'Saucers' Believed By Physicist Here To Be His Balloons
A New York physicist said yesterday he was responsible for many
of the unidentified objects that have been spotted in the last few
years over the United states and Canada.
The physicist Serge A. Korff, director of the cosmic research
program at New York university, told a youth science seminar at
the Explorer's Club that many of the sightings had been of giant
balloons sent aloft to test the upper atmosphere.
The balloons, he said, are 300 to 400 feet across and because
they are partly inflated, assume strange shapes as they ascend.
"At high altitudes they often reflect sunlight and become
visible to viewers below in area where the sun has set or before
it has risen," he said.
During the last 30 years, he said, more than 110 flights to
detect cosmic rays have been carried out by the N.Y.U. Similar flights
are sponsored by some 15 to 20 other organizations, he said.
Dr. Korff, a past president of the Explorer's Club,
did not ascribe all the sightings to exploratory balloons.
Meantime, residents of Suffolk County reported seeing a hovering
object with flashing lights Thursday night and Friday morning.
More than 100 persons, including several policemen, said
they saw the object over beach communities on Eastern Long Island.
One policeman described the object as resembling a "big white star."
It was the second such sighting in Suffolk County in a week.
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