The heroic investigative efforts of Dr David Clarke and colleagues have revealed the Condign Report, a weighty internal document prepared for the British Ministry of Defence in 2000 (FT211:4–6). It concludes that, though UFOs are not alien spaceships, some sightings do relate to “Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena” (UAPs), a term first coined by UFO researcher Jenny Randles. It also cites the term “earth lights”, which I coined to describe the same range of phenomena.

The report gives cause for modest celebration, in that non-mainstream research has been officially acknowledged, and potentially encourages us to start removing the intellectual logjam that the “Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis” (ETH) has constituted for over half a century.