In a separate but related vein, my late husband once saw a flying saucer. He was between 10 and 12 years old when he and a friend were out one evening playing near a small river a few miles from Iowa City (State Univ. of Iowa). This would have been between 1939 and 1941. They saw a small glowing red roundish object rise up out of the river valley and suddenly shoot away across the nearby hills. When he told me this I thought that this might be related to SUI and Van Allen’s discovery of the Van Allen Belts. SUI did have a Department of Physics and Astronomy where Van Allen worked later but not at the time of this sighting. Who knows what interesting stuff might have been going on and sending out electronic messages into the ether. Here is a link for Van Allen, and the kind of work being done at that time that might bring us to the attention of them out there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Van_Allen
;’) Van Allen belts... much later discovery, 20 years after his sighting... nice page on V A btw.
I am a bit reticent wrt UFOs... I have seen things I cannot explain, things beyond what we know... And I accept that UFOs are there (too much testimony in history and today)... But unlike Sasquatch, whose description has remained unchanging through hundreds of years, UFO evidence has largely been tied to the technology of men - A '50's photo looks like two hubcaps welded together, with improvements tracking technology - Easily determined decade by decade.
For that reason, according to the evidence, I am loathe to accept these as evidence for star travelers... Such a technology, capable of the long distances and dangers of space would be robust from it's beginnings just in order to get here...
What that means? I dunno.