Credible UFO sightings

[Moontanman]

In another thread it was mentioned that one of our astronauts talked to government officials about UFO's really being alien space craft and while an astronauts second and third hand reports are interesting they carry very little weight but how about fist hand accounts by astronauts?

 

[ydoaPs]

1) He looks very old. Time does wonders on memory.

2) What was his disposition towards Unidentified Flying Objects prior to the event in question? Confirmation bias does wonders as well.

3) How does he know it was an alien craft? Did he see them through the UFO's windows?

[Moontanman]

1) He looks very old. Time does wonders on memory.

2) What was his disposition towards Unidentified Flying Objects prior to the event in question? Confirmation bias does wonders as well.

3) How does he know it was an alien craft? Did he see them through the UFO's windows?

 

 

I can't argue in his favor because I don't know his mental state at the time of the interview, but I have to admit that if anyone's testimony is relevant to this issue his would have to be... In the time frame he talks about there is no possibility the craft was from our civilization, this is a case of either he is a bald faced liar or he is telling the truth. If he is telling the truth then it becomes what could he have seen that fits the description of what he and evidently others saw....

[ydoaPs]

he is a bald faced liar or he is telling the truth

 

However, his truth doesn't necessarily correspond with what actually happened. Memory is a fickle fickle thing.

[Moontanman]

However, his truth doesn't necessarily correspond with what actually happened. Memory is a fickle fickle thing.

 

 

I think that while joe blow from the rocky top mountain might be easily dismissed I am not as quite as willing to automatically denigrate Gordon Coopers testimony.

 

The "saucer landing" is bizarre, it has no possible conventional explanation, he is not the only eye witness of this saucer landing to come forward, so either he is lying his ass off or he is recounting something he heard as something that happened to him, or he is actually recounting something totally inexplicable that happened in his presence. I might believe joe blow would make up such a story or miss-remember such a story but a trained astronaut deserves a bit more respect.

 

The formations of unknown craft he flew a fighter along with other pilots to pursue is not quite as bizarre but just as inexplicable for the time period and also recounted by other pilots of that time period but they were summarily dismissed.

 

ydoaPs while I know his memory is not positive proof, but I see no realistic gain to be made by him for making these assertions, I can't just wave him off as some doddering old man, i am rapidly approaching the age of doddering, we are not stupid because we are old.... ( I know you weren't suggesting that)

 

I guess my take is that his assertions about these unknown craft are credible, I'd hate to have someone as credible as him as an eyewitness to a crime i had committed.... Testimony by people as credible as Gordon Cooper are puzzling and not an easy puzzle to solve....

 

BTW, quite a few military pilots have come out and testified to some pretty inexplicable craft being seen, they were either dismissed or told to shut up if they wanted to continue to fly. Some of these men controlled nuclear weapons, in those days they actually had control of the weapons, two 2 to 4 megaton war heads were dropped just outside Goldsburro, NC If the plane had climbed a bit higher the bombs would have been automatically triggered when they were dropped, it would have been a very bad day in Goldsburo

 

 

http://www.neatorama.com/2006/09/09/oops-us-government-nuked-north-carolina/

 

The point I am trying to make is that at one time the people on these aircraft actually had real control over their weapons, it was but a few years for sure before more effective controls were put in place but we trusted these men with the most powerful weapons on earth but we dismiss them out of hand for seeing a craft of some sort that cannot be explained?

 

It might not be proof but it is.... very interesting....

Edited March 6, 2012 by Moontanman

[rktpro]

I wonder if this video seems true or fake?

[Moontanman]

The one at 08:00 and on is impressive but then of course you have crap like this.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNIE0leMB6A&feature=related

 

As long as faking UFOs is cool only the earliest stuff from credible witnesses can even be considered, i know, it's crazy but faking UFOs is like a mark of honor for these poes....

[md65536]

The "saucer landing" is bizarre, it has no possible conventional explanation, he is not the only eye witness of this saucer landing to come forward, so either he is lying his ass off or he is recounting something he heard as something that happened to him, or he is actually recounting something totally inexplicable that happened in his presence. I might believe joe blow would make up such a story or miss-remember such a story but a trained astronaut deserves a bit more respect.

 

He doesn't say it happened to him. He says the camera crew captured it and came into his office and told him about it. They had the film developed and through proper bureaucratic channels it was sent off to Washington and he doesn't know if anyone's seen it since.

 

So he described what happened in detail, even though he was in his office. Then he describes the film being whisked away, without stating that anyone viewed the film at all.

 

It might be reasonably assumed that he saw the film, but why wouldn't he mention that specifically? He then goes on to explain how saucer shapes are good for travelling through the atmospheres of other planets. I would say that's a logical fallacy of "begging the question", and suggests confirmation bias.

 

Edit: After watching it again, I feel that the editing, interviewer, and narrator reduce the credibility a lot. They are clearly going for a desired effect, and not presenting unbiased info.

If it was Picard, that might be a little more credible...

Edited March 6, 2012 by md65536

[Appolinaria]

All UFO sightings are most likely aircraft built by humans.

[ydoaPs]

I think that while joe blow from the rocky top mountain might be easily dismissed I am not as quite as willing to automatically denigrate Gordon Coopers testimony.

 

The "saucer landing" is bizarre, it has no possible conventional explanation, he is not the only eye witness of this saucer landing to come forward, so either he is lying his ass off or he is recounting something he heard as something that happened to him, or he is actually recounting something totally inexplicable that happened in his presence. I might believe joe blow would make up such a story or miss-remember such a story but a trained astronaut deserves a bit more respect.

 

The formations of unknown craft he flew a fighter along with other pilots to pursue is not quite as bizarre but just as inexplicable for the time period and also recounted by other pilots of that time period but they were summarily dismissed.

