PLYMOUTH, England -- After years of denial, the British government admits it conducted a thorough scientific study of UFOs, which concluded that unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, do exist, but not flying saucers.

The secret Ministry of Defence study, unearthed through a Freedom of Information request, dismissed most reported UFOs as man-made objects, natural phenomenon or hoaxes.

But it also found that some sightings were possibly of rare atmospheric phenomena -- pockets of electrically charged plasmas forming in the atmosphere. The plasmas would appear as bright, fast-moving UFOs to observers, but be invisible to radar.

"It proves that the (Ministry of Defence was) prepared to look into this subject and it could galvanize science into studying this aspect of the subject out in the open," said British UFO expert and author Philip Mantle.

An unnamed security contractor carried out the study on behalf of the Defence Intelligence Staff, section DI55, based in Whitehall, London. Codenamed Project Condign, the study was started in December 1996 and completed four years later in March 2000. The findings were published in a four-volume, 460-page report, titled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the U.K. Air Defence Region."

Only 11 copies of the report were produced, and they were circulated to a restricted number of high-ranking Royal Air Force and defense ministry officials. It was so secret that not even the Ministry of Defence's UFO department or the government ministers in charge of the defense ministry were made aware of it.

The report came to light through the efforts of UFO author David Clarke and fellow ufologists Gary Anthony, Joe McGonagle and Andy Roberts. They learned about the project in January 2005; it was released to them last month after they filed a Freedom of Information request.

Like the Condon Report, sponsored by the United States Air Force in 1969, Project Condign was used by the Ministry of Defence as a reason to end further UFO research or investigation.

But UFO experts say the study is far from conclusive.

"There is no one single explanation for the UFO phenomenon," said Mantle. "It is multifaceted and more complex than most researchers would care to admit."

John Rimmer, editor of Magonia, a UFO magazine, agreed. "It looks at a fairly limited range of data. I think it falls into the trap of trying to find one explanation to cover a whole range of events."

But Ministry of Defence official Nick Pope, who ran the department's UFO project in the 1990s said, "Whatever one may think of the study's methodology and conclusions, it adds significantly to our knowledge."

Ufologists recently suffered a setback when the infamous "alien autopsy" film was exposed as a hoax. Released in 1995, the film purported to show the autopsies of aliens recovered from a 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico. But special effects expert John Humphreys, who helped create Max Headroom, now says he made the latex aliens seen in the film.

The Ministry of Defence said the full Project Condign report (minus some military secrets about British radar coverage) will be published on the Ministry of Defence website May 15.

An initial summary of the report by Clarke et al. can be found at the Flying Saucery Presents website.








Publicado originalmente en www.wired.com