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The plain truth of the matter

Don’t ever tell Jacques Patenet he works on UFOs. As a rigorous scientist, he will answer that to call such phenomena “unidentified flying objects” is a distorsion of the truth.

Certain phenomena are easily confused with UAPs, like mist effects, aurora borealis or lightning-related phenomena.

“The vast majority of sightings are simply luminous phenomena moving across the sky,” he explains. So, if your perspective is skewed to start with by the pretence that they are objects, you’re like a cat trying to catch the spot of a torch beam—you’ll get nowhere fast.

For this reason, Jacques Patenet prefers the term “unidentified aerospace phenomena”, or UAP for short.

It may sound less catchy than UFO, but it’s a lot nearer the truth. Not surprisingly, the unit he heads—GEIPAN (for Groupe d’Etude et d’Information sur les Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non identifiés)—takes its name from the equivalent French term for UAP.

The forerunner of GEIPAN was created in 1977. At the time, UFOs were nothing new but they had been a strong focus of media attention during the previous decade, raising questions in the minds of the public. “CNES’s Director General therefore opened a unit—initially called GEPAN—to research these phenomena objectively.”

From 1988, the unit changed its name to SEPRA (for Service d’Etude des Phénomènes de Rentrées Atmosphériques) before adopting its current title in 2005.

Today, GEIPAN is putting every eyewitness account it has received since 1988 on line. The database will steadily retrace its footsteps back to 1954, totalling some 6,000 accounts in 3,000 reports of 1,650 sightings.

Some examples of sketches by UAP witnesses sent to GEIPAN. Crédits : CNES

“We will be publishing absolutely every record we have, except for psychologists’ screenings of eyewitnesses, which are covered by patient confidentiality, and anything that could enable them to be identified, in accordance with privacy laws,” says Jacques Patenet.