The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: The Star Map Investigation
Stanton Friedman met Marjorie Fish in 1971 through a referral from Coral Lorenzen, cofounder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. During a subsequent visit to Fish’s home, he was impressed by her intellectual curiosity and precise attention to detail. Additionally, her membership in Mensa verified that her intelligence level was in the top two percentile. When he agreed to attempt to verify her star map work, she sent him copies of much of her work tabulating the spatial coordinates of the local stars. The most troubling aspect was the big variation on various star lists of the distances from the sun to the various stars. The angular coordinates (in what direction to look) were in general agreement from list to list, but the distances were not easy to measure at the time, and there could be several light-years’ difference from one catalog to another.
The models of our local galactic neighborhood that she built were three-dimensional. Beads of different colors, depending on the type of star, were strung in their correct 3-D locations on nylon fish line. Her original model was completed in December, 1968, but more of the pat- tern was not found until the summer of 1969. In December of that year, Gliese’s 1969 Near Star Catalog was published. Fish used this to recheck her work, but three stars on Betty’s map did not appear in the catalog. It was not until the fall of 1972 that the last three stars were found in an updated Gliese Catalog.1 Astronomers in the 1960s and early 1970s were certainly not talking of traveling to the stars. As a matter of fact, most of them are still very resistant to that idea. It didn’t matter, when observing a star with a tele- scope, how far away it was, but trying to model the pattern meant that distances were crucial. The objective was to try to find a three-dimensional pattern (arrangement of stars) that matched the two-dimensional one that Betty had drawn—with the admonition of if, and only if, she could remember what she saw accurately. Betty described the map that she observed on the craft as having a three-dimensional appearance. The 3- foot-long by 2-foot-wide map was similar to a reflective hologram. The stars were tinted and glowed as if she were looking into the heavens.
However, there was no concentration of stars like we might observe when stargazing. The star map that Betty viewed had to be limited to only local stars or selected stars.
Fish, who did not have access to a computer at the time, had to copy all the coordinates by hand at the OSU library, as it would not allow the catalogs to be borrowed.
She found that there were about 1,000 stars within about 55 light years of the sun in all directions. Obviously what Betty saw seemed to point to only about 16 stars as being connected with the lines denoting heavy trade routes, light trade routes, and occasional expeditions. Fish had initially expected to find many patterns that matched what Betty had drawn.
She was looking at each model from many different directions. Fish used color-coded beads to stand for each star, depending on the type of star it was. Many of the stars in our local neighborhood were small red dwarf stars, which seemed very unlikely as the site of an inhabited solar system.
The stars would have to have planets with environments conducive to the development of life. Further, the conditions would have to be right for the development of intelligent life that had evolved beyond our level of technological knowledge. Because the energy levels from the star reaching the planets would be quite low, red dwarfs were ruled out.
Fish also realized that there are many stars whose energy output varies in time. Most scientists feel that the development of life on a planet requires long-term temperature stability: Alternate freezing and frying would not be good for the development of life. Furthermore, many stars are also part of a closely associated pair of stars, or even a triplet. It would appear that, because of the complicated gravitational field of two stars quite close to each other, stable planetary orbits, on a cosmic time scale, would not exist near a double or triple star system.
Fish had expected, by looking at the models from many different directions, to find many patterns that were close to Betty’s. Initially, she found none. She kept eliminating certain categories of stars (variable, small dwarf stars, and so on) as a matching pattern failed to turn up. It was only after she had data from the newly published 1972 Catalog of Nearby Stars by Wilhelm Gliese, and built yet another model using this new data, that she found one—and only one—three-dimensional pattern that fit, angle for angle, line length for line length, what Betty had drawn…a real eureka moment.
Northwestern University astronomer Dr. J Allan Hynek arranged a meeting in Chicago with Marjorie Fish and Stanton. She brought one of her smaller models to the Adler Planetarium. Dr. David Saunders, who wrote UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong, a negative book about the University of Colorado study (Directed by Dr. Edward U. Condon, a well-known physicist) with which he had been connected, was also able to make it for that meeting. Fish discussed the catalogs she had checked and the standards she had used to select the stars in her model, and responded to the scientists’ questions.
Dr. George Mitchell of the astronomy department at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, used one of Fish’s models as a teaching tool in his department. He assured us that her work was very accurate, and that he could find no problems with it. Saunders obtained a computerized version of the Gliese Catalog of Nearby Stars, which had the most recent stellar distance data, and checked on Fish’s work as well. He also found it very accurate. Mitchell and Fish (who was now working at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee), and Betty Hill were all interviewed by Stanton in 1978 for the documentary film UFOs ARE Real.
Stanton sent an article that he had cowritten (with Ann Slate Gironda, which appeared in Saga Magazine) to astronomy writer Terence Dickinson. He was working at the Strassenburg Planetarium and had attended a college lecture that Stanton had given in Rochester, New York. By now he was editor of Astronomy Magazine. They met again when Stanton was lecturing at a college in Milwaukee, where the magazine was then headquartered. He suggested Dickinson do an article about Fish’s work. Prior to writing the article, Dickinson talked to a number of people, including Miss Fish and Drs. Mitchell, Saunders, and Hynek. Showing great courage in view of the negative attitude of the astronomical community toward UFOs, he published “The Zeta Reticuli Incident” in Astronomy’s December 1974 issue. The article drew more response than any article ever published by Astronomy, to date. Dickinson published many letters and pieces about it over the next year. There were, as might be expected, several attacks, including one from Sagan and his Cornell associate, Dr. Steven Soter. Some of Hynek’s students, whom he had asked to look at the work after the Chicago meeting, also joined in the discussion to cover such topics as the age of Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli.
These are the stars that Fish concluded were the ETs’ base stars, quite close to each other, with heavy trade routes between them. These are in the southern sky constellation of Reticulum, “The Net.” Because of the great interest, Astronomy published a 32-page full-color-on-coated-paper booklet, “The Zeta Reticuli Incident” (Astromedia Corporation, 1976). It included the original article and the subsequent publications, which included detailed responses from Fish and others. Amazingly, 10,000 copies were sold within a very short time. The booklet on the cover page included a list of authors of related commentary, including Sagan. Sagan’s attorneys threatened to sue the publisher because his name was listed, even though he was just one of several contributors named. Somewhat to Dickinson’s surprise, his young and courageous publisher, Steve Walther, who also had been behaving strangely for some months, caved in. The reason be- came obvious when Walther died of a brain tumor less than a year later. Because of the legal threats, and because Stanton had instigated the article, Astromedia made Stanton an offer he couldn’t refuse, and he wound up distributing almost 18,000 copies of the booklet.