The University of Oklahoma Professor who "Solved" the Mystery of Flying Saucers

One has to hope that when noted educator Frank G. Tappan, David Ross Boyd Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Oklahoma remarked to the Norman Transcript he had a solution for the flying saucers, his tongue was firmly in his cheek.

He had quipped to the paper, and his words repeated across the land, that "I myself," he explained "have been seeing flying saucers for 40 years."  His theory was that they were not knew but rather that the ancient Romans had seen them 2,000 years earlier.  They were called "Muscae Volitantes" or flying flies. Basically, they were impurities in the vitreous humor of the human eyeball: small discs, dots, saucers, cylinders, beads and streams of beads. Mostly at the edges of the eye and seldom at the center.

 The famous Basel Broadsheet of 1566 showing some sort of celestial event  has been explained in a similar manner.  The text of the broadside has been variously translated but most commonly believed to read that [something] " happened in 1566 three times, on 27 and 28 of July, and on August 7, against the sunrise and sunset; we saw strange shapes in the sky above Basel.

During the year 1566, on the 27th of July, after the sun had shone warm on the clear, bright skies, and then around 9 pm, it suddenly took a different shape and color. First, the sun lost all its radiance and luster, and it was no bigger than the full moon, and finally it seemed to weep tears of blood and the air behind him went dark. And he was seen by all the people of the city and countryside. In much the same way also the moon, which has already been almost full and has shone through the night, assuming an almost blood-red color in the sky. The next day, Sunday, the sun rose at about six o'clock and slept with the same appearance it had when it was lying before. He lit the houses, streets and around as if everything was blood-red and fiery. At the dawn of August 7, we saw large black spheres coming..."

Others suggest that the Swiss event was one of many similar sky events of teh 15th and 16th centuries. The Event above is most often explained as a describing  (1) an unusual sunrise, (2) the second as a total eclipse of the moon with a red sun rising, and (3) the third like a cloud of black spheres in front of the sun.All being compressed into one wood cut illustration.

The "floaters" of which Dr. Tappan spoke are now usually believed to be ruptures of the cornea and are repaired by laser surgery and may be related to glaucoma and other vision illnesses.

The logical reasons why this eye explanation would not work are numerous and so it can be assumed Tappan was jesting - adding yet another layer to the unusual, even bizarre, rationales offered for the objects being seen in the skies over planet Earth.