UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[Astrophotographer]

I don't think we will ever see an end to this thread unless Rramjet disappears. It goes around in circles while he attempts to prop up each case and avoid issues with each one by using UFO websites and links that are biased towards the ETH.

Writing about the Condon Study, Dr. Roy Craig made a rather interesting observation about this:

Dr. Condon was strongly inclined to include material in the project report which would correct errors in UFO writings, including testimony before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. While he and I had lunch together, we had a long discussion of Dan Gilmor's opposition. Just two days earlier, I had advised Dan against such activity. My opposition was based on the conviction that such sparring would be endless. If one proved six of ten arguments wrong, the opposition would merely drop those arguments and substitute six new ones, leaving us where we started. The situation was similar to pursuing Dr. James McDonald's "twenty best UFO cases," which he told various groups of people were worthy of scientific investigation. As soon as the investigator showed several of the twenty to have no merit, those were simply dropped from the list and replaced with different cases. Since Condon seemed to love a good fight, many of which he experienced in his past activities, he must have found it difficult to yield to our arguments, and merely let erroneous testimony fall of its own weight. But he did. (Roy Craig UFOs: An insider's view of the official quest for evidence. p.212 - just so Rramjet knows I am not making this up!)

Like Condon, I really love a good "fight" and it is the old seadog in me that keeps me trying to point out errors in the various cases. However, interested observers in this thread (some have communicated privately with me) probably are taking the stance of Dr. Craig and feel it is pointless to continue. The bottom line is do we allow Rramjet to ramble onward and declare himself the winner because we fail to participate in his little charade or do we continue this endless battle?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Well, we could just leave him to it: Merely resist the temptation to respond to whatever half-baked nonsense is posted, and the thread will die.

It seems Rramjet is just going to bring up every UFO report in history, one after the other. He's never going to convince anyone; all he has is the "little victories" he gets from pompously telling someone they're being unscientific if they just declare he's posting rubbish instead of spending ages on a point-by-point rebuttal.

It's been very funny sometimes, but it's plainly going nowhere at all. If a moratorium/boycott were called, I'd be OK with that.

 

[Stray Cat]

Well, we could just leave him to it: Merely resist the temptation to respond to whatever half-baked nonsense is posted, and the thread will die.

Well maybe the more seasoned researchers are fed up with the constant stream of replacement stories to substitute stories which haven't stood up to the firm conclusion of alien, but I'm still enjoying this thread most of the time.
I have learned a lot by following it and find the humour and the seriousness to be very interesting and entertaining.

The problem with trying to close the thread down is that anyone coming into it late isn't going to read all 124 pages to see the indepth research and discussion, they will only see Ramjet's ramblings with no apparent rebuttal... that's not going to look good.

 

[TjW]

The telling point for me is that Rramjet doesn't know very much about the cases he presents. It's as though he just puts some UFO search terms into Google and pulls up a few pointers to some websites, then posts that as a "new best case".
He seems to like replying to posts. He doesn't seem to like responding to posts, however.
I have some sympathy, since I went through a period in my late teens when I developed an interest in UFOs and psychic phenomena. But not a huge amount, since my interest took the form of finding out more about such claims, rather than just wallowing in their simple existence. It was a little harder in those days, what with no internet, and the library being a two mile long trudge through waist deep snow uphill both ways. But the knowledge I gained about the claims was not nearly so useful as the metaknowledge I gained -- that the more you look into these claims, the less there is to actually see.

 

[blue deamon]

I think the UFOs is real but they rarely appear

 

[Marduk]

I think the UFOs is real but they rarely appear

Thats what everyone but Rramjet has been saying the whole way through

 

[Stray Cat]

I think the UFOs is real but they rarely appear

They appear every time something flies across the sky that is not identified.

 

[Marduk]

They appear every time something flies across the sky that is not identified.

Mine was better





and faster

 

[GeeMack]

I don't think we will ever see an end to this thread unless Rramjet disappears.

Or until people simply point out the logical fallacies and remind him that he hasn't yet offered a single shred of evidence. But that's not likely to happen as long as there are people here who enjoy indulging him. It gives him a sense of validation when he can talk all UFOish and stuff with the other kids. And as long as he has those kids to play with, he'll continue to play.

 

[Patricio Elicer]

Or until people simply point out the logical fallacies and remind him that he hasn't yet offered a single shred of evidence. But that's not likely to happen as long as there are people here who enjoy indulging him. It gives him a sense of validation when he can talk all UFOish and stuff with the other kids. And as long as he has those kids to play with, he'll continue to play.

Regardless, this has been a very informative thread, perhaps the best thread on UFOs ever on this forum.

