UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[carlitos]

Cuddles' explanation makes a lot more sense when you consider ufology's initial series of posts about 'building bridges' and debunking Raelians. Interesting.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Interestingly, this has been suggested as a reason why some woos come here in the first place. We point out all the obvious flaws and inconsistencies, and they try to patch over them. Obviously no-one here is going to be fooled, since we've already seen all the wildly varying and inconsistent claims. But when they now take these stories somewhere else, all the people there see is the new, much more consistent story.

If this were true in ufology's case I might have expected him to do it sooner than now, given how long he's been playing at running a UFO club. But on the other hand, he's not exactly been honest about his intentions so far. Maybe he's not really trying to drum up visitors to his site, but just trying to iron out his story so it sounds more credible when he goes to present it somewhere else. After all, he does an awful lot of talking about this single unrecorded, unverifiable person experience for someone who's supposed to be presenting us with the best research and evidence that shows UFOs are aliens.

And his repeated declarations that his memory is "self-correcting". We should have gotten a clue from that.

Cuddles' explanation makes a lot more sense when you consider ufology's initial series of posts about 'building bridges' and debunking Raelians. Interesting.

Sorry dude but you've just been

busted ( again ).

 

[Tomtomkent]

If you take a peek at Google Earth, you will note that there is another explanation for "lights across the lake" that is a little more mundane.


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_334674e7c8bdedb4d0.png[/qimg]

Just one of many possibilities.

What astonishes me is that anybody who is reasonably intelligent would be surprised a storyof the "oh no aliens" variety is not believed with out being substantiated by evidence. Would they take my word of seeing god, or timetravelling on my word? No. Yet we are expected to take theirs. Odd.

 

[23_Tauri]

If you take a peek at Google Earth, you will note that there is another explanation for "lights across the lake" that is a little more mundane.


[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_334674e7c8bdedb4d0.png[/qimg]

Not saying you're wrong, carlitos, but are we sure that's not a new development? The shape of the roads suggests to me that estate might be later than early 1970s, however I haven't checked this and I know more about UKian town planning layouts than I do USAian ones.

(and I'm certainly not saying "OMG aleeyuns!")

 

[carlitos]

Not saying you're wrong, carlitos, but are we sure that's not a new development? The shape of the roads suggests to me that estate might be later than early 1970s, however I haven't checked this and I know more about UKian town planning layouts than I do USAian ones.

(and I'm certainly not saying "OMG aleeyuns!")

I wasn't referring to the estate subdivision, but the trunk road on and off the motorway highway. I can't be arsed bothered to research it, but I'd bet those roads were there in the 70's. Headlights of braking / accelerating cars turning onto the highway (disappearing) or coming off the highway (appearing) could be "orbs bouncing down the mountain." A towtruck or emergency vehicle could have lights that looked like figure eights. I believe that's what KotA saw, way back when, after his story finally gave way to "oscillating red/blue lights" - a cop car.

 

[Tomtomkent]

I wasn't referring to the estate subdivision, but the trunk road on and off the motorway highway. I can't be arsed bothered to research it, but I'd bet those roads were there in the 70's. Headlights of braking / accelerating cars turning onto the highway (disappearing) or coming off the highway (appearing) could be "orbs bouncing down the mountain." A towtruck or emergency vehicle could have lights that looked like figure eights. I believe that's what KotA saw, way back when, after his story finally gave way to "oscillating red/blue lights" - a cop car.

Hey, if all he saw was a light, and not a disk shaped vehicle as per the old USAF definition should ufology have called it a UFO? By his own definition he needs to downgrade his story to uap.

 

[carlitos]

Hey, if all he saw was a light, and not a disk shaped vehicle as per the old USAF definition should ufology have called it a UFO? By his own definition he needs to downgrade his story to uap.

It's a fast-moving thread, so you likely missed the mental gymnastics he used to avoid that obvious point. Word salad:

Carlitos:

You make an interesting point with respect to the glowing orb UFOs. They may be structured craft that give off a lot of light, but we aren't certain, and in the absence of the maneuvers the object pulled off, I would have to agree that the object would fall squarely under the UAP category, perhaps an "earthlights" type of phenomenon.

However the precision and repitition of it's flight path when preparing for and making the infinity ( slanted figure eight ) maneuvers, and the manner in which it rose vertically, hovered and departed between the mountains to the north, were not indicative of random movement or earthlight behavior. This was very obviously an intelligent or intelligently controlled object. No human technology we know of has ever produced such an object, so it was a UFO ... a "nocturnal light" classed as an NL-1 or possibly an NL-2 under the Hynek system. The NL-2 presumes the object interacted with the surrounding environment when it landed, but the only interaction I could make out was the light shining on and through the trees. Technically because I also saw the object in the morning light, it wasn't strictly nocturnal either, and so far as I know there is no classical category for daytime lights that exhibit the performance characteristics I observed. Again, this makes it a UFO rather than a UAP. The sighting category falls into the MA-1 category under the Hynek/Vallee system.

As I mentioned in the other thread, kittens with flashlights attached to them could easily explain the above, but hey, he's a believer.

