1.
Condon Committee
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The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968. According to a critic of the Report, it is the most influential public document concerning the scientific status of this UFO problem. Hence, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must make reference to the Condon Report, Blue Book had come under increasing criticism in the 1960s. The Air Force did not want to continue its studies but did not want a cessation of studies to provoke additional charges of a cover-up, UFOs had become such a controversial issue that no other government agency was willing to take on further UFO studies. Air Force should work with a few selected universities to provide teams to study UFOs. The Committee suggested that about 100 well-documented UFO sightings should be studied annually, at a Congressional UFO hearing on April 5,1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown defended the Air Forces UFO studies and repeated the OBrien Committees call for more studies. Hynek repeated his call for a panel of physical and social scientists to examine the UFO problem critically for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem exists. Shortly after the hearing, the Air Force announced it was seeking one or more universities to undertake a study of UFOs, the Air Force wanted to have several groups, but it took some time to find even a single school willing to accept the Air Forces offer. McDonald suggested their own campuses, Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, all were judged too closely allied with one position or another. Walter Orr Roberts, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in the summer of 1966, Condon agreed to consider the Air Forces offer. He was among the best known and most distinguished scientists of his time, Condons tenacious encounters with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and other government Loyalty Boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him almost legendary among fellow scientists. On Condons behalf, Robert J. Low, an assistant dean of the graduate program, explored faculty reaction to the proposed project and found it mixed. He tried to reassure those who found the enterprise unworthy of scientific investigation, Low told the Denver Post that the project had met the Universitys acceptance threshold by the narrowest of margins and was accepted largely because it was difficult to say no to the Air Force. Some have suggested that finances were factor in Colorados decision to accept the Air Forces offer of $313,000 for the project. Condon dismissed this suggestion, noting that $313,000 was a rather modest budget for an undertaking scheduled to last more than a year with a staff of over a dozen, the Air Force announced its selection of Condon and the University of Colorado in October 1966. Several other scientists or experts served in part-time and temporary roles or as consultants, in November 1966, retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe and Richard H. Hall, both of NICAP, briefed the panel. They agreed to share NICAPs research files and to improve the collection of UFO reports, the Committee also secured help from APRO, another civilian UFO research group. The Committee moved slowly, hampered by disagreements about the use of funds, by hiring people with no prior position on UFOs, the Committee staff lacked expertise and subject matter expertise
2.
Freedom of Information Act 2000
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The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that creates a public right of access to information held by public authorities. It is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level, the Act implements a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election, developed by Dr David Clark as a 1997 White Paper. The final version of the Act is believed by Ben Robertson to have been diluted from that proposed while Labour was in opposition, the full provisions of the act came into force on 1 January 2005. The Act is the responsibility of the Lord Chancellors Department, the Act led to the renaming of the Data Protection Commissioner, who is now known as the Information Commissioner. The Office of the Information Commissioner oversees the operation of the Act, a second freedom of information law is in existence in the UK, the Freedom of Information Act 2002. It was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2002, to public bodies over which the Holyrood parliament. For these institutions, it fulfils the same purpose as the 2000 Act, around 120,000 requests are made each year. Private citizens made 60% of them, with businesses and journalists accounting for 20% and 10% respectively, journalists requests took up more of officials time than businesses and individuals requests. The Act cost £35.5 million in 2005, the act implements what was a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election. Before its introduction, there had no right of access to government by the general public. The act was preceded by a 1998 white paper, entitled Your Right to Know by Dr David Clark, the white paper was met with widespread enthusiasm, and was described at the time as being almost too good to be true by one advocate of freedom of information legislation. The final act was more limited in scope than the initial white paper. Public Authorities, publicly owned companies and designated bodies performing public functions, in principle, the freedom of information act applies to all public authorities within the United Kingdom, a full list of public authorities for the purposes of the act is included in Schedule 1. A few government departments are expressly excluded from the scope of the act, as government departments are closed and created, the act must be continually updated. It is important to note that for public authorities listed under Schedule 1 the act has limited effect. For example, the BBC is subject to the act only for information which is not held for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, to prevent its journalistic activities from possible compromise. The scope of this provision was considered in the recent High Court decision of BBC v Sugar an internal BBC document examining the BBC coverage of the Middle East for potential bias. The appellants in that case argued that the document had been produced for both operational and journalistic reasons, and so should not be covered by the partial exemption provided in the act
3.
