Types of UFO's

[angelo]

Then a Swiss con artist/fraudsters comes along and cleans up with a book titled Chariots Of The Gods which sold millions of copies. So successful was Erich Von Daniken, that he released other books, all claimed as non fiction about ancient astronauts who developed Atlantis and built the pyramids and most other ancient wonders of the world. Von Daniken spent some time in a Swiss jail for fraud, but still laughed all the way to a Swiss bank account.
The sub title on his first book, Was God An Astronaut Sure to grab the attention of seekers of the truth!

 

[Draconis]

If a civilasation is advanced and old enough to get to the earth, they are surely not going to fly around and scare the shit of people without making contact. That's ridiculous thinking.

Then there is Fermi's dilemma. " If they're there, why aren't they here?" I think the earth is very rare, not that I don't think there's no life out there, I think there is an abundance of life out there, but I think it's mainly microbiological at least, and primitive animal at best.

I've thought about the "aliens coming to see us without making contact" question, and one answer goes like this: maybe they see us as primitive, in the way we see tree cutting ants or animals on the serengeti as primitive? We go long distances to visit the places where these species live, and make wildlife documentaries about them for the folks back home. But we don't spend any time trying to contact them, trying to talk to lions and antelope etc. What would we talk about if we could? Most of the stuff humans do these days would be meaningless to an early hominid who thought fire was cutting edge technology. And us talking about making fire? Boring for most of us.

Or else they could be alien teenagers out for a spin, curious but not wanting to screw up a planet before their parents find out and ground them.

And they might well be here. I doubt it, but they might. If so, meddling, or helping? Well maybe both if there's more than one type.

 

[Draconis]

It's strange to think that I've recently got into UFO's for the first time in years: I've seen a few reports of encounters and am prepared to accept a few as plausible. But as for real proof? That's a difficult one. It's sort of like there's some tatters and threads of cotton and you're suspecting there was a rug. Or it might be a shirt.

Looking on youtube is all but pointless, there's too many CGI spaceships there. I'm tending to be more interested in certain types of encounter. Those from before the 1950's, before when "flying saucer mania" got going and there were fewer planes and weather balloons, and those from isolated places and times where that didn't hit (avoiding the me-too problem). Those with multiple witnesses. Those where the witness had only admitted to the event years later. I'm trying to avoid all the spooky-mulder x-files nonsense.

I am wondering why "they" are so interested in military sites. And why they keep on crashing.

 

[angelo]

I'm sorry, but that damn speed limit of 180.000 miles per second puts paid to any alien visitations.
Any alien civilisation that would spend perhaps centuries to get here just to scare some lovers in lovers lane, late at night, just for fun is not plausible.

 

[BH]

Just curious, but are there any stories out there where there is more than one witness to a ufo coming down and the occupants coming out and talking to people? I came late to the thread and apologize if it's already been mentioned.

 

[Draconis]

Just curious, but are there any stories out there where there is more than one witness to a ufo coming down and the occupants coming out and talking to people? I came late to the thread and apologize if it's already been mentioned.

A particularly interesting one is the 1994 Ariel School event in Zimbabwe.

62 children (between ages 5 and 12) apparently witnessed a spaceship landing near their school, and saw a humanoid figure get out. Although this figure didn't speak, apparently he (?) sent telepathic images to the children. Personally I am dubious about that bit, but the rest seems plausible.

The children had little or no previous knowledge of UFO's etc. Some of them thought the "man" was a demon or suchlike. They were asked to draw what they saw, and the pictures can be found online.

Apparently there had been UFO activity for some days previous to this event.

Although I don't think this can be declared to be definitely an Alien visitation, it is worthy of interest and difficult to dismiss.

 

[angelo]

Just curious, but are there any stories out there where there is more than one witness to a ufo coming down and the occupants coming out and talking to people? I came late to the thread and apologize if it's already been mentioned.

A particularly interesting one is the 1994 Ariel School event in Zimbabwe.

62 children (between ages 5 and 12) apparently witnessed a spaceship landing near their school, and saw a humanoid figure get out. Although this figure didn't speak, apparently he (?) sent telepathic images to the children. Personally I am dubious about that bit, but the rest seems plausible.

The children had little or no previous knowledge of UFO's etc. Some of them thought the "man" was a demon or suchlike. They were asked to draw what they saw, and the pictures can be found online.

Apparently there had been UFO activity for some days previous to this event.

Although I don't think this can be declared to be definitely an Alien visitation, it is worthy of interest and difficult to dismiss.

Mass hallucinations ! It's not an unknown phenomenon. There's also the infamous Betty and Barny Hill who both claimed to have had a close encounter of the third kind.

 

[DBT]

Years ago I saw a speck of light in the night sky that had the appearance of a bright satellite, but it kept changing direction. Which was quite a surprise until I noticed it moved in tandem with a point of vision. It turned out to be some sort of flaw in my eye. After I had become aware of it I could even see it in a dark room. Luckily it cleared up in a few days.

 

[Draconis]

Mass hallucinations ! It's not an unknown phenomenon. There's also the infamous Betty and Barny Hill who both claimed to have had a close encounter of the third kind.

I don't know that much about mass hallucinations, and I don't think the children were kept apart after the event in order to prevent any discussion of what they saw prior to getting them to sit down and draw what they saw. Also, this thing about mass hysteria seems to require an initial cause to get going.

