A flying saucer (also referred to as a flying disc) is a type of flying craft with a disc or saucer-shaped body. Sometimes flying saucers are believed to be of alien origin, in which case they are referred to as unidentified flying objects or (UFO's). These are usually described as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability. Some flying saucers are man-made though, such as the American Chance Vought V-173 / XF5U "Flying Flapjack", the British GFS flying saucer, by the inventor Geoff Hatton, or the British "S.A.U.C.E.R" ("Saucer Aircraft Utilising Coanda Effect Reactions") flying saucer, by the inventor Alf Beharie.

Disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as being sporadically recorded since the Middle Ages, the first highly publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, resulted in the creation of the term by U.S. newspapers. Although Arnold never specifically used the term "flying saucer", he was quoted at the time saying the shape of the objects he saw was like a "saucer", "disc", or "pie-plate", and several years later added he had also said "the objects moved like saucers skipping across the water." (The Arnold article has a selection of newspaper quotes.) Both the terms ''flying saucer'' and ''flying disc'' were used commonly and interchangeably in the media until the early 1950s.

Arnold's sighting was followed by thousands of similar sightings across the world. Such sightings were once very common, to such an extent that "flying saucer" was a synonym for UFO through the 1960s before it began to fall out of favor. The term is still often used generically for any UFO.

More recently, the flying saucer has been largely supplanted by other alleged UFO-related vehicles, such as the black triangle. The term UFO was, in fact, invented in 1952, to try to reflect the wider diversity of shapes being seen. However, unknown saucer-like objects are still reported, such as in the widely-publicized 2006 sighting over Chicago-O'Hare airport.

Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now believed to be hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the 1950s and of B-movies in particular, and is a popular subject in comic science fiction.

Sightings [link]

A manuscript illustration of the 10th-century Japanese narrative, ''The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'', depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.

A record of a saucer-shaped object is from 1290 of a silver disc flying over a village in Yorkshire. Disc-like flying objects were occasionally reported throughout the millennium. For example, in a mass sighting over Nuremberg in 1561, discs and spheres were reported emerging from large cylinders. (woodcut at left) They are also claimed by ufologists to frequently show up in religious artwork. Artwork of the Annunciation of Mary, for instance, frequently shows a narrow beam of light descending from a saucer-like object. (examples at right and lower left) However, it is usually even ambiguous as to whether the artists were trying to depict something that had been seen or whether there was religious symbolism involved, let alone ufos.

Possibly the first well-documented instance to specifically compare the objects to saucers, and the first to be widely reported, was the Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 24, 1947, while Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier. He reported seeing 9 brightly-reflecting vehicles, one shaped like a crescent but the others more disc- or saucer-shaped, flying in an echelon formation, weaving like the tail of a kite, flipping and flashing in the sun, and traveling with a speed of at least 1,200 miles per hour (1,900 km/h). In addition to the saucer or disc shape (Arnold also used the terms "pie plate" and half-moon shaped), he also later said he described the motion of the craft as "like a saucer if you skip it across water", leading to the term "flying saucer" and also "flying disc" (which were synonymous for a number of years).

Immediately following the report, hundreds of sightings of usually saucer-like objects were reported across the United States and also in some other countries. The most widely publicized of these was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho, not far from Arnold's initial sighting. On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch (the so-called Roswell UFO incident, which was front-page news until the military issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon.

On July 9, the Army Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, assisted by the FBI, began a secret study of the best of the flying saucer reports, including Arnold's and the United Airlines' crew. Three weeks later they issued an intelligence estimate describing the typical characteristics reported (including that they were often reported as disc-like and metallic) and concluded that something was really flying around. A follow-up investigation by the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio arrived at the same conclusion. A widespread official government study of the saucers was urged by General Nathan Twining. This led to the formation of Project Sign (also known as Project Saucer) at the end of 1947, the first public Air Force UFO study. This evolved into Project Grudge (1949–1951) and then Project Blue Book (1952–1970).

