UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

Status
Not open for further replies.
The resources wasted by SETI could also go toward finding out once and for all if UFOS actually DO represent ETI. No, SETI is simply a waste of resources, especially when more viable research paths are available.
Robert Bigelow has already spent millions on his own “Silly Effort To Investigate” to no avail but the good news is he’s willing to spend more…

Bigelow’s Aerospace and Saucer Emporium
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/bigelows_aerospace_and_saucer_emporium/

“The agreement between Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS) and MUFON sets up a “Star Team Impact Project” (SIP), with an initial funding period from five months to a year, with the option to renew for a second year. Investigations will be limited to cases where physical effects of a UFO are reported or where “living beings” are allegedly sighted or where “reality transformation” is said to occur. “Lights seen in the sky” do not qualify for paid investigation, a decision with which Hynek would have surely agreed. Anyone who is already a MUFON investigator can apply for a position with SIP, although new or inexperienced investigators are expected to demonstrate their skills by performing investigations of routine UFO sightings before moving up to SIP. Additionally, Bigelow is in the process of contracting up to fifty scientists, who are expected to be on the scene within twenty-four hours after significant UFO incidents, to perform state-of-the-art investigations of whatever artifacts or data the SIP investigators may obtain. All of the investigators’ travel expenses will be covered, as well as a paid stipend of $100 per day of investigation. Incentive payments and bonuses are also available for those whose contributions excel. The results of SIP’s first few months of investigations are scheduled to be presented at MUFON’s annual convention in Denver this August.”

[funny that apparently no results were presented but I digress]

Now quit your whining and wasting everybody’s time here and start practicing what you preach for a change… put your money where your mouth is Mr. Scientist and go get yourself a “real” job “investigating” UFOs. Surely you can show them how it’s done and produce some real results!

What are you waiting for Rramjet… or is it that you’re afraid they won’t hire you?

Hypocrite.
 
I stated:
“Huh! It has already been shown that Ireland and Andrews distorted THEIR diagram to suit their hypothesis (ignoring the pilot’s evidence in the process).”
And Maccabee alterred his on a preconceived idea. No big deal there was it?
Ireland and Andrews stated: "…our interpretation of the available evidence is shown in our Figure 1, where the data are drawn principally from a previous detailed report by Maccabee.2." Reference 2 is a history Dr Maccabee wrote of the events with the title "What Really Happened in New Zealand." (Maccabee, B. (1979a). What Really Happened in New Zealand. Mutual UFO Journal, May) . In that paper Dr Maccabee stated that the plane turned 90 degrees. Ireland and Andrews, by using that reference to construct their diagram, obviously would have known what the pilot had reported – but chose to ignore it (!) to construct a diagram that suited their preconceived notions.

Dr Maccabee states that his corrections were made because:

“ The first change corrects a mistake on the part of this investigator, the radar did not require 3 minutes to warm up after it was turned on because it was already in a warmed-up standby condition, a fact which I was unaware of until after the publication (…) The second change results from the actual measurements of the radar sweep range. Previously the value had been estimated”
(2nd letter, Applied Optics, August 1979. Vol 18. No. 15)

Thus the second rendering of Dr Maccebee’s diagram is the most accurate, accounting for more recently accurate information. Your implication that Dr Maccabee changed the diagram to suit his own purposes is mere cover for your embarrassment at the fact that YOUR cited sources (Ireland and Andrews) DID exactly that (and ignored the evidence to suit their own purposes in doing so)!