Enough material to write a book. I suggest the title, "UFOs: THE RESEARCH, AND THE EVIDENCE ... THAT WASN'T"

 

[Rramjet]

Stray Cat…?

Excuse me?
[qimg]http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg117/ThePsychoClown/Condon-Plan.jpg[/qimg]
Everything in red added by me.

Two points:

First you claimed that the arrows in the Condon diagram represented direction (that being SouthEast). After repeated efforts by me to correct that erroneous assessment by providing a link to the Condon diagram and exhorting you to go and have a closer look, you failed to do so and merely stated that you were an “expert” in photography and could not be wrong… and then finally… when you DO get around to a “clarification” of your position (note NOT by actually examining the Condon diagram! “Don’t bother me with the evidence, my mind is made up!”) you point out that …wait for it… the arrows indicate distance… (stunned silence from the attentive crowd)….

Now, following the logic of the “distance” representing the size of the UFO… if it was at the intersection of the “sightlines” (ie; directly under the overhead wires) then it would have ZERO diameter! This means (according to your logic) it would actually be impossible for a “fake” UFO to have been “hung” in that spot… then if we continue the logic through to the ultimate conclusion - at the point right up next to the camera lens, the UFO would have been (again) some meter or so (at least larger that zero!) in diameter…. But of course this is utter nonsense! One simply cannot make the “sightlines” DO this type of calculation… because if one actually looks at the “sightlines” they are “zero” at THREE places… at the corners of both buildings AND at a point between them (depending on whether you utilise the left or the right or a combination of left and right “sightlines as your guide).

Simply…the “sightlines” are exactly that and nothing more. They delineated the furthest distance to the left and right (that is they represent the field of view) from the two independent camera positions (note the key word is independent – and so are the “sightlines”).

To illustrate more clearly how the UFO “size” calculation from the “sightlines” is impossible (nonsensical, illogical) – imagine a THIRD picture had been taken in between the two extant shots. Suddenly you would have an EXTRA set of “sightlines” bisecting the ones already drawn on the diagram… NOW what represents the “size” of the UFO? Does the UFO flip sizes? Does it become smaller, larger, in more than one place at a time…what? Then it really WOULD be a UFO! LOL.

So, the first point is that the “distance” estimates in the diagram as you have used them to represent the “size” of the UFO at various positions are complete and utter nonsense!

Now I don’t know if that was also what Hartman was indicating… but if he did…then he was as out of his mind also.

The second point is the actual direction of the UFO as described by the witnesses. (http://ncas.org/condon/text/case46.htm)

”Immediately after they both saw the object, apparently as it was still in a NE direction, moving slowly toward the W” (p.608)

”… then as the object gathered speed and turned toward the northwest” (p.608)

”…and returned outside just in time to see the UFO 'dimly vanishing toward the west'” (p. 608)

(emphasis mine Rr)

So when first spotted (to the NE of the observers) the UFO was travelling WEST. Between the first and second pictures it was travelling NORTHWEST and after the two pictures were taken it was again travelling WEST.

So you got your direction of SE from an erroneous reading of the “distance” arrow in the Condon diagram and have simply failed to read what the witnesses stated (“Don’t bother me with the evidence, my mind is made up”).

 

[Access Denied]

The bottom line is do we allow Rramjet to ramble onward and declare himself the winner because we fail to participate in his little charade or do we continue this endless battle?

Well, you know what I would do… close the thread if the majority of active participants expressed a concern for the direction it was going. In this case the OP has ignored repeated calls from participants to adhere to some sort of protocol in order to achieve some kind of resolution… the consensus being either to present your best case in support of your position or acknowledge that all of the evidence presented so far is subject to interpretation at best and fails to support the premise of the initial claim and be done with it. In other words, if the cases presented so far weren’t your best evidence then the presentation of more evidence of similar quality isn’t going to change the outcome. In science, if you fail to adequately address the concerns of a select group of your peers, your paper doesn’t get published…

In the absence of any direction from forum management I will support a global ignore resolution and withdraw my participation and I would suggest that any other cases be discussed in separate threads of their own so as to give others a chance to participate in the process.

I’ve been participating in this thread primarily for the educational opportunity but I think with someone as intellectually dishonest as the OP, eventually you reach a point of diminishing returns…

 

[Belgian thought]

Sorry GeeMack - couldn't resist

 

[wollery]

I am not embarrassed in the slightest. I am merely pointing out that reliance on chemical energy and 1950s technology is an extremely narrow conception of science and what might be possible in the future (or available to ET right now). For example:

(and I reference here: Barrow, J., D. (1998) Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits. Vintage Books, London.)