 

ydoaPs while I know his memory is not positive proof, but I see no realistic gain to be made by him for making these assertions, I can't just wave him off as some doddering old man, i am rapidly approaching the age of doddering, we are not stupid because we are old.... ( I know you weren't suggesting that)

 

I guess my take is that his assertions about these unknown craft are credible, I'd hate to have someone as credible as him as an eyewitness to a crime i had committed.... Testimony by people as credible as Gordon Cooper are puzzling and not an easy puzzle to solve....

 

BTW, quite a few military pilots have come out and testified to some pretty inexplicable craft being seen, they were either dismissed or told to shut up if they wanted to continue to fly. Some of these men controlled nuclear weapons, in those days they actually had control of the weapons, two 2 to 4 megaton war heads were dropped just outside Goldsburro, NC If the plane had climbed a bit higher the bombs would have been automatically triggered when they were dropped, it would have been a very bad day in Goldsburo

 

 

http://www.neatorama.com/2006/09/09/oops-us-government-nuked-north-carolina/

 

The point I am trying to make is that at one time the people on these aircraft actually had real control over their weapons, it was but a few years for sure before more effective controls were put in place but we trusted these men with the most powerful weapons on earth but we dismiss them out of hand for seeing a craft of some sort that cannot be explained?

 

It might not be proof but it is.... very interesting....

 

 

I don't think you get what I'm saying. Even "credible" eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable. Then add on the time since the incident.

[Moontanman]

I don't think you get what I'm saying. Even "credible" eyewitness testimony is incredibly unreliable. Then add on the time since the incident.

 

 

I understand what you are saying but do you understand that dismissing these reports out of hand achieves nothing? Dr. J. Allen Hynek

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek

 

A scientist hired by the US Airforce to debunk UFO sightings come to the conclusion that there was credible evidence that something not of this world was going on. He was not studying things that had happened so long ago memories were suspect and while the average eye witness might be less than credible a great many of the eye witnesses were highly trained and highly credible, far beyond what you might see in court as a simple witness, more like a expert witness in a trail...

 

 

Change of opinion

Hynek's opinions about UFOs began a slow and gradual shift. After examining hundreds of UFO reports over the decades (including some made by credible witnesses, including astronomers, pilots, police officers, and military personnel), Hynek concluded that some reports represented genuine empirical observations.

Another shift in Hynek's opinions came after conducting an informal poll of his astronomer colleagues in the early 1950s. Among those he queried was Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the dwarf planet Pluto. Of 44 astronomers, five (over 11 percent) had seen aerial objects that they could not account for with established, mainstream science[citation needed]. Most of these astronomers had not widely shared their accounts for fear of ridicule or of damage to their reputations or careers (Tombaugh was an exception, having openly discussed his own UFO sightings[citation needed]). Hynek also noted that this 11% figure was, according to most polls, greater than those in the general public who claimed to have seen UFOs[citation needed]. Furthermore, the astronomers were presumably more knowledgeable about observing and evaluating the skies than the general public, so their observations were arguably more impressive. Hynek was also distressed by what he regarded as the dismissive or arrogant attitude of many mainstream scientists towards UFO reports and witnesses.

Early evidence of the shift in Hynek's opinions appeared in 1953, when Hynek wrote an article for the April 1953 issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled "Unusual Aerial Phenomena," which contained what would become perhaps Hynek's best known statement:

"Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there ... any residue that is worthy of scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not an obligation exist to say so to the public—not in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public places in science and scientists?" (Emphasis in original)[4]

The essay was very carefully worded: Hynek never states that UFOs are an extraordinary phenomenon. But it is clear that, whatever his own views, Hynek was increasingly distressed by what he saw as the superficial manner most scientists looked at UFOs.In 1953, Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which concluded that there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and that a public relations campaign should be undertaken to debunk the subject and reduce public interest. Hynek would later come to lament that the Robertson Panel had helped make UFOs a disreputable field of study.

When the UFO reports continued at a steady pace, Hynek devoted some time to studying the reports and determined that some were deeply puzzling, even after considerable study. He once said, "As a scientist I must be mindful of the past; all too often it has happened that matters of great value to science were overlooked because the new phenomenon did not fit the accepted scientific outlook of the time."[3]

In a 1985 interview, when asked what caused his change of opinion, Hynek responded, "Two things, really. One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I still thought they weren't going about it in the right way. You can't assume that everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this."

Regardless of his own private views, Hynek was, by and large, still echoing the post-Ruppelt line of Project Blue Book: There are no UFOs, and reports can largely be explained as misidentifications.[citation needed]

 

It can be asserted with little debate that the Airforce not only lied and ridiculed peoples reports of UFOs they did not scientifically study the phenomena and did much to prevent any real study of this phenomenon. To this day the US Airforce's stance of ridicule has prevented almost any serious study of the phenomena.

 

I just don't think the subject has gotten the study it deserves and anyone who tries risks being labeled a crank or crack pot. Not all UFO's are simple lights in the sky, many have an embarrassing amount of observational data and remain completely inexplicable. If any other subject had as much evidence as UFOs do it would be rigorously studied...

 

I just can't dismiss all sightings as mistaken identity or hoaxes or stupidity.

 

At one time meteorites were dismissed out of hand and the people who saw then and even picked them up after they fell to earth were dismissed as unreliable "eyewitnesses" this went on for centuries, ridicule accomplishes nothing.

 

Turnaround

Hynek began occasionally disagreeing publicly with the conclusions of Blue Book. By the early 1960s—after about a decade and a half of study—Clark writes that "Hynek's apparent turnaround on the UFO question was an open secret."[4] Only after Blue Book was formally dissolved did Hynek speak more openly about his "turnaround."

By his own admission, the soft-spoken Hynek was cautious and conservative by nature. He speculated that his personality was a factor in the Air Force keeping him on as a consultant for over two decades.