Moreover:
“A search of NZ government records by William Ireland, a scientist who worked at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), and a skeptic, (!) failed to turn up any record that there had been a SB in the Pegasus Bay, roughly 40 nm from Christchurch. This is significant because by NZ law, SBs are supposed to indicate their fishing locations to NZ government and numerous other boats had done so. An argument was made that the HSB had not reported because it had been fishing within the 12 nm limit and hence would have been fishing illegally. However, an examination of the locations where one might place a HSB (see Figure 1) shows that they all would have been outside the 12 nm boundary. Hence the fishing would have become illegal only if the boat didn't report its location. (So, why not report?) NOTE: A photo (35 mm color slide) of a group of squid boats, taken at a distance of about 30 nm (56 km), shows roundish images. SBs tend to fish in pairs to concentrate their light. (Even when in large groups they pair off.) Hence for a single boat to be fishing alone would not be a typical mode of operation. If there were one, then there should have been two boats in the Pegasus Bay. Figure 1 shows the track of the aircraft as if flew from Christchurch and sighting directions to the bright object as well as a number of suggested locations for the HSB.
Note that this is based on the immediate recollections of the pilot that he turned the plane 92 degrees before he stopped turning in an effort to put the object "on the nose" of the aircraft (see below). (He subsequently turned left to regain the original flight direction.)”
(http://brumac.8k.com/NEW_ZEALAND/NZSB.html)

NOTE THE NEXT TO LAST SENTENCE: "...based on the immediate recollections of the pilot that he turned the plane 92 degrees…" Given that we know Dr Maccabee spoke to Startup by telephone less than two weeks after the event then we can infer that this is when Dr Maccabee first became aware of the 92 degree turn.

“That's how I got to see the famous film only eight days after it was taken. A newsman from the TV station in Melbourne (Leonard Lee) brought the film to the USA. Lee also arranged for me to speak by phone with the pilot, the cameraman and the air traffic controller. Thus began the initial investigation of the sighting which was followed by analyses that lasted many years. I investigated the sightings by traveling to New Zealand and Australia for a month in February, 1979, to interview all the witnesses, by analyzing the film, and by discussing the sightings with numerous other scientists.”
(http://brumac.8k.com/NEW_ZEALAND/NZFlashingLight/NZFlashingLight.html)

As for a SB in Pegasus bay - on the southern leg:

“It was 45 minutes after midnight that the Argosy Aircraft with the air and news crews flew south from Wellington to Christchurch, passing over the Pegasus Bay. Yet no one on board the plane saw any light from a SB in the Bay, although such a boat certainly would have been seen had it been there.”
(http://brumac.8k.com/NEW_ZEALAND/NZFlashingLight/NZFlashingLight.html)

(and especially if it had Stray Cat’s kW powered navigation lights! LOL)

On the northern leg:

“According the weather report the lower layer of the cloud deck above the Pegasus Bay at about 0220 was 1200 ft or perhaps a bit higher. At that altitude the horizon is 40 nm or more away. A SB is bright enough to be easily seen at 40 nm. Referring to Figure 1 one sees that several of the suggested SB positions are within or barely at the 40 nm range from, the airplane. Thus, if the HSB had had its lights on by the time the plane took off from Christchurch, and if it had been at one of these positions, it should have been seen BEFORE the plane entered the cloud layer.”
(http://brumac.8k.com/NEW_ZEALAND/NZFlashingLight/NZFlashingLight.html)

No light was seen until the plane broke through the cloud tops. That means that, if the light came from a SB, it turned its lights on just after the plane entered the 1200 ft layer – a remarkable coincidence indeed.
 
Thank you very much for the correction.

It seems that I was over-eager, and was thinking that Rramjet was claiming that SETI is set up only to detect transmissions that the ETs are specifically aiming at the Earth with the intention of contacting us. I see that this is not the case and your link and explanation above have clarified that.

I jumped the gun, and apologise to Rramjet for that part of my post, which was in error.


I should stick to the illustrations.

:)

Thank you Akhenaten. Apology acknowledged and accepted.
 
I am averse to writing the same post twice (and the mods might object also), so if you find that your points have not been answered here

Then please note which of your points I have not covered in that post and I will get back yo you then.
Why are SETI look for narrow band radio wavelength signals? You repeated Freidman's argument that it's ridiculous to limit the search to those wavelengths, I showed why it isn't (they're the most energy efficient wavelengths to use, and the broader the signal band the more energy is required). Any comment?