The leading American Physicist and future Nobel physics Laureate Albert Michealson claimed in a public lecture at the University of Chicago in 1894 that:

The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote, nevertheless, it has been found that there are apparent exceptions to most of these laws, and this is particularly true when the observations are pushed to the limit… our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of the decimals. It follows that every means which facilitates accuracy in measurement is a possible factor in a future discovery”​

(p.54)

The revolution began in 1905. Soon there would be developments which would bring new theories of quantum mechanics, relativity, atomic structure, and gravitation onto the scene. Curiously none of them was triggered by some new measurement of natural phenomena at unprecedented accuracy finding a new and unexpected layer of unexplained detail. All revolutions would begin from within the heart of what was known. (p.55)

(As an aside - did you know that quantum mechanics was unable to be experimentally tested for almost 50 years after it was developed!? Yet during those 50 years advances in the theory were forthcoming - even before it was testable as any hypothesis! Rr)

It is one thing to know the laws of Nature, but quite another to know the outcomes of those laws. (p.66)

There may be no limit to the number of different complex structures that can be generated by combinations of matter and energy. Many of the most complicated examples we know of – brains, living things, computers, nervous systems - have structures which are not illuminated by the possession of a Theory of Everything. They are of course, permitted to exist by such a theory. But they are able to display the complex behaviours they do because of the ways in which their subcomponents are organised. It is one thing to have a Theory of Everything: quite another to find all (or even some) of its solutions. (p.67)

At any moment in history there are not merely questions one can ask but cannot answer, there are question which there is no reason to ask. Whatever economic and human resources were made available to Pythagoras for the purposes of investigating the natural world, the results would have been rather shallow even by our own standards. He would not have known what questions to ask, nor could he have known. There is no reason to doubt that the present state of affairs is any different. (p. 70)

…perhaps they would be able to tap into the quantum zero-point energy of the universe and use that as energy. (p.136)

We also appreciate that there may be peculiar configuration of mass and energy which permit time travel to occur, or for local “wormhole” connections to be forged between parts of the Universe which appear (in terms of conventional light travel times) to be enormously distant. (p. 137)

Epic fail. No, really, completely epic fail.

Do you have any idea how much energy is required to create a stable traversable wormhole large enough for a manned spaceship to pass through?

Try looking it up.

Because I'm generous I'll give you a quick hint, the mass equivalence for a 10m wide wormhole is on a par with the mass of the Sun. Except that it has to be negative mass or energy. Any idea how much positive energy it requires to produce that much negative mass or energy? Again, I'll give you a hint - a lot more.

If you want to travel to the far side of the Universe then it's a better bet than using conventional thrust, but if you're just travelling within the Galaxy then it's a lot more energy than conventional thrust.

Care to try again?

 

[wollery]

Oh, almost forgot.

Are you going to enlighten us on how we might detect life on extra-solar planets? How we might detect intelligent life?

 

[Czarcasm]

Haven't checked in for a couple dozen pages-any verifiable evidence yet?

 

[Stray Cat]

First you claimed that the arrows in the Condon diagram represented direction (that being SouthEast). After repeated efforts by me to correct that erroneous assessment by providing a link to the Condon diagram and exhorting you to go and have a closer look, you failed to do so and merely stated that you were an “expert” in photography and could not be wrong… and then finally… when you DO get around to a “clarification” of your position (note NOT by actually examining the Condon diagram! “Don’t bother me with the evidence, my mind is made up!”) you point out that …wait for it… the arrows indicate distance… (stunned silence from the attentive crowd)….

Cor, you don't half talk some nonsense... is it really worth bothering responding to such dishonest drivel?

Now, following the logic of the “distance” representing the size of the UFO… if it was at the intersection of the “sightlines” (ie; directly under the overhead wires) then it would have ZERO diameter! This means (according to your logic) it would actually be impossible for a “fake” UFO to have been “hung” in that spot… then if we continue the logic through to the ultimate conclusion - at the point right up next to the camera lens, the UFO would have been (again) some meter or so (at least larger that zero!) in diameter…. But of course this is utter nonsense! One simply cannot make the “sightlines” DO this type of calculation… because if one actually looks at the “sightlines” they are “zero” at THREE places… at the corners of both buildings AND at a point between them (depending on whether you utilise the left or the right or a combination of left and right “sightlines as your guide).

Utter nonsense proving you don't understand what you are looking at.
In the diagram in the Condon report, the lines from the camera to the object (and beyond) represent the diameter of the object at the relevant distance away from the CAMERA. The two lines from each position don't converge (meaning a size of zero) until they reach the lens.
Go and learn something about stuff before you come back with more nonsense, I don't have time for it.

Simply…the “sightlines” are exactly that and nothing more. They delineated the furthest distance to the left and right (that is they represent the field of view) from the two independent camera positions (note the key word is independent – and so are the “sightlines”).

