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New Zealand Government Opens UFO Files
astroengine writes "Following hot on the heels of a series of international UFO sighting disclosures, the New Zealand government has joined the party and made public 2,000 pages of UFO eyewitness accounts dating back to 1952. Helpfully, the NZ newspaper The Dominion Post has scanned the documents and has made them available online. Among the accounts of alien encounters and strange lights in the sky is one of New Zealand's most famous UFO mystery: the Kaikoura sighting. But was it aliens? Probably not, but it makes for an entertaining read."
UFO? Aliens? Lights in the sky? Not so strange when I see that this article has been posted 12 minutes ago and no one posted yet...
Wooooooow
no one posted immediately b/c there was an alien-induced loss of time...
In my experience most people misidentify pedestrian phenomena and call it a UFO. And being New Zealand I bet most of the sightings occur around Guy Fawkes night.
I was expected to see in the image a sheep being picked up half way in the tractor beam. :-(
kind of disappointed its not there.
...increase in UFO activity in exceptionally hot summers. They must be out to trophy Kakapo sculls...
My bet is that the objects in the Kaikoura sighting were normal aircraft. Maybe somebody decided to try his hands at IFR flying without an appropriate rating. The radar data is consistent with a normal aircraft and the rapid movement on the film is obviously caused by camera shake.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
In my experience most people misidentify pedestrian phenomena and call it a UFO.
MFOs anyone?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Sounds like a job for real men, Minister. Time to send in The Boys!
So why no reports from before 1952? Roswell incident occurred in 1947. I imagine before this people just attributed "UFO"s to natural "unexplained" causes, but then Roswell got so much exposure that I guess it made more sense for people to take the easy way out and say it's aliens. We're still discovering amazing natural occurrences in our atmosphere.
I'm not saying a UFO have never stopped by to take a look, but 99.999% of reports are likely explained by natural causes.
I've never taken a serious interest in astronomy but on a few drunken star-gazing nights I've seen a few fast moving lights. I'd always put them down to "shooting stars" without giving it much more thought. While they were UFOs to me in the sense I couldn't identify them I recently discovered the site http://www.heavens-above.com/ that has excellent satellite pass predictions.
I set up a tripod a few weeks ago and took a photo of the ISS as it passed over at a good azimuth and altitude. It really suprised me how bright it was both in the image and to the naked eye. Now I often look at the site and wander out the back for a look at appropriate times. Depending on the background terrain and path it's taking I can see how a lot of man-made satellites could be mistaken for something extraterrestrial.
While NZ of course have an airforce I'd doubt there's a lot of cutting-edge new tech being developed there, but their clear skies and southern location would make it a good location for viewing those sort of passes. Much like here in Tasmania that's only a little further north.
Yes, I've been sad enough to read some of this today. On http://issuu.com/stuffnz/docs/air_244-10-1_volume_1_opened_1959_-_closed_1983, pages 94 and 95 are hugely entertaining. To quote: ..."even though it might well have been privately thought, "Well, the old bloke may be mad, or somewhat balmy, but still in these times, one never knows". I wish to state, firstly, that I use telepathy largely, with other methods of fine communication to any distance"
Also: .... by quickening or slowing the vibratory lifts of the matter of themselves and ships but whose normally balanced state is one of electro - magnetic radiant matter energy with a powerful, surrounding, magnetic field, very dangerous to approach"
"they can densify at will
Plus!:
"Space and Zone Commander Zimer - Aultra (Zimaran) of HH Venusian forces and S-alliance, the great "saucer" coming down almost vertically, slowly, and oscillating slightly, while I kept contact telepathically and through the antennae of my finger tips with my first space contact and oldest interplanetary friend - in Command! who then fired his full broadside of "Star chaser" and rays, very like vivid lightening of hte sheet variety, back and forth vibratory in dazzling light, each burst coinciding with my signals as he hung stationary over the city"
Good job this was classified!
if we consider ourselves members of a rational society, this shouldn't be news.
UFO reports should be public period. They are reports of phenomena that are unexplained to the observers. If everyone has access to those reports, than it's easier to find someone who can explain them. I really don't understand why these reports were secret in the first place (except for the names and similar stuff).
new sig
> In my experience most people misidentify pedestrian phenomena and call it a UFO.
