Flying Saucers

Résumé du livre

"In this book a top-flight scientist who has seen many a so-called flying saucer himself explodes every one of the current myths about their nature and origin. People who like to be scared or mystified may not want to agree with what Dr. Menzel has to say—but everyone who wants to know the real answer will find it in these pages. And the answer banishes forever the "little men," the foreign power's guided missiles, the space ships, and all the other highly colored scare stories. But truth is stranger than fiction, and Dr. Menzel does far more than debunk. Flying saucers are real, he says, as real as rainbows—and just as hard to catch. Moreover, there is nothing new about them: from the wheels of the prophet Ezekiel through the famous air-ship of 1897, similar sights (and similar scares) have been known throughout history. These optical ghosts in all their variety of size and shape and color and motion are about for anyone to see: what is new, in our supposedly more rational society, is the air age—more people look at the sky, from below and from above, than ever before. With humor, imagination, and common sense, Dr. Menzel describes all types of apparitions. He reviews the flying-saucer stories that started and perpetuated all the mystery, including the tragic death of Captain Mantell. He uncovers the international hoaxes and practical jokes attempted by persons all over the world. he explains, simply and clearly, how interactions between light and atmospheric conditions cause the remarkable variety of phenomena—from the aurora borealis and sundogs to radar mirages—that occur in the sky. He concludes with a serious study of the possibilities of interplanetary travel and an evaluation of flying saucers in some future era."--dust jacket.