To illustrate more clearly how the UFO “size” calculation from the “sightlines” is impossible (nonsensical, illogical) – imagine a THIRD picture had been taken in between the two extant shots. Suddenly you would have an EXTRA set of “sightlines” bisecting the ones already drawn on the diagram… NOW what represents the “size” of the UFO? Does the UFO flip sizes? Does it become smaller, larger, in more than one place at a time…what? Then it really WOULD be a UFO! LOL.

Like I just said go and learn something and come back to me when you have.

So, the first point is that the “distance” estimates in the diagram as you have used them to represent the “size” of the UFO at various positions are complete and utter nonsense!

Now I don’t know if that was also what Hartman was indicating… but if he did…then he was as out of his mind also.

If you know how far away something is, you can work out it's size, if you know how big something is, you can work out how far away it is.
As neither measurement is known, some lines have been put on the plan diagram to indicate the ratio of size v distance. So from the PoV of the camera, if it was further away, it would have been bigger, if it was closer it would be smaller (are you following this nursery school lesson). This is what is indicated on the Condon plan view. The two set of lines are sight lines for the position of the object when each photo was taken and they expand the further away they get from the camera lens because of the object was further away, it would have been bigger. So the diagram represents: The possible size of the object (at two various distances), the two positions of the object in relation to the camera and surroundings and the general direction of travel.

The second point is the actual direction of the UFO as described by the witnesses. (http://ncas.org/condon/text/case46.htm)

”Immediately after they both saw the object, apparently as it was still in a NE direction, moving slowly toward the W” (p.608)

”… then as the object gathered speed and turned toward the northwest” (p.608)

”…and returned outside just in time to see the UFO 'dimly vanishing toward the west'” (p. 608)

(emphasis mine Rr)

So when first spotted (to the NE of the observers) the UFO was travelling WEST. Between the first and second pictures it was travelling NORTHWEST and after the two pictures were taken it was again travelling WEST.

So you got your direction of SE from an erroneous reading of the “distance” arrow in the Condon diagram and have simply failed to read what the witnesses stated (“Don’t bother me with the evidence, my mind is made up”).

Well for a start, if they were in the back yard (South of the house and East of the garage) like they claim, they wouldn't be able to see North East because the house would be blocking the view in that direction.
Unless of course, they were right up agains tthe garage wall in which case, they would have a very restricted view of that area of the sky.
So onwards - It was:
"still in a NE direction, moving slowly toward the W (6), they thought of their camera (1,2,3,6). Witness II ran to the car, thinking it was there, but Witness I remembered it was in the house and brought it (1,6). Witness II took the camera, which was already loaded. The roll of film had been purchased during the winter and already had two or three shots on it (4). At this time "the object was coming in toward us and seemed to be tipped up a little bit. It was very bright -- almost silvery -- and there was no noise or smoke"
So, if it was in the North East and it was coming towards you, which direction would it have to be travelling in?

I think you'll find that would be South West! (not South East as you think I claim... have they not taught you the direction of a compass yet? that's the second time in two days you've got it wrong).

Onwards once more -
"and then as the object gathered speed and turned toward the northwest, he had to move rapidly to his right to get the second picture. Both were snapped within thirty seconds, he estimated (1). According to another early reference: "[Witness II] elaborated, 'There wasn't any flame and it was moving fairly slow. Then I snapped the first picture. It moved a little to the left and I moved to the right to take another picture.'" (3). Plates 23 and 24 show the two photographs in the sequence taken. During this interval the object was moving quite slowly, apparently almost hovering, and it apparently shifted both its position and orientation in a complex way, changing direction and tipping just before it moved away, as indicated in Plate 25 (2,6). However, Witness I described it as "not undulating or rotating, just 'sort of gliding'" (2). The UFO accelerated slowly during or just after the second photograph and moved away rapidly toward the west (2) ."
So, with all these "almost hovering whilst shifting it's position and orientation" statements (even though both photos contradict this), it's no wonder there is confusion as to exactly which direction it was travelling.
However, the direction is YOUR distraction and even if was heading directly towards Mars, it would NOT make it a Martian space craft.

 

[Toke]

Haven't checked in for a couple dozen pages-any verifiable evidence yet?

There appear to be some disagreement on whether a multitude of anecdotes equals evidence or not.

In other words, no.

 

[BobR]

There is not much within 30 light-years of the earth and the energy requirements to travel a few light-years is just huge. Just once, I would like to see something that could possibly get them here.

glenn

Well, as soon as I have perfected hyperacceleration through matter/antimatter interaction, I'll have a look at whether time really does fold in on itself like an accordion when you accomplish it. I'll make sure and let you know, too.

 

[carlitos]

Brutal. Just brutal.