There are no signals that could be sent that we (or ETI) would know had been received until an answer was sent back, so Freidman's objection on that basis is moot. Any comment?

The evidence of alien visitation has been followed up. That you don't like, or disagree with the results of that is irrelevant. Money has been spent on it, just as you want, and the result is that the evidence has been deemed to be extremely lacking. Any comment?

Finding signs of life on extrasolar planets could take decades, and you suggest that only after that should we point a radio telescope at candidate stars. But I showed that even when we find likely candidates we'll be missing loads of potential candidates just by the nature of the methods used to find them.

My questions to you in relation to this are;

What percentage of extrasolar planetary systems are aligned just right to be transiting?​

How many terrestrial planets are far enough from their star for us to see their reflected light by blocking out the starlight?​

Why should we wait decades when we already know which stars are likely to have terrestrial planets (i.e. the ones that both planet search and SETI are already looking at)?​

How do you know that ETIs aren't trying to communicate with us, just as we want to with Active SETI?

How do you know that the ETIs are more advanced than us (and please don't refer to UFOs on this one)?

Since the money for SETI is all privately donated what's your problem with how private citizens choose to spend their own money?
 
I love "Fairly Stale" poster - my fave so far. Couldn't find it in the other place so have to say so here. :):c1::)
 
Except, Cuddles and Rramjet, you're forgetting Active SETI - the attempt to send directed signals to aliens. Who's to say that there aren't aliens out there with their own version of Active SETI.

If we're doing it why wouldn't they?

Given that that was exactly my point, I'm a little confused as to why you think I was forgetting it.

It seems that I was over-eager, and was thinking that Rramjet was claiming that SETI is set up only to detect transmissions that the ETs are specifically aiming at the Earth with the intention of contacting us. I see that this is not the case and your link and explanation above have clarified that.

But that is exactly what Rramjet was saying. At least I think it is, he's not particularly consistent. There is very little chance of us detecting stray signals, the only thing SETI has a real chance of detecting are deliberate ones, or possibly other directed signals such as radar ranging. The problem is not his assumption that that is all SETI could find, it is his assumption that such effort is wasted because aliens are here right now.

Thank you Cuddles – sanity and scientific fact finally come to the fore!

Sanity and scientific fact have been here for a while, you just ignore it most of the time.

Where YOU go wrong here is in the assumption that if ETI were here, they would be emitting signals that we could detect. This is by NO means certain.

Yet every single case you have presented supposedly involves aliens emitting signals that we can detect. Sure, we could postulate something entirely different, but that would contradict your claims more than anyone else's.

Moreover you misconstrue what I am saying. I am not contending we look for signals from ETI at all

I know you're not, and I never suggested you were. Once again you fail at reading comprehension. What I actually pointed out is that if your claims were true, it would be almost impossible for SETI not to see something. Your arguments against SETI are in direct contradiction to your arguments in favour of aliens on Earth.

Methane is solely produced by biological processes
(http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=exobio03)

This is, quite simply, complete and utter bollocks. Methane is found in the atmosphere of almost every planet in the solar system, as well as many moons. As far as I am aware we haven't discovered life on Jupiter or Pluto yet.

There are also oxygen and carbon dioxide we can look at… On a distant planet we will be able to analyse the atmosphere by the absorption technique…simply light passing through the atmosphere splits into its component wavelengths and certain chemicals will cause “signature” dark bands (indicating markers for different chemicals) in that observed spectrum. This won’t be easy, but the technology to do so is getting better every day.

Please, spare us your condescending attitude. I am a real professional physicist, not someone like you pretending to be a scientist. I know far more about spectroscopy than you ever will. The simple fact is, as I already explained, spectroscopy can never actually tell us whether life is present.

Sorry Cuddles, but given that we are discovering planets now at an ever increasing rate so sooner or later we will be pinpointing “habitable” planets that we can start analysing for life.

