Aliens, Project Mogul, and Christmas Tape

I still believe in UFOs. By which I mean, I believe that we have been visited by extra terrestrial life forms. I remember being ridiculed for this belief many times, but my rationale for extra terrestrial life seemed good enough: if one of 9 (now 8) planets in this remarkably average solar system could create intelligent life, those odds, applied to the millions or billions of other star systems would surely result in a similar outcome. Likewise, I believed that a worldwide conspiracy of average joes who saw lights and aircraft unknown in the world was pretty unbelievable. Same for my belief in ghosts. However, I did draw the line that aliens were here to promote the works of Jesus or that they wanted to create human/ alien hybrid embryos (after all, what could they need our pathetic genes for? Dumb homo sapiens have already mapped their own genome and if they can travel past c, they could probably whip up any base pairs they want.)

But I still obsessively read a lot of UFO books, magazines, and sucked down paranormal .5 hour TV documentaries. I know what Project Bluebook is, what a close encounter of the 1st, second, and 4th kind are, who the first inter-racial couple to be abducted were, and how many fingers greys are supposed to have. So I was surprised to see on National Geographic channel a UFO documentary that actually taught me something new.


Of course, everyone who knows what's up knows what Roswell is. Basically: a UFO crashed, a rancher found pieces of debris, newspaper snaps pictures of pieces, alien corpses get sent to area 51, and weather balloon is set up as a cover story. But I finally learned how it could all be explained rationally.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:RoswellDailyRecordJuly8%2C1947.jpg

First of all, it always bothered me that a huge, advanced spaceship only left the debris of foil like metal and rubbery components. Secondly, there was no crater or scarring anywhere around the debris. Thirdly, there was never a good consensus with witnesses anywhere. But there were hieroglyphic writings on some of the debris, which didn't sound like something a weather balloon would have. Why not some serial numbers like all good military projects? An innocuous weather balloon would certainly have something like that somewhere.

As it turns out, the perfectly rational explanation is as follows: it was a secret balloon project. Project Mogul was a top secret program which sent weather balloons with advanced detecting equipment to spy on USSR nuclear activity. It was a rush job and since many balloons were needed it was put together by a toy manufacturer in New York. This manufacturer used tape with Christmas decorations on it. This dried on the wood in the Nevada sun to make the purple hieroglyphs. Other details and hype about the story came about 30 years later after 50's sci-fi made the UFO invaders a standard trope. Because the project was top secret, the government did put out a cover story later and tacitly encouraged the UFO story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Reports_on_Roswell_UFO_Incident

This came out in 1997, while I soaked up my alien lore a year or two earlier. A victory for Occam's razor, a strange retrospective for my childhood obsession. I could say something cheesy, like the alien fixation was just a reflection of a personal and global desire that we aren't alone, that there is more than just a space ship earth. But for a part of me, it's like learning Santa never existed.

That being said, who wants to fund my X-Prize bid?

In other news, while planting a tree in the backyard, I cut my right wrist slightly. It still hurts. Made me definitely consider a bullet to the head as planned suicide method. Have not taken medication in nearly three weeks. However, I finally tested my vacuum former.