UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It at first might not seem that scientists and the paranormal really get along most of the time. After all, paranormal phenomena are often seen by many as lying outside of the wheelhouse of science, and mainstream scientists are often likened to a sort of enemy in a sense, as they are seen as not willing to look into these strange things. However, science is not always the enemy, and there have indeed been very well-known, respected scientists who have gone down rabbit holes that lead them into the paranormal. One of these was a brilliant physicist who entertained the thought that humans could unknowingly exert psychic influence on the outside world around them, which he thought had also actually manifested in himself.

Austrian physicist, Nobel laureate, professor of theoretical physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and early pioneer in quantum mechanics, Wolfgang Ernst Pauli is largely considered to be one of the most brilliant physicists to have ever lived. He was the first to propose the existence of the neutrino in 1930, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945, was widely praised by Albert Einstein, won the Max Planck medal in 1958, and was instrumental to the development of many areas of theoretical physics and quantum theory. Pauli was highly respected among his peers, an impeccable scientific mind like no other, but he also had some rather strange ideas and oddness orbiting him, with one of these being what would later be called “The Pauli Effect.”

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli

It began when people, including Pauli himself, noticed that whenever he was around in a lab there was an inordinate number of freak mishaps and malfunctions of equipment. Almost without fail, when Pauli entered a lab, things would break, electrical systems would malfunction or go haywire, beakers would crack, bunsen burners would fail to ignite, and various equipment would either stop working or experience some sort of disturbance, with even fires breaking out on occasion. Colleagues jokingly referred to it as “The Pauli Effect,” stating as one of its laws “a functioning device and Wolfgang Pauli may not occupy the same room,” but as it continued it became very noticeable that it seemed to all be beyond coincidence and jokes. The effect even seemed to work through walls or across distances. One popular anecdote is that one time Pauli was passing the railway station of Göttingen, when at that moment several pieces of lab equipment at the nearby University of Göttingen exploded without any apparent reason. Similarly, another story has it that when Pauli was visiting Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study the Princeton University physics department’s massive cyclotron particle accelerator inexplicably burst into flames and burned for more than 6 hours before being put out.

As weird incidents like this increased in frequency, Pauli’s peers went from joking about it all to starting to believe there was something truly weird going on in the physicist’s presence, and that there was perhaps something to it. It is rumored that the experimental physicist Otto Stern once even banned Pauli from his lab for fear that he would break something or ruin an experiment. It is interesting to note how these serious, top level scientists were starting to elevate The Pauli Effect to a superstition, seeing it as beyond rational explanation. One science photographer by the name of David Fathi would once say of this:

I had a lot of problems trying to understand how some of the brightest minds of their time could give in to ideas that seem like pure superstition. But now I think that to work in a field like quantum physics, so abstract and far removed from common intuition, you probably have to be predisposed at thinking far out of the box, and you have to be creative and open to weird ideas.

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli

Pauli himself began to seriously consider that there was some as yet unexplained phenomenon behind it all, convinced that it was all real. This was not a big jump for him, as he was already curious about parapsychology and subscribed to C. G. Jung’s ideas on synchronicity, which Jung described as “circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection,” as well as the hidden meaning of dreams. Pauli began to come up with some way to explain it all, theorizing that certain people had the ability to somehow affect technical equipment in their vicinity through forces not yet understood. Pauli was so convinced that this was a real mystery that he discussed it at length with Jung. One of his ideas was that this was due to a sort of psychokinesis, in which mental energy is projected to have an effect on physical surroundings. Pauli would say:

The existence of relatively constant psychic contents that survive personal ego…All we can observe is their effect on other living people, whose spiritual level and whose personal unconscious crucially influence the way these contents actually manifest themselves.

