Thinking & Reasoning Skills

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OCR pages. Any blank pages are indicated. pages. 12 THINKING AND REASONING SKILLS AND REASONING THINKING

Information from a Roswell tour company Comments made on a travel website about a Roswell tour Extracts from the Roswell Daily Record on 8th July, 1947 RecordExtracts from the Roswell Daily on 8th July, 1947 in the Roswell Daily Record Headline text published on 9th July, Adapted Daily Mail article from 2007 Accounts from four witnesses newspaper and a The Independent An adapted 2014 report from selection of reader comments Reader comments article Times York Extracts from a 1997 New

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Unit 2 Thinking and Reasoning Skills Case Study and Reasoning Skills Case Thinking Unit 2

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Background information

Aliens and UFOs have long been a common theme in science-fiction, but the idea that there might actually be intelligent life on other planets is an increasingly plausible concept as we discover more about the complexities of the universe. Mathematical probability alone suggests that there should be a significant number of planets capable of producing and sustaining intelligent life, but whether or not such lifeforms have ever attempted to visit or make contact with Earth is a different question entirely.

UFO sightings are at the heart of a number of conspiracy theories. Many of these sightings feature accounts of aircraft that are beyond known technology, leading people to think either that it is alien technology, or that the military have access to secret, advanced technology.

Most UFO sightings have been debunked, whether due to valid alternative explanations or to a lack of credibility, but there are some that remain ‘unresolved’. Organisations exist that investigate the many claims of UFO sightings, such as MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) and BUFORA (British UFO Research Association), and individuals who study such phenomena are known as ufologists.

One case, ‘Roswell’, has been of interest to ufologists and conspiracy theorists for over half a century. In 1947, an unusual aircraft crashed at a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, and was alleged to have been an extra-terrestrial spaceship. An article was published in a Roswell newspaper shortly afterwards with the headline RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region. This was followed by a contradictory press release the next day claiming that it had been a weather balloon, not a flying saucer.

A number of conspiracy theories have been proposed, claiming variations on the same theme. These suggest that at least one alien spacecraft had crash-landed and that the military covered this up and hid the aliens away in a secret army hangar known as Area 51. This theory, for some, remains plausible in spite of the US government recently declassifying its files on a top secret operation (Project Mogul) from 1947 that involved the crash landing of a high altitude balloon designed for highly classified espionage.

DOCUMENT 1

Extracts from the Roswell Daily Record on 8th July, 1947

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today, that it has come into possession of a flying saucer.

According to information released by the department, the disc was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity, after an unidentified rancher had notified Sheriff George Wilcox that he had found it on his premises.

Major Marcel and a detail from his department went to the ranch and recovered the disc, it was stated. After the intelligence officer here had inspected the instrument it was flown to headquarters. The intelligence office stated that no details of the saucer’s construction or its appearance had been revealed.

Mr and Mrs Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who saw what they thought was a flying disc. They were sitting on their porch last Wednesday night at about ten o’clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed. Wilmot called Mrs Wilmot’s attention to it and both ran down into the yard to watch. It was in sight less than a minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated. Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour. In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to mouth, or like two old type washbowls placed together in the same fashion. The entire body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would be if a light were underneath. From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about 5 feet in size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must have been 15 to 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.

Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs Wilmot said she heard a swishing sound for a very short time. The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops in the general vicinity of Six Mile Hill.

Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself hoping that someone else would say they had seen a flying saucer, but finally today decided that he would come forward. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of a flying saucer came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen.

DOCUMENT 2

Headline text published on 9th July, 1947 in the Roswell Daily Record

General Ramey Says Disc is Weather Balloon

Fort Worth, Texas, July 9 – An examination by the army revealed last night that a mysterious object found on a lonely New Mexico ranch was a harmless high-altitude weather balloon – not a grounded flying disc. Excitement was high until Brigadier General Roger M. Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force with headquarters here, cleared up the mystery.

The bundle of tinfoil, broken wood beams and rubber remnants of a balloon were sent here yesterday by army air transport in the wake of reports that it was a flying disc. But the General said the objects were the crushed remains of a ray wind target used to determine the direction and velocity of winds at high altitudes.

Warrant Officer Irving Newton, forecaster at the army air force’s weather station here said, ‘we use them because they go much higher than the eye can see.’

