, panels and surveys. 281 events, newest first.
GovernmentNov 1967
Moscow Aviation Institute astronomer Felix Zigel appeared on Soviet television asking viewers for UFO reports. In November 1967 AP reported that a commission led by Air Force Gen. Stolyarov was studying UFOs; the group was closed after about five months.
Government7 Jun 1967
University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald presented a paper titled 'International Scientific Aspects of the Problem of Unidentified Flying Objects' to the United Nations Outer Space Affairs Group in New York.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
GovernmentJun 1967
University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James McDonald spent late June and early July 1967 in Australia recording interviews with UFO witnesses. Reuters reported him saying in Sydney that governments, backed by the CIA, were downplaying the subject.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Sightings20 May 1967
Amateur prospector Stefan Michalak said a landed craft near Falcon Lake, Manitoba, vented hot gas that set his shirt alight and left grid-shaped burns. The RCMP and RCAF investigated, a University of Colorado team studied it for the Air Force, and no definitive explanation was reached.
Photo: Jd.101, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters22 Apr 1967
University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald told the American Society of Newspaper Editors that the UFO problem had been mishandled for years. He blamed a 1953 CIA-sponsored panel's recommendation for a debunking effort and said Project Blue Book had been downgraded.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Media17 Dec 1966
In a national magazine, Air Force consultant J. Allen Hynek wrote that most UFO reports had ordinary explanations but a small residue remained puzzling. He criticized how the Air Force handled the subject, called for real scientific study and said he had seen no evidence of a deliberate cover-up.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Close encounters21 Oct 1966
J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's own scientific consultant on UFOs, published a letter in the journal Science urging scientists to give unexplained reports serious, scholarly study rather than dismissing the subject.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Government7 Oct 1966
The Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced a contract with the University of Colorado for an independent scientific study of UFOs, the project whose final report physicist Edward Condon summarized. The first contract gave $313,000 for 15 months starting November 1, 1966.
Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public domain
GovernmentMar 1966
An ad hoc committee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board chaired by Brian O'Brien reviewed Project Blue Book and recommended a university-based scientific study of UFO reports. That recommendation led to the University of Colorado project headed by Edward Condon.
Government1966
University of Arizona atmospheric physicist James McDonald began an intensive study of UFO reports and visited Wright-Patterson AFB to review Air Force UFO files. He later told a House symposium the files surprised him and changed his views.
Media1966
Holden-Day published Intelligent Life in the Universe, Carl Sagan's expanded translation of a book by Soviet astronomer I. S. Shklovskii. It weighed the odds of life elsewhere, radio contact, and claims of past alien visits to Earth.
Photo: A. T. Service, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media12 Apr 1965
After Gennady Sholomitsky reported that radio source CTA-102 varied in brightness, TASS reported that Soviet scientists may have found a signal from a civilization, a story that spread worldwide. CTA-102 was soon identified as a quasar, a natural source.
Photo: Aladin Sky Server, Public domain
Media1965
Astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee published Anatomy of a Phenomenon, which classified historical and modern UFO reports and argued they deserved systematic analysis. Kirkus called it a usable manual of analytical methods for general readers.
Photo: Christopher Michel, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1964
Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev published 'Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations', classing hypothetical civilizations by the energy they can harness. The Kardashev scale remains a common reference in SETI and technosignature work.
Photo: Rights NRAO/AUI/NSF Photographer Woodruff T. Sullivan III Photo Credit NRAO/AUI Archives,..., CC BY 4.0
Media1963
Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel and Lyle Boyd published 'The World of Flying Saucers' with Doubleday, Menzel's second skeptical UFO book. It argued that reports from Kenneth Arnold onward could be explained by natural phenomena, misperception and atmospheric effects.
Photo: Fdavis99 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Close encounters1962
Several British UFO research groups and individuals came together at an inaugural meeting in Kensington, London, to form the British UFO Research Association, which describes itself as a non-cultist, scientifically evaluative body.
Media1961
Ten scientists, including Frank Drake, Carl Sagan and Philip Morrison, met at the Green Bank radio observatory for the National Academy of Sciences' Space Science Board. Drake's equation, used to frame the talks, became the standard way to estimate how many civilizations might exist.
Photo: Raphael Perrino, CC BY 2.0
GovernmentApr 1960
Radio astronomer Frank Drake used an 85-foot dish at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory to listen near 1420 MHz for signals from Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani from April to July 1960. Nothing artificial was found; it began scientific SETI.
Photo: NRAO/AUI/NSF, CC BY 4.0
Sightings4 Mar 1960
A bright fireball and detonation over central Alberta in the early morning was seen by hundreds of people. Nearly 700 stones were then recovered near Bruderheim, the largest meteorite fall recovered in Canada, most of them by the University of Alberta.
Government1960
Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's scientific consultant on UFO reports, chaired Northwestern University's astronomy department and directed its Dearborn Observatory from 1960 to 1978, the base for his later UFO research.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
Media19 Sep 1959
Cornell physicists Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison argued in Nature that radio telescopes could detect deliberate signals from other civilizations, suggesting a search near the 21 cm hydrogen line. The paper is widely regarded as the scientific starting point of SETI.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media1959
Allied Artists released 'The Cosmic Man', in which a white globe-shaped craft hovers near a California resort and the military and scientists argue over the intentions of its shadowy alien visitor, played by John Carradine.
Photo: Allied Artists, Public domain
MediaDec 1958
BBC Television began Nigel Kneale's six-part serial Quatermass and the Pit just before Christmas 1958. In the story, London builders unearth an ancient Martian craft, and Professor Quatermass concludes Martians once altered early human ancestors. It is fiction, not a reported case.
Media1958
French writer Aime Michel's 1958 book, published in English as Flying Saucers and the Straight-Line Mystery, argued that same-day sightings in the 1954 French wave fell on straight lines. Astronomer Donald Menzel later argued the alignments matched chance.
MediaDec 1957
Howco International released this low-budget science fiction film, in which a criminal alien brain from the planet Arous takes over a scientist's body and threatens Earth. The AFI Catalog lists a December 1957 release with a Los Angeles opening on Christmas Day.
Photo: Howco International, Public domain
