Werent there fighter jets chasing these so called "UFO'S"?
UFO'S: A possible explanation
- Thread starter makaya325
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Werent there fighter jets chasing these so called "UFO'S"?
But it was a real event, or no? I kept hearing other cases reporting skyhook helicopters going to a ufo scene.
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The infamous UFO chase that happened in March of 1991, was very hyped by UFO proponents. If you read my links you will discover that several people have since examined the radar data of the two F-16s sent to chase the UFOs. In one case, the radar data showed the F-16 "locking on" to the companion F-16. In other cases, the data indicated ground reflections interfering with the radar (which is documented as having a tendency to do this). The original observations by witnesses, which sparked the chase was also less than compelling. UFO scientist Meessen states that the witnesses were seeing stars that were scintillating. The witnesses could see the jets and they wondered why the jets kept flying past the UFOs (the pilots could not see any UFOs and were following their tracking radar to zero in on the UFOs they were sent to chase). The radar contacts that originally were seen by ground radar stations used to confirm the eyewitness reports had to do with a semi-stationary contact over a factory/power plant smokestack. The soot/exhaust of the stack apparently caused a reflection. The pilots kept circling it and noticed the flashing strobe of it.
The Belgian UFOs are always considered a primary case but there are reasonable explanations for many of the sightings as there always are. I am sure Jake will state it is more knee-jerk skeptism but Meessen was a UFOlogist who thought the original March 1991 events were a good example of UFO and radar. He would later change his mind after seeing the data.
jakesteele
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Okay, let’s play. I didn’t say there was and infinite number of possibilities, you did. I gave you my list of plausibles with room for you guys to add anything plausible, like ‘swamp gas’, you think I might have missed that a CSIOPtic would use. A couple of guy did that. I gave you a skeptic’s list from one of your brethren. Skeptics use a relatively small number of plausible, mundane explanations for UFOs and you know that. If they didn’t this thread wouldn’t exist.
Gord_in_Toronto
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What on earth are you saying? Each incident is, as it should be, examined on its own merits. In some cases enough data is available to derive a "mundane" explanation. In other cases, there is not enough information to draw such a conclusion but comparison with explained cases give a hint that there is nothing inexplicable occurring.
What I want. What any ebil, Randiloving CSIOPtic wants, is a single case that unequivocally proves that there exist "UFO"s that are not explicable by "science as we know it". Fuzzy, out of focus pictures taken at night with no ambient information just don't cut it.
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Feynman was not an astronomer, which is what Bluebook wanted. One must ask why they did not ask for a more qualified astronomer or somebody with greater status than Hynek. It probably had a lot to do with they were too busy with their own studies and programs. Hynek, being a low level astronomer at a college, was available, and probably less expensive (government always selects the lowest bidder).
Blah....Blah.... Wiki is written by various writers and there are some who are very pro-UFO when it comes to these articles. They pick and choose their quotes to paint their version of events. If you want to read about Hynek from an independent source, I suggest the book by Dr. Craig. He also addresses the "trick" memo. Why do I mention Craig? Well, Craig was involved in the Condon study. He found the memo and also gave it to various members of the committee.
BTW, are you stating that Quintanilla lied about everything in his manuscript? Quintanilla may have had his flaws but suggesting he is lying when he talked about Hynek sounds like you are attacking the person. This is something you accuse mean old debunkers/skeptics of doing. Using Condon is perfectly good sense. I know UFO proponents consider the report a farce but Craig did not think so and neither did the National Academy of Sciences.
Hynek's position on astronomical knowledge makes his opinion more important there. However, Hynek's opinion about UFOs are all over the place. If you read Quintanilla and Craig, it appeared that Hynek was interested in placing himself in the position of heading a future government study of UFOs back in the 1960s. That kind of motivation will blind a person and they will not longer be objective.