The term "flying saucer" quickly became deeply ingrained in the English vernacular. A Gallup poll from August 1947 found that 90% had heard about the mysterious flying saucers or flying discs, and a 1950 Gallup poll found that 94% of those polled had heard the term, easily beating out all other mentioned commonly used terms in the news such as "Cold War", "universal military training," and "bookie."

Air Force statistics indicated that the basic saucer-shape continued to be the most commonly reported one through the 1950s and 1960s until Project Blue Book ended in 1970. There have been some claims, still undocumented by scientific study, that reports of saucers began to decline in the 1970s, being supplanted by other craft such as black triangles, cylinders, and amorphous shapes. It has also been asserted that despite the increase in portable cameras, photographs dwindled as Cold War and Space Race interest decreased and a number of notable images were exposed as fakes.

Explanations [link]

In addition to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, a variety of possible explanations for flying saucers have been put forward. One of the most common states that most photos of saucers were hoaxes; cylindrical metal objects such as pie tins, hubcaps and dustbin lids were easy to obtain, and the poor focus seen in UFO images makes the true scale of the object difficult to ascertain. However, some photos and movies were deemed authentic after intensive study. An example was the saucer-like object photographed by farmer Paul Trent near Portland, Oregon in 1950, which passed all tests when studied by the Condon Committee in the 1960s.

Another theory states that most are natural phenomena such as lenticular clouds and balloons, which appear disc-like in some lighting conditions.

A third theory puts all saucer sightings down to a form of mass hysteria. Arnold described the craft he saw as saucer-like but not perfectly round (he described them as thin, flat, rounded in front but chopped in back and coming to a point), but the image of the circular saucer was fixed in the public consciousness. The theory posits that as the use of the term flying saucer in popular culture decreased, so too did sightings.

However, one Air Force commissioned study contradicted some of these contentions. A scientific and statistical analysis of 3200 Air Force cases by the Battelle Memorial Institute from 1952-1954 found that most were indeed due to natural phenomena. But only about 2% were due to hoaxes or psychological effects and only .4% were thought due to clouds. Other very minor contributors to the identifieds were birds, light phenomena such as mirages or searchlights, and various miscellany such as flares or kites. The vast majority of identified objects (about 84%) were explained as balloons, aircraft, or astronomical objects. However, about 22% of all sightings still defied any plausible explanation by the team of scientists. The percent of unidentifieds rose to 33% for the best witnesses and cases. Thus when carefully studied, a very substantial fraction of reports (given the available data) cannot be easily explained away as being caused by mundane phenomena. Other scientific studies have come to similar conclusions. (see Identified flying object for details)

Fata Morgana (mirages) and flying saucers [link]

Fata Morgana, a type of mirage, might be responsible for some flying saucers sightings, by displaying objects located below the astronomical horizon hovering in the sky. It might also magnify these objects and make them look absolutely unrecognizable.

Similarly some unidentifieds seen on radar might also be due to Fata Morgana-type atmospheric phenomena, though more technically known as "anomalous propagation" and more commonly as "radar ghosts". Official UFO investigations in France indicates:

Fata Morgana was named as a hypothesis for the mysterious Australian phenomenon Min Min light

Earth-based examples [link]

The first documented patent for a lenticular flying machine was submitted by Romanian inventor Henri Coanda. He made a functional small scale model which was flown in 1932 and a patent was granted in 1935 At a Symposionum organized by the Romanian Academy in 1967 Coanda said:

"These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a toy made of paper children use to play with. My opinion is we should search for a completely different flying machine, based on other flying principles. I consider the aircraft of the future, that which will take off vertically, fly as usual and land vertically. This flying machine should have no parts in movement. The idea came from the huge power of the cyclons"

Other attempts have been made, with limited success, to produce manned vehicles based on the flying saucer design. While some, such as the Avrocar and M200G Volantor have been produced in limited numbers, most fail to leave the drawing board. The Avrocar, with vertical takeoff and landing, was originally intended to replace both the Jeep and the helicopter in combat situations, but proved to be inadequate for both. In spite of a powerful turbojet, it could not rise more than four or five feet off the ground, i.e., out of ground effect. Thus, the Avrocar could be seen as a prototype for the early generations of hovercraft, lacking only a 'skirt' to make it a truly effective example of the type. Unmanned saucers have had more success; the Sikorsky Cypher is a saucer-like UAV which uses the disc-shaped shroud to protect rotor blades.

