SUBJECT: MORE ON THE BELIGUM UFOs FILE: UFO1555 The following report has been provided by Jean Manfroid of the Liege University and the Institute of Astrophysics. Mr. Manfroid is a subscriber to the ParaNet digest on Internet. SCIENTISTS OF THE ASTROPHYSICAL INSTITUTE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LIEGE COMMUNICATE THE FOLLOWING REPORT ON THE SOBEPS BOOK ABOUT BELGIAN UFOS, AND AGREE TO HAVE IT DISTRIBUTED VIA PARANET. Belgian UFOs SOBEPS, a Belgian association of UFO buffs has compiled and published a series of accounts of UFO sightings in the Liege area. The title is "The UFO wave over Belgium" (in French), and it is now a top selling book here. The preface is by the French CNRS scientist Petit, well-known for the fact that his scientific inspiration is due to aliens (coming from planet UMMO, 15 light years from us, as you should know). Coincidentally, Dr Petit and others are publishing at the same time books on the UMMITs. The Belgian scientific community and specially the astronomers have followed the development of this UFO story since its beginning two years ago. The first events were reported at a time when many astronomers were busy observing several comets, among other things. Moreover, Western Europe was blessed with nice weather, so that the night sky was particularly well examined by many expert observers. A very impressive Venus hung for several months in the evening sky. There was also a rather intense activity at the local airport, with frequent AWACS patrols. And, as usual, lots of aircrafts crossed the Liege area, with, at any time, a minimum of 3 or 4 to be seen. As always during the eastern elongations of Venus (sensibly more than for the morning elongations, like the current one), we received many calls from people excited by strange lights crossing the evening sky. When more information was asked, it almost invariably turned out to be Venus, although the Moon and halos were sometimes implied. We were also asked to examine several video tapes received by the national TV station. Again, Venus was almost always the culprit. These tapes were, as a rule, affected by very bad images, the automatic focusing being fooled by surrounding objects, or by trying to catch a point source at infinity... Nice effects were obtained with extra-focal images of the aperture stop, pulsating disks etc. We were often surprised by the descriptions given by the people who took the videos: they cited distances of 30 or 50 meters, they spoke of hanging globes, moving rapidly, following their cars etc... though their recordings showed much more benign events. Invariably, all those people were looking at the sky for the first time. This raises some doubts on the validity of occasional witnesses. Some of these accounts, as well as others, were relayed by the media. Video tapes of aircrafts at night, showing only their lights were visible. The snowball effect rapidly developed. Witnesses appeared, reporting triangles in the sky, while frustrated astronomers, albeit logging many more hours of observations (with sophisticated equipment), continued to see satellites, meteorites, aircrafts (at times as triangles of light spots). Apparently SOBEPS accepts the fact that Belgian UFOs adopted the international conventions for the lights on their flying crafts. That three lights could form a triangle seemed to have impressed SOBEPS analysts. Meanwhile the public became "ripe" for a "serious" brain-storming by SOBEPS. Several observing campaigns were set up with many UFOs being caught. The air force was somehow involved, with air fighters ready to take off on short notice. One fighter caught, during a few seconds, spurious echoes with supersonic velocities. Certainly some atmospheric or electronic disturbance, but this was interpreted by SOBEPS as the ultimate proof of alien visitors (when a police radar clocked a road signal above the speed limit some years ago, nobody thought of that interpretation). Nothing was seen visually, which means that, though UFOs can be invisible, they do not have the certainly much simpler stealth technology. Again, during those campaigns, expert amateur and professional astronomers saw no UFOs at all. All these accounts are compiled in the biased SOBEPS book. A typical example of the scientific philosophy of the SOBEPS can be found in a UFO sighting during the February 90 lunar eclipse. Hundreds of people were in the field, observing the sky, and they saw the Moon, but also planets, stars, satellites and aircrafts. But from inside the bathroom of a nearby house, one person glimpsed some fast-moving light close to the Moon. She got another brief glimpse from another window. This witness was retained in the SOBEPS compilation. The poor folks who had perfect observing conditions, who knew something about the sky, and who saw a plane instead of a UFO, are not given consideration. The photographic and video material included in the report is very poor. After picking out aircrafts and astronomical objects, only out-of-focus, blurred images remain. Some of them certainly are fabricated. Most awful of all is the grotesque cover picture. One of the strangest aspects is that, in spite of thousands of witnesses, no clear, crisp, image has been produced. Any other so widespread phenomenon would have resulted in hundreds of nice photographs and kilometers of indisputable video material. The release of the SOBEPS report was greeted by full-page articles in newspapers with provocative titles stating that alien visitors are among us, and that this is now a scienfically accepted fact. The national TV network danced to the same tune. We made public our concerns on the issue and a note was quickly released to the press by 10 scientists from various institutions. This note found some positive echoes in the media. Our intent was to disprove the alleged implication of the scientists in this affair (only 2 or 3 scientists are involved in the SOBEPS activities). We have looked at the SOBEPS report, and we found that it is in no way a scientific work. It does not bring the tiniest bit of evidence in favor of alien visitors. Discovering evidence of extra-terrestrial life would be a tremendous feat in the history of mankind, but SOBEPS-like works do nothing toward such a discovery. On the contrary, there is some risk to bring bad publicity to serious projects like SETI. A conclusion that might be drawn by some, is that the Belgian UFO wave is just a well-orchestrated commercial affair, with deliberate exploitation of human credulity. Our general opinion is that the SOBEPS report totally lacks scientific objectivity. N.B. An excellent, in-depth, exhaustive, coverage of the UFO phenomenon, had been published in early 1990, by Marc Hallet -- "Historical and scientific analysis of the UFO phenomenon" -- but in a limited number of copies. The small impact of this serious, scientific, work, compared to the giant waves generated by SOBEPS and other farcical compilations is frustrating. J. Demaret, N. Grevesse, A. Lausberg, J. Manfroid, A. Noels J. Surdej, J.P. Swings (Institute of Astrophysics, University of Liege) ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************