Some other ufologists thought that Hynek was being disingenuous or even duplicitous in his turnaround. Physicist Dr. James E. McDonald, for example, wrote to Hynek in 1970, castigating him for what McDonald saw as his lapses, and suggesting that, when evaluated by later generations, retired Marine Corps Major Donald E. Keyhoe would be regarded as a more objective, honest, and scientific ufologist.[6]

It was during the late stages of Blue Book in the 1960s that Hynek began speaking openly about his disagreements and disappointments with the Air Force. Among the cases where he openly dissented with the Air Force were the highly publicized Portage County UFO chase (where several police officers chased a UFO for half an hour), and the encounter of Lonnie Zamora. A police officer, Zamora reported an encounter with a metallic, egg-shaped aircraft near Socorro, New Mexico. Zamora witnessed two humanoid occupants of the craft, and in its apparently hasty departure, the craft left physical evidence of its presence. As of 2007, no entirely adequate explanation has been presented that would contradict Zamora's account—in fact, in a secret memo for the CIA, Blue Book's director at the time, Major Quintanilla, expressed his own bafflement at the case. Hynek described the case as a potential "Rosetta Stone" that might unlock the UFO mystery.

In late March 1966, in Michigan, two days of mass UFO sightings were reported, and received significant publicity. After studying the reports, Hynek offered a provisional hypothesis for some of the sightings: a few of about 100 witnesses had mistaken swamp gas for something more spectacular. At the press conference where he made his announcement, Hynek repeatedly and strenuously made the qualification that swamp gas was a plausible explanation for only a portion of the Michigan UFO reports, and certainly not for UFO reports in general. But much to his chagrin, Hynek's qualifications were largely overlooked, and the words "swamp gas" were repeated ad infinitum in relation to UFO reports. The explanation was subject to national derision.

[mephox]

I would agree with the statements of Moontanman in most cases. I agree that there likely have been visitors here on earth at least in the 1950s back when we first started a space-flight program and possibly even up to the 1970s when we were still actively plying the route between the earth and the moon with manned missions. If there were an ETC out there interested in us, I would certainly pay attention to our space program at the very least and once they had achieved space flight, I would want to know as much as I could. Granted that's because I'm an inquisitive person and trying to figure the motivations of a theoretical ETC is like trying to figure out what the demon meant when he asked "Feathers or lead?" We have no way of knowing exactly why an ETC would be interested in us. Surely not conquest - intergalactic conquest (for the purpose of overtaking) would pose much of the same trouble that invading a country runs into - multiplied exponentially for distances involved.

 

I think it far more likely that a species that has attained spaceflight and is capable of interstellar travel would be more scientific in nature than barbaric. Barbarism that we've seen on earth tends to eat itself. If a scientific expedition were here, I think it likely that a 'mothership' would be present in the Oort cloud where hiding is far easier than in the asteroid belt and one minor heat source against the entire galaxy would be far less noticeable than one anomalous heat source amidst cold rocks of the asteroid belt. Smaller visitor ships could come in essentially unpowered until near Earth and then leave at high velocity (matching the reports) and vanish in the heat glare of the sun or against the cosmic background. Who knows, they may even have heat capacitors that store their heat until it needs to be radiated later or radiated away from us so we would see nothing but the same black-body radiation we see of other objects in the night sky. The technical possibilities of a far advanced species are infinitely variable.

 

Perhaps one day they will drop the veil and we will discover the truth... Or they will leave and go on to explore another solar system and we will learn nothing and speculation will continue. They may even be Von-Neumann/Bracewell probes from another civilization and not living at all, but their mechanical explorers (this makes more sense to me actually. A ship running from an AI would have no theoretical maximum G tolerance beyond that of the materials of the ship, no need for life support, no supply lines... etc.)

[JohnB]

There are a few reasons for the quick dismissal of the UFO phenomenon. (At least for an ET explanation.)

 

First and foremost, the ET explanation is deeply insulting to the human psyche, for many it is too humiliating to even consider. This comes about from 2,000 years of being told that we were created in Gods image or however you want to phrase it. Bottom line is that we are supposed to be the peak of creation. Now if somebody else can come here but we have no way of getting there, then we are no longer "Lords of Creation", but are so far down the totem pole as to barely qualify as "intelligent".

 

Note that even in our Sci Fi literature which deals with the various "What if" scenarios, it is rare to find a story where mankind is completely overwhelmed by what he finds "out there". Arthur C Clarkes classic "The City and the Stars" is a great example of mankind failing to deal with being a minor player. Simaks "Cosmic Engineers" shows just how long it might take before mankind is mature enough to take a place amoung the stars. Our popular TV shows have had no problems showing their people meeting either Gods or entities with godlike abilities and outsmarting them before the final credits roll. This is unlikely to be the case in reality. We will be faced with technologies that we not only won't know why they work, but we won't know what they do. Consider as a hypothetical an alien ship that used in some ways forms of energy that we call "Dark energy". So we walk through the ship between all the happily humming machinery and every detector we have is saying that all the machines are doing nothing at all, they are not recieving, using or producing any energy.

 

So, in general it fits the belief of many that we are alone and they are quite happy to denigrate anybody and anything that challenges this mindset.

 

The military response is also psychologically based and quite normal considering the times. The US military led the way and everybody else followed because it was the easiest thing to do. The reasoning behind the military cover ups is simple and probably the most sensible thing they could have done at the time. By even the early 1950s the Cold War was well under way and the various peoples of the West were looking to our militaries, and the US military in particular, to protect us. We were relying on the military and along comes the UFO problem. Now the various militaries could have issued statements and told the truth and that would have gone down a treat. "We don't know who they are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know what they want. We don't know if they are hostile or not. And if they are it doesn't matter because we can't catch them or shoot them down anyway."