Some more advanced flying saucers capable of spaceflight have been proposed, often as black projects by aeronautics companies. The Lenticular Reentry Vehicle was a secret project run by Convair for a saucer device which could carry both astronauts and nuclear weapons into orbit; the nuclear powered system was planned in depth, but is not believed to have ever flown. More exotically, British Rail worked on plans for the British Rail "Space Vehicle" a proposed, saucer-shaped craft based on so far undiscovered technologies such as nuclear fusion and superconductivity, which was supposed to have been able to transport multiple passenger between planets, but never went beyond the patent stage.

There is at least one design that received a US patent in 2005: It claims to be "propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state".

Additionally, a professor at the University of Florida has begun work on a Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) for NASA which has received public interest because of its coincidental resemblance to a flying saucer.

Military uses [link]

In the last decade, plasma induction technologies have led to the advance of propulsion and energy systems, operators such as the USAF and NASA have taken an interest in utilizing this tech for the purpose of building flying saucers.

In popular culture [link]

Surprisingly, long before the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947 and the adoption of the term "flying saucer" by the press, spacecraft of human or alien origin were often illustrated as classic flying saucers in the popular press, dating back to at least 1911.

After 1947, the flying saucer quickly became a stereotypical symbol of both extraterrestrials and science fiction, and features in many films of mid-20th century science fiction, including ''The Atomic Submarine'', ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'', ''Plan 9 from Outer Space'', Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion epic, ''Earth vs. the Flying Saucers'', as well as the television series ''The Invaders''. As the flying saucer was surpassed by other designs and concepts, it fell out of favor with straight science-fiction movie makers, but continued to be used ironically in comedy movies, especially in reference to the low-budget B movies which often featured saucer-shaped alien craft.

MGM, however, gave it's 1956 ''Forbidden Planet'' A-film high production values in the ''United Planet's Cruiser C-57D'', presenting a plausable human exploration, faster-than-light starship of the 23rd century.

The saucer design did, however, make a temporary comeback on the television series ''Babylon 5'' as the standard ship design used by a race called the Vree, described in the series as one of Earth's long-standing allies who had visited Earth in the distant past, and who bore a strong resemblance to the "Greys". Aliens in the film Independence Day attacked humanity in giant city sized saucer shaped space ships.

The sleek, silver flying saucer in particular is seen as a symbol of 1950s culture; the motif is common in Googie architecture and in Atomic Age décor. The image is often invoked retrofuturistically to produce a nostalgic feel in period works, especially in comic science fiction; both ''Mars Attacks!'' and ''Destroy All Humans!'' draw on the flying saucer as part of the larger satire of 1950s B movie tropes.

''The Twilight Zone'' episodes "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Third from the Sun", "Death Ship", "To Serve Man", "The Invaders" and "On Thursday We Leave for Home" all use ''Forbidden Planet'''s iconic saucer.

UFO religions[link]

Raëlism is a UFO religion founded by a purported contactee named Claude Vorilhon. They believe that Elohim (plural) are advanced extraterrestrials who created humanity and life on Earth whose previous and ancient contacts have provided the founding for many major religions in existence today.

In esoteric Nazism, it is believed that there were Nazi UFOs with underground bases in New Swabia, Antarctica, South America, and/or America, and that these survived after World War Two.