Sheffield Hallam University
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Sheffield Hallam University is a public university in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The university is the eighth largest university in the UK with 31,485 students,4,494 staff and 708 courses, the day-to-day running was controlled by the local council, whilst the Board of Trade in London appointed the head. Tuition began in a 60x40ft rented room off Glossop Road, in 1850 the School of Design was renamed Sheffield School of Art. In 1905 the City of Sheffield Training College on Collegiate Crescent admitted its first 90 students, in 1967 the Owen Building was constructed. Built in a functional 1960s design, it has since been modernised, in 1969 the Sheffield School of Design merged with the citys College of Technology to form Sheffield Polytechnic. In 1976 Sheffield Polytechnic merged with the two teacher training colleges and was renamed Sheffield City Polytechnic. In 1987 Sheffield City Polytechnic became a member of the Northern Consortium. In 1992 Sheffield City Polytechnic became Sheffield Hallam University, with the right to award its own degrees, in 2005 SHU was reorganised into four faculties. The new Faculty of Development and Society, with an emphasis on people, places and spaces, brought together education, geography, humanities, law, and social sciences. At the same time, with the intention of developing research and teaching in the new Faculty of Health and Wellbeing. The building that had designed and constructed to house the National Centre for Popular Music became the universitys students union building. The Nelson Mandela Building, the students union building, was sold and has since been demolished. In 2007 SHU took over the teaching of nursing and midwifery from the University of Sheffield and these activities are now based at the Collegiate Crescent Campus. The following year the Psalter Lane campus was closed, and the transferred to the City Campus. The £26 million energy-efficient Furnival Building opened in September, the building, which includes teaching spaces and an art gallery has been described as the impressive new entry point to the campus. Winston has a history in academia, being a full-time faculty member at Imperial College London for the majority of his career. SHU is the partner for Higher Futures, the Lifelong Learning Network for South Yorkshire, North Derbyshire. SHU received a First Class award and was ranked 15th out of 151 universities in the People & Planet University League 2015 which assesses universities on their environmental credentials, nazir Ahmed, Baron Ahmed, Labour Party Peer
4.
British UFO Research Association
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The British UFO Research Association or BUFORA is a UK organisation formerly registered as BUFORA Ltd, dedicated to investigating UFO phenomena in the British Isles. The organisation has around 1,000 members, in 1991 the book UFO Encyclopedia was compiled for the group by Major Sir Patrick Wall. BUFORA investigates over 400 cases a year, with the organisation reporting 95% of them as hoaxes and they run witness support groups for those who believe they have encountered extra terrestrials. The organisation has held a conference at Sheffield Hallam University since 1987 and hold meetings across the country. They have been critics of the UK governments Freedom of Information Act as it relates to UFOs. An entry in the UFO Encyclopedia, which was a sighting confirmed as genuine by BUFORA, was found to be a hoax. The supposed contactee, who claimed to have seen a UFO hovering over the town of Warminster, in 1995 the group were the only official UFO organisation to endorse a film, purportedly by the US government, showing an alien autopsy at Roswell
5.
Ball lightning
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Ball lightning is an unexplained atmospheric electrical phenomenon. The term refers to reports of luminous, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several meters in diameter, though usually associated with thunderstorms, the phenomenon lasts considerably longer than the split-second flash of a lightning bolt. Many early reports claim that the ball explodes, sometimes with fatal consequences. Until the 1960s, most scientists treated reports of ball lightning skeptically, laboratory experiments can produce effects that are visually similar to reports of ball lightning, but how these relate to the natural phenomenon remains unclear. Scientists have proposed many hypotheses about ball lightning over the centuries, Scientific data on natural ball lightning are scarce, owing to its infrequency and unpredictability. The presumption of its existence depends on reported sightings, and has therefore produced somewhat inconsistent findings. Owing to inconsistencies and to the lack of data, the true nature of ball lightning remains unknown. The first ever optical spectrum of what appears to have been an event was published in January 2014. It has been suggested that lightning could be the source of the legends that describe luminous balls. In a 1960 study, 5% of the population of the Earth reported having witnessed ball lightning, another study analyzed reports of 10,000 cases. From that time, those fires which frequently appear on the surface of the ocean were called the fire of Castor, when two were seen at the same time, it announced the return of calm, when only one, it was the presage of a dreadful storm. This species of fire is seen by sailors, and is a species of ignis fatuus. This account, however, shares more commonalities with the St. Elmos fire phenomenon, another early description was reported during the Great Thunderstorm at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638. Four people died and approximately 60 were injured when, during a severe storm, large stones from the church walls were hurled into the ground and through large wooden beams. The ball of fire allegedly smashed the pews and many windows, the ball of fire reportedly divided into two segments, one exiting through a window by smashing it open, the other disappearing somewhere inside the church. The explanation at the time, because of the fire and sulfur smell, was that the ball of fire was the devil or the flames of hell. Later, some blamed the incident on two people who had been playing cards in the pew during the sermon, thereby incurring Gods wrath. By this explosion the main top-mast was shattered into pieces and the main mast went down to the keel, five men were knocked down and one of them very bruised
6.
