British To Release UFO Files

Sean Stidman writes "Looks like the Brits are planning to release their secret files on many UFO sightings, including the famous Rendlesham Forest incident. These files should be ready for download by the end of this week, which I guess means by tomorrow. Are their servers going to be able to handle the load?"

Comments

Re:This will never go through

[hkhanna]

Even though the British government has been collecting information on its citizens for quite some time and violating their Constitutional rights to online privacy with their big government databases, they have nothing on the US.

Britain doesn't have a constitution, so their citizens don't have constitutional rights. Eh, big boy?

Interested but skeptical

[aaronhurd]

This will definitely be interesting to see, but as always with governments releasing "secret files," I am skeptical. Certainly these files, if they are legitimate, are not the complete collection, but rather very carefully selected tidbits from the massive archives of British intelligence.

UFO != Alien Life

[peterprior]

I wish people would stop thinking "UFO! OMG! Aliens!"..

A UFO is exactly that... an Unidentified Flying Object. It doesn't mean it's from another planet, it just means there was an object in the air, and some bystander with a fuzzy camcorder at best couldn't work out what it was.

Re:UFO != Alien Life

[Wraithlyn]

What "conspiracy" are you talking about?

Extraterrestrial life could visit the Earth without there being some big conspiracy, you know. In fact any reasonable, open-minded mathematical analysis actually predicts it. The fact that we should, but haven't seen any aliens yet is known as Fermi's Paradox.

The people who refuse to acknowledge facts and evidence are actually on YOUR side. Please read this. It covers all the reasons why scientists have stubbornly refused to admit there is an enormous body of verified (ie, visual reports which match radar evidence) observational evidence to suggest that we have been visited by craft that are 1) physically solid, 2) under intelligent control, and 3) in possession of propulsion technology far beyond human understanding.

I particularly like this piece:

"This type of logic can be successfully applied to any claim. For instance, let's declare that dinosaurs are an extraordinary claim. This declaration requires no logical substantiation, just the way skeptics use their nearly zero a priori probability of extraterrestrial visitation to declare the claim extraordinary with no logical defense whatsoever, given the insufficient information to determine this probability. So, we have declared dinosaurs to be an extraordinary claim. The next step is to reject all fossil evidence for dinosaurs, since fossils are only acceptable for ordinary claims such as woolly mammoths; for extraordinary dinosaur claims, fossils are worthless. What we need, as dinosaur skeptics, is physical proof of an intact dinosaur. And, to make it even more similar to the skeptic approach, we don't need to defend the rationale of the demand for physical proof of dinosaurs; the fact that it is an extraordinary claim allows us to demand the very upper boundary of conceptually feasible modes of proof -- but conceptual feasibility does not translate into practical feasibility. Sure, I can demand physical proof, but will I get it? Is it worth ignoring fossil evidence in my wait for physical proof?

We could extend the analogy further by applying more skeptic logical tricks. For instance, dinosaur articles are published in journals which already believe in dinosaurs; therefore, it is biased and one-sided, and hardly representative of truly critical peer review. We could assert that all fossils are best explained as hoaxes, misidentifications of known and unknown geological processes, and hallucinations and/or misinterpretations by overzealous paleontologists imposing their belief system on an anomalous rock. This, I can contend, is the "simplest explanation", and I don't have to worry about using overstrenuous logic because, in an absence of physical proof of dinosaurs, any explanation is simpler, no matter how contrived and convoluted! This is the essence of the scientific rejection of the UFO evidence: an overwhelming need to disbelieve coupled with a shameful lack of research into the actual evidence."

No offense, but I think you "aliens are impossible" types are as close minded as the "flat earthers" and "fake moon landing" types.. no matter what volume of evidence you are shown, it's never good enough. The only difference between you and "conspiracy nuts" is that you have the backing of a bunch of scientists who don't want to admit how stubborn and blind they've been.

Re:Rendlesham Forest Disclosure

[Anonymous Coward]

yep theyll just black out anything sensitive. Or are the british better than the U.S.?

