UFO's and the Government

[Pardalis]

By the way, I think it's hilarious that people think this is a UFO crash.

I see the "aliens" have perfected their saucer technology.

 

[Alareth]

It is my personal belief that it is simply statistically impossible that life only exists on this planet.

That does not imply that other life is more or less advanced than we are and has the capability to travel here. Just that it is out there.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

@Devil's Advocate.

He's not implying that. He's saying the planets are a very small part of the sky. And, I'd add, they move. So what little part they do block is never the same.

 

[Pardalis]

It is my personal belief that it is simply statistically impossible that life only exists on this planet.

That does not imply that other life is more or less advanced than we are and has the capability to travel here. Just that it is out there.

Exactly, it's frustrating when the UFO fanatics keep confusing the two issues. It's like the creationist confusing abiogenesis and evolution.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

This sparked my curiousity. So I googled and Wikipediad.

The first UFO account described by Kenneth Arnold was "boomerang-shaped" flying objects that moved erratically across the sky, "like a saucer would if you skipped it across water."

Wikipedia has this picture.

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Arnold_crescent_1947.jpg[/qimg]


This makes more sense. It's aerodynamic, not like a saucer, and it wasn't influenced by the press.

Was it an alien wanting to anally probe humans? Or maybe top secret military aircraft? Look familiar?


[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/B-2_Spirit_original.jpg/800px-B-2_Spirit_original.jpg[/qimg]

The U.S. model from the 50's.
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/YB49-2_300.jpg[/qimg]

 

[Athyrio]

I agree. That is why I made it clear that I did not know the origin of the ones I have seen.
They defy only what I know exist.
I am unaware of any craft we have that can fly or hover and remain completely silent. That of course does not make it alien.

Here is my story, D.A.


As a teenager, I became interested in what we referred to as UAO's (Unidentified Aerial Objects) as opposed to UFO's, as if there were some intellectual levels about the subject. They did not necessarily "fly", but they were in the air. Presumably, the ones that were reported to have been in the ocean or lakes got there from the air originally.

OK, I was a buff - I was a member of NICAP (National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena) headed by Major Daniel Keyhoe in the mid 60's. Flying saucers were big news then. What you did was pay your dues, you got a periodical newsletter and instructions on how to search for UAO's and how to behave when confronted with same. I carried a camera around but lost interest after I went to college. I never read the Adamski books. The only brief interest I had in abduction stories or "citizen-ride-along" like Adamski was the Betty and Barney Hill story, but I dismissed that as being too fantastic later.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving 1966 my brother and father drove to Statesboro to pick me up from college and take me home for the holidays. My father had this enormous land yacht of a car that had a windsheild that curved upward further than the average car. My brother was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, Dad in the rear. I was having some issues with both so the trip home was mostly silent. I was just looking at the night sky, which was very clear and starry. Somewhere out of Statesboro, a bright light passed directly overhead and low - I am not an astronomer, but I had been a stargazer long enough to know the difference between a star, a "falling star", or conventional commercial aircraft. I grew up and still lived 2 miles from the Atlanta Airport (Hartsfield). This light flew so suddenly overhead and low and was immediately overtaken by a second similar light that caught up to it and both banked to the left and disappeared in the treeline/horizon ahead. These were not meteors. These lights were flying low. These were not small lights. If they were flying at regular altitudes, they would have had to have been enormous crafts by the size of the lights and could not have disappeared in the distance as quickly as they did. My brother never said a word so I did not bring it up. It was curious but not that big of a deal.

