With security forming a large barrier in front of the CNES space agency headquarters PARIS Thursday, France announced it became the first country to open its files on UFOs when the national space agency unveiled its website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.
Other countries release data reactively to Freedom of Information Act requests, especially in Britain and in the United States, "but we decided to do it the other way around and made everything available to the public," Spokesman Patenet said. The aim was to make it easier for researchers to access the data which became possible with recent advances in technology. The online archives are to be updated as new cases are reported, and it containts catalogued cases in minute detail with scanned copies of police reports.
The CNES receives between 50 and 100 UFO reports a year, mostly written up by police, of which 10 percent are the object of on-site investigations. Many reports involve multiple sightings and one case involved thousands of people across France. Evidence such as burn marks and radar trackings showing flight patterns or accelerations that defy the laws of physics are taken very seriously. Almost 25% Of the 1,600 cases registered since 1954 are classified as "despite good or very good data and credible witnesses, we are confronted with something we can't explain".
For example, nearly 1,000 witness said they saw flashing lights in the sky on November 5, 1990, but had merely seen a rocket fragment falling back into earth's atmosphere. Yet on January 8, 1981 outside the town of Trans-en-Provence in southern France, 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 away. A dull-zinc grey saucer took off almost immediately, leaving burn marks. Investigators took photos, and then collected and analyzed samples.
The spokesman stated "We do not have the least proof that extra-terrestrials are behind the unexplained phenomena. ... Nor do we have the least proof that they aren't."
Visit the website: www.cnes-geipan.fr
See also: The French SEPRA: GENDARMERIE NATIONALE IS AN OFFICIAL SOURCE OF REPORTS FOR THE SEPRA: http://www.ufologie.net/htm/sepragen.htm
AFP (Agence France Press)
UFOs.about.com
msnbc.msn.com
www.ufoevidence.org
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