The weather balloon was found several days ago near the centre of New Mexico by Rancher W. W. Brazel. He said he didn’t think much about it until he went into Corona, New Mexico, last Saturday and heard the flying disc reports. He returned to his ranch, 85 miles northwest of Roswell, and recovered the wreckage of the balloon, which he had placed under some shrubs. Then Brazel hurried back to Roswell, where he reported his find to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff called the Roswell air field and Major Jesse A. Marcel, 509th Bomb Group intelligence officer, was assigned to the case. Colonel William H. Blanchard, commanding officer of the bomb group, reported the find to General Ramey and the object was flown immediately to the army air field here.

Ramey went on the radio here last night to announce the New Mexico discovery was not a flying disc.

Newton said that when rigged up, the instrument “looks like a six-pointed star, is silvery in appearance and rises in the air like a kite”. Newton said that some 80 weather stations in the U.S. were using that type of balloon and that it could have come from any of them. He said he had sent up identical balloons during the invasion of Okinawa to determine ballistics information for heavy guns.

DOCUMENT 3

Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.

DOCUMENT 4

Accounts from four witnesses

A. Grady L Barnett, a civil engineer with the US Soil Conservation Service who was on a military assignment at the time, interviewed in 1950:

“I noticed that they were standing around looking at some dead bodies that had fallen to the ground. I think there were others in the machine, which was a kind of metallic...disc. It was not all that big. It seemed to be made of metal that looked like dirty stainless steel. The machine had been split open by an explosion or impact.

I tried to get close to see what the bodies were like. They were all dead as far as I could see and there were bodies inside and outside the vehicle. The ones outside had been tossed out by the impact. They were like humans but they were not humans. The heads were round, the eyes were small, and they had no hair. The eyes were oddly spaced. They were quite small by our standards and their heads were larger in proportion to their bodies than ours. Their clothing seemed to be one-piece and grey in colour. You couldn’t see any zippers, belts or buttons. They seemed to be all males and there were a number of them. I was close enough to touch them but I didn’t – I was escorted away before I could.

While we were looking at them a military officer drove up in a truck with a driver and took control. He told everybody that the Army was taking over and to get out of the way. Other military personnel came up and cordoned off the area. We were told to leave the area and not to talk to anyone at all about what we had seen...that it was our patriotic duty to remain silent.”

B. Major Jesse A. Marcel, 509th Bomb Group intelligence officer:

“There was all kinds of stuff – small beams about three eighths or a half inch square with some sort of hieroglyphics on them that nobody could decipher. These looked something like balsa wood, and were of about the same weight, but they were not wood at all. They were very hard, although flexible, and would not burn. There was a great deal of unusual parchment- like substance which was brown in colour and extremely strong, and a great number of small pieces of a metal like tinfoil, except that it wasn’t tinfoil.”

“One piece of metal foil, two feet long and a foot wide, was so durable that it could not be dented with a sledgehammer, despite its being incredibly light. I am absolutely convinced that the material had nothing to do with a weather balloon or a radar target. I am quite certain that no bodies were among the debris, and that whatever the object was it must have exploded above ground level.”

Marcel’s testimony cannot be dismissed, owing to his background in aviation: he had served as a bombardier, waist-gunner and pilot, had logged 468 hours of combat flying in B-24 aircraft, and was awarded five air medals for shooting down enemy aircraft in World War II. Towards the end of the war he was attached to 509th Bomb Wing, an elite military group for which all those involved required high-security clearances. Following the Roswell incident, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and assigned to a Special Weapons Program that specialised in analysing air samples to discover if the Russians had detonated their first nuclear bomb.

D. Glenn Dennis, a local mortician, interviewed in 1989:

In the interview Glenn Dennis discussed his involvement in the events in Roswell in 1947. He claimed he had been asked about the availability of small hermetically sealed caskets and for his recommendations on the preservation of bodies that had been exposed to the elements for several days. Glenn Dennis also reported a conversation he had had with a nurse from the Base Hospital. The nurse had been in attendance during autopsies performed on “... several small non-human bodies ...”. Glenn Dennis kept drawings of aliens that the nurse had sketched during their meeting. This meeting was to be their last and Glenn Dennis could learn no more about the alien bodies, as the nurse was abruptly transferred to England within the next few days.

DOCUMENT 5

Document 5a and Document 5b

An adapted 2014 report from The Independent newspaper and a selection of reader comments

At Australia’s Parkes Observatory scientists had been mystified by the origin of ‘perytons’ – intense but short bursts of energy that seemed to be a message coming from outer space. But the message wasn’t from aliens at all – scientists have found that the origin of the perytons was in fact a microwave oven in their kitchen. When the door was opened prematurely whilst their telescope was set at a certain angle, the two interacted to give the appearance of the huge perytons. The discovery that the messages were actually coming from microwave ovens means that scientists have been able to rule out that the perytons are alien messages.

