We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the amount of UFO activity in recent months, increasing both in the dramatic nature of the events over earlier this spring and the number of reports pouring in from all over the globe with particularly numerous accounts hailing from Asia and the Western United States. But when an unidentified object suddenly plummeted from the skies in a field outside a village in India, a small crowd gathered around the capsule in a scene reminiscent of the opening to “The War of the Worlds”
The scare brought about by the quickly plummeting object was similarly paralleled by the HG Wells classic, though the result was more indicative of Orson Welles’ radio play interpretation. As the crowd gathered around the object which had crashed into the Earth many speculated that the device was far too strange to possibly be a traditional aircraft. Its pod-like structure appeared more like something falling from an object sent up from NASA, but the lack of any identifying marks indicating it was from NASA assured the villagers the object was not related to the space program. Instead, it had a strange dull metallic surface as though it were plucked from a science fiction saga dreamed up by any contemporary of the genre.
The town of Vuyyer, located nearby was quickly contacted and a lecturer from the nearby university, U Ramprasad was called to the scene. As the villagers awaited his arrival they approached it, but did not make contact with it out of fear of exposure to some unknown alien element or -perhaps more terrifying- its occupants. As Ramprasad descended on the scene, he quickly identified the object as a weather balloon atmospheric data collection device designed to collect atmospheric data. After almost four hours of questioning whether they were indeed gazing at an extraterrestrial object, this unidentified falling object was finally identified.
Though it was far from a crashed flying saucer, the object was strange enough to cause those assembled to question for one brief moment their position in the greater universe. But even as it was, this incident was handled in a way that ultimately resulted in all parties involved having their questions answered. Imagine the sensation that would have occurred had scientists dismissed the crowd without explaining the purpose of the object and shuttled it away beneath a tarp. No doubt such an act would have spawned millions of stories the next day. Why is this relevant? It’s almost always as interesting to study the reactions many officials have when studying and collecting an object. Though they may debunk it later, to remove an object from a public scene is to create a scene that -whether warranted or not- could lead many genuinely interested people into believing something more was going on behind the scenes. It was only because the professor was personally able to identify the object that this UFO was identified and the masses dispersed with a level of scientific satisfaction that made all those involved happy.
What if it had been a top secret project? Even a terrestrial mystery object could have been the catalyst of a major investigation had this level of transparency not been immediately available.