You know, the only time I ever saw the "swamp gas" explanation given was by Hynek for the Michigan case. UFO proponents like to use it as an example of bad explanations for UFOs. So, they are either saying that Hynek was perfectly willing to create false explanations or they are exaggerating. In the case of the sighting that Hynek was trying to explain, the "swamp gas" explanation had some merit to it. If you want to discuss that event, we can go around and around.
How can you use the term "unidentified flying object" as a possible solution for an "Unidentified flying object"? Don't you mean "alien spaceship" instead of UFO?
Feel free to list the "small number" of explanations then. We have already listed a lot more than 10-15 so your claim still remains false. It is my opinion that UFO reports have to be taken on a case by case basis.
Often the same explanations are given simply because, statistically (See Hendry's data) this is the case. Hendry had determined that 35% of his over 1,000 nocturnal UFOs were stars or planets. It may appear that skeptics are using stars/planets as a standard "cookie cutter" explanation but the fact is that people most often misidentify planets and stars and report them as UFOs. It makes sense that stars/planets are going to be a "popular" explanation for nighttime UFOs.
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jakesteele
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Yep, all of that is true. It happens on both sides of the fence. People seek out that which they want to be true.
I Ratant
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.
QE being D.
MikeSun5
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That's because the explanations ARE plausible and work perfectly fine. When a bunch of "mundane" explanations would suffice, why add martians to the list? Sh**s and giggles?
By that logic, here are some other plausible explanations:
Alternate Dimensions
Dragons
Black Magic
God Sneezing
Angels Fighting Each Other
Ghosts
Demons
Super Heroes
...I'm sure I'm missing a bunch.
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You forgot Chuck Norris! That should always be the first thing on your mind when you spot a UFO.
jakesteele
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++++[Here is the part of my original post you seem to be forgetting: “There have been many examples of pilots at all levels of skill and experience that have reported seeing UFOs. Also, there are planes of some sort in the air 24/7 that are flying at or near the approximate heights that UFOs do. They also have a much wider field of vision than astronomers do. But to you their word seems to mean nothing. But at the same time you will accept anecdotal evidence from amateur astronomers as being golden, as in the Phoenix Lights situation. ]
This is what I’m talking about, I don’t care about a particular incident whether CSIOPtics got it right or not. Your beliefs in the area of woo, of which of UFOs are a part, are already made up that it is bunk, it ain’t true, therefore, it’s bogus and debunkable.
You’ve already shown your bias by going into all of your stuff about pilots prone to making mistakes, the dead Italians, ‘do you think pilots make no mistakes’ and about how you don’t mistake venus, etc. so clearly your bias is showing simply because anything woo/UFO doesn’t fit into you reductionist, mechanistic world view.
What I keep trying to drive home, which is something you don’t want to deal with, is the underlying psychology of a CSIOPtic. You will always, always, always take the low road, be like water seeking the lowest level; in that a CSIOPtic is utterly predictable. Why, ‘because we haven’t seen anything yet, therefore, it is all woo. You know that, though, don’t you?
If you take the Condon report and Project Bluebook, you will find a lot of criticism about it in that many people thought that it was a rigged game from the start, especially with the ‘trick memo’. They wanted the mundane and would go to any lengths to achieve that goal as do you.
++++Hold on there, Sparky. I didn’t imply the astronomer was making his story up. That’s you doing the Straw Man shuffle. In your mind, you have your minds already made up that it isn’t and can’t be true, therefore it is fake or mistaken and you go in trying to disprove rather than asses with an open mind and suspended judgement.
Cool quotes, but still doesn’t address the basic issue of the underlying psychological biases of a CSIOPtic as in the Joe Nickell vid.
The fact is that a poll of scientists/astronomers of events that transpired months or years before are not going to be solved very easily. It is hard to chase down various items to explain them. Feel free to list the best cases in these surveys and we can look at them for how exotic they really were.
Let's see, the polls that support you conclusions are valid and righteous, but any that don't are bogus or woo or whatever. Jeez, who've thunk it?