Document 5b

Reader comments

Georgia, Blackpool Is this what our brightest scientific minds are wasting their time on these days? It’s a good job they like micro-meals, or we’d still be searching the skies for aliens! We can’t afford to waste time and effort, so it’s about time science turned its attention to more important projects, like global warming.

Rahul, Brighton Haha this is brilliant. It’s a shame people weren’t using microwave ovens back in 1947, or else the government could have added it to their list of wacky explanations for the alien crash landings in Roswell.

Esme, London When are people going to learn that there is a scientific explanation for everything, even if we don’t yet know what it is! Aliens, angels, gods… one day we will see how silly we were for thinking they exist.

DOCUMENT 6

Extracts from a 1997 New York Times article Item removed due to third party copyright restrictions.

DOCUMENT 7

Document 7a

Information from a Roswell tour company

In July 1947 something crashed in the desert between Corona and Roswell, New Mexico – and it was not part of a weather balloon!

Since that time, the numbers of civilian and military witnesses who have come forward to talk about their role in the so-called ‘Roswell Incident’ have reached the hundreds. Known by some as the grandfather of modern UFO cases, the Roswell event involved not only an extra-terrestrial UFO crash, but a top secret military retrieval operation, as well as a government cover-up campaign that has lasted for over 60 years.

So what actually did crash near Roswell back in the summer of 1947?

Find out on our exciting Roswell UFO tour, and enjoy an educational, informative, and fun journey to the places where it all happened. Follow the fascinating story of the UFO incident as you visit the actual sites where the events occurred in Roswell. Explore Roswell Army Air Field, the former military base that was home to the 509th Bomb Group, the elite unit that was so closely involved with the UFO incident.

Discover the infamous hangar (Building 84) where the recovered spacecraft and alien bodies were kept before they were sent to other locations in the United States to be studied. At each of the above locations, time is allotted to take photographs and discuss the events that took place there. No matter what your interest level, time or budget we guarantee that you will see, hear, and learn more about the 1947 UFO crash on our fun and educational Roswell UFO tour!

Document 7b

Comments made on a travel website about a Roswell tour

Robert Ewing, Texas You will not be disappointed on this tour. Going to Roswell and not doing a tour of the crash site would be like going to Egypt on holiday and not visiting the pyramids. Fascinating information and I particularly liked the information he provided on the three flights out of Roswell with ‘Weather Balloon’ debris sent to three bases. Really? Three flights to quickly move simple weather balloon debris? Or what about the government stories of the test dummies they say were at the scene? They were not manufactured until years after the incident. Perhaps there was a black hole or time warp that placed those test dummies from the future into a weather balloon in the past! And why would Brazel have hidden the ‘balloon’ debris if he really didn’t think it was anything unusual before he heard the accounts? He must have known that it was extra-terrestrial.

Timmy-Jo Hucker, Los Angeles This is a tour for people who appreciate research, history and TRUTH. Our tour guide didn’t try to convince us of anything, he just clearly stated facts. It’s about time people started taking notice of the evidence for alien visitations, because otherwise people won’t know what to look out for when they visit again and before we know what’s happening our planet will be drained of its resources and aliens will infiltrate our homes and eat our hamsters and guinea pigs for afternoon tea.

Bart A Barrackus, Kentucky I went along because my wife was curious about whether there is any truth in the stories about aliens at Roswell. Now that I’ve heard all the evidence I’m a believer… you either accept the ridiculous explanations about crash test dummies and weather balloons the government offered, or you believe that we were visited by aliens. I’m no fool. It’s a massive injustice that the government has gone to such lengths to keep us from knowing the truth about aliens on our planet.

Tommy Magnum, Hawaii People will make a tourist attraction out of anything these days! So what if aliens landed at Roswell. There are alien abductions going on all the time in lots of places. My uncle Joe from England was abducted by aliens whilst he was at a music festival back in 1969, and has written a book about his experience, but you don’t see him selling silly tours of where it happened.

James Crockett, Miami There is clearly no truth in the stories about aliens crash landing at Roswell, because the government has given plausible explanations for the sightings and the debris, and it is so long ago now that we would know about it if it were true. So, people who believe in the existence of aliens should wake up and get real.

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