Why us?

[webplodder]

While I don't have a problem with the ETH, it's a pretty reasonable idea, it does seem to dominate all discussion of UFOs and is quite hard to get past sometimes. There could be a whole range of different explanations, some of which we don't fully understand, for a select few cases.

Which returns us to the need for scientific evidence. So far there has been none at all. The objective of the scientific method is to demonstrate that something is supportable or not and without due evidence we get into the endless speculations that we see in connection with the Rendlesham case and many others.

[John Burroughs]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8axMaBL ... ture=share http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUIY_bL ... ture=share

Here you go Ignis have fun with these!!

[John Burroughs]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8axMaBL4uo&feature=share http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUIY_bL ... ture=share

Here you go Ignis have fhttp: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRdPs7tLZ_A&feature=relatedun with these!!

[AdrianF]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8axMaBL ... ture=share http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fUIY_bL ... ture=share

Here you go Ignis have fun with these!!

I read the book a few years before they made this. I thought the movie was going to be a massive let down, but they did a great job of converting the idea to screen.

Which returns us to the need for scientific evidence. So far there has been none at all. The objective of the scientific method is to demonstrate that something is supportable or not and without due evidence we get into the endless speculations that we see in connection with the Rendlesham case and many others

Absolutely. But while there are a few people doing some good work, the majority of scientists won't touch the subject. Even if they're personally interested, which is a shame.

[John Burroughs]

This bugs me for several different reason besides the fact it was written in 1987..

Harry concludes from the classification of the event which sent the ship back that the Habitat crew is fated to die: it would not have been an "unknown event" if they had lived to report about it, he reasons. Harry soon sneaks back to the spaceship, and finds a way to enter the sphere. Soon after, a series of binary-encoded messages begins to show up on the habitat's computer screens, and Harry and Ted are able to decipher the messages and converse with what appears to be an alien (which calls itself "Jerry"), which has been trapped in the sphere.

The film ends with the three deciding to use their powers to erase their own memories before being debriefed, in order to prevent the knowledge about the sphere from falling into the wrong hands. Thus, Harry's paradox, in which they are alive yet no one has learned about the "unknown event," is resolved. As they erase their own memories of the "unknown event," the sphere is seen emerging from the ocean and flying off into space

[Vortex]

Good luck with that! If the UK/US military told us even a tenth of what they know, the origin of UFOs would be a matter of public record....

You may well be right! And for a long time I was pretty convinced that a massive cover-up surrounding this subject was in place. But again, it's just speculation isn't it? I'm not dismissing the possibility of the UK/US military covering-up data on this subject (indeed, I'd be shocked if they didn't know more about the subject considering the years that both nations have spent investigating the phenomena behind the scenes), I'm just saying that we need to focus on the available data from UFO cases in order to make any real progress. Maybe it's naiive to suggest that international and military/civilian co-operation is required in this field, but excluding the UK and USA, several countries have adopted this approach to a certain extent: Belgium, France, Mexico and Brazil for example.

[bignos]

oocam's razor simply implies that the answer MAY be a simple one, not that it is...
also further to my comment about history proving experts wrong, only recently 'we' discovered a thing called "metamaterials" - they basically prove that you can bend light around an object, up until then it was thought of as impossible, textbooks are now being rewritten. UFOs just disapearing in the blink of an eye .... maybe they just switch on a "cloak"?

[Frank]

Which returns us to the need for scientific evidence. So far there has been none at all.

That's a bit of an understatement ..

Would you consider Edward Ruppelt, who headed the USAF official blue book investigation, a reliable source?
Here are some of the cases he describes:

1952:
In a matter of seconds the three aircraft were close enough to the B-25 to be clearly seen. They were not F-86's. They were three bright silver, delta wing craft with no tails and no pilot's canopies. The only thing that broke the sharply defined, clean upper surface of the triangular wing was a definite ridge that ran from the nose to the tail.
In another second the three deltas made a slight left bank and shot by the B-25 at terrific speed. The colonels estimated that the speed was at least three times that of an F-86. They got a good look at the three deltas as the unusual craft passed within 400 to 800 yards of the B-25.

1948/1949:
When they reduced the data they had collected, McLaughlin and crew found out that the UFO had been traveling 4 degrees per second. At one time during the observed portion of its flight, the UFO had passed in front of a range of mountains that were visible to the observers. Using this as a check point, they estimated the size of the UFO to be 40 feet wide and 100 feet long, and they computed that the UFO had been at an altitude of 296,000 feet, or 56 miles, when they had first seen it, and that it was traveling 7 miles per second.
(...)
This wasn't the only UFO sighting made by White Sands scientists. On April 5, 1948, another team watched a UFO for several minutes as it streaked across the afternoon sky in a series of violent maneuvers. The disk shaped object was about a fifth the size of a full moon.
On another occasion the crew of a C-47 that was tracking a skyhook balloon saw two similar UFO's come loping in from just above the horizon, circle the balloon, which was flying at just under 90,000 feet, and rapidly leave. When the balloon was recovered it was ripped.

1952:
They flew on for a few more minutes with "the darn thing" still off to their left. If it was a balloon, they should be leaving it behind, the pilot recalled thinking to himself; if they made a 45 degree right turn, the "balloon" shouldn't stay off the left wing; it should drop way behind. So they made a 45 degree right turn, and although the "balloon" dropped back a little bit, it didn't drop back far enough to be a balloon. It seemed to put on speed to try to make a turn outside of the C-54's turn. The pilot continued on around until he'd made a tight 360 degree turn, and the UFO had followed, staying outside. They could not judge its speed, not knowing how far away it was, but to follow even a C-54 around in a 360 degree turn and to stay outside all of the time takes a mighty speedy object.

1951
The [radar] operator spotted an object about 12,000 yards southeast of the station, flying low toward the north. He tried to switch the set to automatic tracking. He failed, tried again, failed again. He turned to his audience of VIPs, embarrassed.
"It's going too fast for the set," he said. 'That means it's going faster than a jet!"
A lot of very important eyebrows lifted. What flies faster than a jet?
The object was in range for three minutes and the operator kept trying, without success, to get into automatic track. The target finally went off the scope, leaving the red-faced operator talking to himself. The radar technicians at Fort Monmouth had checked the weather - there wasn't the slightest indication of an inversion layer.
The Fort Monmouth Incident then switched back to the radar group. At 3:15 P.M. they got an excited, almost frantic call from headquarters to pick up a target high and to the north - which was where the first "faster-than-a-jet" object had vanished - and to pick it up in a hurry. They got a fix on it and reported that it was traveling slowly at 93,000 feet. They also could see it visually as a silver speck.
What flies 18 miles above the earth?
The next morning two radar sets picked up another target that couldn't be tracked automatically. It would climb, level off, climb again, go into a dive. When it climbed it went almost straight up.


Or the Belgian Air Force? Here is their official statement about the Belgian triangles:

(...)

8. At 00.05 2 F16 were scrambled from BEAUVECHAIN airbase and guided towards the radar contacts. A total of 9 interception attempts have been made. At 6 occasions the pilots could establish a lock-on with their air interception radar. Lock-on distances varied between 5 and 8 NM. On all occasions targets varied speed and altitude very quickly and break-locks occurred after 10 to 60 seconds. Speeds varied between 150 and 1010 kts. At 3 occasions both F16 registered simultaneous lock-ons with the same parameters. The 2 F16 were flying +- 2 NM apart. No visual contact could be established by either of the F16 pilots.

(...)

Conclusions:

12. The Belgian Air Force was unable to identify neither the nature nor the origin of the phenomena. However, it had sufficient elements to exclude following assumptions:

a. Balloons. Impossible due to the highly variable speeds (confirmed visually and by radar).
b. ULM. Same as for balloons.
c. RPV. Impossible due to the hovering characteristics.
d. Aircraft (including Stealth). Same as for RPV. No noise.
e. Laser projections or Mirages. Unlikely due to lack of projection surface (no clouds). Light spots have been observed from different locations. Light spots moved over distance of more than 15 NM. Form of inlighted part of spots has been observed with spectacles. Laser projections or mirages can not be detected by radar.

[webplodder]

Frank, I appreciate the point you are making but, nevertheless, all the examples you have given can be explained in other ways because there is no scientific back-up that supports any conclusion that they necessarily due to ET activity. Misidentifications, hoaxes, peculiar atmospheric phenomena, experimental aircraft, imagination, mental aberrations or even downright lying must all be considered over alien visitations because until there is more solid scientific evidence for the existence of ETs in our airspace Occam's Razor must be applied. This kind of thing tends to turn into a belief system, not a scientific exercise so that people want to stick with the ET hypothesis even when not supported by proper evidence. Frank, do you honestly think that given the number of UFO events and even so-called close encounters over the years there would not be something more substantial to base the ET hypothesis on? Hearsay is not scientific evidence Frank, pictures can be faked or distorted; radar can malfunction or pick-up temperature inversions, pilots are only human and can be mistaken, etc., etc.

I notice that many of the proponents of the ET hypothesis bring out books. Could it be that it is the profit motive we have to examine here rather than genuinely strange phenomena?

Frank, answer me this: why do most serious scientists not take the ET hypothesis seriously?

[David Bryant]

'Serious' scientists? What on Earth do you mean by that?
I suspect the 'official' view is that any scientists that publicly accept the reality of the UFO phenomenon are NOT 'serious'.
I am the UK's only full-time, professional meteorite dealer: I have a degree in Astronomy and Biochemistry. Does the fact that I admit to having seen a number of UFOs mean that I'm not a 'serious' scientist?
I think the key word is publicly: I am aware of a number of eminent scientists who privately feel that UFOs are a genuine phenomenon, but, out of concern for peer-group opinions, say nothing in public.

[bignos]

i agree with the above, it could be a career nosedive....

[Frank]

I am not saying we have evidence of ET visitation, webplodder.

The only thing you can conclude from the data is that we have a phenomenon that is unexplained and that has some characteristics that could point to ET visitation.

Your statement that all cases can be explained in mundane terms is simply untrue. Like I said earlier, every research effort so far has found a considerable amount of cases for which there was no mundane explanation that fits the data, and these were cases with sufficient data to draw such a conclusion.

Look at the conclusion of the Belgian Air Force in my previous post for example. Or look at these statistics from project blue book published in Ruppelt’s book:

Since June 1947, when the first UAP report had been made, ATIC had analyzed 1,593 UAP reports. About 4,400 had actually been received, but all except 1,593 had been immediately rejected for analysis. From our studies, we estimated that ATIC received reports of only 10 per cent of the UAP sightings that were made in the United States, therefore in five and a half years something like 44,000 UAP sightings had been made.
Of the 1,593 reports that had been analyzed by Project Blue Book, and we had studied and evaluated every report in the Air Force files, we had been able to explain a great many. The actual breakdown was like this:
Balloons
- Known 1.57%
- Probable 4.99%
- Possible 11.95%
- Total 18.51%
Aircraft
- Known 0.98%
- Probable 7.74%
- Possible 3.04%
- Total 11.76%
Astronomical Bodies
- Known 2.79%
- Probable 4.01%
- Possible 7.40%
- Total 14.2%
Other: 4.21%
(i.e. Searchlights on clouds, birds, blowing paper, inversions, reflections, etc.)
Hoaxes: 1.66%
Reports with insufficient data to evaluate: 22.72%
(In addition to those initially eliminated)
Unknowns: 26.94%

So 1 in every 4 reports investigated was an unknown, and these were all reports with sufficient data to evaluate.

The idea that all cases can be explained is an illusion. This can only be done by ignoring important data, but that has nothing to do with science.

Many scientists have a distorted image of the UFO data (which is not surprising given the rubbish you get if you google the subject) and do not spend any effort in studying the (few) scientific reports that are available. But like David pointed out, those that do take the phenomenon very seriously.

[David Bryant]

As an example of the pressure that publicly-funded scientists are under, I know of a senior climate modeller for the DoE who can give you chapter and verse on how the evidence for global warming has been manufactured / manipulated / spun. His salary depends on NOT going public with this.

I recently gave a talk about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life to a fairly august bunch of amateur astronomers: at the end the chairman thanked me, but added the caveat that it was a shame I'd spolied the presentation by mentioningUFOs! I responded by inviting the audience ( Which included a good number of ex-pilots) if any of them had witnessed an aerial phenomenon they couldn't categorise: almost all of them (over 150!) put their hands up!

[webplodder]

Frank, I think what you would have to do is take a specific case and examine it on its own merits. It's not much help in generalising about every case because they have to be looked at on an individual basis as, for example, as the Rendlesham one, which hasn't really demonstrated anything solid, has it.

[webplodder]

David, I don't see how a scientist could think one thing in private and say something else in public because a scientist has to approach phenomena from a critical point of view based on evidence. Who are these scientists? I'm not aware of them, David.

[David Bryant]

Oh dear, 'Webplodder'! You do seem a little.....ingenue?
'Scientists' (or people who make a living from Science at least), are not the paragons of truth and honesty you seem to imagine!
The vast majority work for governments or corporations who expect them to promote a certain vision of the 'truth'. Woe betide anyone who forgets this! (David Kelly!)
Or how about Nigel Calder who was the Editor of the New Scientists until he published 'The Chilling Stars'? Or when did you last see David Bellamy on TV? These are just a few of the people who discovered that integrity can be the downfall of a professional Scientist.

If you were not anonymous, and if I felt I could trust you, I'd reveal the i/ds of a dozen Scientists who say one thing in public and another, diametrically opposed, in private.

[David Bryant]

You were right to pick up the Nigel Calder error: but you do seem to have adopted the two main strategies of the 'cynical denier':
1) Pick up on any small error in fact, as if that alone is sufficient to discredit the whole thesis
2) Ridicule and call into question the sanity of anyone who holds a different opinion (There is a lot of difference between eccentric and mad: or would you call Sir Patrick Moore mad?) I love the way you attempt to dismiss Bellamy's scientific achievements by linking him to David Icke! (Stephen Hawking has been on the Simpsons, you know!)

Just a question: why are so many of the posters on this forum cynical about the existence of UFOs? If you think Halt, Penniston, Burroughs, Warren et al are either liars or deluded 'care in the community candidates', why not go off and start your own web forum'? Your missionary zeal is unlikely to persuade the 'believers'!

[David Bryant]

Crikey! I have an area of commonality with Mr Ridpath???? LOL!

[AdrianF]

Just a question: why are so many of the posters on this forum cynical about the existence of UFOs?

I don't know if that many people are? I've certainly become increasingly skeptical that there is any connection between UFOs and ET, but as this forum revolves around a UFO event, that would make me and most of the forum readers, believers in "UFOs", or at least interested in the subject and therefore not cynical.

[Ignis Fatuus]

Optical phenomena and optical illusions near lighthouses - C. Floor
http://www.keesfloor.nl/artikelen/diversen/lighthouse.pdf