February 7, 1967, a group of 5 of us ventured north from the college to attend a high school basketball game near Athens. It was after midnight that we were returning back to Statesboro on a southerly route. I was sitting in the middle of the backseat with my head leaning back and peering into the black country sky that seemed to be filled with stars. I was searching the air for UAO's. NICAP had said to watch for lights moving east to west. I was looking to my left when a bright light caught my eye in the distance and it was moving westward at a 90 degree angle to our route. Despite the speed of the car, I was able to focus on this light and noticed that the surrounding stars were blacked out momentarily around it while it moved as if obstructed. I had already told the guys that I would be looking for something in the sky and shouted for the driver to stop. It was a state route, but we were the only ones on the road there. We stopped in the middle of the road and all 5 of us got out and shut off the motor, leaving the doors open. We were just watching this light continue on its path towards us. There was absolute quiet with no other ground lights around. At one point a dog barking in the distance was the only noise except for a whispered comment or two from one of us. I estimate we stood there at least 5 minutes total, maybe more, because one of the guys crossed a ditch to a fence and took a leak and then came back to watch the light. Within a minute or two, the object passed overhead, but instead of continuing its silent path, it stalled above us. Now all of us are looking straight up above the car. The light was directly above, still no noise. Then the white light seemed to grow larger and larger. Then the edges of the light came more sharply into focus and I could clearly see a triangular shape - the light, that is. It was as if the cover of a bank of fluorescent ceiling lights was shaped like a triangle. I said, "the thing's getting bigger", but one of the others said, "Hell no, it's getting CLOSER. It's coming down!" At this point, we all panicked and dove into the car and sped on down the road. Looking behind us we could now see the light moving back eastward, not to the west as it had been. It still appeared to move slowly by our perspective but it had to have been moving faster than us because although it was further away than before, now it caught up with and seemed to be cruising parallel to us. I understand that no road is perfectly straight and that's why a stationary object like the moon can appear to change positions, but 4 of us were watching this thing. It never got ahead of us and it never came towards us again. About 10 minutes after we had fled, the white light changed gradually to red in a few seconds, and disappeared, not zipping away, but just vanished like when you turn out a light. How close was it when we were standing in the road? No idea. To demonstrate, I would hold my hands above my head, touch my thumbs together and my index fingers together to form a triangle and say that's how big it looked before I caved. We never reported it.

Exactly 2 weeks later on the 21st, I seemed to be the only one interested in rehashing that night. It was just beginning to get dark. Three of us were walking to the edge of the campus where our P.O. boxes and a Dairy Queen were located. Bob had been one of the 5 in the car. He was with me and another guy and I was re-telling the tale to this third guy, using Bob as a witness. Actually by this time, the other 3 that had been in the car wanted me to just STFU about it but I couldn't let it go. We were standing at a traffic light across the street from a store on the opposite corner and I was right in the middle of talking about it. Behind the store was a small stand of trees. Directly across the crosswalk on that corner was a similar stand of trees. Behind those, less than 50 feet away, was the large parking area that had the Post Office and DQ. There was a sudden rush of wind. The noise of wind came from the left. We could clearly see a maybe 40 foot long "craft" of some kind whooshing by at what was maybe 40-50 miles per hour, above and behind the corner store and behind, but not higher than, the stand of trees. There was no engine sound, only the rush of wind, and what sounded like something metal flapping against something metal. There were sections of light on the side we could see that did not look like running lights, but gave the impression of a row of windows with the visible light coming from within. I ran across the street past the trees and into the open parking area and stood directly behind the path of this thing as it moved away. The parking area bordered a large field that had few trees and the thing was now moving over it. One of the other guys reached the parking area and was behind me. From this perspective, all we could see was a an object moving away from us in a straight line. Just as quickly, this object appeared to suddenly move up 90 degrees for a second, then back down 90 degrees to the same path it had been on and continued to move straight away from us. It repeated this same manoeuver twice more, until it was too far away to be visible. Each of the 3 times it did that, bits of light that looked like flames shot out of it and sprinkled down on the downturn, but faded before they got to the ground.

I was 18 years old and did not drink or use drugs, and neither did any of the witnesses to this "shared hallucination." There were no photos, no abductions, no slot-mouth, no eared, bobblehead short people - nothing whatsoever left behind to hold in my hand.

