The article below was published in the daily newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, Strasbourg, France, page 5, on May 14, 1952.
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Flying saucers, which had for a time fallen into oblivion, are making headlines again. A fairly serious study on the subject was published by the American magazine "Life". Even more remarkable: the United States Air Force, which until now had seemed to treat people’s claims with contempt, has officially stepped in to invite all witnesses of mysterious appearances in the sky to contribute to the case file it proposes to maintain and analyze itself. And most recently, a reporter managed to take five photographs of a mysterious craft over Rio de Janeiro.
What reality lies behind the notion of the "flying saucer," and how can we explain the popularity of the term itself, which implies that the objects in question have a specific shape or size? If we review the accounts of observers whose seriousness and good faith cannot be doubted — among them doctors, engineers, and scientists — we find that none of them reported a shape strictly that of a saucer, rather than a plate or a simple disk. Many speak of "spheres," others of "lenses," and still others of "cigars," and it is clear that not all the sightings involved objects or phenomena of the same shape. Furthermore, none of the objects so described have ever been captured, found on the ground, or immobilized in any way; each case involved brief sightings, completely unexpected, leaving the greatest uncertainty regarding the distance, size, and actual speed of the phenomena.
It is easy to understand that for a lone observer relying only on visual impressions, there would be no way to distinguish between a craft flying at a certain speed and another twice as large, flying twice as far and at double the speed.
It is quite certain that some honest but inexperienced observers have associated natural phenomena they witnessed by chance with what they had seen or heard about "flying saucers." Some of these phenomena — particularly those linked to the presence of electricity in the atmosphere, such as thunderstorms, "heat lightning," or St. Elmo's fire — can appear in unusual forms that make us doubt their nature, and sometimes even our own senses.
The author of these lines remembers seeing one night, when he was about fifteen years old and in the company of a friend, off the coast of Nice, a sort of fireball, with an apparent size twice that of the moon, but incomparably brighter; the apparition crossed an immense vertical path in about a second, as if to fall into the sea, all in complete silence, leaving the two youths stunned into silence, before exchanging impressions that matched perfectly.
It is above all essential to eliminate from the reports anything overly definitive about size, speed, dimensions, or duration, in which honest errors — even by trained observers — can easily be off by a factor of four. The brevity and complete unexpectedness of the phenomena only amplifies such errors. Furthermore, we must approach with extreme caution any statements suggesting the craft seen was "certainly guided." Some natural phenomena move "randomly," but that randomness can appear deliberate. In Central America, for instance, tornadoes have been seen to follow winding yet perfectly natural paths that made it seem as though a destructive will was directing them at urban centers.
It is therefore not a question of recklessly rejecting all testimonies, nor of accepting them all at face value; moreover, for the layperson, the problem is even more complex than for the scientist, since their sources of information are rarely direct and they must also assess the honesty and seriousness of their informants.
So what do we know for certain, in the end? On the one hand, that the Americans — and perhaps the Russians too — are devoting considerable effort to the research and development of new, ultra-secret craft, whose common characteristic appears to be rocket propulsion — chemical today, nuclear tomorrow. It is not out of the question, given the current state of technology, that alongside the classical projectile shape like the V-2, efforts are being made to develop disc- or lens-shaped vehicles, whose movement would combine rapid rotation around their axis with a translational motion that would be easier to control for specific missions. This problem is related, as we know, to that of building an "outer station" — a kind of artificial satellite of Earth that would orbit the planet indefinitely, completing one circuit in about an hour, at an altitude of a few hundred kilometers. This satellite, designed to eventually be habitable for several weeks, would offer the nation that builds it unlimited economic and military advantages, notably through the use of cosmic energy, which is almost entirely absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere.
Are the recent sightings of "flying saucers" connected to preparations of this kind? It is understandable that official denials on this matter cannot be taken as absolutely decisive. However, among the probable causes of the phenomena observed, we must always consider possible atmospheric or meteoric events, to which an overactive imagination has quickly attributed military significance.
Finally, some have mentioned "extraterrestrial causes." Taken literally, such an explanation is not in itself surprising, especially when we consider that daylight itself is of extraterrestrial origin. But some have gone further — sometimes with all the weight of technical authority — and imagined craft designed and built on other planets, even beyond the solar system: craft inhabited and guided by beings endowed with intelligence and will, who would be inspecting Earth with cautious or aggressive curiosity. We've all read, in Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, charming or terrifying imaginative descriptions of such beings, often with completely arbitrary traits: in this area, the imagination knows no bounds.
Could these be "living" beings, with a form of life entirely different from our own, capable of existing in completely different material environments and especially at different temperatures, yet possessing consciousness and will like us? Nothing today authorizes such a hypothesis — but nothing authorizes us to reject it outright either. We may, in fact, be condemned to centuries of doubt on this matter. The only thing that is certain is that we are not dealing with human beings like ourselves — for if they were, they would share our vanity and would not fail to make their presence known in a much more direct manner.
Germain LIEVRE