Black triangle UFO
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Black triangles are a class of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, with certain common features which have reportedly been observed during the 20th and 21st centuries. Media reports of black triangles originally came from the United States, the aircraft may be related to the rumored USAF Aurora aircraft developmental program. Reports generally describe this class of UFOs as large, silent, black triangular objects hovering or slowly cruising at low altitudes over cities, sightings usually take place at night. These objects are described as having pulsing colored lights that appear at each corner of the triangle. Black triangle UFOs have been reported to be visible to radar and this entire Belgian UFO wave, however, has been disputed by skeptics. This is a key finding in the attribution of what have frequently reported as black craft, often triangular. These plasma formations also have the effect through magnetic, electric or electromagnetic, local fields of this type have been medically proven to cause responses in the temporal lobes of the human brain. These result in the observer sustaining his or her own vivid and this is suggested to be a key factor in influencing the more extreme reports found in the media and are clearly believed by the victims. On March 30,1993, multiple witnesses across south-west and west England saw a black triangle at low speeds. Analysis of the sightings by Nick Pope concluded that the object moved in a course from Cornwall to Shropshire over a period of approximately 6 hours. The sightings report clearly visible objects over densely populated areas and highways, mostly in the United States and Britain, in February and March 2014, an aircraft matching the black triangle description was photographed multiple times over Kansas and Texas in daylight. In February 2014, an amateur photographer Jeff Templin snapped pictures of an aircraft while photographing wildlife in Kansas. On Mar 10,2014 Steve Douglass and Dean Muskett photographed a triangular shaped aircraft giving off a long contrail over Amarillo, bill Sweetman, Graham Warwick, and Guy Norris of Aviation Week all agree that the photos show something real. The Kenosha UFO wave began in December 2016, the events of 17 February were documented by multiple groups of witnesses. All of the reports consist of a dark triangular objects in the sky with blinking white and red lights. The craft was seen on 19 January 2017 at around 5,00 am barely hovering above the ground. The object was described as dark on the bottom with lights, other sightings include 28 December 2016 at around 8,00 pm and 24 January 2017 at around 9,00 pm. The Belgian UFO wave began in November 1989, the events of 29 November were documented by over thirty different groups of witnesses, and three separate groups of police officers
7.
Plasma (physics)
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Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, the others being solid, liquid, and gas. Yet unlike these three states of matter, plasma does not naturally exist on the Earth under normal surface conditions, the term was first introduced by chemist Irving Langmuir in the 1920s. However, true plasma production is from the separation of these ions and electrons that produces an electric field. Based on the environmental temperature and density either partially ionised or fully ionised forms of plasma may be produced. The positive charge in ions is achieved by stripping away electrons from atomic nuclei, the number of electrons removed is related to either the increase in temperature or the local density of other ionised matter. Plasma may be the most abundant form of matter in the universe, although this is currently tentative based on the existence. Plasma is mostly associated with the Sun and stars, extending to the rarefied intracluster medium, Plasma was first identified in a Crookes tube, and so described by Sir William Crookes in 1879. The nature of the Crookes tube cathode ray matter was identified by British physicist Sir J. J. The term plasma was coined by Irving Langmuir in 1928, perhaps because the glowing discharge molds itself to the shape of the Crookes tube and we shall use the name plasma to describe this region containing balanced charges of ions and electrons. Plasma is a neutral medium of unbound positive and negative particles. Although these particles are unbound, they are not ‘free’ in the sense of not experiencing forces, in turn this governs collective behavior with many degrees of variation. The average number of particles in the Debye sphere is given by the plasma parameter, bulk interactions, The Debye screening length is short compared to the physical size of the plasma. This criterion means that interactions in the bulk of the plasma are more important than those at its edges, when this criterion is satisfied, the plasma is quasineutral. Plasma frequency, The electron plasma frequency is compared to the electron-neutral collision frequency. When this condition is valid, electrostatic interactions dominate over the processes of ordinary gas kinetics, for plasma to exist, ionization is necessary. The term plasma density by itself refers to the electron density, that is. The degree of ionization of a plasma is the proportion of atoms that have lost or gained electrons, even a partially ionized gas in which as little as 1% of the particles are ionized can have the characteristics of a plasma. The degree of ionization, α, is defined as α = n i n i + n n, where n i is the number density of ions and n n is the number density of neutral atoms
8.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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