OK, I finally talked about it on JREF. Somebody offer an opinion. I'm not going to interpret it as a whole. Obviously some of the details I provided involve a bit of interpretation for purposes of description. I remember it well because I have written it down many times and for a long time afterwards I couldn't STFU about it.

 

[Stellafane]

Are you implying that radio waves would not reflect off planetary bodies?
The U.S. Army Signal Corps used our moon as a natural passive reflector in the mid-40's.

No, I'm not implying that at all. What I am saying is that the space taken up by planetary bodies within the universe is for all intents and purposes nil, so the idea that they're somehow preventing alien radio waves from reaching us makes no sense. Consider this: we have an anomalously large and close planetary body (the moon) blocking out a relatively large chunk of sky, far more than all the other objects in the solar system combined. But the amount of radiation blocked by the moon is insignificant compared to the overall total we receive.

Reply to regarding the balloon and airships...a low flying airship can easily be heard. Neither could have followed a car at 55mph, nor could any match the speed of the craft that flew over my driveway.

The problem is, it may not have actually matched the speed of your car, or did the other things you observed. Instead, those phenomena may have been caused by observational effects and conditions within and around you, rather than the object itself. For example, an airplane with a single light flying directly overhead will often appear to approach at a fast speed, slow down and/or hover right above you for a few moments, then speed off. Most airplanes can't really do that, of course. But the effect is caused by visual tricks played by the viewer's eyes and brain, not the airplane itself. Many UFO sightings are the products of just such observational artifacts.

 

[Kahalachan]

The U.S. model from the 50's.
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/YB49-2_300.jpg[/qimg]

That's awesome. Thanks.

I think we can offically say RIP to flying saucer ideas.

Edit: Although it's unfortunate most other people won't.

 

[Civilized Worm]

Anyway, the alians don't just perform rectal probes, they also make crop circles, unless you subscribe to the insane theory that crop circles have more to do with cider drinking...

Cider drinking can explain just about any bizarre phenomenon you can think of. And if you disagree you've clearly been drinking the wrong cider.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

No, I'm not implying that at all. What I am saying is that the space taken up by planetary bodies within the universe is for all intents and purposes nil, so the idea that they're somehow preventing alien radio waves from reaching us makes no sense. Consider this: we have an anomalously large and close planetary body (the moon) blocking out a relatively large chunk of sky, far more than all the other objects in the solar system combined. But the amount of radiation blocked by the moon is insignificant compared to the overall total we receive.

I understand. But it still is speculative. What if the alien's had a planetary body like out moon blocking a line to earth? There could be a lot of reasons we would get no signals (if there were any) to consider.

The problem is, it may not have actually matched the speed of your car, or did the other things you observed. Instead, those phenomena may have been caused by observational effects and conditions within and around you, rather than the object itself. For example, an airplane with a single light flying directly overhead will often appear to approach at a fast speed, slow down and/or hover right above you for a few moments, then speed off. Most airplanes can't really do that, of course. But the effect is caused by visual tricks played by the viewer's eyes and brain, not the airplane itself. Many UFO sightings are the products of just such observational artifacts.

Oh I am aware of that, but the part of that story, the object was following us, and went ahead out of sight, then a few minutes later was hovering over a church. The church was a small one story structure with a steeple that was about a third of length of the church building.
There were tree's all around the church and it's parking lot.
The object was just to the left of the steeple, but not above the tree line.
It was very low.

 

[grmcdorman]

I understand. But it still is speculative. What if the alien's had a planetary body like out moon blocking a line to earth? There could be a lot of reasons we would get no signals (if there were any) to consider.

What?? Apparently you haven't considered orbits. No body in space - planet, moon, star, whatever - is at rest. Moons, in particular, orbit. In fact, astronomers take advantage of that to do various measurements, when a solar system body passes in front of a star. It's called occultation^WP.