 

I'm certain that a statement along those lines would have assured the American people of the US militaries ability to protect them and their airspace. Since the "Unmitigated Flippin' Orrors", as the RAF came to know them, didn't seem to be widely hostile, they weren't sinking ships, shooting down large numbers of aircraft or wiping out the occasional town, the easiest answer o the problem was to make it go away. A "rational" answer would be found to each sighting, even if you had to break known laws of physics to find it. Misinformation and disinformation became the tools whereby the people were calmed. "Don't worry, there is nothing there. Your military can protect you. You are safe."

 

But here we are some 50 years on and the military is now in a bind. They simply can't admit that they've been lieing for the last 50 odd years. Assuming there has been no actual "contact" the wording of the admission would be a beaut, something like; "People of the World. Some 70 years ago we became aware of visitors to our planet. We didn't know who they were. We didn't know where they were from. We didn't know what they wanted. And we had no idea if they were hostile or not. Due to the Cold War it was decided to lie to you and claim UFOs didn't exist. We have kept up this lie for 70 years but now it is time for the people of Earth to know the truth. And the truth is. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know what they want. We don't think they're hostile because they haven't invaded after 70 years of overflights. You now know as much as we do."

 

That would go down a treat too. Of course, after having admitted to lieing for 70 years, then everybody would believe that the authorities had in fact come clean and weren't hiding anything more and that all future statements would be the total truth. If you believe that I've got a great bridge for sale, going cheap.

 

Denial of these craft was the only way to stop panic and prevent a global nuclear conflict. (I'll come to this in a minute.)

 

Whoever is flying these things, they are not locals. If a branch of the Western military had been flying these things for the last few decades would we really be developing the F-22 and F-35? The USAF has a small fleet of saucers but NASA is using fireworks to get people to and from the ISS? Come on, think! We might have a couple cobbled together from a crash site here and there but most of them ain't ours.

 

As to lieing to prevent nuclear war it's quite simple. If such craft existed they made (make) the militaries of the world rather obsolete, you can't fight what you can't catch. This was especially true in the 1950s and if a craft crashed in say, the USA, then if the USAF could reverse engineer the craft they would have the Soviet Empire by the balls. The longer the soviets left it, the further behind they would get. Their only option for survival would have been an all out nuclear strike to topple the West before it got too big to topple. The reverse is also true. If a craft went down in Soviet space and they were able to reverse engineer it, then they would have complete military domination of the planet. The West would be forced to strike before the reverse engineering could be completed. The "big lie" may have prevented a war.

 

A final point for consideration, the famous "Roswell" incident. The airbase housed the 509th Bomb Group, the only bomb group armed with nuclear weapons at that time. It was possibly one of the highest security places in the West. The announcement of the "saucer" came from Maj. Jesse Marcel, head of Intelligence at the base and a presumably reasonably important position. If you believe the "Official" story (and I think we're up to about Ver 4.0 of the realio, trulio, this is what happened, cross my heart, official version) then you are admitting that you believe that the head of intelligence for the 509th, after examining the wreckage and the crash site itself cannot tell the difference between a balloon with some aluminium foil and balsa wood glued to it and a crashed craft roughly the size of a DC-3. To believe the official story is to believe Maj Jesse Marcel to be so amazingly incompetent and mindbogglingly stupid as to be unable to tell the difference between aluminium foil and aluminium plate.

 

Any more answers from me will have to wait. I'm off to the New South Wales gem fields for a few days.

[mephox]

There are a few reasons for the quick dismissal of the UFO phenomenon. (At least for an ET explanation.)

 

First and foremost, the ET explanation is deeply insulting to the human psyche, for many it is too humiliating to even consider. This comes about from 2,000 years of being told that we were created in Gods image or however you want to phrase it. Bottom line is that we are supposed to be the peak of creation. Now if somebody else can come here but we have no way of getting there, then we are no longer "Lords of Creation", but are so far down the totem pole as to barely qualify as "intelligent".

 

Note that even in our Sci Fi literature which deals with the various "What if" scenarios, it is rare to find a story where mankind is completely overwhelmed by what he finds "out there". Arthur C Clarkes classic "The City and the Stars" is a great example of mankind failing to deal with being a minor player. Simaks "Cosmic Engineers" shows just how long it might take before mankind is mature enough to take a place amoung the stars. Our popular TV shows have had no problems showing their people meeting either Gods or entities with godlike abilities and outsmarting them before the final credits roll. This is unlikely to be the case in reality. We will be faced with technologies that we not only won't know why they work, but we won't know what they do. Consider as a hypothetical an alien ship that used in some ways forms of energy that we call "Dark energy". So we walk through the ship between all the happily humming machinery and every detector we have is saying that all the machines are doing nothing at all, they are not recieving, using or producing any energy.

 

I think we are in agreement on this. I fail to see how religion and the human psyche comes into the question of whether or not there are ETCs (extra terrestrial civilizations) out there and I also fail to see how that qualifies us as being far down on the totem pole. Do you compare the bear to the shark and say the bear is smarter because it can live on land? I wouldn't think so. If we and ETCs took different evolutionary paths they are both equally valid evolutionary paths (because they happened, obviously) and the fact that they got there first means nothing. Perhaps their world was formed long before ours, so they got a billion or two year head start on us - maybe they had fewer catastrophes or their civilization didn't collapse multiple times after the most advanced civilization of the time failed for various reasons. We believed for a while that the earth was the center of the cosmos and even made needlessly complicated machines to explain it, but that didn't mean it was right, for example.

 

To believe we are alone in the universe simply because we have heard from no-one else is a logical fallacy and to believe that we are alone because its insulting to our psyche is an even greater failure of logical thought.

