Roswell UFO Incident

      How thrilling is the very imagination that super-intelligent extraterrestrial beings living on other planets of distant galaxies get into their flying saucers and visit our planet Earth! For many years sci-fi writers have been writing their stories on and about aliens visiting the Earth in their flying saucer-like spaceships. Hollywood producers have made a number of blockbuster films (such as Independence Day) based on alien invasion on the Earth.

Roswell UFO Incedent

                                                           

      However, in actual fact, so-called aliens and their flying saucers have never really been seen in any part of the world. Although some people in the USA claim to have seen flying saucers their claims have been challenged by scientists. What scientists need is strong evidence-like the debris of a flying saucer to come to the conclusion of whether or not aliens exist. But till date no such evidence has been found.     

     Oddly enough, there is a place where one can find everything and almost anything related to aliens and their flying saucers. The place is known as the 'International UFO Museum and Research Center', and it is situated in the city of Roswell, New Mexico, USA. There are thousands of items on display in the Roswell museum which include the models of flying saucers, statues of aliens, pieces of space rocks, bo photographs of the people who claim that they have actually seen the flying saucer (or Unidentified Flying Object/UFO to be precise) with their naked eyes some 50 odd years ago and the snapshots of the people who say that they saw the UFO come crashing onto the Earth and explode. Besides these strange items, the museum includes video films, books, magazines and newspaper reports about the sighting of UFO.

     Although all this seems most incredulous to common people, still every year more than 1,50,000 tourists visit the Roswell UFO museum. They undertake a long and arduous journey across the barren desert plains of New Mexico. The visitors' idea are twofold: To see the amazing exhibits of the museum, which are not seen in any museum of the word, and to know about the mysterious incident of UFO landing near the city of Roswell in July 1947. Whether or not the UFO carrying aliens on board really landed in Roswell is still a mystery--and it is not solved till date. However,it fascinates the visitors to a great extent. So,what exactly happened in July 1947? Here goes the story--

     It was May, 1947. There were a great number of rumours about Unidentified Flying Objects/UFOs being seen all over the nation in the USA. During the four weeks of May 1947, the American Government had received a total of 800 such reports. Debates and opinions started flying about among the people. There was some amount of panic too, since many Americans believed the rumours that highly intelligent extraterrestrial beings or aliens were visiting Earth simply to plan an attack to take over the planet. The then President of the USA, Harry Truman, gave the orders to the Air Force chief to start patrolling the skies and when this news reached the American citizens there was even more of a panic. Scientists kept on assuring the Americans that considering the colossal distance between the Sun and other stars even if some aliens residing on a distant planet should travel for the whole of their lives, they would not be able to reach Earth. Even if their flying saucer or sophisticated spaceship travels at immense speed it would take hundreds of thousands of years to reach our planet. The scientists were right, but even so, since almost every day reports that some strange object (UFO) was sighted in the sky by someone or the other kept on trickling in, for how long could the common people believe the scientists?

     It is said that on July 1, 1947, strange things started happening one after the other at the small town of Roswell in New Mexico. There was an Army Air Field radar centre at 150 kilometres southwest of Roswell. The radar operator Frank J. Kaufmann saw some big dots on the radar dial and was most surprised.The dots on the dial did not resemble those of an aircraft. They were much bigger in size. Kaufmann immediately summoned his senors who suggested to Kaufmann that he should continue to observe the radar dial and send a message as soon as he

spotted something strange again. At midnight on July 3,1947, Kaufmann really got to see a strange sight on the radar screen. The whole screen was illuminated by a blindingly bright light. In other words, the screen which had a black background on which bright green dots were seen easily had actually almost turned into a luminous silvery white light. How and why did this happen was out of Kaufmann's wildest imagination.

     A few hours later an even more surprising incident took place at Roswell Army Air Field where all the telephones started ringing simultaneously. Residents of Roswell were telephoning and all of them were asking the same question to the airport officials: 'Has one of your aircraft crashed?'

     The reason for this question was obvious. There was an ear-splitting explosion on the outskirts of Roswell and it was heard by the resident of the town. Soon after, bursts of extremely bright light had been seen on the horizon. The sky looked stark with an over bright white light for quite a long distance. The residents thought that one of the military aircraft had crashed during its flight. Actually, it was not so. There had been no plane crash but even so Army Air Force personnel rushed to the place where the accident occurred. They found a lot of debris scattered all over the place. If none of the fighter jets had crashed, what were these pieces of? Did they belong to a flying saucer or UFO?

     There is never any need to invite anyone to a free show, and so a number of villagers including residents of Roswell arrived there in hordes and picked up many of the pieces lying around. Some of the pieces looked like the spare parts of an aircraft (for example, like a propeller or tail). Usually aluminum or titanium is used in aircraft but here each piece was much heavier than these two metals.

     The American government always maintained a secretive attitude about the happenings at Roswell after this mysterious incident. As an explanation to this incident the government said that a high-altitude weather balloon sent into space by the meteorological department had crashed in Roswell. There cannot be a huge explosion should a meteorological balloon crash, besides how could there be great flares of fire which lit up the horizon of Roswell for quite some time? And what about the metal parts recovered from the crash site? There were many villagers who insisted that they had seen a huge saucer-like object in the sky for quite a number of days after the incident. A few of them even claimed that they had seen dead bodies of the aliens.

     For 50 long years the American Government kept the Roswell incident under wraps. They even burnt away all the confidential reports related to this strange occurrence. However, if a weird and mysterious happening is not explained, people will be more interested in knowing about it instead of forgetting it. Everyone has their own pet guess, rumours are spread and maybe a museum that will always keep the memories fresh gets erected!

     The International UFO Museum and Research Centre of Roswell has been set up in exactly the same way. Models of brainy extraterrestrial creatures, pictures of flying saucers (UFO), as well as of the place where the flying saucer is claimed to have crashed, along with models that explain the working of a UFO. The exhibits leave the visitors spellbound. This unique museum takes them on a journey of the alien world which sci-fi writers had imagined long ago. After visiting the museum it becomes difficult for the visitors to decide whether the so-called aliens had really visited Roswell in their so-called UFOs or not? The mystery remains mystery--and it better be! Why would anyone visit the Roswell UFO museum once the mystery is revealed?