Re:We dont actually need these docs

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, all the arguments! Your insistence on such an absurdity proves your own credulousness.

Re:This will never go through

[AndrewRUK]

...until the recent human rights act, i didnt have ANY rights...

Wrong. You did, and still do, have the right to do anything not prohibited by law. Our laws do not say "you are allowed to do U, V, and W," they say "you are not allowed to do X, Y and Z." (U, V, W, X, y and Z being things that you can or cannot do.) I don't need a law to say I can post on slashdot (for example) - the fact that no law says I can't means I can. (And, for the pedants in the audience, I mean in general, I know there are some things the law says I can't say - incitement to racial harted is an offence, as is saying I could get you illegal drugs [counts as intent to supply, iirc] - to give two examples.)

cool

[zogger]

--glad to see the brits *maybe* releasing some info. will remain to be seen how hokey or how real it is. Spain and some other nations have released a little as well.

Link url to blackvault, the largest UFO site on the web, among other things contains thousands of US freedom of information act documents, and yes, there's a boatload of redacted out content, as in "nothing to see here, we just blacked this out because... uhhh... ya see.. I mean..., well because we can!" This site is BIG, well done, and thorough, I recommend it to serious researchers and enthusiasts AND skeptics.

http://www.bvalphaserver.com/

the Black Vault

The web master started this site I *think* when he was 16, I've been visiting off and on for years.

Here's my disclaimer. Some of ya'all might have noted my frequent reference to "government" as more or less a pack of liars. One of the two primary reasons (initially that is) I have held this position most of my life is because of "ufos". when I was a teenager some friends and I saw one very close up, very close. Nope, no drugs or booze involved to dispel any trolling. It was not swamp gas, nmoon on a ducks back, some helicopter, or any other explanation other than -no explanation. Some seriously advanced flying "something'. To describe it , it was a large glowing oval shaped whatever, it flew down the block just above the houses, stopped over a house closeby, hung out, then slowly went down the block, toward the end it started to climb then WHAM took off like mach bignumber and was gone. Tell ya whut you just do NOT forget things like this. So, I start reading about UFOs,and I notice the government more or less says they don't exist except as various lame reasons. Well, too bad, 'cuz I know this is a whopper. Score one for destroying a yong man's trust in government, already shaken by the kennedy whack, then oswalds rubout which was obvious to anyone with an iq above 50 as "eliminating some embarassing evidence".

government=liars when it comes to certain things. This is IMO of course, but in the decades since I have seen no evidence to persuade me otherwise, in fact,I'd say the evidence FOR ufo's as being something "other" is better than for "honesty in government".

Exactly what they are, no idea, demons to secret nazi craft, time travellers to interstellar visitors, angels to secret gov blackops-no idea, none. I tend to more think the correct answer is "all of the above".

Re:cool

[geek]

" Exactly what they are, no idea, demons to secret nazi craft, time travellers to interstellar visitors, angels to secret gov blackops-no idea, none. I tend to more think the correct answer is "all of the above"."

Or it's none of the above and YOU'RE the liar. I trust elected officials with college educations and clean background checks with top level security clearance a lot more than 16 year old kids running websites.

No offense, maybe you are right, maybe they are right, maybe I am wrong. I know it doesn't matter since you can't prove any of it. When you can I'll eat my words.

Re:Britain == land of the free.

[shepd]

Why is it in this 'free' land I'm assumed guilty until proved innocent if I forget the key to my encrypted documents? Not to mention the ever growing panopticon which is the streets of England.

Me-thinks you need to read up a lot more on the state of freedom in these countries...

Re:Rendlesham ain't your father's UFO

[Wraithlyn]

Thank you for responding. Yes, I've read the lighthouse theory. It's good, and raises some questions, but it simply can't explain all the observations, and it dismisses any observations that cannot be explained by its hypothesis as being "a marvellous product of human imagination."