 

I do agree that, to a certain extent anyway, that some science fiction authors do tend to play our species as unable to deal with being a minor player. But there are many more out there that do not. Peter F. Hamilton does rather well in his books portraying, in my mind, the opposite reaction - embracing the way the universe is when humanity is but a small part of a much larger whole and working within that part to make the best of things within a necessarily human perspective. After all, how could we have any other than a human perspective? Any perspective we take can be argued as being anthropocentric. We are human and our perspective is ours. An alien with have a perspective that THEY can argue is anthropocentric - which will be the largest block in communications with another species and perhaps a reason why we haven't heard from any: we're looking for them in ways that make logical sense to a human.

 

Finally, for this section, if we do run across an alien ship that uses 'dark energy' then I would think that it has SOME effect on the reality around it, much as the theoretical dark energy in our universe is forcing it to expand further, that we would be able to detect. If, however, it neither receives, uses or produces no energy it could be argued - quite logically - that it does not exist - or at the very least does not exist as a part of space-time as we know it. Maybe it will look like a blue police call box.

 

So, in general it fits the belief of many that we are alone and they are quite happy to denigrate anybody and anything that challenges this mindset.

We have the Fermi Paradox or, more appropriately the Fermi Question that we have yet to find an answer to. That we haven't found a signal from an ETC yet does not mean they're not out there. Perhaps they're not within our particle horizon - which would mean we are effectively alone. If they are within our particle horizon there are a multitude of theories as to why we haven't observed them yet (as radio signals, I'm still in doubt about many ET sightings here on Earth).

 

 

The military response is also psychologically based and quite normal considering the times. The US military led the way and everybody else followed because it was the easiest thing to do. The reasoning behind the military cover ups is simple and probably the most sensible thing they could have done at the time. By even the early 1950s the Cold War was well under way and the various peoples of the West were looking to our militaries, and the US military in particular, to protect us. We were relying on the military and along comes the UFO problem. Now the various militaries could have issued statements and told the truth and that would have gone down a treat. "We don't know who they are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know what they want. We don't know if they are hostile or not. And if they are it doesn't matter because we can't catch them or shoot them down anyway."

 

I'm certain that a statement along those lines would have assured the American people of the US militaries ability to protect them and their airspace. Since the "Unmitigated Flippin' Orrors", as the RAF came to know them, didn't seem to be widely hostile, they weren't sinking ships, shooting down large numbers of aircraft or wiping out the occasional town, the easiest answer o the problem was to make it go away. A "rational" answer would be found to each sighting, even if you had to break known laws of physics to find it. Misinformation and disinformation became the tools whereby the people were calmed. "Don't worry, there is nothing there. Your military can protect you. You are safe."

 

But here we are some 50 years on and the military is now in a bind. They simply can't admit that they've been lieing for the last 50 odd years. Assuming there has been no actual "contact" the wording of the admission would be a beaut, something like; "People of the World. Some 70 years ago we became aware of visitors to our planet. We didn't know who they were. We didn't know where they were from. We didn't know what they wanted. And we had no idea if they were hostile or not. Due to the Cold War it was decided to lie to you and claim UFOs didn't exist. We have kept up this lie for 70 years but now it is time for the people of Earth to know the truth. And the truth is. We don't know who they are. We don't know where they're from. We don't know what they want. We don't think they're hostile because they haven't invaded after 70 years of overflights. You now know as much as we do."

 

That would go down a treat too. Of course, after having admitted to lieing for 70 years, then everybody would believe that the authorities had in fact come clean and weren't hiding anything more and that all future statements would be the total truth. If you believe that I've got a great bridge for sale, going cheap.

 

Denial of these craft was the only way to stop panic and prevent a global nuclear conflict. (I'll come to this in a minute.)

 

Whoever is flying these things, they are not locals. If a branch of the Western military had been flying these things for the last few decades would we really be developing the F-22 and F-35? The USAF has a small fleet of saucers but NASA is using fireworks to get people to and from the ISS? Come on, think! We might have a couple cobbled together from a crash site here and there but most of them ain't ours.

 

As to lieing to prevent nuclear war it's quite simple. If such craft existed they made (make) the militaries of the world rather obsolete, you can't fight what you can't catch. This was especially true in the 1950s and if a craft crashed in say, the USA, then if the USAF could reverse engineer the craft they would have the Soviet Empire by the balls. The longer the soviets left it, the further behind they would get. Their only option for survival would have been an all out nuclear strike to topple the West before it got too big to topple. The reverse is also true. If a craft went down in Soviet space and they were able to reverse engineer it, then they would have complete military domination of the planet. The West would be forced to strike before the reverse engineering could be completed. The "big lie" may have prevented a war.

 

A final point for consideration, the famous "Roswell" incident. The airbase housed the 509th Bomb Group, the only bomb group armed with nuclear weapons at that time. It was possibly one of the highest security places in the West. The announcement of the "saucer" came from Maj. Jesse Marcel, head of Intelligence at the base and a presumably reasonably important position. If you believe the "Official" story (and I think we're up to about Ver 4.0 of the realio, trulio, this is what happened, cross my heart, official version) then you are admitting that you believe that the head of intelligence for the 509th, after examining the wreckage and the crash site itself cannot tell the difference between a balloon with some aluminium foil and balsa wood glued to it and a crashed craft roughly the size of a DC-3. To believe the official story is to believe Maj Jesse Marcel to be so amazingly incompetent and mindbogglingly stupid as to be unable to tell the difference between aluminium foil and aluminium plate.

 

Any more answers from me will have to wait. I'm off to the New South Wales gem fields for a few days.

I also tend not to believe the Roswell incident was a UFO - far more plausible that it was a crashed plane or other terrestrial event for a number of reasons.