I don't think they had sufficient prior knowledge of UFO's to provide the emotionally-charged state required to produce mass hallucinations. They did not go out into the field looking for UFOs.

It's equally unsupportable to claim every reported possible Alien landing, with multiple witnesses, is caused by mass hysteria as it is to claim every UFO is an alien spaceship floating around.

Consider a counter example: Say there is a mass of supporters who have witnessed a football game, and thus know whether their team has won or lost after the game. They have prior knowledge of the game of football, and being keen supporters of their team, thus they are in quite an emotional-charged state. So let's say their team won, would it be considered reasonable to gather them all together and tell them without any evidence that they're victims of mass hysteria, that their team actually lost and they're all in some sort of mass denial? Why would anyone assume that to be the case? Should that proposition be taken seriously by anyone? I doubt it.

 

[Draconis]

Another counter example to "mass hallucinations": Say there's a murder with multiple witnesses. Is it a valid defence in court to say the witnesses were victims of a mass hallucination? If such a thing can be easily proved, then lots of people convicted as murderers would need to be released.

 

[untermensche]

They come but they hide.

Because humans are such a special ape you wouldn't want to disturb them.

 

[angelo]

Another counter example to "mass hallucinations": Say there's a murder with multiple witnesses. Is it a valid defence in court to say the witnesses were victims of a mass hallucination? If such a thing can be easily proved, then lots of people convicted as murderers would need to be released.

In saying that, consider that say, 10 people witnessed a smash. In writing a witness report, each witness has their own version of what happened. Some witnesses don't even agree on the colour of the vehicles involved.

 

[Draconis]

Another counter example to "mass hallucinations": Say there's a murder with multiple witnesses. Is it a valid defence in court to say the witnesses were victims of a mass hallucination? If such a thing can be easily proved, then lots of people convicted as murderers would need to be released.

In saying that, consider that say, 10 people witnessed a smash. In writing a witness report, each witness has their own version of what happened. Some witnesses don't even agree on the colour of the vehicles involved.

That's hardly disputing that there was a crash. Judgements have to be made to draw conclusions from lots of reports, rather being too ready to dismiss some that don't quite fit. Or dismissing them all because they're suspiciously similar. But some are just really out of line with the rest; if so discarding such testimony ought to be considered.

 

[angelo]

A reasonable defence lawyer would get a case thrown out of court with such conflicting witness reports.

 

[BH]

Back around 1985 or 1986 my father, my mother, my sister and I were coming back home from somewhere I can't remember and we started seeing these three or four swirling lights in the sky. If you held a quarter up at arms length that is about how big they were.

It was right after a rain and there was scattered fog. Remember this.

Anyway, we get home. We had noticed the lights about three blocks away from the house and get out of the car trying to figure out what they were. We even go get the neighbors out of the house next door and they look in total bewidlerment. This goes on for about thirty minutes and by this time the whole street is out watching. I had ran and got them all out of their homes. I was around ten years old.

The whole neighborhood is out watching these lights for about thirty minutes and then all of a sudden three beams from the ground become visible right after the other.

And then we knew what they were. They were searchlights. There were scattered fog banks around town and someone was running heavy duty searchlights as a promo for a new store down town about two or three miles away. A fog bank got between us and the light beams going up, not enough to block the light hitting the clouds up in the sky but wide enough to block us seeing the beams.

All the neighbors looked at it and felt relieved. One man, a world war two vet was getting really aggravated and scared.

Dad felt kinda embarrassed. But no one dissed him. It unnerved the neighbors for several minutes too.

 

[Draconis]

Getting back to the types of ufo's, it's interesting that their shapes vary. Of course the round ones could easily be plates or hub caps chucked in the air. Cigar shapes were popular about 100 years ago, but that's probably understandable with all those airships wafting around.

The so-called black triangles are more perplexing, not least being as they have a longer history than that of manned flight. They've been "debunked" as hi-tech aircraft with stealth capabilities (although if they're intent on being stealthy, why all those bright lights?) I've heard these things have been reverse-engineered to produce advanced aircraft for reasons not entirely clear. Allegedly one was used in the 2nd battle of Fallujah in order to direct troops etc, although I find it odd to imagine that such advanced stealth tech is required to beat a bunch of bearded men with guns.

 

[angelo]

99% of these sightings are explainable. The 1% not explainable are because of lack of credible witnesses.

 

[Draconis]

99% of these sightings are explainable. The 1% not explainable are because of lack of credible witnesses.

I'd go with 95% explainable and/or mundane explanations. The 5% being something "odd" happening, but not necessarily aliens.

Those hardcore UFO nuts seem to jump to a conclusion too easily, just like some other zealots.

 

[bilby]

99% of these sightings are explainable. The 1% not explainable are because of lack of credible witnesses explanations.

FTFY.

Not every observation is explainable.

UFOs are, by definition, unidentified.

The absence of an explanation for an observation or a report is not particularly remarkable; and it is certainly not a license to adopt a hypothesis that has no basis in reality.

"I saw a light in the sky, and I don't know what it was", describes a fairly mundane situation. "Therefore aliens" is not a tenable conclusion to derive from that observation alone.

 

[angelo]

Someone has already stated that there are those who do jump to conclusions far to easily. An unexplained light in the sky becomes a UFO, or sometimes as in the Barney Hill case an alien abduction.