Pajarito Astronomers Notice, 1986: "Why Should a Scientist Be Concerned about UFOs?"
Pajarito Astronomers Notice, 1986: "Why Should a Scientist Be Concerned about UFOs?"
Source file: DOE-UAP-D003_Pajarito_Astronomers.pdf Originating agency: Department of Energy / Los Alamos National Laboratory (community club document) Date: May 20, 1986 Page count: 1 (read) PURSUE Release: 2
Summary
This is a single-page meeting notice from the Pajarito Astronomers, an amateur astronomy club headquartered at P.O. Box 1092, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544, and "Sponsored by Club 1663" — the Los Alamos employees' social club whose name recalls the laboratory's wartime postal address. Dated Tuesday, May 20, 1986, the notice announces the club's next meeting on Thursday, May 29, 1986, at 7:30 p.m. in the Ranch Room at Fuller Lodge. The guest speaker was Dr. John Warren of AT-6, and his announced topic was "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?" The document is of low evidentiary significance — it reports no sighting — but it is a genuine artifact of how the UFO subject was treated as a serious discussion topic within the Los Alamos scientific community.
Research Article
The Pajarito Astronomers (named for the Pajarito Plateau on which Los Alamos sits) were a community astronomy club drawing heavily on the technical workforce of Los Alamos National Laboratory. The notice's mechanics are entirely ordinary club business: officer positions (President, Vice President, Treasurer) are listed by laboratory mail-stop codes (MS K553, MS E531, MS F665) with the individuals' names redacted, and members are given walking directions to the Ranch Room at the south end of Fuller Lodge, the historic building at the heart of Los Alamos.
What makes the page relevant to this archive is the program: a talk titled "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?", delivered by Dr. John Warren, identified with the laboratory group designation AT-6. The framing of the title is significant. It does not advertise a sensational sighting or a believer's lecture; it poses the question of scientific concern — implicitly arguing that the subject merits the attention of working scientists. That such a talk was scheduled, by a Los Alamos-affiliated club and a laboratory scientist, and that the resulting document was retained in agency files and later released through the PURSUE collection, illustrates the persistent, low-level institutional engagement with the UFO question at the nuclear laboratories.
The page bears several archival stamps and annotations, including "A-86-014-91-3," a handwritten "Bergman H-183," and "EHF-100-334," indicating it was processed and indexed within a records system. No incident, observation, or technical claim appears on the page.
Significance
On its own, this is a minor document and is scored accordingly. Its value is contextual: it adds another data point to the picture of Los Alamos as a place where UFOs were a recurring topic of organized scientific discussion across decades — consistent with the green-light recollections of the late 1940s and early 1950s captured in the James Tuck correspondence, and with the laboratory's broader involvement in imaging and analyzing anomalous objects.
Key People
| Person | Identity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. John Warren | Los Alamos scientist, group AT-6 | Guest speaker on the UFO question |
| Club officers | Redacted (mail stops MS K553, MS E531, MS F665) | President, Vice President, Treasurer |
Locations
| Location | Details |
|---|---|
| Fuller Lodge, Ranch Room | Meeting venue, Los Alamos |
| Los Alamos, New Mexico | Club headquarters (P.O. Box 1092) |
Incidents
| Item | Date | Location | Pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scheduled talk: "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?" | May 29, 1986 (announced May 20) | Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos | 1 |
Notable Quotes
"Guest speaker will be Dr. John Warren of AT-6, whose topic will be 'Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?'" — page 1
"Sponsored by Club 1663" — page 1, masthead
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