About the only thing I can think of, on this basis, is a a star being on the direct line-of-sight to another system. However, it's not very likely - most of space is empty - and even then, there's both the orbital motion of the presumed aliens' planet, and the fact that some of the signal would bend around the star.

A dust cloud or other nebula is much more likely. Even then, such obscurations are usually transparent in the radio wavelengths (that's how astronomers observe the galactic centre, mostly).

Regardless, this sort of argument only works if life is very rare and all such life is obscured from us. Given the vast number of stars that are visible, it would take an astronomically low probability for advanced civilizations for all such to be obscured from us at all wavelengths.

ETA: Even for a star in our line of sight, this would change (gradually) over time, too, due to the motion of the three stars involved - ours, the "blocking" star, and the aliens' star.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Generic UFO talk belongs over in General Skepticism and the Paranormal.

 

[grmcdorman]

Generic UFO talk belongs over in General Skepticism and the Paranormal.

It's a conspiracy, I tells ya! Making us move over there!

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I think it's important to distinguish between "UFOs" and "Alien Encounters".

UFO's are a very real phenomenon. After all, a UFO is simply an airbourne object that is not identified. Even putting aside the extremely mundane, there are still documented accounts of genuine mysterious flying "things". This doesn't mean they are extra terrestrial or supernatural, just that we genuinely cannot explain them.

As an example I would offer the December 1978 incident over the South Island of New Zealand. What was it that made the light? Well, we don't know. That's why it's a "UFO" sighting. Perhaps the official government investigation into the event would reveal the answer, but the report was labeled "Top Secret" and has never been released. Certainly the "official explanation" is lacking - if for no other reason than because it offers up multiple explanations - none of which really fit the accounts.

Of course, strange unexplained lights in the sky at night are a very far cry from gray-skinned aliens in flying saucers with rectal probes and ray guns. I think it's important to separate them.

As to why aliens would come here and not announce themselves? Ack! One must not violate the prime directive!

-Gumboot

I know the True Believer UFOgists reject the explanation that the lights were those of shrimp boats. However, the blobs of light filmed would have resolved into something else if the cameraman had simply focused his camera at say infinity rather than the few feet it most definitely is. Many UFO photos are similar out of focus blurry blobs.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

This sparked my curiousity. So I googled and Wikipediad.

The first UFO account described by Kenneth Arnold was "boomerang-shaped" flying objects that moved erratically across the sky, "like a saucer would if you skipped it across water."

Wikipedia has this picture.

[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Arnold_crescent_1947.jpg[/qimg]


This makes more sense. It's aerodynamic, not like a saucer, and it wasn't influenced by the press.

Was it an alien wanting to anally probe humans? Or maybe top secret military aircraft? Look familiar?


[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/47/B-2_Spirit_original.jpg/800px-B-2_Spirit_original.jpg[/qimg]

Edit To Add: This is an interesting link on German aircraft design in WWII

http://www.century-of-flight.freeola.com/new site/frames/horten frame.htm

It seems after WWII America adopted this design and eventually developped stealth technology. So it's not aliens, but Nazis that are responsible for UFOs

Do some more Gooling. The paper at the URL I posted earlier pretty much proves what Arnold saw were Pelicans. His description is exactly that of Pelicans.

 

[Corsair 115]

The U.S. model from the 50's.
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/YB49-2_300.jpg[/qimg]

Even back then the design's stealthy characteristics were noted. But the lack of fly-by-wire capability meant that the flying wing shape was very difficult for a pilot to manually control (there's a reason why the vertical stabilizer on aircraft are large) so further development of the YB-49 was abandoned.

The aircraft did get a guest starring appearance in the 1953 movie version of War of the Worlds when it came in and dropped an atomic bomb on the first Martian cylinder.

