117 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
117 lines
6.5 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: THE HILL ABDUCTION CASE FILE: UFO2710
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PART 9
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IS THE FISH INTERPRETATION UNIQUE?
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By Robert Sheaffer
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The story of Marjorie Fish's attempts at identifying the star
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patterns sketched by Betty Hill was told in "The Zeta Reticuli
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Incident" by Terence Dickinson in the December 1974 issue. This pattern
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of solar type stars unquestionably bears a striking resemblance to the
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map that Betty Hill says she saw while she was being examined aboard a
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flying saucer. But how significant is this resemblance? Is there only
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one pattern of stars which will match the sketch convincingly?
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Betty Hill herself discovered an impressive resemblance in a star map
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published in the New York Times. In 1965 a map of the stars of the
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constellation Pegasus appeared in that newspaper, accompanying the
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announcement by a Russian radio astronomer (Comrade Sholomitsky) the
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radio source CTA-102, depicted in the map, may be sending out
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intelligent radio signals. Intrigued by this remarkable claim, Betty
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Hill studied the map, and added the corresponding star names to her
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sketch. As you can see, the Pegasus map -- while not exactly like the
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sketch -- is impressively similar. If CTA-102 -- appearing near the
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"globes" in her sketch -- was in reality an artificial radio source,
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that would give the Pegasus map much additional credibility.
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However, the case for the artificial origin of quasar CTA-102 soon
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fell flat. Other scientists were unable to observe these reported
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strange variations which had caused Sholomitsky to suggest that CTA-102
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might be pulsing intelligently.
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In 1966, when Marjorie Fish was just beginning her work, Charles W.
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Atterberg (employed by an aeronautical communications firm in Illinois)
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also set out to attempt to identify this star pattern.
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"I began my search by perusing a star atlas I had on hand," Atterberg
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explained. "I soon realized that this was a pointless and futile
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project." Any star pattern useful for interstellar navigation, he
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reasoned, would not be Earth-centered as are the familiar constellation
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figures. Thus Atterberg began to look in three dimensions for a pattern
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of stars that would approximate the Hill sketch.
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Working from a list of the nearest stars, Atterberg "began plotting
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these stars as they would be seen from various directions. I did this
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by drawing the celestial position of a star, I would draw a straight
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line penetrating the sphere at a known position, and measure out to the
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distance of the star...It at first took me hours to plot this out from
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any one particular direction."
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When plotting the stars as seen from a position indefinitely far away
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on the celestial equator at 17 hours right ascension, Atterberg found a
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pattern of stars conspicuously similar to the Hill sketch. After much
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work he refined this position to 17 hours 30 minutes right ascension, -
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10 degrees declination. The resulting map resembles the Hill sketch
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even more strongly than does the Fish map, and it contains a greater
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number of stars. Furthermore, all of the stars depicted in the
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Atterberg map lie within 18.2 light-years of the sun. The Fish map
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reaches out 53 light-years, where our knowledge of stellar distances is
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much less certain.
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Carl Sagan states in Intelligent Life in the Universe that, excluding
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multiple star systems, "the three nearest stars of potential biological
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interest are Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi and Tau Ceti." These three
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stars from the heart of the Atterberg map, defining the two spheres in
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the very center of the heavy lines that supposedly represent the major
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"trade routes" of the "UFOnauts". Epsilon Eridani and Tau Ceti were the
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two stars listened to by Project Ozma, the pioneering radio search for
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intelligent civilization in space.
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Other heavy lines connect the spheres with the sun, which we know has
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at least one habitable planet. Thinner lines, supposedly representing
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places visited less frequently, connect with Groombridge 1618,
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Groombridge 34, 61 Cygni and Sigma Draconis, which are designated as
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stars "that could have habitable planets" in Stephen H. Dole's Rand
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Corporation study, Habitable Planets for Man. Of the 11 stars (not
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counting the sun) that have allegedly been visited by the aliens, seven
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of them appear on Dole's list. Three of the four stars which are not
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included are stopping points on the trip to Sigma Draconis, which Dole
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considered to have even better prospects than Epsilon Eridani or
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Epsilon Indi for harboring a habitable planet.
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Another remarkable aspect of the Atterberg map is the fact that its
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orientation, unlike the Fish map, is not purely arbitrary. Gould's belt
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-- a concentration of the sky's brightest stars -- is exactly
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perpendicular to the plane of the Atterberg map. Furthermore, it is
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vertical in orientation; it does not cut obliquely across the map, but
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runs exactly up and down. A third curious coincidence: The southpole of
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the Atterberg map points toward the brightest part of Gould's belt, in
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the constellation Carina. The bright stars comprising Gould's belt
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might well serve as a useful reference frame for interstellar
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travelers, and it is quite plausible that they might base a
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navigational coordinate system upon it.
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No other map interpreting the Hill sketch offers any rationale for
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its choice of perspectives. The problem with trying to interpret Betty
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Hill's sketch is that it simply fits too many star patterns. Three such
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patterns have been documented to date. How many more exist
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undiscovered?
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Robert Sheaffer is a computer systems programmer currently working at
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NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |