Cont: UFOs: The Research, the Evidence

[turingtest]

The Wiki article brushes aside claims that observers of the flying objects said they hovered without sound. One quote is that some airmen heard a low hum. Helicopters do not make a low hum they make one hell of a noise. The wiki article says the sound may have just been blown away by the wind. It seems to me it is that article which is trying to discredit the UFO claims with ill considered disinformation. The first thing investigators of UAPs do is check if there were any planes or helicopters or dirigibles or weather balloons in the area.
Colonel Andre Amond sent in a report. which said. He ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized ultra light, or any other known aerial vehicle.

What exactly are "the UFO claims"? It seems to me that all you're really doing with your laundry list of UFO episodes (and, BTW, quantity does not automatically confer quality) is the usual strategy of dismissing what are at least grounded explanations for what people may have seen in favor of maintaining the mystery so you can insert your own preferred but otherwise un-evidenced and airy woo.

 

[Carrot Flower King]

And so has Ian Ridpath at http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/lighthouse_visibility.htm

It was, in part, the Orfordness lighthouse.

For a full explanation read his page on Rendlesham here:

The Rendlesham Forest UFO case – Ian Ridpath

Rendlesham Forest Incident, Rendlesham Forest UFO, Rendlesham Forest case, Rendlesham Forest UFO case, British Roswell, Rendlesham Forest explained

www.ianridpath.com

PS. I'd love to see your photos. Care to post a couple?

I have quite a lot of pix taken on Orford Ness over several visits prior to the demolition of the light house. Snag is few of them are immediately accessible, even before I figure out image posting on this new set up.

I'll have a rummage and see what I can find easily.

 

[JayUtah]

The Wiki article brushes aside claims that observers of the flying objects said they hovered without sound.

Not remarkable, as it convolves with usually-wrong estimates of size and distance.

One quote is that some airmen heard a low hum. Helicopters do not make a low hum they make one hell of a noise.

No, helicopters are not limited to just one kind of noise. Again, this depends on estimates of size and distance, and these are almost always wrong.

The wiki article says the sound may have just been blown away by the wind. It seems to me it is that article which is trying to discredit the UFO claims with ill considered disinformation.

Wind literally does "blow away" sound. Most UFO claims are based on very narrow expectations for what the physical world provides.

The first thing investigators of UAPs do is check if there were any planes or helicopters or dirigibles or weather balloons in the area.
Colonel Andre Amond sent in a report. which said. He ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized ultra light, or any other known aerial vehicle.

He ascertained it was not a "hologram!?" Bwhahaha! Such a report is non-credible on its face. Your author wants us to believe that the colonel did a thorough report, which means we have to believe the fantastical claim.

Scorpion, these are the same UFO reports that have been given a new coat of paint every ten years ago and shopped around for a gullible new audience.

 

[Myriad]

Belgian one sounds like kites.

Back before drones, I always said how easy it would be to create UFO hoaxes with lighted kites. From the ground, at night, they tend to look much larger, faster, and farther away than they are. They can't go very high but "low on the horizon" seems to be the preferred stomping ground for UFOs. It's easy to make them move in ways impossible for (pre-drone) free-flying aircraft, because unlike a plane they can hover. Unlike a balloon they can maneuver dramatically. Unlike a helicopter they have little inertia and can change speed and directions much more quickly. They can be silent because they need no engines (though there are ways to make them emit "strange" sounds too). If the lights are set to turn on and off (or are remotely controlled, though that's more difficult) they can appear and disappear.

"Reports" always seem to emphasize that the object's observed movements wouldn't be possible for a plane, helicopter, or balloon. A kite never seems to even be considered, which makes it perfect for a hoax.

 

[JayUtah]

"Reports" always seem to emphasize that the object's observed movements wouldn't be possible for a plane, helicopter, or balloon. A kite never seems to even be considered, which makes it perfect for a hoax.

Free-floating objects are routinely reported as UFOs. We had a spectacular one a few years ago in my city. It was a silver hobby dirigible approximately 30 m long that had escaped its owner's control.

A number of premises underlie most UFO reports. A number of them simply don't hold when scrutinized.

Foremost among them is that ordinary objects will always (or almost always) be recognized as such, especially by experienced observers. The corollary to this is the notion that ordinary objects will always manifest in their canonical appearance. The mantra goes, "I've seen many examples of X before, and that was no X." The expectation is that X will appear and behave in a sort of canonical form: helicopters will always make loud chop-chop noises, etc. I've been around airliners my whole life, with considerable hands-on experience. When you see an airliner emerge silently from a fog bank with only its landing lights visible, your whole notion of "I know what X looks and sounds like" goes out the window.

Around my home, the most common source of UFO reports is seagulls. Our state bird is the California seagull. There are lots of them, especially around the lake. As you may be aware, flocks of birds tend to wheel more or less in unison when they turn. The Califonia seagull has a dark back and a white underbelly. This means that when seen from a distance, a flock of seagulls will tend to appear and disappear against a mountainside backdrop.

The next common misunderstanding is that size, distance, and velocity can be reliably determined. This is especially acute for unidentified objects. Beyond about 100 meters, estimates of distance become highly inaccurate. The customary binocular vision cues are not useful beyond that range. Neuroscience shows us that estimates of distance beyond 100 meters is based almost entirely on estimates of object size. More particularly, you have to know what the object is so that you can reckon its apparent size against expected size. Experimenters have routinely spoofed subjects' estimates of distance by showing them objects of familiar shape but nonstandard size.A big part of this cueing mechanism is fitting the object within expected surroundings. When you present objects outside their familiar background or context, estimates of size go out the window as well as ordinary object identification. Estimates of velocity depend on accurate estimates of distance and a relative lack of motion in the observers. Moving observers (e.g., objects seen from a car or an airplane cockpit) routinely appear to exhibit motion that is inconsistent with naive estimates.

Finally we have the myth of the "trained observer." While certain kinds of observation can be trained, there simply is no such thing as a generally better observer. This includes pilots, military officers, government officials, police officers, and others common proffered as people whose inability to identify something should be considered evidence of some unknown of fantastical origin. The kind of observation that can be trained is situational and phenomenological, not general. For example, police officers can be trained to recognize signs of drunkenness, and this can be tested and established to a higher degree of accuracy than lay observation.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Scorpion, you have to look no further than Campeche for a plane full of trained observers backed up by radar and FLIR hard evidence!

Famous Mexican UFO video debunked by TV host – Openminds.tv

openminds.tv

 

[Cosmic Yak]

The Wiki article brushes aside claims that observers of the flying objects said they hovered without sound. One quote is that some airmen heard a low hum. Helicopters do not make a low hum they make one hell of a noise. The wiki article says the sound may have just been blown away by the wind. It seems to me it is that article which is trying to discredit the UFO claims with ill considered disinformation. The first thing investigators of UAPs do is check if there were any planes or helicopters or dirigibles or weather balloons in the area.
Colonel Andre Amond sent in a report. which said. He ascertained that this craft was not a hologram, helicopter, military aircraft, balloon, motorized ultra light, or any other known aerial vehicle.

This is a total misrepresentation of the Wiki article.

 

[Explorer]

Have you actually bothered to research any of these sightings yourself, Scorpion?

For example when I googled this one:



... the first link was to a wiki article:

Belgian UFO wave - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I'm not going to bother to google the others until you have done the minimum amount of research that could reasonably be expected before posting such a list on a sceptics site.

I Googled Scorpion's Ray Bowyer pilot report and picked up a video of him being questioned by several different interviewers on various TV channels.


The UFO was described in the headlines at the time that the object was "gigantic" and a "mile long". However, during the interview the pilot stated that the object was around 40 to 50 miles away and so he qualified the size estimate when prompted and simply said that it must have been large. However, the sighting was interesting and so was the description of the object. A second object was also seen in the area by a different pilot at the same time, and both were seen on radar. Both of these objects said the pilot, should not have been in an air controlled area. In conclusion, all we can say in my view, is that these kind of sightings although unusual and sometimes disturbing, can never really be explained in a definitive way. Only suggestions can be made as an alternative to alien technology, and frankly in this case at least with so little physical evidence, can anything be proven.

