学位英语

第四篇 Where Have All Our Visitors Gone?

Sixty years ago, a man named Kenneth Arnold saw something that people are still seeing today -something that changed popular culture for ever.

Flying his plane over mountains in the US state of Washington, he saw a line of strange objects, either crescent -shaped or disc-like, flying with the motion of a saucer skimming on water.

The media soon picked up on the story-the Flying Saucers were here1! Was the earth being visited by creatures from another planet? Soon， so many sightings were made that the US military began to investigate . It called these strange objects UFOs -Unidentified Flying Objects, and that is how they are known today.

Military investigations found no evidence of visitors from outer space. But that did not stop the true believers . The military were covering up, they said. or maybeit was because the travelers from space were of such superior intelligence that they could hide from the most sophisticated military analysts.

People have always seen strange lights in the sky. In the past these were explained in religious ways. In a world where religion was less influential and science fiction was popular, signs from god were replaced by visitors from other planets .

The date of the first UFO signings was also significant. In 1947, World War II had just ended and the cold war was just beginning. Humanity seemed locked in endless conflicts. Like generations before them, people looked to the skies for help. But instead of seeking God, they looked for help from super-intelligent aliens with advanced technology. Belief in UFOs became the first religion of science.

However, even people who believe in UFOs are not quite sure why they visit the earth. The universe is a big place and it is reasonable to assume that there is life somewhere out there. It is possible that aliens have worked out how to travel through space. Yet some people report that they have been taken by aliens and have had experiments performed on them. Why would anyone travel across half the universe to conduct medical experiments on people living in small towns in the United States?