Why the French state has a team of UFO hunters.
Thousands of UFO sightings are reported every year but not many countries are willing to spend money investigating them - there is just one dedicated state-run team left in Europe. Is France onto something?
You don't need a time machine when you visit the French Space Centre headquarters in Toulouse - it's already a throwback to the 1970s. Green lawns sweep on to wide boulevards with stout long rectangular office blocks on either side.
It's almost Soviet-style in the heart of southern France. There are few signs of life even though 1,500 people, most of them civil servants, work in boxy offices along narrow unappealing corridors.
France has the biggest space agency in Europe - the result of the 1960s space race and President Charles de Gaulle's grand determination to keep France independent of the US by building its own satellites, rocket launchers and providing elite space research.
An offshoot of all that - France is the only country in Europe to maintain a full-time state-run UFO (unidentified flying objects) department. There used to be one in the UK and another in Denmark but they closed down years ago due to budget cuts.
France's UFO unit consists of four staff, and about a dozen volunteers who get their expenses paid to go on site and look into reports of strange sightings in the skies.
(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/78665000/jpg/_78665544_ufo-cigar.jpg)
The team is called Geipan. That's a French acronym for Study Group and Information on Non-Identified Aerospace Phenomenon.
Its boss is Xavier Passot. Surrounded by dozens of books on UFOs, and stacks of documents, he tells me his mission is to be as transparent as possible about strange sightings and to follow up on each one that his team receives.
They publish their results on their website which gets 30,000 hits a month. The team receives, on average, two UFO sightings a day. The department insists an 11-page form is filled out for each one. The idea is to provide details including photographs where possible but also weed out jokers and time-wasters.
If someone claims to have seen strange lights in the skies, the UFO team might go online to see whether the observation took place on a flight path - it can trace commercial air traffic going back more than a week.
The team also has access to military flight paths and is in touch with the air force and air traffic controllers.
Sometimes if its staff are really intrigued by photos they have seen or if there have been several witnesses to the same sighting, they will call the local police to ask whether they can be considered credible.
They might even check with neighbours to see whether they were out drinking that night or perhaps smoking something other than cigarettes.
Passot says many of the people who get in touch are smokers, puffing away outside bars or their own homes at night, gazing at the stars.
One of the boxy offices houses yellowing archives going back to the 1950s. The papers I look at contain eerie accounts of strange things encountered in the skies by fighter pilots on routine reconnaissance missions.
(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/78665000/jpg/_78665543_ufoaucamville.jpg)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29755919
UFO footage from around the world released in video documenting best of October
http://www.examiner.com/article/ufo-footage-from-around-the-world-released-video-documenting-best-of-october
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Another UFO on NASA live stream suggests ISS is under alien observation.
(http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/a1/7c/a17cc74f4a4929e60a1ff217134963ae.jpg?itok=mwr3NceX)
http://www.examiner.com/article/another-ufo-on-nasa-live-stream-suggests-iss-is-under-alien-observation
Quote from: astr0144 on November 04, 2014, 07:38:00 PM
Thousands of UFO sightings are reported every year but not many countries are willing to spend money investigating them - there is just one dedicated state-run team left in Europe.
Every conspiracy site in the WORLD is saying governments around the world are covering up the UFO investigations... yet yout OP seems to indicate that NO country (save France) is wasting any time or money on it anymore
Are those two facts not in conflict?
QuoteIs France onto something?
Perhaps they are merely late to the party :P
QuoteYou don't need a time machine when you visit the French Space Centre headquarters in Toulouse - it's already a throwback to the 1970s.
Ah! Late to the party :P
QuoteFrance has the biggest space agency in Europe - the result of the 1960s space race and President Charles de Gaulle's grand determination to keep France independent of the US by building its own satellites, rocket launchers and providing elite space research.
Charlie also tried to talk the Quebeqois into quitting Canada 8)
QuoteThere used to be one in the UK and another in Denmark but they closed down years ago due to budget cuts.
Well from what I undersatnd the one in the UK was run by the MoD and headed by non believer Nick Pope. They shut it down because they found nothing of value and it was a waste of time.
UK closed UFO desk after 50yrs and no 'potential threat'The British government finally shut down a special unit investigating UFO sightings after more than 50 years as it was a drain on resources and not a single report ever revealed " a potential threat to the United Kingdom," newly released government files showed Friday.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) closed a hotline and an email address to which sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) could be reported in 2009, saying at the time that "no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom".
http://phys.org/news/2013-06-uk-ufo-desk-50yrs-potential.html
QuoteFrance's UFO unit consists of four staff, and about a dozen volunteers who get their expenses paid to go on site and look into reports of strange sightings in the skies.
Only FOUR people? To cover the thousands of Alien craft zipping around daily? Hmmmmm 8)
(http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/78665000/jpg/_78665544_ufo-cigar.jpg)
This image is tagged 78665544_ufo-cigar.jpg
To me it looks like a disc ufo with the standard dome seen from the SIDE
The text says the body color was orange to yellow (consistent with slow moving discs) with red(burgundy) outer edges. The dome was green
Quote from: zorgon on November 04, 2014, 09:16:51 PM
Only FOUR people? To cover the thousands of Alien craft zipping around daily? Hmmmmm 8)
GEIPAN's page say they have only two people working full-time, the responsible and his assistant. :)