References [link]

External links [link]

FBI Special Agent Guy Hottel's memo

Category:Unidentified flying objects

cs:Létající talíř (UFO) cy:Soser hedegog de:Fliegende Untertasse eo:Fluganta subtaso hi:उड़न तश्तरी (अन्तरिक्ष) hr:Leteći tanjur la:Patella volans ml:പറക്കും തളിക ja:空飛ぶ円盤 pt:Disco voador ro:Farfurie zburătoare ru:Летающая тарелка sco:Fleein saucer sv:Flygande tefat ug:ئۇچار تەخسە

Name	Stanton T. Friedman
Birth date	July 29, 1934
Birth place	Elizabeth, New Jersey
Occupation	Ufologist, former Physicist
Children	}}

Stanton Terry Friedman (born July 29, 1934) is a professional Ufologist, currently residing in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. He is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident. He studied physics at the University of Chicago and worked as a nuclear physicist on research and development projects for several large companies. He is a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S.

Biography [link]

Career in nuclear physics [link]

Friedman graduated from Linden High School and the University of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Science in 1955 and a Master of Science degree in nuclear physics in 1956.

Friedman was employed for 14 years as a nuclear physicist for such companies as General Electric, General Motors, Westinghouse, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell Douglas, where he worked on advanced, classified programs on nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power plants for space applications. Since the 1980s, he has done related consultant work in the radon-detection industry. Friedman's professional affiliations have included the American Nuclear Society, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and AFTRA.

UFO investigations and advocacy[link]

In 1970 Friedman left full-time employment as a physicist to pursue the scientific investigation of UFOs. Since then, he has given lectures at more than 600 colleges and to more than 100 professional groups in 50 states, nine provinces, and 16 foreign countries. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant on the topic. He has published more than 80 UFO-related papers and has appeared on many radio and television programs. He has also provided written testimony to Congressional hearings and appeared twice at the United Nations.

Friedman has consistently favoured use of the term "flying saucer" in his work, saying "Flying saucers are, by definition, unidentified flying objects, but very few unidentified flying objects are flying saucers. I am interested in the latter, not the former." Friedman used to refer to himself as "The Flying Saucer Physicist", because of his degrees in nuclear physics and work on nuclear projects.

Friedman's positions regarding UFO phenomena[link]

Friedman was the first civilian to document the site of the Roswell UFO incident, and supports the hypothesis that it was a genuine crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. In 1968 Friedman told a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives that the evidence suggests that Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial vehicles. Friedman also stated he believed that UFO sightings were consistent with magnetohydrodynamic propulsion.

In 1996, after researching and fact-checking the Majestic 12 documents, Friedman said that there was no substantive grounds for dismissing their authenticity.

In 2004, on George Noory's "Coast to Coast" radio show, Friedman debated Seth Shostak, the SETI Institute's Senior Astronomer. Like Friedman, Shostak also believes in the existence of intelligent life other than humans; however, unlike Friedman, he doesn't believe such life is currently on Earth or is related to UFO sightings.

Friedman has hypothesized that UFOs may originate from relatively nearby sun-like stars. In a book published in 2008, he said:

...[there] are about 1,000 stars within our local galactic neighborhood, meaning the region within 54 light years of Earth ... According to an excellent study done by Terence Dickinson ... 46 of those stars are very similar to our sun .... the star pair Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, in the southern sky constellation Reticulum (the Net) only 39 light years away from us, are sun-like stars about 35 times closer to each other than the sun is to our nearest stellar neighbor. They are also about 1 billion years older than the sun. A civilization that had a billion-year head start on us will certainly know things that we can't even dream of. Our own limited science has shown that nuclear fusion rockets can provide thrust far in excess of that provided by chemical rocket, and so interestellar travel may be as easy for other civilizations now as nonstop flight across the ocean is for us today". (p.217)

A piece of evidence that he often cites with respect to this hypothesis is the 1964 star-map drawn by alleged alien abductee Betty Hill during a hypnosis session, which she said was shown to her during her abduction. Astronomer Marjorie Fish constructed a 3-dimensional map of nearby sun-like stars and claimed a good match from the perspective of Zeta Reticuli, about 39 light years distant. The fit of the Hill/Fish star maps was hotly debated in the December 1974 edition of ''Astronomy'' Magazine, with Friedman and others defending the statistical validity of the match.

