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UK UFO Sightings Declassified, Still No Intergalactic Relations
schwit1 is just one of the massive flood of readers (and publications) writing to tell us about the recently declassified UK Ministry of Defense account of a supposed UFO sighting. Included are nineteen sightings between 1986 and 1992, with the most notable being a sighting in 1991 with a US Air Force pilot's first-hand account. Not that this lends an air of credibility to anything, just more papers with more words. "Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years. [...] UFO expert and journalism lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, Dr David Clarke, said the documents would shed new light on relatively little-known sightings. He said some conspiracy theorists would already have decided that the release of the papers was a 'whitewash.' He added: 'Because the subject is bedevilled by charlatans and lunatics, it is career suicide to have your name associated with UFOs, which is a real pity. The National Archives are doing a fantastic job here. Everyone brings their own interpretation. Now you can look at the actual primary material — the stuff coming into the MoD every day — and make your own mind up.'"
Not career suicide, just a hilariously pointless hobby like squirrel eating ... or Warcraft.
A career suicide indeed it is. We have had a good example here, in Canada. A scientist for the Defence Research and Development Canada, a DND department responsible for military research projects in Canada, lost his job a few years back.
During his free time, that scientist worked on the active SETI project. He was always meticulous about keeping is work separate from his hobby, but Radio-Canada was not. During a prime time interview, they captioned his name with the title "scientist for the Canadian defense" or something like that.
From what I heard, his career as a military scientist was promptly ended following that media "incident".
Why is the possibility of of earth being observed by alien xenobiologists and xenoanthropologists always immediately dismissed? It certainly falls within the realm of possible when compared against our current understanding of physics.
Astronomers are regularly finding extrasolar planets and are, in some cases, able to determine the atmospheric composition.
Biology is slowly moving toward transgenic creatures, cloning, and cyborgs.
Physics and nanotechnology continually revealing new information about how the universe works. Some of this information is finding practical uses in controlling information and energy.
In the past 100 years, computers have gone from laughably simple to being capable of modeling the climate of an entire planet. It's still innacurate and slow but it's getting faster and better.
If it were possible right now, we'd have all kinds of people exploring the galaxy. Within the next 1,000 years, it will be possible to find planets that have a high chance of sustaining higher life forms and deliver some kind of observers to those planets for further study.
What would prevent there from being one or more alien races from undertaking a similar mission of exploration? Why would Earth automatically be disqualified as a target of such a mission?
Oh please... "The Egyptian papyrus described a fleet of flying saucers darting through the sky?"
Seriously....
The Egyptians said NO SUCH THING, that is by way of being utter nonsense.
There have been lots of fascinating reports of strange events and objects in the sky in ancient time, most notably by the chinese. These are interesting because they reveal that early civilizations felt such things were worth recording, but most of the time information is scant, sufficient only to allow us to speculate as to causes, such as meteors or ball lightening.
They are not, in any way at all, indicating that there were people sitting around pondering alien spaceships in the ancient world. Ever...
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
The older you get, the more you realize just how fallible human perception and memory truly are, and how amazingly easy it is to fall prey to self-delusion. That pretty much describes every UFO believer I've ever met.
What is actually very fascinating is to learn about (and sometime experience!) the psychological manifestations that have been attributed to alien visitation. True story: several years ago, my mother called me on the phone to tell me that she had experienced an episode of sleep paralysis. She had the classic symptoms: an inability to move coupled with hallucinations of someone (or something) being in the bedroom with her. She didn't know what had happened to her until I told her about the phenomenon, and how throughout history people had attributed sleep paralysis episodes to supernatural or extraterrestrial visitation.
What was truly bizarre is that I experienced my own episode of sleep paralysis just a few nights later. I awoke in a panic, unable to move and absolutely certain that something was in the room with me. After about 30 seconds I broke out of it and jumped out of bed. Even though I intellectually knew what had happened to me, I didn't go back to sleep until I had checked the house for intruders. The feeling of another presence in the room with me was that strong.
