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The article is written to mark the upcoming 38th International UFO symposium in Denver, Colorado

Akila Weerasekera MUFON-Minnesota/SLUFORA

Millions of people have seen objects in the sky that they cannot identify and many thousands have taken the time and trouble to submit written reports about them.

The vast majority of these sightings could well be of such things as meteors, planets, stars, weather balloons, swamp gas and atmospheric disturbances. There remains, however, a significant body of experiences that are truly inexplicable.

There is no doubt that disk-shaped objects have been seen by a great many honest and sober men and women. The objects have been tracked by ground based and airborne radar and have been photographed by still and movie camera in black and white and color. The craft have been observed to hover, move straight up or down, and accelerate and maneuver at speeds far beyond the capability of any known airplane.

The idea that earth is being visited or has been visited by intelligent beings from outer space is regarded with skepticism by the scientific community. Such visitations are highly improbable; according to some astronomers, although they also say it is likely that advanced civilizations exist among the billions of galaxies in the universe.

In our own galaxy, the Milky Way there are perhaps 200 billion stars - a small fraction of which probably have planets on which life is feasible. On some of these it is not unlikely that intelligent beings have evolved and developed civilizations with technologies far superior to ours. In his book 'The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective,' astronomer Carl Sagan makes an "optimistic estimate" that within the Milky Way there might be a million such instances.
Why, then, apart from the lack of concrete evidence, do scientists find it hard to believe that interstellar spaceships have visited earth?

For one thing, we have only just announced our existence by radio, in the last 50 years or so years - to the rest of the universe. We live on the edge of our galaxy, and our closest neighbors may be hundreds or thousands of light-years away. It is going to be some time before the good news reaches them. Probably they would respond by radio, but they may have technology, for travel close to the speed of light, (186000 miles per second) and decide to drop by for a look at us.

Even so, it would take another several hundred or thousand years in planetary time for their spaceships to reach us return home. But most people fail to understand is that the linear mode of travel is not the only way to travel. It is suggested that these UFOs could be using some sort of a space-time distortion method which doesn't require traveling vast distances in a linear mode.

One of the main reasons why science is so skeptical about extraterrestrial visitations is that, in Sagan's words the accounts of spaceships and their occupants are "stodgy in their unimaginativeness." Our reports of close encounters ascribe to these visitors our own technology whereas, Sagan points out, theirs would be "so far beyond our present capabilities as to be indistinguishable from magic."

Also according to skeptics UFOnauts themselves are too much like earthlings, even though life forms elsewhere in the universe are probably composed of atoms and molecules as we are, given the random factors operating in the evolutionary process. Sagan says it could be assumed that extraterrestrial beings would be totally different from us. Even the least imaginative of the Science-Fiction writers would not suggest a humanoid so uninteresting as the reported saucerians, but according to what UFOlogists have gathered, these extraterrestrial beings might be similar to humans (after all, the humanoid shape might be universal).

The Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, is one of the oldest and largest UFO investigative organizations in the United States. MUFON was established as the Midwest UFO Network in Quincy, Illinois, on May 30, 1969, by Walter H. Andrus, Allen Utke, John Schuessler, and other scientific-minded researchers. Most of MUFON's early members had earlier been associated with APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization).The organization now has more than 3,000 members worldwide, with a majority of its membership base situated in the continental United States. The mission of MUFON is the scientific study of UFOs for the benefit of humanity through investigations, research and education.

The urgency of an organized effort to monitor UFO sighting in Sri Lanka and maintain a proper data base on such sightings has been a long felt need due to baffling UFO appearances all over Sri Lanka. Due to that need Sri Lanka UFO Research Association was founded in the late 1990s. Here are some of the mass sightings which were reported over the past 10-15 years.

In 1994 some students of Seevali College, Polonnaruwa, witnessed one evening a large, disk-shaped UFO landing on their playground. Dwarf- like creatures emerged from the UFO and came towards the children. The kids got petrified and ran away to call for help. When the teachers arrived, the UFO occupants and the craft had disappeared. In September the same year in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, 62 children, age 5-7 witnessed a craft landing on their play ground. According to the children, a little man wearing a black suit came out of the craft. The children were very frightened and ran away.
In 1998 Bandarawela, Diyatalawa and surrounding areas were subjected to many visitations and mass UFO sightings. Two children from Adikaram Primary school in Diyatalawa reported a saucer shaped craft landing in the middle of their play ground. While they were looking suddenly it climbed higher and floated off over the near by mountain. Many credible witnesses including medical doctors, school teachers and police officers came forward to reveal what they have encountered.

While I was on vacation in Sri Lanka in 2002, the national television channel, Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation reported on it's 8:00 pm, news on both June 9, and 10th, that there have been UFO sightings in the city of Polonnaruwa in first week of June 2002. The TV channel showed video footage of some nocturnal lights. Several entities too have been sighted, who had apparently run away when seen by civilians. These sightings have been reported on several days. That year Polonnwaruwa area became a UFO hot spot. But the sightings were not limited to Polonnaruwa and surrounding areas.

People from all over the country reported similar incidents to SLUFORA. Our (SLUFORA) study showed that most of the sightings could not be explained by conventional aircrafts, mass hallucinations, weather phenomena or hoaxes. We interviewed more than 200 people and they had experienced similar encounters. We were lucky to witness unusual light maneuvering in the sky one night over the Parakrama Samudra. Also, majority of sightings were reported over archeological sites and rice paddy fields.

The people in Monaragala district were very excited and terrified with the amazing encounters with mysterious entities appearing in their village in month of July, 2006. A small boy who is 13 years old and a school girl who is 17 years old as and their grand mother reported seeing small and marvelous creatures. In addition to that, three girls who went to bathe in Kirindioya on the following morning have seen these marvelous creatures. According to the witnesses the entities were very small and two of them were 2.5 ft in height and the other one was one foot taller than the others. Their heads were very large and their eyes were very blue and shining.

These are only a few reported mass sightings and there were many isolated cases reported to SLUFORA. Investigating sightings has become an issue due to the lack of resources and support. The sightings could not be ignored as pure delusions or hoaxes. It is easy for the so called scientists and fiction writers to debunk the phenomena without any kind of investigation. During the 2002 Pollonnaruwa sightings, Arthur C. Clark made a statement that the sightings are probably balloons or some weather phenomena. How can a person issue such a statement without conducting a proper investigation? Is it in accordance with the so called scientific method? By making such statements the witnesses to these encounters become reluctant to come forward because of the humiliation and the cases go uninvestigated.

What most of our scientists don't know is that the mainstream scientific communities of other countries have already started investigating the UFO phenomena and that the ridiculing and debunking without investigating period has ended. The National Institute for Discovery Sciences (NIDS) in the United States is one of the many paranormal research organizations which maintains a large database of anomalous activity and investigates reports. Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Perhaps either alternative is equally profound and terrifying.

I believe that the evidence tells us that intelligent life exists out there and that an alien hand is reaching out to us across the void of space. We no longer should debunk UFO sightings without any investigation or research. Also, our government should pay some attention to the sightings before it becomes a national security issue.

One thing is certain, if there is anybody out there and if they do make full contact with us, it would be the most significant event in the history of human race. So, let us try to keep an open mind.

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