 

[steve s]

The U.S. model from the 50's.
[qimg]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/YB49-2_300.jpg[/qimg]

Don't forget the Northrop N9M-B (a smaller fighter version of the YB49.)
http://www.mucheswarbirds.com/N9MBart.html

It looks remarkably similar to the boomerang-shaped UFO that Kahalachan posted.

Steve S.

 

[portlandatheist]

I have a question for the hard core physicists out there:
If an alien civilization broadcast a signal at say 10000 Watts at say 10 light years away(for the sake or round numbers), using the Poynting Vector (the decrease in wattage as a function of distance) would we, even in theory, be able to detect such a weak signal? I don't know how weak of a signal SETI can detect and haven't crunched any numbers but it seems to me that such a signal would come across as nothing more than virtually undetectable background noise.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Here is my story, D.A.


As a teenager, I became interested in what we referred to as UAO's (Unidentified Aerial Objects) as opposed to UFO's, as if there were some intellectual levels about the subject. They did not necessarily "fly", but they were in the air. Presumably, the ones that were reported to have been in the ocean or lakes got there from the air originally.

OK, I was a buff - I was a member of NICAP (National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena) headed by Major Daniel Keyhoe in the mid 60's. Flying saucers were big news then. What you did was pay your dues, you got a periodical newsletter and instructions on how to search for UAO's and how to behave when confronted with same. I carried a camera around but lost interest after I went to college. I never read the Adamski books. The only brief interest I had in abduction stories or "citizen-ride-along" like Adamski was the Betty and Barney Hill story, but I dismissed that as being too fantastic later.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving 1966 my brother and father drove to Statesboro to pick me up from college and take me home for the holidays. My father had this enormous land yacht of a car that had a windsheild that curved upward further than the average car. My brother was driving, I was in the front passenger seat, Dad in the rear. I was having some issues with both so the trip home was mostly silent. I was just looking at the night sky, which was very clear and starry. Somewhere out of Statesboro, a bright light passed directly overhead and low - I am not an astronomer, but I had been a stargazer long enough to know the difference between a star, a "falling star", or conventional commercial aircraft. I grew up and still lived 2 miles from the Atlanta Airport (Hartsfield). This light flew so suddenly overhead and low and was immediately overtaken by a second similar light that caught up to it and both banked to the left and disappeared in the treeline/horizon ahead. These were not meteors. These lights were flying low. These were not small lights. If they were flying at regular altitudes, they would have had to have been enormous crafts by the size of the lights and could not have disappeared in the distance as quickly as they did. My brother never said a word so I did not bring it up. It was curious but not that big of a deal.

February 7, 1967, a group of 5 of us ventured north from the college to attend a high school basketball game near Athens. It was after midnight that we were returning back to Statesboro on a southerly route. I was sitting in the middle of the backseat with my head leaning back and peering into the black country sky that seemed to be filled with stars. I was searching the air for UAO's. NICAP had said to watch for lights moving east to west. I was looking to my left when a bright light caught my eye in the distance and it was moving westward at a 90 degree angle to our route. Despite the speed of the car, I was able to focus on this light and noticed that the surrounding stars were blacked out momentarily around it while it moved as if obstructed. I had already told the guys that I would be looking for something in the sky and shouted for the driver to stop. It was a state route, but we were the only ones on the road there. We stopped in the middle of the road and all 5 of us got out and shut off the motor, leaving the doors open. We were just watching this light continue on its path towards us. There was absolute quiet with no other ground lights around. At one point a dog barking in the distance was the only noise except for a whispered comment or two from one of us. I estimate we stood there at least 5 minutes total, maybe more, because one of the guys crossed a ditch to a fence and took a leak and then came back to watch the light. Within a minute or two, the object passed overhead, but instead of continuing its silent path, it stalled above us. Now all of us are looking straight up above the car. The light was directly above, still no noise. Then the white light seemed to grow larger and larger. Then the edges of the light came more sharply into focus and I could clearly see a triangular shape - the light, that is. It was as if the cover of a bank of fluorescent ceiling lights was shaped like a triangle. I said, "the thing's getting bigger", but one of the others said, "Hell no, it's getting CLOSER. It's coming down!" At this point, we all panicked and dove into the car and sped on down the road. Looking behind us we could now see the light moving back eastward, not to the west as it had been. It still appeared to move slowly by our perspective but it had to have been moving faster than us because although it was further away than before, now it caught up with and seemed to be cruising parallel to us. I understand that no road is perfectly straight and that's why a stationary object like the moon can appear to change positions, but 4 of us were watching this thing. It never got ahead of us and it never came towards us again. About 10 minutes after we had fled, the white light changed gradually to red in a few seconds, and disappeared, not zipping away, but just vanished like when you turn out a light. How close was it when we were standing in the road? No idea. To demonstrate, I would hold my hands above my head, touch my thumbs together and my index fingers together to form a triangle and say that's how big it looked before I caved. We never reported it.