Major conclusions and arguments[link]

Friedman states that he has reached major conclusions on the basis of his research dating back to the late 1950s. These can be summarised as follows:

There is overwhelming evidence that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft; that is, "some" UFOs are ET spacecraft, though most are not.

A few people in the U.S. and other governments have known the above since at least 1947 and employ a "need-to-know" policy regarding this knowledge; that is, the knowledge is highly classified largely as sensitive military information.

In addition, Friedman maintains that although arguments against these conclusions sound plausible, "when one examines them, they collapse, because of an absence of evidence to support them, and the presence of evidence that contradicts them". (p. 30) Friedman argues that reproducibility is largely irrelevant to the study of UFOs, essentially because by definition, scientists do not control variables if UFO phenomena involve intelligent extraterrestrial control; that is, in this case, the study of UFOs does not involve experiment and experimental methods. This position can be criticized on the basis that experiments can be conducted on materials or technology that are hypothesized to have an extraterrestrial origin. Although Friedman maintains that such materials have on at least one occasion been obtained, as stated above, he maintains these are highly classified and not available for conventional or mainstream scientific study.

Friedman has characterized the kinds of evidence, scientific and otherwise, that he considers to be relevant, which include credible testimony, analyses of documents, video and physical trace evidence, and particularly multiple sources of mutually corroborating evidence of one or more kind. Regarding testimony, he states that "we must remember that the reason most sightings can be determined to be relatively conventional phenomena, often seen under unusual circumstances, is that most people are relatively good observers. The problem comes with the interpretation of what was observed ... it would be irrational to say that people are good observers when their input allows us to identify the object being observed, and yet poor observers if we can't identify the UFO as something conventional" (pp. 32–33). In response to criticism on the basis of psychological or other grounds, he refers to the quality evaluation reported in the ''Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14'' and other evidence, such as that contained in the COMETA report.

SETI[link]

Friedman has stated strong views against SETI research. Friedman contests the implicit premise of SETI that there has been no extraterrestrial visitation of the planet, because SETI is seeking only signals, not extraterrestrial intelligence or beings. He maintains that the prominence and widespread public claims of those involved with SETI has tended to prevent serious research, including research by journalists, of UFOs.(p. 129)

Friedman has criticized Carl Sagan, a proponent of SETI, for ignoring empirical evidence, such as "600-plus UNKNOWNS" of ''Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14''. Friedman argued that this empirical data directly contradicts Sagan's claim in ''Other Worlds'' that the "reliable cases are uninteresting and the interesting cases are unreliable". Specifically, Friedman refers to a table in ''Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14'' that he says "shows that the better the quality of the sighting, the more likely it was to be an 'unknown', and the less likely it was to be listed as 'insufficient information'" (p. 42).

Public and scientific opinion[link]

Friedman says of the response to his talks, "I know that most people are unfamiliar with the several large-scale scientific studies ... because I ask, after I show a slide and ask about each one, "how many here have read this?" Typically it is only 1 or 2 percent." He says that a talk he gave to Canadian journalists in Saint John, New Brunswick caused the attitudes of the journalists to change because "Attendees had had no idea there was so much solid information, as opposed to the tabloid nonsense they thought was the primary source of UFO data." (p. 202)

Friedman has argued that the majority of people believe UFOs exist and at least some groups of scientists do as well. Friedman (2008) refers to the following data in support of his position: He addressed criticisms of the original documents in both sources. As an example, Philip J. Klass claimed lexicographic inconsistencies based on the use of Pica typeface in the Cutler-Twining memo and offered $100, in a challenge to Friedman, for each legitimate example of the use of the same style and size Pica type as used in the memo. Friedman provided 14 examples and was paid $1000 by Klass.

