UFO phenomenon, between desire and fear of whether or not we are alone in the universe

The golden age was that of the Martians, initiated, through an excess of passion, by an excellent early 20th century Italian astronomer Virginio Schiaparelli. From the then-clear skies of Milan, he observed from Brera with a telescope that was very innovative for the time the planet Mars with its canyons, which are deep fractures in the crust of that planet, like a canyon sharply outlined and thousands of kilometres long.

Schiaparelli was a utopian socialist à la Proudon, he saw goodness and goodwill even in the arid planet all rocks and dust, which we see today thanks to the Nasa robots that send us images of that red desolate world every day. In a couple of public lectures, he made a somewhat daring flight of fancy, which, as a positivist scientist, he could not even think of, by putting forward as a hypothesis that that channel had been dug by a civilisation of Martian peers and fraternal brothers, who knows for what reason, but evidently for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the red planet.

A series of misunderstandings in translations into and from English gave rise to the myth of the Martians, who also came to visit: they, or similar extraterrestrials, were behind the flying saucer phenomenon. One cannot count the science fiction novels, the films with Martians, now good and now wicked and bad, invading the screens between the early 1950s and the famous 1996 Mars Attack. In short, for a time the inhabitants of flying saucers were probably thought to be Martians. The flip side of the coin was shown in a big way by Ennio Flaiano, with his fine comedy 'Un Marziano a Roma', which also aired on TV at the time and can be found in bookshops or on YouTube.

Crocefissione di Cristo, 1350, che sta sopra l’altare del monastero Visoki Dečani in Kosovo

But UFOs flying through our skies are certainly nothing new in the last century. Ufology enthusiasts believe they can be found in many famous paintings in the history of art, for example in the beautiful Crucifixion of Christ, 1350, which stands above the altar of the Visoki Dečani monastery in Kosovo. There we find, to the right and left of the cross, two human figures guiding what appear, today, to be spaceships, but are actually the Sun and the Moon, as described in the Holy Scriptures. It was normal at the time to personify the two luminary stars with people travelling in two celestial chariots.

“Il fenomeno celeste di Norimberga”, incisione di Hans Glaser, Biblioteca Centrale, Zurigo

Imagination did the rest, as in the case of the Nuremberg event of 14 April 1561 when a terrible celestial battle took place in the sky for more than an hour according to many witnesses, which was immediately engraved in various printed plates. It was probably a series of atmospheric phenomena, known as pareli, which were more complex and longer-lasting than usual. It was such an unusual phenomenon and impressed the population so much that even the famous Jung studied it and wrote about it in one of his books. Beware then that ignorance of celestial phenomena often made our simple and frightened ancestors speak of gigantic swords or crosses that appeared, perhaps blood-coloured, and that were instead innocent passing comets with their beautiful tails, and so on. The examples are many and take us back in time, with the Roman and Greek gods standing in the sky and occasionally descending, but let us remember that in the Bible, the prophet Elijah ascends to heaven on a chariot of fire, as described in the Second Book of Kings. Obviously, a chariot of fire makes the UFO enthusiast think that it is something similar to the one that Elon Musk nowadays departs every week, like a mail coach, from the Cape Canaveral base. The examples would still be dozens and dozens.

But back to our times, even if UFOs today, in the time of social networks, have so many competitors, from the theory that the Earth is flat, which is also 150 years old, to chemical trails and all sorts of denialism and conspiracy, not to mention the 10,000 or more low-orbit satellites that now constantly pass over our heads, Starlink in the front row. Despite this, there have been UFO sightings, from Liguria to Calabria, without too much fuss and with greater awareness than in the past. Let us not then speak of the USA, the home of the sightings. Today we know that the light from a distant plane can create an illusion, that drones from afar can do the same as well as some small meteorites and so on, even if some sightings remain unexplained.

Underneath the UFO phenomenon, which today is quieter and more realistic, there is still a desire, or perhaps even a fear, to understand whether or not we are alone in this universe that contains billions of billions of planets. But the more we study it, the bigger, more fascinating but deserted it seems to us.