Here is a very logical and well written essay on UFO skepticism. In particular, I would like to direct your attention to the section entitled, "Occam's Razor and the Skeptics", roughly two thirds of the way down. I shall quote it here:

"Occam's Razor and the Skeptics

The UFO skeptics don't understand Occam's Razor, and they abuse it regularly. They think they understand it, but they don't. What it means is that when several hypotheses of varying complexity can explain a set of observations with equal ability, the first one to be tested should be the one that invokes the fewest number of uncorroborated assumptions. If this simplest hypothesis is proven incorrect, the next simplest is chosen, and so forth.

But the skeptics forget two parts: the part regarding the test of the simpler hypotheses, and the part regarding explaining all of the observations. What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses, which is the inverse of the proper approach. The proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis by saying "if we assume the object was not physical, despite the level of evidence that would imply the solidity of a conventional aircraft with near-certainty, then we can also assume the object was not moving, was not exhibiting the color orange, was not 50 feet in diameter as described, and then declare that it was really Venus."

Do you see what I'm getting at? The lighthouse hypothesis could explain a light appearing to move in the forest, but it doesn't explain how they observed what they described "as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high." It doesn't explain how it could have "bank(s) of blue lights underneath". It doesn't attempt to explain why "the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy." It doesn't explain how the object vanished and was spotted again "an hour later near the back gate."

It can account for the presence of radiation, the depressions on the ground, and the tree markings, but it can't explain the relationship... ie WHY they recorded a "peak reading in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depressions. A nearby tree had moderate (.05-.07) readings on the side of the tree toward the depressions." Is it just a coincidence that the radiation levels from cosmic rays and whatnot are measurably strongest in the depressions and centre of the 'landing zone', and the side of the tree facing it? Perhaps. Unlikely though.

It doesn't explain how "At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared." It doesn't explain how "three star-like objects were noticed in the sky. Two objects to the north and one to the south [which] moved rapidly in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights.", or "The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical through an 8-12 power lens. They then turned to full circles.", or "The object to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time." (Yes I know it mentions these last observations. Saying the above is "probably" just stars is NOT an adequate scientific explanation for these very specific and detailed observations corroborated by multiple eye witnesses)

So, in conclusion, the lighthouse hypothesis attempts to 'mutilate and butcher the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses'. This is NOT the Scientific Method.

Re:We dont actually need these docs

[Christopher Thomas]

UFOSkeptic [ufoskeptic.org] a must read for all "science types", written by Dr. Bernard Haisch.

I'm afraid I'm not terribly impressed with this site. After reading through these documents, it became clear that Dr. Haisch has a habit of jumping to the most favourable possible conclusion given incomplete evidence (as opposed to saying "the evidence is incomplete; here are the options and we don't know which is true").

The most thought-provoking case of this was his discussion of Fermi's Paradox. The paradox is that observations to date suggest that there are a very large number of worlds in the galaxy hospitable to intelligent water-based life, and yet we see no evidence of it and none of it has provably come to visit. Dr. Haisch notes that this either means that colonizing civilizations don't last long, or that aliens _do_ come to visit, and immediately concludes the latter. If anything, the lack of strong evidence of visitation or beacons or the like suggests that the former case is the more probable.

As a side note, the implications of this chain of reasoning are fascinating to consider. Either civilizations almost inevitably eradicate themselves, or they almost inevitably become permanently introverted, or they almost inevitably move somewhere else (either a virtual world, a la "Calculating God", or another universe (a la the Sublimed Elders from the "Culture" novels). Another option is that even under favourable conditions, sapient life, or perhaps complex life of any form, is extremely rare. Yet another option is that there is some other factor affecting habitability of worlds that we haven't found yet that eliminates most from consideration.

Whatever the case, there is by no means convincing evidence for the conclusion that aliens must be visiting us. Yet, the whole site is filled with jumps of logic like that.

