Word: menzel
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Radar Ghosts. He did not have far to look. During World War II, Menzel had left astronomy to become a radar expert. One job (as chairman of the Wave Propagation Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was to study the effect of atmospheric irregularities on radar waves. Sometimes a layer of warm air makes the waves wander oddly, producing deceptive ghosts on the radarscope. Warships have shelled empty ocean, thinking an enemy was there. Since light waves and radar waves behave in much the same way, Menzel reasoned that the same irregularities might produce optical ghosts resembling flying saucers...
Moon Disks. Menzel is convinced that rarer types of mirages explain most flying saucers. Part of his conviction comes from something he saw while driving across New Mexico from Holloman Air Force Base to Alamogordo. It was a clear, cool night and a full moon had risen. Menzel noticed near the moon two bright objects which he took at first for the stars Castor and Pollux. His astronomer's knowledge told him that Castor and Pollux would not be visible at that season, so he lowered the car window to get a better look. The stars turned into fuzzy...
...Menzel wrote a report on this "sighting" and sent it to the Air Force. He never thought his disks were flying saucers; they were close to the moon and obviously associated with it. But they puzzled him for a long time. Now he believes they were caused by the motion of the car distorting a layer of warm air just above its roof and forming two displaced images of the rising moon. A more ignorant man might well have reported them as flying objects. At any rate, they led Menzel to his present theory about the saucers...
This common condition, Menzel believes, is responsible for many of the saucer sightings (see diagram). The warm air overhead turns downward the light from bright objects, such as street lights or auto headlamps. If the "interface" is too turbulent, it can form no visible image, but if it is just steady enough, it will create bright images that seem to sweep rapidly across the dark sky. This is the explanation, says Menzel, for the famous "Lubbock Lights,"* which have been taken for interplanetary space ships flying in formation. They may be the images of a string of lights...
...moon or a high, brightly lighted cloud. The image will appear below him; it may be distorted, magnified, or in rapid motion. If the inversion has waves in its surface (common near mountain ridge's), the pilot may see a line of bright objects in rapid motion. Menzel believes that this is what Pilot Kenneth Arnold saw in 1947 when he reported the first flying saucers over a high ridge near Mt. Rainier...