• They are able to traverse interstellar distances, but are unable to navigate our atmosphere. This strikes me as highly implausible but, as I have no proof, I cannot say it isn't true absolutely, only unlikely.
• As you point out, there are many 'official' versions - all of which either contradict each other or tell very different versions of the events. The current summary version of which resides here: http://www.af.mil/information/roswell/
  • It spells out in unambiguous terms the factors involved in the incident. 13 US airmen lost their lives in tragic accidents in two separate incidents - one involving a manned balloon (2) and the other involving a KC-97 aircraft (11)
  • The non-human but anthropomorphic bodies found were crash test dummies, not aliens. Scientists or the military staff working with them would need to retrieve them and, if they fell outside the bounds of the Roswell AFB then of course there would be bystanders. This was at the start of the Cold war and everyone was extremely nervous over ANY activity performed by the military and especially involving military scientists.
  • If there was a cover-up, as it appears there was, then a simpler explanation is that it was a false ploy to distract any Russian surveillance activities from actual research and events happening elsewhere. This is, of course, speculation and, as such I do not give it as much credence as I do other speculation - an interesting mental exercise but not something to take seriously until real proof is presented.

So, I suppose I am in agreement with your conclusions about the Roswell incident, if not your method in arriving at the conclusion. Simply because I took a different logical path down a hypothetical road does not mean my method was the right one either, however. It's all conjecture until proof is presented that can be irrefutably tested. But I am happy to speculate in the meantime - it gives me ideas for other things to speculate about.

 

In conclusion, I believe that I am in agreement with most of what you are saying, JohnB, if my following of your logic is correct.

 

Anyway... Enough speculation for now. Time to get away from the computer.

[michel123456]

FYI another UFO sighting case has been debunked lately, it was in the belgian press last summer, here a link to an article in english. You never know what is behind a picture or a testimonial.

[Moontanman]

FYI another UFO sighting case has been debunked lately, it was in the belgian press last summer, here a link to an article in english. You never know what is behind a picture or a testimonial.

 

 

of course the cultural meme of faking UFO's for fun has led to dismissals as well. That's why I mainly focus on reports by military pilots in the early years, hoaxing makes it almost impossible to really trust any civilian accounts or photos but of course as i said earlier one hoax or a thousand doesn't mean something isn't really happening, meteorites continued to fall from the sky for centuries while the knowledgeable of that day proudly proclaimed it was all nonsense and all such rocks that fell from the sky were fakes and the people who saw them fall were liars.

 

You cannot take one false or hoaxed case and use it to proclaim all are such... I think the subject deserves to be studied by people who do not set out with a goal in mind positive or negative, it could very well be something completely unexpected and give some insight into how the human mind works. maybe we are hard wired to see certain things under certain conditions and in the distant past we saw gods and demons or angels and now we see technology..

 

Or it could be that in the past the aliens were real and used religious belief to control us in some manner. The possibilities are endless of course but i think something is happening that is a real phenomena. the fact that UFOs have been seen by multiple witnesses and seen on multiple radars and military personal on the frond, pilots in the air as well as civilian pilots and all in one sighting while not proof it is interesting enough to me that I think it should be investigated and the Airforce's debunking left no room for study, their just make something up and blame it on that attitude has not exactly helped.

 

I am still waiting to see if the data from WISE shows any heat anomalies, any alien space craft or base should be visible in the infrared...

[md65536]

I just don't think the subject has gotten the study it deserves and anyone who tries risks being labeled a crank or crack pot. Not all UFO's are simple lights in the sky, many have an embarrassing amount of observational data and remain completely inexplicable. If any other subject had as much evidence as UFOs do it would be rigorously studied...

 

I agree but I think the same things can be said of a lot of different conspiracy theories. All of the psychology, confusion, suspicions etc of conspiracy theories in general apply here (including the straw man of grouping all conspiracy theories together). I'd like to see a lot of things investigated openly, including UFOs. I'd be interested in knowing what Bush Sr. etc. knows about the subject.

[rigney]

I agree but I think the same things can be said of a lot of different conspiracy theories. All of the psychology, confusion, suspicions etc of conspiracy theories in general apply here (including the straw man of grouping all conspiracy theories together). I'd like to see a lot of things investigated openly, including UFOs. I'd be interested in knowing what Bush Sr. etc. knows about the subject.

 

Does anyone have a thought on this latest huge flash of light over Phoenix, Az.? Since no one seems to know, I wonder what it could have been?

 

http://9-11themotherofallblackoperations.blogspot.com/2012/03/mysterious-flash-of-light-over-phoenix.html

Edited March 12, 2012 by rigney

[Moontanman]

Another very credible UFO sighting...

 

http://thenightsky.org/coyne.html

[Semjase]

This video is as credible as it gets.

 

[Moontanman]

UFO sighting in Alaska, the UFO was seen on radar and by the pilots of an Air Japan aircraft. The radar is disputed...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_flight_1628_incident

 

 

 

Two objects

As soon as JAL 1628 straightened out of its turn, at 05:11 PM, Captain Terauchi noticed two craft to his far left, and some 2,000 ft (610 m) below his altitude, which he assumed to be military aircraft. These were pacing his flight path and speed.^[8] At 5:18 or 5:19 PM the two objects abruptly veered to a position about 500 ft (150 m) or 1,000 ft (300 m) in front of the aircraft, assuming a stacked configuration.

In doing so they activated "a kind of reverse thrust, and [their] lights became dazzlingly bright".^[1] To match the speed of the aircraft from their sideways approach, the objects displayed what Terauchi described as a disregard for inertia: "The thing was flying as if there was no such thing as gravity. It sped up, then stopped, then flew at our speed, in our direction, so that to us it [appeared to be] standing still. The next instant it changed course. ... In other words, the flying object had overcome gravity."^[1] The "reverse thrust" caused a bright flare for 3 to 7 seconds,^[8] to the extent that captain Terauchi could feel the warmth of their glows.

Air traffic control was notified at this point (i.e. 5:19:15 PM), who could not confirm any traffic in the indicated position. After 3 to 5 minutes the objects assumed a side-to-side configuration, which they maintained for another 10 minutes. They accompanied the aircraft with an undulating motion, and some back and forth rotation of the jet nozzles, which seemed to be under automatic control,^[8] causing them to flare with brighter or duller luminosity.

