Next year, the History Channel promises to bring ex-Happy Mondays frontman Shaun Ryder to our TV screens as he investigates the UFO phenomenon. Ryder, a Salford lad, claims that the area is host to a wormhole through which alien visitors can presumably emerge.
Like Shaun, I hail from Little Hulton although 10 years his junior: perhaps in the intervening time the wormhole evaporated or collapsed. I certainly can't vouch for it existing and something like that would stand out in Salford. But better to address these mysteries to a QED guest with a lot to say about the modern folklore of UFOs. Ian Ridpath is an author, amateur astronomer and journalist who has a keen interest in the topic. He delivers lectures on astronomy and is known among the skeptics-in-the-pub crowd for his talk on the history of UFOlogy.
Despite the increasing and near-total ubiquity of cameras and video recording devices, the paucity of evidence for any truly aberrant sky phenomenon would suggest that there really isn't anything there to puzzle over. We have not seen a massive increased in pictures or videos of extra-terrestrial spacecraft. Of course, this hasn't stopped people from mistakenly reporting countless Chinese paper-lanterns as alien visitors as the popularity of these environmentally-dubious novelties has peaked recently. But it is the vintage reports, such as Roswell, and the UK's own equivalent (although heavily connected with the US military for added conspiracy factor) at Rendlesham Forest which ufologists continue to obsess over. This is odd since Ian Ridpath has comprehensively de-mystified this incident, and his clear and common-sense explanations for the supposed anomalies are a breath of fresh-air for all rational thinking people.
Our government, charged as it is with the defence of our airspace, has to take reports of incursion into it by anything unidentified rather seriously. On his website, Ian links to a recent release of UFO related material from the National Archives. Reading the highlights, it is instructive to note that RAF Fylingdales, the radar station used as part of the ballistic missile defence system, which can track objects in a 360 degree aspect to a range of over 3000 miles, had at the turn of the millenia, never tracked a single UFO in it's entire history.
Still the Shaun Ryder show may be worth watching, if anyone can conjure up an alien visitation on camera, it would surely be Ryder. As he reportedly said during the infamous Ghost Hunting with the Happy Mondays episode:
"If I can turn myself, with my own imagination, into a popstar... I can manifest a f**king ghost."
Well put.
Ian Ridpath, on the other hand, can be relied upon to give a more objective analysis. Both treats will have to wait until next year though, unless you happen to have an actual wormhole in your back garden.