_
+++And there are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of airplanes in the air 24/7 round the clock, and they consist not just of amateurs, but very trained and experienced pilots. If an amateur astronomer isn’t fooled by phenomena, why would an experienced pilot be? The odds of a pilot seeing ‘something’ are far greater than an astronomer just by sheer weight of numbers. And guess what, you get more reports from pilots as the ratio of numbers would indicate.
Again, I’m going to ask you: Do you think that every sighting from the beginning of man, up to and including the present, and by extension, all sightings in the future short of an actual landing? Tick...tock....tick....tock.
p.s. Sorry about things being out of order, but that was a really long post and I found it hard to keep everything in order.
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You stated that you refuted his explanation for the Phoenix lights (read what you wrote in quotes again). To refute something is to demonstrate it is not true. Now you are stating that you are a “mind reader” because you can understand/know their intentions? You have not shown his methods and techniques to be false (i.e. refuted). If you have, feel free to explain what you mean because you keep shifting your position.
Professional pilots make errors too but you do not want to concede this as a possibility. How many professional pilots can identify the planet Jupiter in the sky? How many professional pilots know what a satellite re-entry or bright fireball looks like? These objects HAVE been mistaken for UFOs in the past by PROFESSIONAL pilots. I can give you examples (I have about the Tornado pilots) yet you seem to ignore this issue. It is as if you are putting your hands over your ears (or eyes) and are repeating “La…La…..La, I am not listening (or reading)”.It has nothing to do with “spinning” anything. These are FACTS, which can not be denied. Pilots, like everybody else (even astronomers), make mistakes in observations. Failure to grasp this is just putting yourself into a little room of denial.
The point of the matter is the claims being made are exotic and have never been shown to exist. Why must they "suspend judgment" and throw away their natural curiousity to see if there is another possibility to explain it? Are you actually suggesting that somebody CAN levitate or do you think it was a trick of some kind? Can you demonstrate that it was not the individual’s athletic ability (like Michael Jordan) that made him appear to levitate? I am not saying this is the case but you are stating that Nickell is wrong. I have yet to see you demonstrate he was. He was offering a potential explanation for the event. It may not be right but it is a possibility to consider. Isn’t that what an “open-mind” is supposed to be about?
Actually there is. There is a video of the event. It showed five lights in formation but the formation shifted significantly during the video. This demonstrates the witnesses who saw the “triangle” with lights were incorrect since the formation would have been fixed. Therefore, the lights were independent. I can then add several testimonies that state they saw aircraft as well that night. I also have the testimony of a commercial pilot who heard the pilots of the aircraft talking to the enroute air traffic controller and his aircraft. There is enough evidence to conclude the amateur astronomers observations are fairly accurate.
You are correct. Greer is as woo as you can get with UFOs. That is, unless you want to actually believe he contacts UFOs with flashlights. Feel free to give him your money so he can show you how to think about UFOs and have them come to you so you can communicate with them as well with your flashlight.
I suggest you look very closely at some of the names on that list. Corso is a fraud. Filer’s alien being shot story has been shown to be a made up story by…..the National institute for discovery science (NIDS- a pro UFO group). Lt. Haut is dead and was not in the Navy. After he died, people produced a detailed affidavit about Roswell that he signed that basically disowned everything he stated previously in another affidavit. The details suggest they thrust this in front of him when he was mentally impaired. Larry Warren has been shown to be lying about his involvement at “Rendleshame (as UFOlogist Jenny Randles recently called it) forest”. If I recall Puthoff has ideas about “free energy” and other scams. Dr. Wood is part of the MJ-12 scam. Nick Pope sells UFO books and has no first hand knowledge about UFOs. His expertise in the “Rendleshame” case has been shown to be poor and inaccurate. Astronaut Mitchell talks about rumors and secret sources. Astronaut Cooper talks about UFOs he chased in his fighter jet. He also talks about the filming of a UFO landing he heard about but this has since been refuted. Colonel Ross Dedrickson claims the US sent a nuclear weapon to the moon but the aliens destroyed it! Need I go on? Sure there are a few genuine articles of people with some integrity on the list but they are a minority. Several of their cases have been examined and have reasonable explanations (we can discuss each if you so desire). The list is heavily padded by a bunch of con-artists and liars. You also missed a few:
Lance Corporal John Weygandt USMC - Was sent to a UFO crash site in Peru to retrieve alien bodies and debris.
