Paper short abstract:

Flying saucers are imaginary objects which, for a short period, shaped a scientific hypothesis - the 'interplanetary' hypothesis of early 50s Intelligence work - and then gained an independent afterlife with a variety of traceable effects: a case study of creativity and unintended consequences.

Paper long abstract:

In flying saucers, we have an example of a virtual object with multiple real effects in the world. Going back in time, it is possible to trace their pre-history, prior to the Cold War, in the ideas of Theosophy, spread through pulp magazines in the first half of the twentieth century. However, flying saucers emerged as a topic of concern to U.S. Air Force Intelligence in the period between the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War. They gained greater substance with the deployment of a Home Radar System in the early 1950s in the context of a fear of Russian Intercontinental Ballistics Missiles, appearing on radar screens as Unidentified Flying Objects. By the time the Intelligence services sought to demythologize these creations, in the early 1950s, they had escaped into the public sphere. By tracing their history, largely through their effects, we can follow the life of these imagined objects of thought in several spheres, beginning with military and technological institutions and documents, then, nearer at hand, in the domestic realm, including accounts of abduction, and, simultaneously, far away in the justification of and ambitions for the Space programme. These moves are recorded in contemporary media: stories, films, television and, latterly, the Internet. This is an instance of a discarded scientific hypothesis - the 'interplanetary' hypothesis - with a brief life and a long afterlife.