Each object had a square shape, consisting of two rectangular arrays of what appeared to be glowing nozzles or thrusters, separated by a dark central section. Captain Terauchi speculated in his drawings, that the objects would appear cylindrical^[5] if viewed from another angle, and that the observed movement of the nozzles could be ascribed to the cylinders' rotation. The objects left abruptly at about 5:23:13 PM, moving to a point below the horizon to the east.^[8]

[hide]Excerpt of communication with Anchorage ARTC Center^[9][10] Time Speaker Dialog 5:18 or 19 PMAKST AARTCC^{[note 1]}audio tape [Two craft, first noticed at a distance at 5:11 PM, approach to within 500–1,000 ft from the cockpit.] 5:19:15 JAL-1628, First officer^[8] Anchorage Center, Japan Air 1628, ah, do you have any traffic, ah, seven [i.e. eleven] o'clock above? 5:19:24 AARTCC, Carl Henley^[6] JAL1628 heavy, say again... 5:19:28 JAL-1628 Do you have any traffic in front of us? 5:19:32 AARTCC JAL1628 heavy, roger. 5:19:36 JAL-1628 Ah, roger and, ah, we in sight, ah, two traffic, ah, in front of us one mile about. 5:19:49 AARTCC JAL1628, roger, do you have.., ah, can you identify the aircraft? 5:19:58 JAL-1628 Ah, we are not sure, but we have traffic in sight now. 5:20:04 AARTCC JAL1628 heavy, Roger. Maintain visual contact with your traffic and, ah, can you say the altitude of the traffic? 5:20:14 JAL-1628 Uh, almost the same altitude. 5:20:21 AARTCC JAL 1628 Roger. Would you like a higher or lower altitude? 5:20:27 JAL-1628 Ah, no, negative. JAL1628. 5:21:19 AARTCC JAL1628 heavy, see if you are able to identify the type of aircraft, ah, and see if you can tell whether it's military or civilian. 5:21:35 JAL-1628 JAL1628. We cannot identify the type, ah, but we can see, ah, navigation lights and ah, strobe lights. 5:21:48 AARTCC Roger, sir. Say the color of the strobe and beacon lights. 5:21:56 JAL-1628 The color is, ah, white and yellow, I think. 5:22:03 AARTCC White and yellow. Thank you. 5:21 AARTCC, Watch supervisor’s entry Daily Record of Facility Operation
5:21 PM. JL1628, HB747, BIKF-ANC reported traffic at his altitude (FL350) one mile with a white and yellow strobe. AAL ROC^{[note 2]}and EDF ROCC notified.^{[note 3]} No known traffic identified. After 3 to 5 minutes the two craft change their relative position, which is not reported to AARTCC,^[8] and the captain unsuccessfully attempts to photograph them. 5:22:11 AARTCC [Requests information about weather and clouds] 5:22:41 AARTCC [informs JAL-1628 that transmissions are garbled and asks them to change transmitting frequencies.] 5:23:05 JAL-1628 [Reports clouds below them]. 5:23:13 JAL-1628 And now the target, ah, traffic is extinguished [i.e. disappeared]. We cannot see it now. VHF transmissions have returned to normal after 10 to 15 minutes of heavy interference.^[8] 5:23:19 AARTCC JAL1628 Roger. And I'm not receiving any radar replies.

 

There were more sightings within in a few months of similar UFOs in that area.

The UFO sighting that convinced the US air Force that UFOs were extraterrestrial space craft during project SIGN.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiles-Whitted_UFO_Encounter

 

 

 

Encounter

In the early morning hours of July 24, 1948, Pilot Clarence Chiles and co-pilot John Whitted were flying an Eastern Airlines Douglas DC-3 from Mobile, Alabama to Montgomery, at about 5000 feet in altitude.

At about 2:45 a.m., Chiles spotted a hazy red cloud, somewhat similar to aircraft exhaust. It was slightly above them, and to the front-right of the DC-3 by about half a mile. Chiles saw an aircraft, and, thinking it the source of the exhaust, pointed it out to Whitted and said, "Look, here comes a new Army jetjob." (Story, 71) However, they quickly realized that the object was unlike a jet plane, and was moving towards them at very high speed. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt would write that within a matter of seconds,

[t]he UFO was now almost on top of them. Chiles racked the DC-3 into a tight left turn. Just as the UFO flashed by about 700 feet to the right, the DC-3 hit turbulent air. Whitted looked back just as the UFO pulled up in a steep climb. Both the pilots had gotten a good look at the UFO and were able to give a good description to the Air Force intelligence people.

They had seen the object for about 10 to 15 seconds. Both men described the object as cigar- or torpedo-shaped, about 100 feet in length, and about three times the diameter of a B-29 bomber. The "fuselage" was entirely smooth, with no wings, projections or fins. A bright red-orange exhaust was emanating from the object's rear, and was more orange at the outer edges of the exhaust, but grew redder when it rose in altitude. The exhaust extended approximately 30 to 50 feet behind the object. They heard no sound from the object as it sped past the DC-3.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the witnesses asserted that the object had what appeared to be two rows of rectangular "windows." A few weeks after the sighting, Chiles was to write that "there were two rows of windows, which indicated an upper and lower deck, from inside these windows a very bright light was glowing. Underneath the ship there was a blue glow of light." (Clark, 182) The light from the object was so bright that both men were blinded by its intensity for a few seconds.

There were only a few differences in the observations of the two men: Chiles thought he observed a conical shape at the object's nose that was somewhat similar to a radar pole, and he described a glassy window at the object's front that was somewhat similar to a cockpit window. Whitted thought the object was slightly further away than Chiles described, and he did not see the cockpit-like "windshield" or the "radar pole" at the object's nose. Chiles recalled the "exhaust" as being less intense, and not flaring out as much as Whitted observed.

