PARIS (AFP) - France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.
The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.
"It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena."
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption.
"Cases such as the lady who reported seeing an object that looked like a flying roll of toilet paper" are clearly not worth investigating, said Patenet.
But many others involving multiple sightings -- in at least one case involving thousands of people across France -- and evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously.
A phalanx of beefy security guards formed a barrier in front of the space agency (CNES) headquarters where the announcement was made, "to screen out uninvited UFOlogists," an official explained.
Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954, nearly 25 percent are classified as "type D", meaning that "despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can't explain," Patenet said.
On January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, for example, a man working in a field reported hearing a strange whistling sound and seeing a saucer-like object about 2.5 meters (eight feet) in diameter land in his field about 50 meters (yards) away.
A dull-zinc grey, the saucer took off, he told police, almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples, and to this day no satisfactory explanation has been made.
The nearly 1,000 witness who said they saw flashing lights in the sky on November 5, 1990, by contrast, had simply seen a rocket fragment falling back into earth's atmosphere.
Patenet's answer to questions about evidence of life beyond Earth was sure to inflame the suspicions of those convinced the government is holding back: "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena."
But then he added: "Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."
The CNES fields between 50 and 100 UFO reports ever year, usually written up by police. Of these, 10 percent are the object of on-site investigations, Patenet said.
Other countries collect data more or less systematically about unidentified flying objects, notably in Britain and in the United States, where information can be requested on a case-by-case basis under the Freedom of Information Act.
"But we decided to do it the other way around and made everything available to the public," Patenet said.
The aim was to make it easier for scientists and other UFO buffs to access the data for research.
The website itself -- which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic -- is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports.
To visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr.

 

Interesting, always had a thing for paranormal activity and UFO;s what do you think.real or just people trying to get attention.

 

I dont know the site crashed to many hits.. there has to be something out there.. I have seen some things in my day that I cant explain.. who really knows.. but our goverment is hiding something

 

I think they shall have to PAY for exposing our activities in such a blatent mann... Ooops! Forget I said anything...

//waves hand slowly across your vision//
::these are NOT the Droids you are looking for::

 

there has to be life somewhere else in the universe...there could easily be hundreds of thousands of planets that could support life just like Earth. the fact that most people dismiss the idea is a good indication of how self-centered we are asa planet. hundreds of years ago we were the center of the universe and the earth was flat...maybe in a hundred more years we'll finally be able to accept that Earth is a speck of nothing in the universe (in other words, we ain't ****)

 

^^^Speak for yourself! I, for one, AM schitt... No, wait... That dint come out the way I intended it to[:@]

 

You know what I have learned about almost everyone here???


YOU ARE ALL WEIRD!!!! LOL

But it's ok

Josh

 

calling us wierd makes you wierd. and thats why AF is considered but many people here as more of a firendlier audi forum

 

Josh, do you not believe in life on other planets?

 

I am not sure. It is hard for me to believe that with so many other planets out there there isn't any other life. It just seems like a waste of space but I don't know. I don't believe that there is life on any other planets in our solar system, but in other solar systems and other galaxies who knows! It wouldn't suprise me if thats what you are asking.

Josh

P.S. did you ask me that because you know that I am a Christian or are you just asking?