Contact - Carl Sagan [42]
The great majority of UFO reports, the DCI continued, were natural objects misapprehended by the observer. Unconventional or experimental aircraft, automobile headlights reflected off overcast, balloons, birds, luminescent insects, even planets and stars seen under unusual atmospheric conditions, had all been reported as UFO's. A significant number of reports turned out to be hoaxes or real psychiatric delusions. There had been more than a million UFO sightings reported worldwide since the term "flying saucer" had been invented in the late '40s, and not one of them seemed on good evidence to be connected with an extraterrestrial visitation. But the idea generated powerful emotions, and there were fringe groups and publications, and even some academic scientists, that kept alive the supposed connection between UFO's and life on other worlds. Recent millenarian doctrine included its share of saucer-borne extraterrestrial redeemers. The official Air Force investigation, called in one of its final incarnations Project Blue Book, had been closed down in the '60s for lack of progress, although a low-level continuing interest had been maintained jointly by the Air Force and the CIA. The scientific community had been so convinced there was nothing to it that when Jimmy Carter requested the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to make a comprehensive study of UFO's, NASA uncharacteristically refused a presidential request.
"In fact," interjected one of the scientists at the table, unfamiliar with the protocol in meetings such as this, "the UFO business has made it more difficult to do serious SETI work."
"All right." The President sighed. "Is there anybody around this table who thinks UFO's and this signal from Vega have anything to do with each other?" Der Heer inspected his fingernails. No one spoke.
"Just the same, there's going to be an awful lot of I-told-you-so's from the UFO yo-yos. Marvin, why don't you continue?"
"In 1936, Ms. President, a very faint television signal transmits the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games to a handful of television receivers in the Berlin area. It's an attempt at a public relations coup. It shows the progress and superiority of German technology. There were a few earlier TV transmissions, but all at very low power levels. Actually, we did it before the Germans. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover made a brief television appearance on… April twenty-seventh, 1927. Anyway, the German signal leaves the Earth at the speed of light, and twenty-six years later it arrives on Vega. They sit on the signal for a few years-whoever `they' are-and then send it back to us hugely amplified. Their ability to receive that very weak signal is impressive, and their ability to return it at such high power levels is impressive. There certainly are security implications here. The electronic intelligence community, for example, would like to know how such weak signals can be detected. Those people, or whatever they are, on Vega are certainly more advanced than we are-maybe only a few decades further along, but maybe much further along than that.
"They've given us no other information about themselves-except at some frequencies the transmitted signal doesn't show the Doppler effect from the motion of their planet around their star. They've simplified that data reduction step for us. They're… helpful. So far, nothing of military or any other interest has been received. All they've been saying is that they're good at radio astronomy, they like prime numbers, and they can return our first TV transmission back to us. It couldn't hurt for any other nation to know that. And remember: All those other countries are receiving this same three-minute Hitler clip, over and over again. They just haven't figured out how to read it yet. The Russians or the Germans or someone is likely to tumble to this polarization modulation sooner or later. My personal impression, Ms. President-I don't know if State agrees-is that it would be better