Twilight of the gullible
There used to be many reported sightings of UFOs, but modern life has not been kind to them. Charles Nevin finds out why
By Charles Nevin
At the University of Worcester, a full conference room is studying a large screen displaying images which will subsequently be revealed as Venus, floating binbags, fireballs, lighthouse beams, Chinese lanterns and blurred birds. The link, as the speaker, Ian Ridpath, explains, PowerPoint by point, is that all had been thought to be Unidentified Flying Objects.
Ridpath, a science writer and UFO sceptic, was opening a conference organised by the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP), an agnostic body which has reported a sharp drop in sightings of UFOs, together with a significant fall in the popularity of groups dedicated to studying the proposition that we are regularly being visited by inquisitive aliens. Could it be, we are asked to suppose, that the truth isn’t actually, after all, Out There?
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