Uh, what? So they see something they can identify, but somehow gets confused and think it's something they can't identify?
But I'm pretty sure it was a whale spout in the sunshine.
> In my experience most people misidentify pedestrian phenomena and call it a UFO.
Uh, what? So they see something they can identify, but somehow gets confused and think it's something they can't identify?
Sure. The Kaikoura thing was basically lights in the sky and some radar tracks which might or might not have been correlated with them.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yes, "UFO" is a stupid term. Has been for years. To normal, sane, people it means "I saw something flying that didn't look like a plane" but to drooling morons it means "OMG! Aliens!"
How we know is more important than what we know.
This reads like "Project Blue Book" crap, which was later admitted by those involved to be nothing more than a public relations lie factory.
A cursory flip through these documents reveals them to be a sampling of sleep-worthy accounts, (points of light in the sky which are easily identifiable as satellites or other mundane objects) and a collection of letters written by school children and un-balanced people along with the patient responses from overwrought defense officers charged with the duty of replying to this nonsense. -Along with a bunch of internal memos where clipped newspaper articles were circulated among government staffers.
Either New Zealand's military, police and air traffic officials are blissfully excluded from the rest of the planet which has lived through hundreds of events of a far more dramatic nature and which include multiple witness accounts including people who are not allowed to omit documenting their experiences.., or this whole release is carefully edited spin.
I mean, come on. This is published by a government! As anybody who has experienced anything to do with any government anywhere, the people involved must exist in a state filled with 800 pound gorillas and the game-theory proven reality is that never, ever sticking your neck out is simply the only way to survive as a civil servant.
The only interesting point in all of this is that somebody somewhere decided that spin was in fact needed. THAT means there is a fear that the population was threatening to become a little too informed and needed to be tucked back in.
I'd say that Richard Dolan is largely responsible for this response, and he's been soundly dealt with over the last year or so; a man who was once a premier UFO researcher of impeccable academic quality and grit has been given quite the mind-fuck lately with a lot of weird influences introduced into his life. (Creepy psyops people). He's been seduced into doing those idiotic TV shows for heaven's sake!
This kind of release would help along the impression that his work is just a bunch of bunk.
Oh well.
-FL
correct me if I am wrong here but a UFO is a pedestrian phenomenon. I am able to identify a great many things in the sky to some degree, but there will always be things i cant identify. In the widest sense of the word unidentified one could even say that every flying object is unidentified by someone. Even by the strictest definition there are numerous species of insect that are not know to science and are able to fly, and if that is not strict enough then there are occasionally strange objects in the sky that no one really knows what they are. What I am getting at here is that UFO DOES NOT MEAN ALIEN SPACESHIP. In fact if you saw an alien spaceship, and you were 100% sure that it was an alien spaceship, it would not be a UFO as you have identified it. Now that that is out of the way I think it is great that these reports are being made public, I don't even know why they would ever need to be secret. I find flying objects, unidentified or otherwise highly interesting and think that attempting to identify them is interesting and worthwhile.
I'm just saying the threshold for classing something as a UFO is very low. And as someone mentioned UFO to many people means alien controlled craft.
Go read Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted Worlds for a good treatment.
.. are notorious for causing UFo reports. The float silently and flicker in strange ways and to the stupid that equals alien spacecraft.
These types of reports are typically kept secret because in addition to stories that are totally made up, they could be a source of intelligence on military aircraft. When testing new yet easily observable capabilities (i.e. VTOL), you don't want foreign powers reading your citizens' UFO sighting reports to judge how far along you are, or for that matter even to track down which airfields are being used to test prototype craft. In some cases depending on local geography and political relations, the reports might even contain information on craft of neighbouring nations.
Alphanos
Yes, and the normal people also have to figure out if you meant "I saw something flying that didn't look like a plane" or "OMG! Aliens!". I saw a UFO once, it was probably a blimp, but I wasn't close enough to verify, so technically it is still a UFO, to me at least.
Dereks' dont run
The term's not stupid; it's the usage of UFO = OMGZ ALIENZ!!!11 that's the problem as you point out but their stupidity doesn't make the term stupid. Unidenfied flying object - I rather like it's functional efficiency.