Exactly 2 weeks later on the 21st, I seemed to be the only one interested in rehashing that night. It was just beginning to get dark. Three of us were walking to the edge of the campus where our P.O. boxes and a Dairy Queen were located. Bob had been one of the 5 in the car. He was with me and another guy and I was re-telling the tale to this third guy, using Bob as a witness. Actually by this time, the other 3 that had been in the car wanted me to just STFU about it but I couldn't let it go. We were standing at a traffic light across the street from a store on the opposite corner and I was right in the middle of talking about it. Behind the store was a small stand of trees. Directly across the crosswalk on that corner was a similar stand of trees. Behind those, less than 50 feet away, was the large parking area that had the Post Office and DQ. There was a sudden rush of wind. The noise of wind came from the left. We could clearly see a maybe 40 foot long "craft" of some kind whooshing by at what was maybe 40-50 miles per hour, above and behind the corner store and behind, but not higher than, the stand of trees. There was no engine sound, only the rush of wind, and what sounded like something metal flapping against something metal. There were sections of light on the side we could see that did not look like running lights, but gave the impression of a row of windows with the visible light coming from within. I ran across the street past the trees and into the open parking area and stood directly behind the path of this thing as it moved away. The parking area bordered a large field that had few trees and the thing was now moving over it. One of the other guys reached the parking area and was behind me. From this perspective, all we could see was a an object moving away from us in a straight line. Just as quickly, this object appeared to suddenly move up 90 degrees for a second, then back down 90 degrees to the same path it had been on and continued to move straight away from us. It repeated this same manoeuver twice more, until it was too far away to be visible. Each of the 3 times it did that, bits of light that looked like flames shot out of it and sprinkled down on the downturn, but faded before they got to the ground.

I was 18 years old and did not drink or use drugs, and neither did any of the witnesses to this "shared hallucination." There were no photos, no abductions, no slot-mouth, no eared, bobblehead short people - nothing whatsoever left behind to hold in my hand.

OK, I finally talked about it on JREF. Somebody offer an opinion. I'm not going to interpret it as a whole. Obviously some of the details I provided involve a bit of interpretation for purposes of description. I remember it well because I have written it down many times and for a long time afterwards I couldn't STFU about it.

Looks like we're in the same boat, brother. One of wonder.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I have a question for the hard core physicists out there:
If an alien civilization broadcast a signal at say 10000 Watts at say 10 light years away(for the sake or round numbers), using the Poynting Vector (the decrease in wattage as a function of distance) would we, even in theory, be able to detect such a weak signal? I don't know how weak of a signal SETI can detect and haven't crunched any numbers but it seems to me that such a signal would come across as nothing more than virtually undetectable background noise.

It is hard to say. The only thing I've heard about S.E.T.I is they work at the low end of radio waves. They assume that an advanced civilization would use a base form of signal to raise probability of it reaching some that were looking for it.

And I believe their founder started the Disclosure Project.
(I could be mistaken in that though)