Firstly, the rate at which we discover planets has nothing whatsoever to do with the kinds of planets we are actually capable of finding. Current technology cannot find Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbits. We could launch enough telescopes to find millions of planets every day, and it still wouldn't get us any closer to finding habitable ones. Of course, the technology is advancing as well, so we are getting closer to finding habitable planets, but that has nothing at all to do with the rate planets are found.

Of course, finding planets is still a long way from conducting atmospheric spectroscopy. You can find planets without ever having to detect light coming from them, but that doesn't work if you want to analyse their composition. We're getting a lot closer to finding small planets, but we're not a lot closer to being able to take visual images of them.

This would seem a far stronger proposition that SETI’s millions to one shot in the dark –and we are already doing it – so why waste money on SETI when it should be going toward the technology to aid the discovery of actual planets and potential life on them. THAT would seem to be the most productive path to take and would give us a greater chance of success than SETI ever could.

You also think blimps and mirrors seem to be aliens. What you think seems to be the case rarely appears to have any relation to reality.

The resources wasted by SETI could also go toward finding out once and for all if UFOS actually DO represent ETI.

No, SETI is simply a waste of resources, especially when more viable research paths are available.

Given what we've seen of your idea of "research", this is probably the best recommendation I've ever seen in favour of SETI.
 
Given that that was exactly my point, I'm a little confused as to why you think I was forgetting it.
Sorry, completely misread your post (largely because I was skimming a bit).

This is, quite simply, complete and utter bollocks. Methane is found in the atmosphere of almost every planet in the solar system, as well as many moons. As far as I am aware we haven't discovered life on Jupiter or Pluto yet.
In fact, it's the third most abundant gas in Jupiter's atmosphere. So, only life produces methane, eh? Watch out for the invasion of the Jovian gas creatures.

Please, spare us your condescending attitude. I am a real professional physicist, not someone like you pretending to be a scientist. I know far more about spectroscopy than you ever will. The simple fact is, as I already explained, spectroscopy can never actually tell us whether life is present.
I actually do astronomical spectroscopy, and Rramjet's "dark bands" almost made me spit coffee over my laptop. I think he once saw a picture of the Sun's "spectrum" in a high school science textbook.
 
I actually do astronomical spectroscopy, and Rramjet's "dark bands" almost made me spit coffee over my laptop. I think he once saw a picture of the Sun's "spectrum" in a high school science textbook.


So again we have experts in relevant fields demonstrating that Rramjet clearly doesn't have qualifications which he claims to have, and additional support to the hypothesis that he isn't any kind of a scientist at all.

And speaking of hypotheses, Rramjet, how's that rebuttal coming, you know, refuting the conjecture that UFOs are gods messing with an insane high school kid's head to make him say stupid things on the Internet? Or are you going to just let that stand as one of the best evidenced explanations put forth so far?
 
Last edited:
Yet every single case you have presented supposedly involves aliens emitting signals that we can detect. Sure, we could postulate something entirely different, but that would contradict your claims more than anyone else's.
That is completely untrue. First, most of my cases are UFO cases, not “alien” cases – and I have repeatedly pointed out in those cases that “aliens” (and especially ETI) cannot be the conclusion. Second, the only “emissions” detected in SOME of the cases presented was light – for the main part, the rest of the detection of the UFOs was via radar (reflected human emission) and daylight sightings (reflected natural visible spectrum emissions). There were two cases where it seems likely that some form (or combination of) ionizing radiation was apparent (in that there were detrimental physical effects on the observers) but these hardly amount to “…every single case…”.

I know you're not, and I never suggested you were. Once again you fail at reading comprehension. What I actually pointed out is that if your claims were true, it would be almost impossible for SETI not to see something. Your arguments against SETI are in direct contradiction to your arguments in favour of aliens on Earth.
No wonder JREF is trouble – even the moderators cannot make a point without being uncivil and resorting to personal attack.

Please point to anywhere in my “arguments” against SETI that are in “direct” contradiction with my arguments for UFOs and “aliens".