I knew what had happened to me by the next morning: my mother's description of her experience, coupled with the power of suggestion, had induced a similar experience in my own mind. Since then, neither my mother or I have suffered a second episode. It was a very sobering reminder to me that even rigorous education and scientific training are not always proof against the psychological tricks of one's own brain.
If you think the parent is insightful read this ...
During the 1942 Battle of Los Angeles the military instituted a mandatory black out of the entire city of LA & fired 1400+ Anti-Aircraft rounds at a single, quoting the military, "unidentified aircraft." This lasted for more than an hour. Despite numerous confirmed hits the craft remained airborne and eventually flew off without ever being identified. (Read the 1942 LA times article).
In 1948 green fireballs were seen over the south-western skies of the US near nuclear weapons research sites. Famous meteoriticist Dr. Lincoln La Paz declared they weren't normal meteors. In 1949 the USAF started Project Twinkle under the direction of Dr. Anythony Mirachi.
The study concluded in a now declassified report that cinetheodolites had tracked 4 objects traveling at an "altitude of ~150K ft" (~28.5 miles!), were "30 ft. in diameter", & traveling at an "undeterminable, yet high speed." Mirachi went on to later criticize a Time magazine article that claimed there was no proof to support the existence of UFOs.
Mirachi wrote, "There was too much evidence in favor of saucers to say they could have all been balloons. 'I was conducting the main investigation. The government had to depend on me or my branch for information.' He said he didn't see how the Navy could say there had been no concrete evidence of the phenomena." (see here for more details)
Also in 1948 Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a self-proclaimed skeptic, joined Project Blue Book as a scientific adviser. By 1969 when Blue Book was shutdown Hynek did an about face. He wrote several books, particularly, "The Hynek UFO Report" which repeatedly stated that the attitude of Blue Book was, "it can't be therefore it isn't."
He also gave an interview, available on YouTube, where he said, "I was there at Blue Book and I know the job they had. They were told not to excite the public, don't rock the boat, & I saw it [with] my own eyes. ... The cases that were very difficult to explain they would jump handsprings to keep the media away from that." He later went on to found the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
July 13 - 29th of 1952, over the skies of Washington DC, numerous UFOs were seen by observers on the ground, in the air, & tracked on radar. The situation escalated & General Samford, the Director of Intelligence of the USAF, held an emergency press conference. When asked by a reporters what people were seeing he suggested the lights on the ground may have looked like they were in the air because inversions act like an "air lens" & bend light rays. He added that something similar could have "tricked" radar in to thinking it was tracking aerial targets. (http://ufologie.net/htm/usa1952.htm)
In 1969 an Air Force scientific report titled "Quantitative Aspects of Mirages" (Menkello, F.G. Report No. 6112, USAF, Environmental Technical Applications Center) made it clear inversion strong enough to create the visual effect described during the 1952 press-conference could not exist in earth's atmosphere.
1956 at Bentwater/Lakenheath an object was sighted by several military officers on the ground while simultaneously tracked on radar at 2 different stations. The object moved at ~4000 mph and was monitored for several hours during which two planes were scrambled.
When the 1st DeHavilland Venom locked on to the object the UFO shot to the rear of the plane. The pilot tried evasive maneuvers, couldn't break free & eventually had to return to base to refuel.
The 2nd plane encountered mechanical difficulties as it flew within range of the object. The US sponsored Condon Report had this to say, "
I'd recommend reading the book by the Air Force's first head of project blue book, Edward J. Ruppelt, before you make such general claims. It's available free online, here, and it's a refreshingly candid look at the sighting reports from the early 50's. He makes it very clear that he had access to all the pentagon experts and that a surprising percentage of cases were clearly not anything we had made. After reading this book, I have stopped mocking true UFO believers. Their case really isn't as shoddy as it seems.
flying saucers on medieval paintings
You mean circles?
F-16 were chasing above their territory, and which went through the sound barrier over urban areas without producing any supersonic bang.