Given the early hour of the flight, most of the passengers were asleep. One of them, Clarence L. McKelvie, would later offer corroborative eyewitness testimony. He asserted that he saw an extraordinarily bright light from his window seat in the aircraft, describing it as unlike lightning. He later told Project Sign investigators that the light seemed to have moved parallel to the plane, but at a higher altitude.

Within seconds of the close encounter, Chiles asked Eastern Airlines flight controllers, via two-way-radio, if any known experimental aircraft were being flown in the region. There was none.

 

 

 

 

Explanations

The Pentagon first suggested that the men had seen a weather balloon, but this explanation was quickly withdrawn. Within days, an Air Force spokesman admitted the sighting was credible, further stating: "this country has no plane resembling a double-decked, jet-propelled, wingless transport shooting a 40-foot flame out of its back end." (Clark, 182)

Astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a consultant to Sign, argued that if the pilots had reported accurately what they'd seen, that "no astronomical explanation" was even remotely plausible. However, he did offer an admittedly "far-fetched" explanation, suggesting that the pilots had seen an "extraordinary meteor." (Clark, 183)

The men of Project Sign, however, had their own ideas. Ruppelt wrote

According to the old timers at ATIC, this report shook them worse than the Mantell Incident. This was the first time two reliable sources had been really close enough to anything resembling a UFO to get a good look and live to tell about it [Weeks earlier, Mantell had died in pursuit of a UFO].

Sign's personnel were very intrigued by the Chiles-Whitted report. They knew that rockets could fly, but there was no known technology that could account for a rocket being as maneuverable as the pilots had asserted. They pored through obscure technical journals (including the work of German engineer Ludwig Prandtl) and eventually concluded that a "flying fuselage" was feasible if the object had a power source that used nuclear energy.

Based on this, and other UFO cases, Sign's personnel began to favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Though there was no direct physical evidence, they thought that there was simply no Earthly technology that could account for some UFO sightings.

They allegedly wrote the Estimate of the Situation to argue their case. The document was gradually forwarded to the highest authorities in the Air Force, who rejected it, primarily because of a lack of physical proof. The Estimate was ordered destroyed, and no copies are known to survive.

However, Sign's personnel refused to abandon the interplanetary hypothesis, even when explicitly ordered to do so. Due to conflicts with "anti-saucer" elements in the U.S. military, Sign was dismantled and replaced with Project Grudge, which conducted little to no research, and which tended towards debunking of any UFO reports.

Hynek's meteor explanation became the official Air Force explanation for the Chiles-Whitted incident, though his qualification was not mentioned in later discussion of the sighting.

Edited February 20, 2013 by Moontanman

[Dekan]

 

All UFO sightings are most likely aircraft built by humans.

&nbs

 

That seems the most likely explanation - UFOs are secret aircraft, built by the US government.

[Moontanman]

  &nbs

 

That seems the most likely explanation - UFOs are secret aircraft, built by the US government.

 

 

No this cannot be true of all inexplicable sightings, either they are alien space craft or the evidence is false in some way, no middle ground...

[SamBridge]

I don't think you can currently use "credible" and "UFO" in the same sentence unless you combine credible with the prefix "un". There are many natural phenomena that could have happened. For instance, there's the extremely rare "ball lightning". It occurs very rarely in nature, but after enough sightings and recognition in the 21st century we were able to confirm large glowing balls near storms were not spirits or UFO projectiles, they are natural phenomena. There's also many tricks light itself can play on concave and convex lenses. In my adventures of photography I have certainly seen not only isolated clouds that have a smooth UFO appearance that mimic a lentincular cloud over regions with no mountains, but have seen clouds with a very similar hue to the landscape that were also "disk-like". But upon driving closer I found they were merely clouds, though the white lenticular clouds were pretty easy to tell that they were clouds, especially since they dissipated as they traveled over a body of water.

One should also consider not only the likelihood of life forming in the universe, but also after that, evolving to an intelligent form, then discovering space-travel technology, then finding this pale blue dot of a planet.

Edited February 21, 2013 by SamBridge

[Moontanman]

I don't think you can currently use "credible" and "UFO" in the same sentence unless you combine credible with the prefix "un". There are many natural phenomena that could have happened. For instance, there's the extremely rare "ball lightning". It occurs very rarely in nature, but after enough sightings and recognition in the 21st century we were able to confirm large glowing balls near storms were not spirits or UFO projectiles, they are natural phenomena. There's also many tricks light itself can play on concave and convex lenses. In my adventures of photography I have certainly seen not only isolated clouds that have a smooth UFO appearance that mimic a lentincular cloud over regions with no mountains, but have seen clouds with a very similar hue to the landscape that were also "disk-like". But upon driving closer I found they were merely clouds, though the white lenticular clouds were pretty easy to tell that they were clouds, especially since they dissipated as they traveled over a body of water.

One should also consider not only the likelihood of life forming in the universe, but also after that, evolving to an intelligent form, then discovering space-travel technology, then finding this pale blue dot of a planet.

 

 

So you are going to assert one unknown phenomena to explain another unknown phenomena? Sam, I am not talking about a light in the sky or something seen but not enough information has been gathered to know what it is. are you going to tell me a slow moving meteor stopped and shown a green light on that helicopter and was seen from the ground by completely unconnected observers?

 

Are you going to tell the airliner that observes a powered object was ball lightning?

 

I'm "not" saying for sure these things are alien space craft but to dismiss them all as ball lightning or odd clouds is just not paying attention,.,,

 

There are indeed cases of UFOs that are completely inexplicable, have huge amounts of data, competent observers, radar contacts, multiple independent observers and multiple independent radar contacts.

 

"edited due to leaving out an important word"

Edited February 21, 2013 by Moontanman