It is interesting that Pauli’s musings on this are some of the earlier ideas put forth on psychokinesis, in an era before it even had an official, agreed upon name. Pauli was never able to prove any of this, but he allegedly spent much time pondering it and writing of it in his journals. He often lamented that there was no way to prove any of this under strict lab conditions, that in the end it was mostly based on anecdotal evidence, and that it was probably doomed to forever remain misunderstood. However, he maintained that the Pauli Effect was real, that people could mentally influence surrounding objects and electronics right up until his death in 1958. So was this just superstition among scientists or was there anything to it at all? It is hard to know just how grounded this was in reality, but it remains a curious little piece of lore merging science and the paranormal, as well as a strange little historical curiosity.

In 1977, the FBI declassified its UFO files under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. It was something that led to close to 2,000 pages of UFO-themed material being placed into the public domain. Since then, even more UFO-connected material has been made available by the FBI for one and all to see – such as files on cattle mutilations, the so-called Conatctees (George Adamski, George Van Tassel and so on), and UFO research groups. One of the first pages of material the FBI released back in 1977 was a letter sent, in the summer of 1947, to the FBI by a scientist. His name: Edwin M. Bailey. He was also a man who had some deep worries about the suddenly growing UFO phenomenon. Probably because of Bailey’s standing, the FBI didn’t waste any time in contacting him for a chat. J. Edgar Hoover’s agents were keen to see what Bailey had to say. After all, this was the dawning of the “Flying Saucer” age and just about everyone was fascinated by what was afoot.

In their papers on Bailey, the FBI stated: “Bailey prefaced his remarks by stating that he is a scientist by occupation and is currently employed at the American Cyanamid Research Laboratories on West Main Street in Stamford, Connecticut, in the Physics Division. Bailey further indicated that during the war he was employed at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the Radiation Laboratory which Laboratory is connected with the Manhattan Project. Bailey advised that he is thirty years of age and is a graduate of the University of Arizona.”

Before I continue with the story, here’s a bit of background on Bailey’s employer, American Cyanamid Research Laboratories: “American Cyanamid Company was a leading American conglomerate which became one of the nation’s top 100 manufacturing companies during the 1970s and 1980s, according to the Fortune 500 listings at the time. Founded by Frank Washburn in 1907, the company grew to over 100,000 employees worldwide, and had over 200,000 shareholders by the mid-1970s. Its stock was traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ACY. It was repeatedly reorganized after the mid-1990s, merged with other firms, and saw brands and divisions sold or spun off. The bulk of the former company is now part of Pfizer, with smaller portions belonging to BASF, Procter & Gamble and other firms.

“Although originally a manufacturer of agricultural chemicals the product line was soon broadened into many different types of industrial chemicals and specialty chemicals. The company then diversified into synthetic fibers, pharmaceuticals, surgical products, plastics, and inorganic pigments before World War II; and later added, by acquisitions, cosmetic and toiletry products, perfumes, building products, home building, and several smaller product categories following World War II.”

The FBI continued and listened carefully to Bailey’s thoughts on the Flying Saucer mystery. In the FBI’s records we’re provided the following on the man and his ideas: “Bailey stated that the topic of ‘flying saucers’ had caused considerable comment and concern to the present day scientists and indicated that he himself had a personal theory concerning the ‘flying saucers.’ Prior to advancing his own theory, Bailey remarked that immediately after the conclusion of World War II, a friend of his, [Deleted], allegedly observed the ‘flying saucers’ from an observatory in Milan and Bologna, Italy. He stated that apparently at the time the ‘flying saucers’ had caused a little comment in Italy but that after some little publicity they immediately died out as public interest. Bailey stated that it is quite possible that actually the ‘flying saucers’ could be radio controlled germ bombs or atom bombs which are circling the orbit of the earth and which could be controlled by radio and directed to land on any designated target at the specific desire of the agency or country operating the bombs.”

Although just about everything Bailey said – and suspected, too – was speculative, the FBI was concerned by the matter of those “germ bombs.” Whether the FBI may have heard of such theories from other people, I don’t know; the files don’t make that clear. That Bailey became of interest to the FBI, though, showed that when the UFO enigma began on June 24, 1947 – the date on which the famous Kenneth Arnold case took place – J. Edgar Hoover’s agents were taking things carefully and quickly. Maybe with a degree of concern, too.