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SOHO Strikes Back
Nick Lightfoot writes "As seen on /. several days ago, Euroseti is holding a conference to show off it's collection of pictures of 'UFOs' taken by SOHO cameras. SOHO has released a response
page to show how a cosmic ray or other similar ccd artifact could be mistaken for a UFO, especially after the image has been enhanced. After watching Euroseti's video featuring some of the images, I was able to identify one of the 'UFO' images as a comet, and several others looked like they were just planets. Hopefully they will release some images on the web soon so I taking take a closer look at them without having to buy their £15 cd."
It is because they want to keep all those alien gadgets to themselves. And think of all those nice spacebabes on Venus they would have to share with the rest of the world.
-- we're dressed in green, and we're feeling mean
They understand that they will never be able to convince the hardcore UFOlogists, but at the same time they recognize the fact that there are a lot of people going "Hey, whats up with that?"
The fringes will never be convinced, but responses like this and Phil Plait's BadAtromy.com will help to explain to the inquiring minds who's scientific literacy isn't what it should be.
The real question now is can some other independent group prove such UFO-ish artifacts can be created like the SOHO group claims. After all, it was once said that the moon was too bright for Hubble to image, but color tests were acknowleged to be done using clouds over Earth. Now we finally have publicly avaialble low-res moon images from Hubble.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
The SOHO page *actually* shows how a 'flying saucer' can be faked by manipulating their data, NOT how the original data can be 'mistaken' for a UFO.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
This is a brilliant scam, and I am quite impressed. Someone has finally figured out how to capitalize on the gullability of certain extremist UFO groups.
I've got proof that Elvis exists! I've got hundreds of photographs taken by an outside agency. I've scanned them all, and for the low-low price of $25 (USD), you can own a copy of the proof on CD. I'll let you see a few really low quality internet videos of them before you pay, but I promise you that blur in the corner is The King!
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
Take a look at this SOHO image! Not only is the Solar system crawling with UFOs, but they've also been concealing the fact that the Sun is mounted on a giant stick! Sure, they say the stick is just a shadow from a pylon in front of the camera, but we know the truth, don't we?
Now the real question is: whose stick is it? And are they likely to come back and probe us?
I was wondering when Slashdot itself would post a link rebutting Euroseti's pseudoscience. What's a wonder to me is that Slashdot didn't update the article by adding a link to here when this comment pointed it out.
Anyone who has seriously massaged data knows the dangers of 'wanting to believe' It is very hard to limit oneself to error correction and legitimate pattern enhancement. This is especially true when one is using off the shelf, not fully understood, tools. It is so easy to introduce artifacts that can be mistaken for reality.
This is exactly what happened to these images, the Man on the Moon image, Man on Mars image, and will continue to happen. People want to believe. They consider themselves cosmopolitan for their ability to accept improbable explanations, but forget the first step was to extinguish all possible conventional explanations, the first of which is systematic error.
The universe does not lie, but it is vague enough so we can easily lie to ourselves. It is as easy to create UFOs out of fuzzy images as it is to create animals out of passing clouds. We can not use either to prove or disprove the existence of anything.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The proliferation of video cameras along with the lack of recent corraborated sightings seems to show that UFOs are not visiting us now. How many people independently videotaped the WTC collapse? Yet there are no current, credible UFO videos. Did 'they' stop visiting in the 1950's? The only way to keep these hoaxes alive is to push them just beyond the sight of the masses. If everybody had a CCD telescope then the hoaxsters would have to resort to doctoring Hubble images to 'prove' their point.
word.
Gentlemen, it's safe to take off your tin foil hats now.
On the other hand, there is always the question of where the line is between bias and fraud. If you believe and the evidence is inconclusive, then you might be guilty of bias. If you make up 'evidence', especially if it is contrary to existing evidence, and then try to sell it (no matter if it is mineral exploration data, or cosmic data), then that is a whole nother kettle of fish.
The bottom line is this: If there are ET's, and they are advanced enough to avoid detection on any large or credible scale, then they are surely aware of our capabilities (including SOHO and /.), and should have no problem continuing avoiding detection.
All this is just chatter to those who believe, and no evidence to the contrary will persuade them. Hundreds of millions of people worship gods that they cannot see, touch, or communicate with; others have turned this belief into a big, profitable business.
Shirtless woman joyrides in stolen police cruiser
Since the USSR wound down, GEODSS has also been used for finding near-earth asteroids. A few objects show up every month. Here's the list for December, 2002.
MIT's Lincoln Labs also operates an automated skywatch.
Here's an image from GEODSS. The objects that show as streaks are moving relative to the starfield.
If it's out there, one of these systems will pick it up within a few days.
The original picture before the "enhancement" looks more like a spacecraft to me. It looks like the original, constitution class, Enterprise, in orbit! The enhanced picture is obviously fake...it looks like flying saucers seen in TV shows.
Is this an undocumented time travel occurance where Kirk and crew visits 2001??
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
What really gets me is that the people searching for UFOs in the SOHO data obviously find that more exciting that the SOHO data... and that's tragic.
I mean, it takes some effort to follow the detailed science SOHO was designed to support, but the images alone should be worth looking at. Go look at this hotshot of four planets and the Sun's outer layers. Tell me you don't find that image awe-inspiring, or that you don't think the ability to get that image is among man's most impressive achievements.
(Yes, I'm a scientist by training, and do find this stuff genuinely awe-inspiring and have no time for those who refuse to learn and chase after UFOs. I never worked with SOHO, but I sat in a lab for three years across from someone who was doing a PhD on SOHO data. I was working on something much more boring for my PhD.)
Hopefully they will release some images on the web soon so I taking take a closer look at them without having to buy their £15 cd."
If these people were interested in science, they'd have release the photos on their web page first, then issued the press releases. When they do it the other way around, it's not about science. It's about the £15.
Geez! These guys clearly don't have any clue, they don't even know that UFOs don't exhaust anything!
Because we humans are near the verge of destroying ourselves, the aliens have upped the pace of abductions. The problem is that they don't have enough "regular" saucers for the job, so they had to pull some of their older chemical-based-propulsion saucers out of mothball and get them working again. Thus, exhaust fumes.
Even aliens are not immune from boom and bust cycles. Hmmm. Maybe there is a market for abduction tracking software.
Table-ized A.I.
So you think Euroseti's claims are a bit far-fetched? Perhaps just an attempt to cash in? Well, in a long ranging scientific analysis of the images obtained by euroseti, we at bobjonesuniversityseti have revealed the TRUE nature of the "UFO's" in the SOHO images. Here is the proof!
What struck me while watching the video was that every instance of a "saucer shaped object" was very clearly viewed edge on. As is the case with images of galaxies, real space craft would be viewed from many different angles. The fact that each and every image is viewed edge on proves that they are not what they may look like.