 

[23_Tauri]

I wasn't referring to the estate subdivision, but the trunk road on and off the motorway highway. I can't be arsed bothered to research it, but I'd bet those roads were there in the 70's. Headlights of braking / accelerating cars turning onto the highway (disappearing) or coming off the highway (appearing) could be "orbs bouncing down the mountain." A towtruck or emergency vehicle could have lights that looked like figure eights. I believe that's what KotA saw, way back when, after his story finally gave way to "oscillating red/blue lights" - a cop car.

Ah. I understand. The main highway and road up the mountain.
No fireflies on you, carlitos

 

[EHocking]

It's a fast-moving thread, so you likely missed the mental gymnastics he used to avoid that obvious point.

Or to coin a new phrase, "wriggling beneath his own petard".

 

[carlitos]

Ah. I understand. The main highway and road up the mountain.

It's doesn't even have to be up the mountain. When you brake, your headlights go down. You can go up or down over a bump / rise in the road. Reflections can bounce off of clouds, fog, whatever.

 

[Tomtomkent]

It's doesn't even have to be up the mountain. When you brake, your headlights go down. You can go up or down over a bump / rise in the road. Reflections can bounce off of clouds, fog, whatever.

Or even look like the brown mountain lights thanks to atmospheric layering.

But just lights on the road can easily describe the patterns attributed to this UFO, with out any fancy dan reflections.

 

[23_Tauri]

It's doesn't even have to be up the mountain. When you brake, your headlights go down. You can go up or down over a bump / rise in the road. Reflections can bounce off of clouds, fog, whatever.

Yes, indeed.
I recall Astrophotographer asking ufol why he didn't think that the three separate sightings could have been different objects / other phenomena, rather than the same thing. ufol rejected this as a possibility.

However, I think that ufol may have witnessed different lights, conflating the experience of seeing fireflies with car headlights at other times during the night / early morning.

Of course, we have no way of testing this, having no data, no records of the event, but it takes us even further away from the need for an extraordinary, non-mundane explanation.

ETA: or even, observing the different phenomena at the same time, fireflies figure of eight-ing in the foreground, cars on the highway in the distance..... many combinations of lights at night that could get confusing to someone in an unfamiliar place. Murph, do you accept this theory or reject it?

 

[Akhenaten]

ETA: or even, observing the different phenomena at the same time, fireflies figure of eight-ing in the foreground, cars on the highway in the distance..... many combinations of lights at night that could get confusing to someone in an unfamiliar place. Murph, do you accept this theory or reject it?

All good theories, but I'm totally sold on kittens with flashlights attached to them.

 

[RoboTimbo]

All good theories, but I'm totally sold on kittens with flashlights attached to them.

If only there were some way to illustrate a stray cat with a flashlight on it....

 

[Akhenaten]

Yeah, I'm doing it.

 

[remirol]

Hi, just checking in. 13,000+ posts later, has any evidence yet been presented that isn't either anecdotal-with-no-witnesses or blurry rubbish?

 

[John Albert]

However, back engineering your figures to fit your perception of the event at the time (40 years after the event) doesn't make your initial estimates anymore accurate does it?
And neither does back engineering your story to fit your figures.

If you look at the illustration you can see what I meant by about "two thirds up" the side of the mountain when it stopped to hover

You have just rejiggered your story yet again to conform to inconsistencies that have been pointed out to you.


Note that this incredulous examination of your figures over the last few pages are responses to this statement of yours:

It was suggested that I could not have determined the size or distance of the object I saw too, but I demonstrated how I did it with reasonable accuracy.

"Reasonable accuracy," you say? What margin of error would you consider "reasonably accurate"?

We've already pointed out that when viewing an unknown object in the sky, it is impossible to determine its size without knowing how far away it is, and vice-versa.

You claimed you used trees on the ground to determine the size and altitude of an object in the sky. How exactly did you manage that, without a reliable measure of its distance?

You obviously couldn't manage it very well, because in different versions of the story you have given three totally inconsistent altitude estimates, ranging from 300 feet, to 200 meters (roughly 656 feet), to the weirdly precise figure of 4608 feet...

...and you can see how estimating that height at around 200 meters seems reasonable, but I admit that the estimate is probably off by some margin. I just don't know what exactly.

"Some" margin? Try 200-1500%

Do you even realize how outrageously inaccurate those margins are?

At 1500% enlargement, a ¾" firefly would be nearly a foot long!

It's all well within parameters to rule out any known manmade or natural object or phenomena.

But you haven't "ruled out" anything! Your story doesn't even have basic internal consistency. On closer examination, it has crumbled to bits. The only important detail you seem to have gotten correct is the general setting, which actually exists according to Google Earth. Nearly every other verifiable detail has contradicted earlier tellings of the story, or been demonstrated to be mathematically, geographically, or physically impossible.

Now do you understand why anecdotes are useless as evidence?

Or are you going to totally ignore the fact that nearly every salient point in your story has been proven wrong numerous times, and go forward dishonestly promoting this latest revision as the "truth" as if you recalled it from your own memory?

Does anybody here not know the answer to that last question?

 

[carlitos]

...nearly every salient point in your story has been proven wrong numerous times, and dishonestly promote this latest revision as the "truth" as if you recalled it from your own memory?

 

[Agatha]

Hi, just checking in. 13,000+ posts later, has any evidence yet been presented that isn't either anecdotal-with-no-witnesses or blurry rubbish?

Yes!












Or, more accurately, no.

 

[Drs_Res]

All good theories, but I'm totally sold on kittens with flashlights attached to them.

I'm going with:

"Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads."