This article was published in the daily newspaper The New York Times, New York City, USA, on October 30, 1966.
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A New York physicist said yesterday he was responsible for many of the unidentified objects that have been spotted in the last few years over the United states and Canada.
The physicist Serge A. Korff, director of the cosmic research program at New York university, told a youth science seminar at the Explorer's Club that many of the sightings had been of giant balloons sent aloft to test the upper atmosphere.
The balloons, he said, are 300 to 400 feet across and because they are partly inflated, assume strange shapes as they ascend.
"At high altitudes they often reflect sunlight and become visible to viewers below in area where the sun has set or before it has risen," he said.
During the last 30 years, he said, more than 110 flights to detect cosmic rays have been carried out by the N.Y.U. Similar flights are sponsored by some 15 to 20 other organizations, he said.
Dr. Korff, a past president of the Explorer's Club, did not ascribe all the sightings to exploratory balloons.
Meantime, residents of Suffolk County reported seeing a hovering object with flashing lights Thursday night and Friday morning.
More than 100 persons, including several policemen, said they saw the object over beach communities on Eastern Long Island. One policeman described the object as resembling a "big white star."
It was the second such sighting in Suffolk County in a week.
