Sir,
I must congratulate you for publishing the article about the UFO sighting by British tourists over Cyprus last week. This subject is often not discussed in the media. It seems there is a large number of such sightings occurring all over the world.
If one chooses to ignore such reports, there still remains an element of secrecy involving governments and secret agencies surrounding it, as shown by testimonials of credible professionals such as ex-military people, doctors, lawyers, astronauts and even presidents. In other words, it seems the US government does not want to comment on this subject. As a matter of fact, a recent poll showed that 72 per cent of the American public believe their government is lying about UFOs.
I believe the scientific community should start looking into this phenomenon with an open mind. Some may argue that extraterrestrial life may exist, but that they cannot get here. I believe we should not make such assumptions. We should neither believe that they can get here, nor that they are not able to get here until we find out. After all, such assumptions are based on our current technological capabilities because we would be assuming that “they” are on the same level of technological advancement as us. And that is in my opinion wrong because if we look at how much we have advanced technologically in these last 50 years, then we can only imagine how much other civilisations, thousands, if not millions of years older than us would have advanced.
It would certainly be an exciting project to try and solve the UFO mystery. A mystery which has been with us for thousands of years.
David Kinsella, Vittoriosa, Malta
Sir,
Referring to Jean Christou’s excellent article on the UFO phenomenon (‘Are they here?’ April 29), I should like to address the reported comment of Mr Ioannis Fakas that “research has shown that 93 per cent of all UFO sightings are explainable”.
Aside from my own eight sightings (three in Cyprus), I should point out that the largest study by the US Air Force concluded that 21.5 per cent of 3,201 cases were “unknowns”; that the better the quality of the sighting the more likely to be an “unknown”; and that the probability that the “unknowns” were just missed “known” was less than one per cent.
With respect, I suggest that Mr Fakas’ remark, as reported, appears to be a classical example of a pronouncement by an “expert” on a subject of which he knows absolutely nothing.
J.M. Knowles, Coral Bay, Paphos