Sgt. Karl Wolf: US Air Force - Describes alien structures on the far side of the moon seen by the Lunar Orbiter prior to men landing on the moon. These images were not presented to the public for viewing.
Sgt. Leonard Pretko: US Air Force - Saw UFOs in Hawaii and knew somebody who stated that MacArthur saw the Roswell crashed spaceship and alien bodies.
MSGT Dan Morris - Numerous stories about him serving in the National Reconnaissance Organization (NRO) after his tour of duty. There he was involved in all sorts of UFO cover-ups, intimidations, and assassinations by certain organizations to keep the UFO cover-up secret.
Do you believe these guys blindly or are you going to question what they say as being too far fetched? Show some curiosity by at least checking up on what each witness says.
Many? Feel free to give us those examples. We addressed the Phoenix lights but giving blanket statements about various pilots reporting UFOs is difficult to address. Do you have a particular case or set of cases in mind or are you just going to post a link to NARCAP? Many of their cases are vague and the details are missing. I am curious what you find most compelling.
Do you even understand what the “trick memo” was about? Dr. Craig described it in his book. He felt it was a poor choice of words by Dr. Low but the idea was that they wanted to find a way to investigate UFOs that would be acceptable to scientists. The word “trick” (i.e. in this sense not to fool but the knack/ability to do something) was used by UFO proponents to undermine the study. The NAS was perfectly willing to accept the study as valid. UFO proponents can cry about it all they want but the real reason they hate the Condon study is because it took away the possibility for a future government department independent of the USAF that would study UFOs. You can thank Condon for squashing the idea of a federal agency designed to study UFO reports.
You kept complaining skeptics are accepting the astronomer’s observations as gospel because it supported the explanation for the lights. This means (at least to me, correct me if I am wrong) you find his observations suspect, which implies he is lying. If you are willing to accept his observations, then you must assume the case can be explained. Still you keep stating that Plait had been refuted about the Phoenix lights. So which is it? Make up your mind. Either you find his observations valid or not.
The difference between what you were stating and what I am stating is that I don’t say people are lying about their observations. I am just stating their observations are flawed and affected by their emotions/desire to believe they saw something exotic. You seemed to be implying that the amateur astronomer did not see aircraft in formation that night.
When I am looking at a case, I try and weigh all the testimony and accept what is most likely. In this case, the amateur astronomer’s testimony is supported by many of the witnesses who reported shifting lights in formation, the video of the lights, the testimony of another individual who reported aircraft, and the testimony of a pilot who stated the enroute controller said they were a formation of Tutor aircraft. I could also add the testimony of one witness who saw the “triangle” fly in front of the moon but it turned invisible at that instant. To him, the moon took on a “wavy” appearance (his original statement said something like the fumes of a gas can), which describes what a formation of jets would do if they flew in front of the moon. The “exotic craft” testimonies were just people wanting to see something more than just a formation of lights.
The idea that the proper method is to “suspend judgment” is another term for being “open-minded”. Did you watch the video I linked? Feel free to watch it again and see how being “open-minded” (aka suspending judgment) can lead you directly towards the “clean and well-lit prison” of your desired belief.
I did not state this. I stated that many of the UFO sightings described are not very exotic and those that were seemed to have reasonable explanations. Can you provide a case of an astronomer observing something really exotic that can not be explained?
I think you exaggerate the numbers of aircraft but there are a lot. However, this goes to my original statements. Pilots have been shown to make mistakes with astronomical phenomena. It has been demonstrated many times. Why would I assume that a pilot did not make the same mistake others have made and immediately believe he saw an alien spaceship? Again, each case is accepted on its own merit. Lumping them together is an invalid argument because many will be misperceptions. Pick the best ones so we can examine what you think is the best evidence.
