Edward Condon

Public interest remained intense, so the Air Force funded the University of Colorado to conduct a major scientific study.

The project was led by physicist Edward Condon.

Its researchers examined photographs, radar cases, witness accounts, physical evidence, possible atmospheric effects, possible astronomical explanations.

The final report arrived in 1968, and its conclusion changed the academic future of the UFO subject.

Condon argued that more than two decades of UFO study had contributed essentially nothing to scientific knowledge.

and that further large-scale investigation was unlikely to justify the effort.

The National Academy of Sciences broadly supported the project's approach.

And this was in the year 1940.

A guy named Edward U. Condon.

Yeah, guys, don't shoot the messenger.

I'm just telling you his name.

Now, in English, the word is condom, so it's not the same spelling.

But in Spanish, Edward U. Condon.

Well, he invented a computer game that plays a nym, and a nym is like this character, against a human competitor, which we see very often now.

You can play two-player, multiplayer, but many times when you're playing alone, you're playing against the computer.

I admit I'm not too familiar with them.

People like Edward Condon.

You also talk about influential thinkers on UFOs like Joseph Hynek.

and Edward Ruppel.

National news outlets ran stories on the couple's claims and a U.S. Air Force investigator visited the font.

17 years after the sighting, military commissioned research led by nuclear physicist Edward Condon originally concluded that it couldn't be easily debunked like many others.

The report, which analyzed the original negatives, stated that, quote, all factors investigated It appears to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic disk, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two credible witnesses, end quote.

So the analysis, pictures were real, negatives were real.

Now, even if you're the kind of person who believes that aliens are regularly visiting our planet, those events would make up such a tiny fraction of all sightings because there is so much stuff that can be regarded as a UFO.

Back in the mid-'60s, one of the most important studies on UFOs was carried out at the University of Colorado and led by physicist Edward Condon.

The Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, or the Condon Report, as everyone called it, was published in 1968.

It said that every new launch put on average five new objects into Earth's orbit.

Driven partly by cases like Socorro and the Portage County chase, and partly by a general public sense that Blue Book's quick, confident explanations weren't always convincing.

So in 1966, the Air Force funds an independent scientific review based at the University of Colorado and headed by physicist Edward Condon.

It becomes known as the Condon Committee.

And it's explicitly framed as a neutral outside scientific body.