Re:Rendlesham ain't your father's UFO

[Christopher Thomas]

Here is a very logical and well written essay on UFO skepticism. [dabsol.co.uk] In particular, I would like to direct your attention to the section entitled, "Occam's Razor and the Skeptics", roughly two thirds of the way down.
[...]
What a debunker will do is mutilate and butcher the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses, which is the inverse of the proper approach. The proper approach is to alter the hypothesis to accommodate the observations. One should never alter the observations to conform with a hypothesis

This is true when observations are taken under carefully controlled conditions (that is, after all, part of the scientific method). However, chance eyewitness accounts of *anything* under non-ideal conditions are about as closely related to reality as a typical "inspired by true events" TV-movie. This is the bane of police officers taking witness statements from accident scenes; it also makes it reasonable to claim that any given interpretation in the memo was not a correct one, especially given that known phenomena almost certainly accounted for at least some of the items described.

This feeds back into the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" rule of thumb. If observations appear to contradict all expectations, and the observations are open to question, then it is fair to assert that the observations are likely to be at least partly mistaken. Note that this does not assert ironclad proof; only likelihood.

If you want guesses as to the other points you raise, sure, I'll give them; but without having been there that night, they're so much hot air.

Blind conjectures as follows:

The lighthouse hypothesis could explain a light appearing to move in the forest, but it doesn't explain how they observed what they described "as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high." It doesn't explain how it could have "bank(s) of blue lights underneath".

Silouette of trees obstructing the light would do this quite nicely. Most of the light showing at the top, some glow at the bottom, and enough of a glow at the sides to give the impression of shininess. I can believe that the blue colour was an illusion; colour sense is royally screwed up in low-light conditions (light dim enough to be perceived as monochrome often looks pale blue or green). Without actually taking a look at this lighthouse, I have no explanation offered for why the pulsing light was described as red.

It doesn't attempt to explain why "the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy."

A meteor as bright as the full moon had passed overhead a few minutes ago. This is described in the link I cited. Or it could just as easily have been some other trigger; animal noise needn't be constant.

It doesn't explain how the object vanished and was spotted again "an hour later near the back gate."

Obstructed by trees as the observers moved would be my first guess. Other explanations doubtless exist.

it can't explain the relationship... ie WHY they recorded a "peak reading in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depressions. A nearby tree had moderate (.05-.07) readings on the side of the tree toward the depressions."

That one's easy. Trees aren't radioactive. Any excess background was probably from rocks (my father had a few thorite samples at one point; drove a radiation counter nuts). Point the counter at a tree, and the tree blocks half of the background. Move so that you no longer have line of site to wherever the rocks in question are, or even move farther from the deposit, and you get a reduced count. Dirt will also do a decent job of blocking beta rays, as long as it's not itself radioactive.

It doesn't explain how "At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared." It doesn't explain how "three star-like objects were noticed in the sky. Two objects to the north and one to the south [which] moved rapidly in sharp angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights.", or "The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical through an 8-12 power lens. They then turned to full circles.", or "The object to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time." (Yes I know it mentions these last observations. Saying the above is "probably" just stars is NOT an adequate scientific explanation for these very specific and detailed observations corroborated by multiple eye witnesses)

You left out the part about the "red sun-like light" that pulsed and gave off the glowing particles observation being through trees, which means it could have been just about anything. Best guess: one or more people with flashlights checking out the site. A red pulsing light sounds more like a campfire, but wouldn't move.

I have no explanation for the distant lights observed on the horizon, but am confident that one of the many usual glowing-moving-light explanations applies.

So, in conclusion, the lighthouse hypothesis attempts to 'mutilate and butcher the observations until it can be "explained" by one of the simpler hypotheses'.

Per my comments above, I think that taking all of the observations at face value would be even less accurate, especially given the evidence offered that _some_ of them (the disturbance caused by the meteor and the lighthouse's pulsing light) are very likely to not be the result of spacecraft activity (as they were classified in the report). The scientific method includes acknowledging noisy data as such.

Re:This will never go through

[Anonymous Coward]

huh??? Are you stupid or just a troll?

Let me guess? You also think that the USA was the birth place of democracy, right?

Let's think here... Magna Carta (1215, King John, etc.), that's at least 500 years before your "civilisation" was a twinkle in our eye.

Democracy... sounds Greek, doesn't it?

Typical stupid, uni-browed, fat, ugly American... read a book, for god's sake.