UFOs In the News

Several readers have let us know about a report on MSNBC that France's space agency has announced plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings in a month or so. The archive includes some 6,000 reports relating to around 1,600 incidents over 30 years. In a separate development, many readers have sent in word of the reported UFO that at least six United Airlines workers saw over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last November. National Public Radio picked up the story with an interview with the Chicago Trib reporter who wrote about it yesterday. United is, strangely, denying that any such incident was ever brought up. The FAA admits there was an incident but is not investigating it.

Comments

Re:From CNN

[Joe The Dragon]

They must of been looking at the big Interchange near there
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=60016&ie=UT F8&z=15&ll=41.987057,-87.870326&spn=0.014195,0.042 787&t=k&om=1
http://whereroadsmeet.8k.com/Interchange/il-i90-i1 90.htm

Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft

[s31523]

You know, this is a very good point. I used to work at a place, long before mainstream UAVs, UCAVs and the like, and they had something that when people saw it flying around would call it a UFO. It would hover, move directly vertical, then fly horizontal and turned on a dime. Anyone not in the know seeing this crazy thing fly would call it a UFO and be right, and it certainly wasn't an alien space craft I assure you. I can just imagine all the crazy projects various government agencies and third party companies have going on that result in UFO sightings.

People just want to think these weird flying things are aliens visiting us. But honestly, if YOU were an alien, with this fantastic technology to fly hundreds of light years to visit another planet with life on it, would you just fly by some stuff then go home? Hell, I wouldn't drive 60 miles look at something and turn around and come home.

The French news is the most interesting

[maynard]

In 1999 the French government and military released the COMETA report, which essentially stated that UFOs represented some kind of physical phenomena that was unknown and deserved further study. It did not rule out the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis, which is most amazing given that this report was published and authored by well known French scientists and military commanders. A translation of that report is available (in pdf form) here:

http://www.cufos.org/cometa.pdf

(Note that I don't promote cufos.org, nor know anything about the site.)

Re:The French news is the most interesting

[maynard]

I witnessed a UFO back in 1994. Here is a description of that event I posted on slashdot:

http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=48139&ci d=4930168

Basically, I saw a flying disc perform outrageous maneuvers in broad daylight. I can tell you what that thing was not: it was not a helicopter, not a balloon, and not an airplane. But I can't tell you what it was. I honestly don't know.

It still bothers me. I still have dreams about the experience. But the rational side of me must separate what I witnessed (a visual image of what appeared to be an object) vs. jumping to the conclusion that it was a some kind of alien craft. It's tenuous at best to claim that I witnessed something strange - to further claim I know what it was, and that it was alien.... well, that's more than even I can take. I have no idea.

But it still bothers me. And it bothers me even more that even saying this in todays climate is to impugn one's own credibility. Even Michio Kako has publicaly stated that he thinks the issue is worth investigating.

Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence .

[aXis100]

The leap of faith required between Aliens and God is an order of magnitude:

Statistically it's likely that other planets out there support life, and some of them might be advanced enough for space travel. It's a significant but not unrealistic improvement on our own position/technology.

"God" in the biblical form requires an immense level of magic to explain.

Richard Dolan.

[Fantastic Lad]

One of the best researchers in the field of UFO's is Richard Dolan.

UFOs are not fun and games, they are not delusions. They are real. The phenomenon has involved real technology, doing real things that are not supposed to be possible. This technology, since at least World War Two, has engaged in a confrontational and provocative manner with U.S. military forces on many occasions. It has involved both air space violations and alarmed responses, and has elicited the concern of some of the highest ranking military and intelligence officers in the country.

We know this because, for a relatively brief period in America's history (primarily the late 1970s and into some of the 1980s), the Freedom of Information Act enabled researchers to obtain official documents from government agencies which clearly demonstrated this. Not that FOIA is officially dead today, but it has had its ups and downs over the years. As far as obtaining UFO-related information, FOIA's moment of glory was long ago, in the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam era.

Thus, agencies such as the CIA, DIA, FBI, and pick your alphabet-soup agency, which for years had steadfastly denied having anything to do with UFOs, suddenly released thousands of pages of documentation proving the opposite. It is true that, among these officially released documents, there is no absolute smoking gun - e.g. a memo from the President stating "Okay, what do we do about these pesky aliens, anyhoo?" There are, however, quite a few documents that are one cut below this. That is, documents that describe utterly awesome military encounters with the unexplainable.

Taken individually, such FOIA documents do not prove the existence of UFOs as something "not us." After all, people, even military witnesses, can make mistakes. Radar can be faulty or misinterpreted. But, taken as a whole, the released FOIA documents provide a large body of evidence relating to serious military encounters with UFOs. After you read the first fifty of these, you start to wonder.

Let's review a couple of these documents. . .

You can read the whole of his essay, (in two parts).

The quote from above comes from the second part. The first part is, what I thought, a fascinating historical review of how the world works with regard to secrets.

Or you can read his book. It comes highly recommended. --This is not your average "Woo woo, Leonard Nimoy looks at UFO's!" book. It only looks at cases reported by multiple airforce/military/police witnesses, (due to their typically being selected for being sane and sound individuals as well as the procedural documentation recorded in each case as a requirement of their jobs). Even though civilian accounts are left out, the book still manages to cover a couple hundred cases from the 40's to the 70's. It also deals in depth with the military and political side of the issue, and easily refutes many of the common misnomers about UFO's, (of which several are represented on this site).

He doesn't, however, get into what UFO's are here to do. That's a whole other can of worms.

Here is some channeled work which attempts to shed light on that subject, among others. (Beware, with a group like the one this particular material comes from, a lot of creepy people also come out of the woodwork to spread fear and confusion and lies, etc., in order to stop people from looking. So take everything, including this, with a grain of salt. This is the kind of material and subject matter which makes people want to play a lot of video games and shut out eve