Sky Reports and Distant Worlds: teacher key

Aliens and UFOs, grade 12 edition, written for 12th grade and up. From the 1947 saucer story to Mars rocks and radio signals, two long searches meet: what people report seeing in the sky, and what the evidence shows about life beyond Earth. The open questions matter as much as the answers.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What does the term UFO describe?
   • An object that is a spacecraft
   • A kind of weather balloon
   • Something in the sky that the observer could not identify at that moment (answer)
2. What did the 1994 Air Force report say about the Roswell debris?
   • It was a meteor
   • It came from Project Mogul (answer)
   • It was a spacecraft
3. According to the Civil Aeronautics Administration, what accounted for the 1952 Washington radar contacts in almost every instance?
   • Birds
   • Solid objects
   • A temperature inversion (answer)
4. Why was the Robertson Panel's concern described as attention and security?
   • It proved visitors had come
   • Officials feared panic and that an enemy could flood the U.S. with false reports (answer)
   • It wanted more reports
5. Why does NASA call the Cheyava Falls finding a potential biosignature and not a discovery of life?
   • The same minerals and organic matter can form without life (answer)
   • It was found on Earth
   • No samples were studied
6. What is the Wow! signal?
   • A message that was decoded
   • A planet found by Webb
   • A strong narrow radio signal from 1977 that has never been heard again (answer)

Words

• biosignature: possible life sign
• inversion: layered air
• declassified: no longer secret
• paradox: puzzling contradiction
• conjecture: educated guess
• hoaxes: tricks or fakes