Media [link]

Books [link]

''Flying Saucers & Science'', June 2008, 320P.

''Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience.'' Co-author Kathleen Marden. Career Press / New Page Books, 2007. ISBN 978-156414-971-8, ISBN 978-1-56-924741-9

''Top Secret/MAJIC'', Marlowe + Co. 2005. ISBN 1-56924-342-5. 296 pages, ISBN 978-1-56-924342-8

''Crash at Corona: The Definitive Story of The Roswell Incident.'' Co-author Don Berliner, 1997. ISBN 978-1-93-104489-9

''Science was Wrong: Startling truths about cures, theories, and inventions "They" declared impossible''. Co-author Kathleen Marden. Pompton Plains, NJ: New Page Books. 2010.

Videos, VHS, DVD [link]

Safespace - Fastwalkers - Winter 2006

UFOs: Stanton Friedman's revelation - an interview with Stanton Friedman

2 DVDs - FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL DVD (NOT VHS) Vol. 1, 1993 Video 84 min. (Filmed at Kennedy Space Center) and FLYING SAUCERS ARE REAL Vol. 2, 1996 75 min for a Total Length of 168 minutes.

2006 151 Minute 2 disc DVD set "UFO SECRET MJ-12: Do You Believe in Majic?". "Includes Canadian TV Broadcast "Do You Believe in Majic?" (Mostly Stan Friedman vs. Karl Pflock + Stan Friedman's Lecture at Aztec 2003 about Roswell and MJ-12++ outtakes from DYBM.

RECOLLECTIONS OF ROSWELL DVD 105 min. Featuring testimony from 27 Roswell witnesses.

Debate "Are Flying Saucers Real?" VHS 2 Hrs. 2 Hour formal Debate STF vs. USAF Pilot Major James Magaha. Middle Tenn. State Univ. January 2004. Includes Q & A.

UFOs Are Real (1979) VHS - 92 min.

CDs [link]

UFOs: The Real Story (1996) New CD of the Ramey Memo Scans and Enhancements

References[link]

External links [link]

Stanton T. Friedman - Homepage

Stanton T. Friedman - Statement

Interview with Stanton Friedman

Category:1934 births Category:Jewish American scientists Category:Canadian nuclear physicists Category:People from Elizabeth, New Jersey Category:People from Fredericton Category:Ufologists Category:American UFO writers Category:American skeptics Category:Living people Category:University of Chicago alumni Category:Pseudohistorians

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name	Jamie George
birth name	Jamie George
birth date	October 20, 1990
birth place	Welwyn Garden City, England
height
weight
ru position	Hooker
ru currentteam	Saracens F.C.
ru clubyears	2009 –
ru proclubs	Saracens F.C.
ru clubcaps	21
ru clubpoints	(10) }}

Jamie George (born 20 October 1990 in Welwyn Garden City, England is an English rugby union player. He plays at Hooker for Saracens in the Aviva Premiership. He has also represented the England Rugby Team at under 16, under 18 and under 20 level.

Saracens[link]

Jamie has played for Saracens since 2009 after he came through the Saracens academy.

2009-2010 season[link]

In the 2009-2010 season Jamie made his debut for the Saracens first team. However this was the only appearance he was to make in the season. He however continued his development playing for the Saracens Storm in the A league.

2010-2011 season[link]

The 2010-2011 season is Jamie's first major season for the Saracens first team. He has played most of the season as an understudy to Schalk Brits who he describes by saying "He is a fantastic role model. I admire his approach to life and rugby and I have so much to learn from him". So far this season he has made 20 appearances and scored 2 tries, helping Saracens to secure a home semi-final in the Aviva Premiership.

References[link]

External links [link]

England profile

Saracens profile

Category:Articles created via the Article Wizard Category:1990 births Category:Living people Category:English rugby union players Category:People from Welwyn Garden City