U.F.O. este acronimul englez al cărui echivalent românesc este O.Z.N. – Obiect Zburător Neidentificat. Formularea este la singular – obiect, nu obiecte.
Sintagma U.F.O. a fost introdusă de căpitanul U.S.A.F. Edward J. Ruppelt: ”UFO is the official term that I created to replace the words «flying saucers»”1.
Ruppelt, ofițer care a studiat fenomenul în cadru militar, avea nevoie de un termen care să ofere programului o oarecare respectabilitate. Pur și simplu, nu poți studia ”farfurii zburătoare” fără să te umpli de ridicol. Pretextul l-a constituit ”forma” obiectelor:
”Obviously the term «flying saucer» is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short.
Officially the military uses the term «flying saucer» on only two occasions. First in an explanatory sense, as when briefing people who are unacquainted with the term «UFO»: «UFO – you know – flying saucers». And second in a derogatory sense, for purposes of ridicule, as when it is observed, «He says he saw a flying saucer»”2.
A urmat propunerea unei noi științe – Ufologia. Numele și justificarea poartă semnătura lui Ivan T. Sanderson:
”UFOs are, at prepent, un unpleasantness of an advanced order. Whether they exist or do not exist, they are almost constantly in the news, have cost us millions of dollars annually for some years, and get a lot of people unduly excited, thereby adding to the already excessive overload of tensions in this uncertain new world. They appear on occassion even to have caused death. Like television, the beastly things appear to be here to stay, and it is high time that some serious minds were brought to bear upon them and the problem they are creating. This may call for an unexpected extension of psychology, or of astronomy or meteorology. It might do the same for biology because some might well be highly tenuous life-forms, indigenous to our upper atmosphere. It might prove to be nothing more than an exercise in bibliographical research, but needs, first of all, to be tackled scientifically.
What we need, in fact, is the immediate establishment of a respectable new science named Ufology”3.
Fără a ne avânta în procese de intenție, remarcăm că este nepotrivit să promovezi o abordare științifică consolidată prin intermediul unei reviste de science-fiction. Intenția o fi fost lăudabilă, însă dezvoltările ulterioare confirmă toate bănuielile.
Note: 1,2Edward J. Ruppelt – ”The report on Unidentified Flying Objects”, Ed. Doubleday&Co Inc., Garden City, NY, 1956, Cap. 1; 3Ivan T. Sanderson – ”An introduction to ufology”, în ”Fantastic Universe”, februarie 1957, pg. 27- 34.