J. Allen Hynek - UFO Origin Hypotheses

UFO Origin Hypotheses

In 1973, at the MUFON annual symposium, held in Akron, Ohio, Hynek began to express his doubts regarding the extraterrestrial (formerly "interplanetary" or "intergalactic") hypothesis. His main point led him to the title of his speech: "The Embarrassment of the Riches." He was aware that the quantity of UFO sightings was much higher than the Project Blue Book statistics. Just this puzzled him. "A few good sightings a year, over the world, would bolster the extraterrestrial hypothesis—but many thousands every year? From remote regions of space? And to what purpose? To scare us by stopping cars, and disturbing animals, and puzzling us with their seemingly pointless antics?"

In 1975, in a paper presented to the Joint Symposium of the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics in Los Angeles, he wrote, "If you object, I ask you to explain – quantitatively, not qualitatively – the reported phenomena of materialization and dematerialization, of shape changes, of the noiseless hovering in the Earth's gravitational field, accelerations that – for an appreciable mass – require energy sources far beyond present capabilities – even theoretical capabilities, the well-known and often reported E-M (sc. electro-magnetic interference) effect, the psychic effects on percipients, including purported telepathic communications."

In 1977, at the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, Hynek presented his thoughts in his speech "What I really believe about UFOs." "I do believe," he said, "that the UFO phenomenon as a whole is real, but I do not mean necessarily that it's just one thing. We must ask whether the diversity of observed UFOs . . . all spring from the same basic source, as do weather phenomena, which all originate in the atmosphere", or whether they differ "as a rain shower differs from a meteor, which in turn differs from a cosmic-ray shower." We must not ask, Hynek said, what hypothesis can explain the most facts, but we must ask, which hypothesis can explain the most puzzling facts.

"There is sufficient evidence to defend both the ETI and the EDI hypothesis," Hynek continued. As evidence for the ETI (extraterrestrial intelligence) he mentioned, as examples, the radar cases as good evidence of something solid, and the physical-trace cases. Then he turned to defending the EDI (extradimensional intelligence) hypothesis. Besides the aspect of materialization and dematerialization he cited the "poltergeist" phenomenon experienced by some people after a close encounter; the photographs of UFOs, some times on only one frame, not seen by the witnesses; the changing form right before the witnesses' eyes; the puzzling question of telepathic communication; or that in close encounters of the third kind the creatures seem to be at home in earth's gravity and atmosphere; the sudden stillness in the presence of the craft; levitation of cars or persons; the development by some of psychic abilities after an encounter. "Do we have two aspects of one phenomenon or two different sets of phenomena?" Hynek asked.

Finally he introduced a third hypothesis. "I hold it entirely possible," he said, "that a technology exists, which encompasses both the physical and the psychic, the material and the mental. There are stars that are millions of years older than the sun. There may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than man's. We have gone from Kitty Hawk to the moon in some seventy years, but it's possible that a million-year-old civilization may know something that we don't ... I hypothesize an 'M&M' technology encompassing the mental and material realms. The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology."

In Hynek and Vallee's 1975 book The Edge of Reality, Hynek publishes a stereoscopic photograph of a UFO he took during a flight. According to the book the object stayed in sight long enough for Hynek to unpack his camera from his luggage and take two exposures. UFO researcher Robert Sheaffer writes in his book Psychic Vibrations that Hynek seemed to forget that he had photographed and published these two photographs as he told a reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail that he had never seen a UFO. The article quotes Hynek saying that in all the years he has been looking upward "He has never seen 'what I would so dearly love to see. Oh, the subject has been so ridiculed that I would never report a UFO even if I did see one - not without a witness'".