One year on, it's tinfoil hat revisited after Congressional hearing

For the first time in 50 years, the US Congress held a hearing on May 17 to look at what they call unidentified aerial phenomenon, something the rest of us, for as long as I can remember, have known as unidentified flying objects.

Last year, the Pentagon's release of videos and photographs of such aircraft caused a sensational stir but also met with some disbelief. After writing about it at the time, I took one heck of a ribbing from some acquaintances. One in particular would, whenever he saw me, hum a tune from a classic American TV show about eerie phenomena.

Often, when I talked to people about that release-It was so fascinating! How could I not?-there would be an uncomfortable silence.

But the topic seems increasingly harder to ignore now, and anybody who would summarily dismiss the possibility of UFOs these days, after so many well-documented inexplicable events have been brought to light, hasn't been paying attention.

During the House Intelligence subcommittee hearing, evidence of at least two such events was presented. Pentagon officials showed the lawmakers an ultrashort video of a spherical object flying past a US Navy Pacific Fleet F18 fighter jet. It was unclear how the object could stay aloft because it had no wings, tail or surfaces that would guide its flight, nor was there any indication as to what propelled it at such velocity. It had no visible means of propulsion, and it left no exhaust trail.

Another video, however, showed aircraft whose flight could conceivably be explained and possibly dismissed as being UFOs.

That video, shot at night by the Navy off the US East Coast, showed green-from the night-vision lens-triangular shapes hovering in the sky. These, it was determined, could conceivably have been common drones, and thus of no interest.

Most of the hearing was closed to the public because, authorities said, the evidence presented would also reveal characteristics of US intelligence gathering, which the government wanted to avoid.

In my column a year ago I referred to "tinfoil hats", something that cynical US humorists joke that UFO believers like to wear to prevent space rays from penetrating their skulls.

If you think about it, the idea condescendingly proposes that only a fool could seriously entertain the thought of otherworldly beings visiting.

It wouldn't be the first time that a gap in our world view kept us from progressing.

Many societies of the past believed Earth to be flat and that it was possible to sail a ship over the edge, and so the common wisdom was-don't go too far.

Ancient Greece, which in the West is held to be the cradle of wisdom, only gradually abandoned that thought. According to Aristotle, many Greek philosophers of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE could not conceive of Earth as a globe.

Thales, known as the father of science, thought in the 6th century BCE of Earth as being like a log floating in water.

The ancient Norse and Germanic people thought of Earth as flat and surrounded by water.

All the more to the Norsemen's credit, then, that they visited the New World some 400 years before Columbus. In the 10th century, Leif Eriksson sailed west from northernmost Europe and found a place he called Vinland, known today as Newfoundland, Canada.

Historically, our perception of reality lags behind what our minds tell us it may be, because we need time to embrace new thoughts. But let's not forget to revel in what might be real.