Please, spare us your condescending attitude…
Really Cuddles, for a moderator, in my opinion, you are becoming too emotionally involved in this and statements such as (” This is, quite simply, complete and utter bollocks.”) do not help. I merely made a number of assertions, if you believed those assertions to be mistaken or incorrect in some way, all you had to do was point out how and why.

…and your having to resort to an unfounded appeal to authority (“I am a real professional physicist…”), while at the same time resorting to denigration ( “…not someone like you pretending to be a scientist.”) usually means that a person is not sure enough of their arguments to let them stand alone.

You also resort to misrepresentation of other’s statements and arguments ( “You also think blimps and mirrors seem to be aliens.”). I have NEVER claimed “aliens” in the cases you (are obviously) referring to. Moreover, in the one, you ignore both the eyewitness testimony and the historical record which makes it absolutely implausible that a blimp could have been at the place and time - and in the second, you ignore the fact that no known mirror has been found that defines the precise shape of the UFO combined with photo analysis (by UFO debunkers and proponents alike) which shows that a “mirror” is an utterly implausible source.

You have a go at gratuitous unfounded assertion ( “Sanity and scientific fact have been here for a while, you just ignore it most of the time.” and “What you think seems to be the case rarely appears to have any relation to reality.”) to which, if I was as equally disinterested in research and evidence, I could reply in kind – which however would be to involve myself in a shouting match begun by you. I am, fortunately for all concerned, merely interested in the scientific method and am content to let my arguments stand or fall unaided by such unscientific UFO debunker methodology of argument.

Quite simply, I expect better from a so-called “moderator” in the JREF forum.
 
ciao Rramjet, I'd like to say its been an education, but obviously that would be a lie
:D
 
…and your having to resort to an unfounded appeal to authority (“I am a real professional physicist…”), while at the same time resorting to denigration ( “…not someone like you pretending to be a scientist.”) usually means that a person is not sure enough of their arguments to let them stand alone.
In this particular case, it means the stuff you made up was so ridiculous that the most appropriate response was a snort.

I am, fortunately for all concerned, merely interested in the scientific method and am content to let my arguments stand or fall unaided by such unscientific UFO debunker methodology of argument.
Before your arguments can fall, aided or otherwise, you will have to elevate them.
 
Few things, Rramjet:

1) No one was being uncivil to you. I know you've so far failed to get your head around the concept that people disagreeing with you does not mean they're insulting you, but do try. You're making yourself look very silly with this constant bleating about perceived abuse. Either that or point to someone abusing you. I don't mind which.

2) Any case you present that doesn't prove aliens is irrelevant. We all accept that UFOs exist. Move on from that point.

3) Cuddles isn't a "so-called" moderator, he demonstratably IS a moderator.

So, with all that in mind, care to provide any proof of aliens?
 
I could reply in kind – which however would be to involve myself in a shouting match begun by you. I am, fortunately for all concerned, merely interested in the scientific method and am content to let my arguments stand or fall unaided by such unscientific UFO debunker methodology of argument.

That's a very high horse you seem to have climbed aboard... watch you don't fall off now...


...Doh! too late.
 
I am, fortunately for all concerned, merely interested in the scientific method and am content to let my arguments stand or fall unaided by such unscientific UFO debunker methodology of argument.


Interesting - May I draw your attention to this post http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/4332/P30/#49785 , and to read paragraph 3 very carefully, and state where, throughout this JREF thread, you have shown the methods so eloquently described on said post?

If Rramjet has me on ignore, then maybe someone else could point our polite Rramjet to this link - ta very much.
 
Last edited:
From the same post that Belgian Thought brought up above at CFI forums:
This is the same for UFOs. They are unidentified flying objects. The key concept here is of course UNIDENTIFIED. UFO does not mean extraterrestrial spacecraft, little green men, aliens, meteorites, the planet Venus, satellites, delusions, or anything of the kind.

Is this our same Rramjet saying that UFOs aren't aliens?

ETA:
I am, fortunately for all concerned, merely interested in the scientific method...

Then pay attention to the people trying to teach it to you.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom