(4 of 5)
After concluding that flying saucers are nothing but rare mirages, Menzel satisfied himself by mathematical analysis that air irregularities can cause them. But this theoretical treatment, he felt, was not enough. So he set about generating small-scale flying saucers in his basement laboratory.
Basement Saucers. He could not, of course, put several miles of atmosphere into a Cambridge basement, so he did the next best thing: he poured three inches of benzene into a straight-sided glass container. Over this he poured acetone, which is lighter. The two water-white liquids mixed only slightly, simulating an atmospheric inversion with the lighter warm air on top.
Then Menzel pointed a slender round beam of light from a projector at the underside of the invisible interface between the two liquids. Instead of passing through, the beam curved downward. When he looked directly into the downward slanting beam, he did not see a round spot of light. He saw an elliptical object, i.e., a perfect "flying saucer."
This laboratory saucer could "fly" too. When Menzel tilted the container, the image moved with the often-reported darting motion. When the liquid was stirred gently, the saucer changed shape, sometimes breaking into many fragments.
Prism Exhausts. Menzel does not claim to explain the exact air conditions that produce each flying saucer. The original light may come from almost any bright source, and it may follow all sorts of complicated paths, with different results each time. Sometimes the reported saucers have "glowing exhausts." Menzel believes that these "exhausts" are related to the colors seen through a prism. The conspicuous red, always seen at one end of the image, looks like a jet of red flame.
Since flying saucers are rare, they require unusual conditions to produce them. Menzel hopes that his rational explanation will encourage good observers to be on the alert for them.
While thinking scientifically about the flying saucers, Dr. Menzel has not neglected the colorful fancies of the spaceship cult. One of its articles of faith is that the space ships were first seen in the earth's atmosphere in 1947, not too long after the first atomic bomb was exploded in New Mexico. Their extraterrestrial designers—so the theory goes—wanted to see what ambitious man was up to. Ever since that time, the space ships have patrolled the U.S. Southwest, checking on atom bombs, rockets and other man-made threats to interplanetary peace.
Gay Nineties Saucers. "Who says that flying saucers were never seen before 1947?" asks Menzel. Recently he and his wife and young daughter visited the Library of Congress and found in the newspaper files a flying saucer scare more than 50 years ago. It started in California, where many flying saucers have been seen recently. "California had inversions then," says Menzel, "just as it has them today."
The first report came from Oakland. On the night of Nov. 22, 1896, people on an Alameda streetcar saw a huge "bird-shaped" object with a brilliant light hilts nose. "When first seen," said the Oakland Tribune, "the object seemed to be floating over San Leandro. It shot across the sky in the northwest, then turned quickly and disappeared in the direction of Haywards."