SUBJECT: WHERE ARE THEY NOW - 1985 FILE: UFO2557
From the "Where Are They Now" file, a press release issued 1985:
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TWO LEADING SPACE RESEARCHERS GIVE THEIR VIEWPOINTS THAT THERE
IS LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS AND ALIENS MAY ALREADY WALK AMONG US.
10/14/85
Press Release Paid By Dateline Communications
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 14 -- We are not alone. There is life on other worlds.
Aliens may already walk among us, unknown, unrecognized, but with
calculated purpose, and official "first contact" with extraterrestrials --
at best, with mutual distrust -- could occur by the year 2000.
These were the principal viewpoints advanced by two leading space
researchers -- Dr. Thomas McDonough and Robert Emenegger -- involved
in the ongoing exploration for civilizations elsewhere in the Milky
Way or other galaxies, and by viewers of the syndicated cable
television show, "Dateline: USA," polled in a follow-up, national
survey.
Spurred by a discussion of "The Invaders Plan" -- the best-selling first
volume of L. Ron Hubbard's new, landmark 10-volume "Mission Earth"
dekalogy of an invasion of Earth recounted entirely by aliens "who already
walk, work and conspire among us" -- Emenegger cited U.S. government
files, now secret and inaccessible, that he has been shown by Air Force and
other government officials documenting landings by unidentified flying
objects (UFOs).
Emenegger -- who told the "Dateline: USA" audience that his initial contact
with UFO sightings, by government invitation, was as a "disinterested and
frankly skeptical outsider" -- referred specifically to a 1977 "close
encounter," an actual UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
The incident is described in detail in his book, now in its sixth printing,
"UFOs: Past, Present and Future."
Emenegger also briefly described what he called a recent contact --
witnessed by at least a half dozen U.S. government officials -- with the
pilot of a spacecraft he said identified himself as coming from the planet
Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun in the solar system.
McDonough, coordinator of the Planetary Society's Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program, confirmed recent widely
published reports in a number of major publications of growing evidence
of the development or suspected existence of planetary systems -- and
possible life forms -- around other stars in our own and distant galaxies.
These include Vega, Beta Pictoris, and, possibly, Barnard's Star, which,
only six light-years away, is the closest of the three to Earth.
A light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in a year --
roughly 6 trillion miles.
A member of the prestigious International Astronomical Union, Fellow of
the British Interplanentary Society, recipient of a special NASA citation for
his work on the Pioneer spacecraft flyby of the planet Saturn and holder of
a doctorate in astrophysics from Cornell University, McDonough told the
"Dateline: USA" audience that the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's Hubble space telescope, scheduled to be launched in 1986,
could extend mankind's view of the origin of the universe and the development
of mature planetary systems -- and possible evidence of life on other worlds
-- to or very close to its projected beginnings some 10 billion to 20 billion
years ago.
It was pointed out that with the stars in the Milky Way estimated at between
100 billion and 200 billion, and the number of galaxies and of stars per
galaxy in the observable universe equaling, and perhaps exceeding, that
figure by at least three or four times, the number of other possible planetary
systems and planets capable of sustaining intelligent life forms must fall well
within the range -- very conservatively -- of 50 million to 100 million.
The poll of more than 2,500 "Dateline: USA" viewers in 20 major
metropolitan markets across the United States -- from New York to Los
Angeles -- disclosed that nearly 60 percent of the respondents not only
believe there is intelligent life on other planets, but that "they've been
watching us for quite a while, and some of them -- for whatever reasons,
perhaps like the aliens in Hubbard's novel, 'The Invaders Plan' -- may even
be living next door."
Asked if they concurred with a U.S. State Department official's statement to a
congressional committee that "aliens from other solar systems are a potential
threat to us and we are a potential threat to them," 45 percent agreed "we
would have to fight to protect ourselves"; 35 percent thought "we might be able
to benefit mutually from one another"; and the remainder largely felt that "an
invasion by a civilization that could travel through space and find us -- and
our space probes have made no secret of how to get here -- would be just too
powerful to resist."
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