Maybe you, my fellow Slashdotters, can offer insight. When people ask me if I believe we have been visited by creatures from other planets I point out that nowhere in the Universe will you find a place with unlimited resources and interstellar space travel would require a great deal of resources. To devote the time and energy into a project as massive as visiting another star system would be a massive undertaking which would need specific goals and a high probability of the mission being successful.
The bulk of the readers can't reply right now. They've been abducted to be fitted with anal probes.
This article is about UFOs, not the TSA.
Of course it is aliens, it is in The Dominion Times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Star_Trek)
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Something like "Unexplainable Aerial Phenomena" would do the trick. As soon as it is adequately explained it would stop being a UAP. But unfortunately the past tense of unidentified means that once someone declares something a UFO it always will be.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Get to it before it gets ./'ed or someone decides that stuff.co.nz is another wikileaks!
crap, i meant 504, got my responses confused.
We could just classify all the stories into a big database, and run some stats, like how many have seen circular ships, how many seen flashing lights, it would be interesting to see the most prevalent story is, as it could appear many times from different locations and give us a clue as to the most probable design for a ship, and how many could have been just flying aircrafts that military had designed, but not disclosed.
In my experience most people misidentify pedestrian phenomena and call it a UFO.
In my experience anything which can not be identified IS a UFO. Good thing that's the definition too. Ultimately, such willful ignorance undermines the acronyms credibility which makes people look even dumber.
Part of the problem here is that all too often people constantly misuse "UFO". Its constantly misused to indicate aliens are in control. Such willful misuse of a completely credible acronym, "UFO", only leads people to cringe when hearing it, despite the fact, when properly used, there is nothing the least bit cringe worthy.
The facts are, we have thousands of years of documented UFO sightings. The facts are, the vast majority are readily explained as pedestrian sightings. The facts are, many are completely unexplained or directly contradict their official explanation. And yet, none of that implies probe-crazy aliens.
Even if you're unwilling to consider aliens for many modern sightings, it implies there is a nation with flying vehicles the size of some small cities (or at least extremely massive by modern aviation standards) and unidentified source of flight. Again, even if you exclude the possibilities of aliens, the prospect of "flying cities" is still pretty damn exciting.
Heck, even the Kelly Johnson of the famed Skunk Works program, after seeing a tiny, tiny part of modern aviation programs, years after his retirement and shortly before his death, was completely awe struck citing something along the lines, "It can only be described as pure science fiction."
The world of tomorrow is here and despite being secret, once revealed, is likely to completely blow our socks off.
Mother-Fucking Objects?
Kinda reminds me of when people show a picture of a fictitious flying saucer and call it a UFO. Clearly if you have a clear picture of it is an IFO (Identified Flying Object) and if it is also on the ground, then its a IGO (Identified Grounded Object) Then again if you know what it is just call it what it is and not a UFO.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Misidentification? How else would you classify Flying Objects that are Unidentified, except UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects).
Note: The term UFO is not synonymous with extra terrestrial space craft; In fact, once a UFO is identified as such it is no longer a UFO.
about a million more 9's after that decimal...then multiply by a billion
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There is a great Iridium satellite app for the iPhone, too. Just search for "Iridium" on the App Store. It uses your current location and has a few cool features (like showing the "flare" track overlaid on Google Maps imagery so you can figure out whose front yard would be the best, Jerry, the BEST to view it from.)
"While NZ of course have an airforce"
Ummm ... well ... we sort of do ... kind of ... in fact here is what we have .. fear us!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_New_Zealand_Air_Force#Aircraft
No sniggering in the back row please!
I saw strange lights in the sky around Mt Ruapehu late one night when driving through the desert there (south of Taupo on SH1), to the point where the whole van of people was saying "What the f*** was that?". We saw a few more lights/explosions and then pulled over on a hill overlooking the plain with a video camera but didn't see anything else. After reading about ball lightning online I think it was probably that. Either that or munitions from a nearby base, but I'm pretty sure the area we were looking at wasn't that close to the firing ranges.
Do you think I would be wasting my time with SETI if we had already been visited?
You'll hear the answer if funds transfer doesn't hit my account in the next 8 minutes
Support SETI@home
It's the army training zone, and clearly marked as so. I've heard explosions and seen lights on numerous occasions. I suppose it's rare enough to be unexpected though.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
New Zealand. 100% Pure, 100% Natural. 0 % Infantry, Navy or Air Force. 100% there for the taking.