UFOs in Reality by T.R. Dutton Read Free Book Online Page A

giving a total number of tracks over the inhabited areas of the Earth of 1010. All this represented a precisely programmed surveillance activity being carried on by fully automated probes, employing technology well beyond our current understanding.
     

    Fig. 15
    Now , it is important to point out that I do not regard these fixed paths over the Earth to be followed for continuous orbiting, even though three super-orbital sequences have been identified. The evidence suggests that they are analogous to the fixed air-lanes followed by civil aircraft, except that they are followed in space. These ‘space-lanes’ seem to be used for rapid over-flights of targeted locations on the Earth’s surface directly below. An exploration craft/probe may be launched into the atmosphere over the target area from one ‘lane’ and retrieved some time later by a retrieval craft following another ‘lane’ that passes over the target. This scenario will be seen to be substantiated by the encounters considered in Part 2.
    Renewed search for evidence of favoured approach paths from space
    At this point in the investigation, an outstanding unknown was whether or not there had been favoured approach paths from outer space. The Fig.13 graph of Mean Solar Time vs. Days of the Year had, in a tantalising way, produced a constant sidereal time line apparently linking a series of points spanning seven of the ten chosen dates. The sidereal orientation represented by this line was 19:50 hours Right Ascension (RA) at the northern-most point on each orbital path . It was decided to check this out by selecting 75 more recent SAC reports and, by applying to these the accumulated knowledge to that date. For each of these cases, the ground tracks passing through that location were first identified and, then, the time of the event was used to define the orientations of the corresponding orbits in space. Since more than one track and associated orbit could be linked to a given location, the number of possible RA orientations for the 75 events was 103. Fig. 16 shows how these RAs were distributed.

    Fig 16
     
    There were two most favoured areas of the sky –— a major one in the 23:00-24:00 hours RA region and another isolated lesser peak between 11:00 and 12:00 hours RA. There was not a significant peak at 19:50 hours RA. Consequently, the puzzle remained unresolved and had to await further inputs, which came, later, from an unexpected source.
     

PHASE 3:
Contributions from Crop-Circle Studies  
    Phase 3 may seem to be strangely out of place in this book, but, as will be demonstrated, it is very much part of my overall search for understanding of the SAC phenomenon. My involvement in the crop circles mystery provided new insights and resulted in an unexpected refinement of the Astronautical Theory. These contributions to my research are given here in their correct chronological sequence .
    CHAPTER 8
A MEETING OF MINDS  
    As has doubtless become apparent, my path through the UFO pilgrimage has been signposted in some very unusual and totally unexpected ways. None was more fortunate than the encounter I had on one night in May 1987.
    That was the night of my lecture in a series organised by the British UFO Research Association , BUFORA . It was delivered at their usual venue in the London Business School. The title of that major lecture was “We are DEFINITELY not alone” . It took more than of one-and-a-half hours to deliver, because it contained most of the material described in the previous chapters of this book – at least, as much of it as then existed.
    After the lecture, I was approached by a group of men, who had obviously been listening very intently and with some enjoyment during the delivery. The leading person expressed his appreciation of my material and then asked if I had heard about the crop markings in Wiltshire and Hampshire. I admitted that, other than having seen a photograph of swirls in a crop on the Isle of Wight some years ago,