 

[Pixel42]

As JayUtah has pointed out, if the pilot didn't know what he was looking at he had no way of estimating either its size or its distance - it could have been big and far away, or small and close. If he was also seeing it on his radar he should have been able to tell exactly how far away it was, and wouldn't have been guessing. According to the wiki article:

In 2013, the British academic and folklorist David Clarke published a partial transcript of the recorded conversation between Bowyer and an air traffic controller on the island of Jersey. In the transcript, the air traffic controller said that he did not pick up any radar contacts ahead of Bowyer's aircraft, only seeing "a very faint primary contact", which he considered to be meteorological in origin.

This (also from the wiki article) looks like a plausible explanation:

A local astronomer, Michael Maunder, attributed Bowyer's report to sun dogs, an optical phenomenon caused by the refraction of light through ice crystals in the atmosphere. He described the weather during the flight as "just right for setting up sundogs and similar phenomena". Sundogs appear at 22 degrees relative to the direction of the sun from the observer, and Maunder noted that at the time of Bowyer's sighting, the lights he reported seeing would have been approximately 22 degrees from the sun.

 

[Darat]

15 years since the thread was originally started and we are still going over the same stuff!

 

[Carrot Flower King]

All you need to do to see how rubbish most folk are at estimating speed and distance is to go out on any road around other traffic...

As to "experienced observers", from a bird watching point of view it can be hilarious listening to other folk talk themselves into knots over something common in unusual light conditions or a rare colour form, such as a leucistic variant. And, to protect the guilty, Carrot Flower Queen and I know nothing about 2 people who convinced themselves that there was an otter atop a ruined farm house in Sufolk...No, we know nothing about that...anyone who says we were in Suffolk at the time is mistaken...

 

[Pixel42]

15 years since the thread was originally started and we are still going over the same stuff!

77 years and counting since Roswell, and still not a shred of actual evidence.

 

[sackett]

77 years and counting since Roswell, and still not a shred of actual evidence.

The ufoologists reply, "Oh yeah? The evidence don't go away! So there must be somethin' innit! Gotta be!"

Some people's playhouses are impossible to knock down. No wonder, when they've been piled so thick with rubbish.

 

[Scorpion]

I am still reading the book UFOs and will not finish it for a couple of days. I will consider criticism of it then. Meantime I want to mention two times in my life I have seen something unexplained.
The first was when I was in junior school and I was in the playground during a break. I cannot remember how old I was but I was probably under ten years old. I looked up and saw what appeared to be a silver disk hovering directly overhead. From below a weather balloon might look like a disk, but I had the impression it was round metallic and silver. I cannot remember what happened, because I think I was called in from the playground. I remember wanting to keep watching it but I don't think I was allowed to.
The second time, is an event I have already posted somewhere on the forum. I was in the garden on a clear night looking for sputnik one when it was due to pass overhead in Kent. While looking for the sputnik I noticed what looked like a faint star was moving along in relation to the stars around it. It was moving very slowly and then it stopped moving and stayed still for a minute or two. Then it started moving again. Then it stopped again for a similar amount of time, and it did this several times until disappearing from view. Soon after that Sputnik one appeared and it rose from the horizon in a continuous movement. It was brighter than the moving star object and it soon passed overhead and disappeared from view.
I still wonder what it was that I saw as in those days there was not supposed to be anything else up there except the sputnik. It was not a helicopter, I am sure of that. It was soundless and had no lights, other that what I assume was the sun reflecting from it.

 

[RoboTimbo]

Are you a "trained observer"?

 

[Scorpion]

Are you a "trained observer"?

Hardly

 

[Pixel42]

I am still reading the book UFOs and will not finish it for a couple of days. I will consider criticism of it then.

Or you could do a bit of research, and criticise it yourself.

Meantime I want to mention two times in my life I have seen something unexplained.

You mean something you couldn't explain.

Why would you expect to immediately be able to identify everything you might see in the sky? I doubt there's anyone in the world who could.

 

[JayUtah]

All you need to do to see how rubbish most folk are at estimating speed and distance is to go out on any road around other traffic...

This is a thing. When litigating highway accidents, a common point of tension between plaintiff and defense counsel is the parties' estimates of distance. Drivers are notoriously unable to accurately recall or estimate distances in common standard units such as feet or meters. Defense attorneys generally prefer estimates in "car lengths," which is still indeterminate but tends to result in more accurate estimates of distance. This becomes important when determining fault or negligence, since short following distances generally contribute to accidents—one cannot stop in time. The plaintiff in a rear-end collision generally wants to prove that the driver behind (presumably the defendant) was following too closely.

 

[JayUtah]

I will consider criticism of it then.

Keep in mind that skepticism isn't about getting the right answer. It's about being able to justify with evidence and sound reasoning the answer you got. If you do that properly, you should get a true answer or the best answer. But "rightness" is often confused with preconceptions expectations. The right answer for someone might involve subjective factors.

With that in mind, we're trying to get you to recognize and evaluate your assumptions. For example, in your sightings you mention :—

It was not a helicopter, I am sure of that. It was soundless and had no lights, other that what I assume was the sun reflecting from it.

You state an overt assumption: that you could see the object in question only because sunlight was reflecting off it, presumably at altitude. But you rely upon another premise which contains a tacit assumption: that if it had been an ordinary aircraft you would have heard its engines and seen perhaps a different lighting arrangement. Those are the kinds of assumptions that generally don't hold when tested, even if they seem intuitively true. But whether they hold or not, it's important to recognize that you have made assumptions. Only then can you discuss whether they hold as premises. In the end you may come around full circle and decide according to evidence (rather than guesswork) that it still can't have been a helicopter. But that rational exercise doesn't occur until you become adept at spotting and questioning your assumptions.

UFO authors prefer to stick with intuition rather than fact and never question the core assumptions in their hypotheses. This is why their books have broad appeal and staying power. But it's why they're garbage when reckoned as any sort of investigative exercise.

Meantime I want to mention two times in my life I have seen something unexplained.

As others have pointed out, there's a subtle but important difference between "unexplained" and "I can't explain it." Happenstance occurrences are notoriously difficult to explain, even when you have a plethora of available fact. Even with sure facts and reasoning, we can't rewind the clock and determine that what we think happened was actually what happened. A favorite trick of UFO enthusiasts is to reverse the burden of proof: "Okay, you're so smart, you tell me what I saw." The fact that we can plausibly do this in some cases does not give rise to a general obligation to do so in other or all cases. And UFO enthusiasts have wised up to affirmative claims, so that they don't seem like they have a burden of proof: "I'm not saying it was aliens, but..." (it was aliens). They want to bank on the notion that some curious set of observations must be considered remarkable simply because it is curious, and that aliens are as good an explanation as any. Then they berate skeptics for their lack of curiosity when we say, "All right, you saw something you can't identify—so what?"

The key principle remains that stuff happens all the time that is perfectly normal, but appears extraordinary according to the circumstances of observation. The fact that we can attribute some of these remarkable observations to mundane causes after the fact is enough intellectual justification to set that up as the null hypothesis. If you tell me you saw something remarkable, I won't argue. If you want to tell me what that remarkable observations means—e.g., "There are vehicles that defy the laws of physics"—then I will push back skeptically.

 

[JayUtah]

The ufoologists reply, "Oh yeah? The evidence don't go away! So there must be somethin' innit! Gotta be!"

Some people's playhouses are impossible to knock down. No wonder, when they've been piled so thick with rubbish.

Fringe theories are cyclical, from my perspective. They're proffered, discussed, debunked and buried, only to rise again years later for a new audience. It's been long enough since Stephen Greer that a new author can pick up the same claims, slap on a new coat of paint, and present them to an audience who never heard them before. It doesn't help that there's an obvious grift involved. UFO enthusiasm is a money-making enterprise.

But the companion claim is that the government has been hushing things up. This lets people say, "We could prove UFOs are alien spaceships if only the government would release the information we know it has." That's why the UFO movement is just as much about whistle-blowers as it is about people who saw or chased things up in the sky. There is no winning that battle. Eventually all the relevant information from Roswell was released. Eventually the Area 51 site was acknowledged. But because it didn't involve a crashed ship and little gray aliens, it was dismissed as a cover story. As long as "They're lying!" remains convincing rhetoric, it literally doesn't matter what the actual evidence is.