I answered that question. I have not seen any GOOD evidence to suggest that anything unusual is being seen. There is nothing to suggest aliens or anything else exotic (i.e. unknown to science) is the source for any UFO reports. Again, feel free to list any set of cases that suggest this conclusion is wrong. The ball is in your court. Make your case. Prove me wrong.
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gambling_cruiser
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Jakesteele you lost the debate pages ago and your invention of expressions like CSIOPtic shows only your bias. You are no skeptic and you will not convince anybody here otherwise. But don't let this facts spoil your war against JREF.
The ignorance is strong in this woo, isn't it?
The ignorance is strong in this woo, isn't it?
jakesteele
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I’ve got no problem with that.
jakesteele
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Let me guess, you’re one of those CSIOPtics who thinks that every sighting from the dawn of man, up to and including the present, and by extension, any sightings in the future short of one landing on the White House lawn for tea and crumpets, has a plausible, mundane explanation, aren’t you?
By the way, are you the guy that made up the term woo?
Marduk
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Why not Kuiper, Menzel, Whipple, Hoyle, Tombaugh, etc.etc. They were unavailable and they probably had a lot more to do than Hynek. We can dance around this all day but Hynek continued to push the UFO science for years after bluebook with no luck in convincing anybody outside the UFO community that there was something to study. He wrote two books and accomplished nothing. We can thank Condon for his recommendation for the government not to fund any future UFO studies. What a waste of taxpayer dollars that would have been.
My question had to do with Quintanilla’s documentation of what transpired at Bluebook during his years there. Obviously, you must accept his statements as factual as far as the way Hynek conducted himself during his tenure. Ruppelt’s opinion date back to the early days of Bluebook, when Hynek was acting as a scientist and nothing more. During the later years of Bluebook, Hynek’s decided to study UFOs as something he felt was important. I don’t think he was lying but his bias towards believing UFO reports affected his opinions and interpretation of events.
You need to read up on some history. This was 1966 and Hynek was already fighting with Quintanilla and trying to undermine him. He was also writing various letters and speaking to congressmen trying to get an independent study of UFOs started.
However, statistics show that a great number of these are simple misidentifications. If we use Hendry’s values, out of 30 million cases of nocturnal lights, over 10 million would be simply stars and planets. The other cases would add up under various explanations. Can you identify the cases that stand out? Saying there are 30 million or 30 billion UFO cases means nothing. It is a number. What cases stand out to you that demonstrate that they are something exotic/alien?
gambling_cruiser
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Sorry I wasn't fast enough to invent the term woo, it existed already at the time i joined this forum. But i would like to have coined it, it's really good!
Your new terms will probably not used by any other than yourself. And this means your efforts at slandering JREF and CSICOP are epic fails.
But deep inside you know this, don't you?
IF (really big IF) sometimes an alien civilization is going to visit us then
a) we won't notice anything if they don't want to be detected
a1) if they don't want to interfere they wont
a2) if they are evil we would be dead not knowing what happend
b) if they want to make contact then they will be live on any tv channel of the earth; not on a shaky cellular phone video on you tube.
But to suggest they use their super duper FTL drive to come here and anal probe cattle and/or some hillbillies is bovine excrement.
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Even more amazing is that their incredible craft crash quite a bit. Apparently, we don't have to worry about them invading because it seems good old lightning can destroy their craft! That means all we have to do is build a "lightning gun" and shoot them down. Hmmmmm.....Earth vs. the flying saucers did something similar if I recall correctly. I haven't seen any army trucks running around with lightning guns attached though... I will keep my eyes open for them.
I think your statement goes directly to the quote of Dr. Feynman I gave earlier.
"I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the result of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extraterrestrial intelligence."
I always wonder why the aliens suddenly appear in the same location as Venus, when bright meteors are visible, when the ISS or an Iridium flare is visible, when space debris re-enters, when people launch chinese lanterns, when rockets are launched, etc. etc. .
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