A mirage, a light anomaly, a meteor, another aircraft seen at a skewed distance, a hoax by the pilots, a falling satellite---and about 1,000 other possible explanations that are all much more reasonable than intergalactic alien visitors traveling almost incomprehensibility vast intergalactic distances only to buzz our aircrafts and probe our hillbillies.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
UFO..... Maybe a secret hypersonic craft, since the SR 71 is retired, and there in "no" current replacement ? A cover up for soviet hypersonics ? Can't admit they have one and we don't. Consider that it is a great big deal to get here. I agree with the poster that your "abducted" people story is not rational. Kidnap a few humans if you need them, breed, and sequence the DNA, or just clone your own if you need to at this level of supposed technology. No one is coming here to bugger Bubba. Of course, if anyone had alien tech, it would be a huge leg up, aka the Terminator or Star Trek's Timeship stories. The fact that no one has just come out with a clean endless power source or radical new weapon is proof that no one has any significant alien artifacts.. -or at least ones we can figure out.
[...] the Sumerians, who sort of invented language.
The mind boggles. The likely timespan between the evolution of spoken language (meaning something with at least some syntax and probably phonology) and written language (which is what the Sumerians are typically credited with) is on the order of 1E4 years. And yes, IAALinguist.
More on-topic, I've personally witnessed a documented unidentified aerial phenomenon, also witnessed by hundreds of others, including police, firefighters, journalists (yeah, yeah). I'm talking about the November 9, 1990 sighting in Montreal. I was in Grade 10 at the time, walking downtown with two friends. One of them noticed the lights over Place Bonaventure, and we all determined that something at least "unusual" was afoot, and stood there looking at it for almost a half-hour. It was pretty neat.
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the official RCMP report on the incident, which concluded with no plausible explanation for the phenomenon.
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun
There's obviously a lot of skepticism on this site.. however a few years ago I was having a bbq and, before you ask no one had started drinking or smoking anything, but a couple of us saw these silver globes traveling EXTREMELY fast around the clear sky, they (and there was about 8 of them) sped over the horizon and then shot upwards twirling around each other. DEFINITELY not a bird, plane.. photos are: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3251/2959668832_e5abe840d1_b.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3208/2959668228_778ac7d3d9_o.jpg After seeing these, I'm convinced we're not alone..
Sure, it is certainly possible that we're being observed by an alien race. What makes no sense, however, is why they would be doing it the way the UFO believers think they're doing it, i.e. visiting us in spaceships and kidnapping random people for study.
UFO believers constantly weave their own preconceptions of how aliens "ought" to look and behave into their delusions. Just read the history of UFO abductions over the past 50 years, and notice how the stories and descriptions constantly evolve to match the technology and culture of the day. For example, the "abduction" of Betty and Barney Hill reads like a bad 50's sci-fi movie nowadays - which is almost certainly what inspired it.
Consider that an alien race would be literally centuries ahead of us in science and technology. If they've found an economical way to travel between the stars, then they would have an understanding of physics far beyond our own. The computing power at their disposal would be incomprehensibly greater than ours. They would have techniques for surveillance at their disposal that we could barely comprehend. My point is this: if aliens are actually monitoring us, we'd literally never know it.
Think of it this way: suppose you wanted to constantly monitor a tribe of chimpanzees. Within 20 or 30 years we'll probably be using small robotic probes to do just that. The probes will look like rocks, or insects, or a hundred other objects that will be indistinguishable from the normal environment of the chimps. The chimps will have no clue they're being watched. We'll even be able to obtain tissue and blood samples using robotic insects. Now extend those ideas by a few centuries of technological progress and you'll start to have a glimmering of how aliens would be observing humanity.
The whole idea of aliens flying around in spaceships, randomly kidnapping people, and subjecting them to bizarre physical examinations is laughable. It defies logic and reason. However, in the context of human psychology and sexual fantasies, the origin of such stories becomes perfectly clear.
Given that I don't believe in existence of god[s] ... no, I don't. This, however, does not prevent me from using the Bible as one of oldest sets of stories, be they fictional or true. IMO, most people don't have much imagination, and it would be hard for an ancient man to invent "a man on a flying throne" without some sort of an input (mushrooms wouldn't be enough - the idea of a flying machine has to be in his brain already.)
It is also interesting that Indian equivalent of the Bible also features UFOs (vimanas, see Wikipedia.)
It seems highly unlikely that first contact from another galaxy would involve anything remotely humanoid.
Like we'd have a clue one way or another. As I see it, there has been from the begining of multicelled life on Earth, strong selection pressure for limbs. And the biped has independently evolved at least twice (dinosaurs and primates). My take is that any planet with sufficiently advanced and varied life on it is going to have something bipedal. It might not be intelligent or even what we'd consider animal though.
Yes... and what's more, there is a documented psychological disorder in which people cannot tell the difference between past imaginings versus past events. I forget the name of the disorder now, but it is serious business and common enough to be responsible for all of the abduction stories and a great many criminal accusations. Let this be yet another compelling reason to never ever convict a person based on the testimony of a single witness.
Treatment for the disorder is palliative, at least for now. People who have the disorder are taught to frame their mental picture with a colored border so that later on, when they recall the memory, they'll see the border and know it wasn't real.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
They are not, in any way at all, indicating that there were people sitting around pondering alien spaceships in the ancient world. Ever...
It would be hard to expect an ancient people to say, "we saw an aerodynamic craft of strange configuration approach at mach 12, capable of extreme delta-V acceleration, flying in formation with a mothership and several smaller ships, each with thrust powered by some sort of engine producing multi-spectral visible radiation," but we might hear things like:
Ezekiel:
2 Kings 2:
Isaiah 66:
Jeremiah 4:
Zechariah 6:
One might consider something like this a modern re-imagining of Ezekiel's wheels.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Sorry, having an Air Force captain (pilot) describe seeing this *does* lend an air of credibility. The Air Force doesn't let Jim from the trailer park fly their planes.
Do you have ESP?
I've always wondered (and I honestly don't know, I'm not old enough) if the moon landing hoaxers were inspired by the movie "Capricorn One." The movie was released in 1978 about a mission to Mars which is faked from a desolate sound stage after NASA learns that the life support system on the capsule would break down halfway there.
Can anybody older than I, and with a good memory, tell me if the moon landing hoax people were around before this movie came out? Or if they're a result of the movie, similar to the UFO phenom.
Comment of the year
When I was a kid in the 70s, I was a bit of a UFO buff. I read accounts of all sort of aliens being sighted - tall ones, short ones, green ones, grey ones, ones clothed in shiny silver, naked ones...
Then, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, everybody started seeing Greys. No one sees tall green aliens in shiny suits anymore.
(It's kind of sad, really...poor guys kicked to the curb by Spielberg's FX.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't know about this particular scientist, though I do know that in some of the more secret 3 letter agencies (and various other slightly longer acronyms) that I worked for in Australia, we had a few black and white rules and regulations on the subject. It always amused me that one of those rules made it 'forbidden' to actually talk / write / comment about UFO's. I often wondered what evolution took place that would actually get those policies enacted in the first place. Was it some twisted idiot like myself messing around, or was it for slightly more serious reasons? I guess I'll never know.
That said, I used to bring the subject up pretty much as a matter of routine in some very amusing places. At least they were amusing to me. Before I was employed by government, one of the psychs at the interview asked me why I wanted to have a job in this particular category. I told him straight up: "I want to find out if UFO's exist" - he giggled like a school girl and assumed I was making a joke, scribbled some notes, and I got the job.
For a short while I got mixed up with a few contacts at DSTO, South Australia (Adelaide) who had access to a couple of bits of interesting gear (of the human manufactured kind) - in a briefing about it all one time, the perfect opportunity arose for another of my socially inappropriate remarks and I blurted out "So, you also take crashed UFO's there too?"
The answer was interesting, not quite what I was expecting, but lets just say, even at those levels there is "No Conspiracy"
I'm as anti-censorship as they come, but some things probably do need to be kept quiet lest you piss off someone that can actually hurt you.
Lets put it this way:
Through your binoculars you see test platforms and foreign planes flying around area 51, rednecks see UFO's, through our telescopes we see more, or perhaps more frequently, a lot less of much the same thing over various parts of our red dirt. We have our own supply of locally produced rednecks too.
Similar thing happened to me once. I am very much a UFO skeptic (at least skeptical of the 'alien' explanation anyway), but one day I was driving along around dusk and saw what looked like a classic UFO in the sky - cigar shaped, silvery, glowing. It was hovering rather than moving at high speed but its position did change slowly. As I was moving myself and the object held its nominal position, it could only be something large at a distance. I could only get glimpses due to terrain, but I *HAD* to know what it was...
It took a while before I could turn off the motorway I was on, and then figure out how to get closer to it. It was hard because I didn't have clear sight of it, but luckily it didn't suddenly zoom away as I half expected it to! Eventually I got it - I turned into a gateway to find... a large illuminated blimp attending some sort of sports event.
It is also worth reading "DMT - The Spirit Molecule" by Dr. Rick Strassman.
Dimethyltryptamine is the most powerful hallucinogenic known to man, and the book concerns the study of the effects DMT has on the human mind. During the experiements he discovers that the "alien abduction experience" can be recreated "at will" by administering relatively high doses of DMT.
DMT occurs naturally in the human brain and is regulated by the pineal gland - we are all taking a dose of the schedule one drug right now.
From this we can determine that perhaps the "alien abduction experience" is built in to us at some level, and that those who experience it have somehow triggered a flood of DMT.
Peace,
Andy.
Damnit! That system is a word-for-word description of my old idea for detecting stealth/stealthy aircraft- I came up with it in low-observables/composites class a few years back.
GEODSS is unsuitable for detecting low-flying aircraft. The field of view with big telescopes is too small. Sites have to be installed in high-altitude locations with good seeing. It's for looking at targets much further out. There are smaller electro-optical trackers for anti-aircraft use.
The most useful approach for detecting stealthed aircraft is bistatic radar, a subject which tends not to be discussed much in the open literature. Ordinary "monostatic" radar has the transmitter and the receiver in the same location. Stealthed aircraft are designed to have a very small radar reflection of the incoming beam back in the direction from which it came. That's why the weird aircraft geometries. But only to a limited extent do they absorb radar beam energy. Much of it is reflected off in other directions. Bistatic radars, where the transmitter(s) and receivers(s) are in different locations, can pick up those reflections. There are some clever ideas in this space. But I digress.
That is if you assume all life evolves the same way and undergoes the same probable events to come to a common endresult.
Imagine a square world, the entire conceptualization ability of creatures living on a square world would differ so greatly they might be unable to grasp our sphere shaped one and the implications with al the results.
Their biology, mathematics and all that would differ: they wouldn't have radiants, they wouldn't use degrees but will have a more firm understanding and derrived knowledge about squares. They won't really know Pi as they might have a hard time conceptualizing circles or spheres.
Events creating our culture, would have a entire different timeline as well; they might not have the same symbols, ideals, social constructs, "moralities", art or any of that.
Now, imagine then, to come to a planet, and observe a society, which takes its own references and mental constructs for granted, but for the onlooker, its alien. It's horribly abstract to grasp, and quasi impossible to trace back all those habits and structures which have evolved over the years.
The same way you find a "redneck" a "lower form of human", they might consider it otherwise.
Take this thought-experiment; in a place where space is scarce, he who lives in the open might be considered elite. In the same way, you might end up with a preconcept of creatures who are codependant and the ones being independant are considered king. What you find "disgusting" or "lower value" about a redneck is just cultural and is based on your frame of reference, conditioning and what you consider "wealth" or "health". To a species, alien to our, these nuances might be completely lost. Maybe they greet kings by anal probing them, as they can afford to be gay and do not require to fornicate to maintain their reproduction as they can afford some alternative means which might be considered more fashionable or they communicate through anal glands and feel frustrated humans are retartedly hysterical and fart (=screaming) uncontrollably when they try to engage into conversation.
I think it's an impossible task to conceptualize the unknown with all its probabilities.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1