Documents / Report
This is the final report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, conducted by the University of Colorado under Air Force contract F44620-67-C-0035, with Edward U. Condon as scientific director and Daniel S. Gillmor as editor. It was submitted to the National Academy of Sciences on 15 November 1968 for review. The report includes field studies, photographic and radar analyses, case studies, historical chapters and appendices such as the Robertson Panel report and the Twining letter.
Although it is safE' to l,:ollduue that thcr-e is no intelligent life on Venus, the contrary idea IS held. quite tenar.iously by certain groups in America. There arc ~smal1 religious groups who maintain that Jesus Chri st nO\... sojounls on Venus, and that ~ome of thei l' members have travelled there by flying saucers supplied by the Ven'J5ians and have been greatly refroshed spiri tually by visiting Him. There is no obser- vational evidence in support of this teaching. In the fantasy Iiterature of believers in Elll, some attention is aiven to a purely hypothetical pla.rl~t named Clarion. Not only is there no direct evidence for its existence, but there is conclusive indirect evidence for its non-exis tence. 'TI10S e UFO wri ters who try not to be totally inconsistent with scienLfic fin ...1ings, recognizing that Venus and Mars are unsuitable as abodes of life, have invented Clarion to meet the need for a home for the vi s j tors wl~o they be lieve come on some UFOs. They postulate th:;t Clarion moves in an orbit exactly like that of the Earth around the Sun, but wi th the orbit rotated through half a revolutior: in its plane so that the two orbits have the same line of apf,idcs, but lvi th Clarion's perihelion in the same direction from the Sun 115 the Earth's aphelion. The two pl:int~ts, [arth and Clarion. are postulated to move in their orb:\.ts in such a way that they are alway5 opposite each other, so that the line 6arth-Sun-Clerion is a straight line, T;lUS persons on Earth would never see CJ arlon because it is permanen': ly eclipsed by the Sun. If the t\olo orbits I.;ere exactly circulr-.r. the two planets would move along their common orbit at the same spec(l and so Viot11d remain exactly o:Jposite e~',ch other. But even if the orbits are elliptical, so thilt the speed In the orbi t is var.lao Ie, the tW\) pI allets v.-ould vary in speed Juring the year in just such a way as ah.;ays to remain opposite ~ach other and thus cOlltinue to be permanently eclipsed. However. this tidy arranef:'m~;.t would not occur in actuality because the motion of ench of these two nl anetg would be perturber, this tidy arralle~m~"t would not occur in actuality because the motion of each of these two 111 anets would be perturhetl by tilt' gravitational attractions bl'tW(~Cn them and the other planets of ;;he
Report, from the classic collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 1497 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.