130,000 pages of declassified US Air Force files related to UFO sightings(theblackvault.com)
theblackvault.com
130,000 pages of declassified US Air Force files related to UFO sightings
http://theblackvault.com/
17 comments
Carl Sagan makes that comparison in his book "the demon haunted world".
Joe Nickell is an author who's written extensively on this subject. He's a paranormal investigator who happens to also be a Ph.D. folklorist, and his folkloric interpretations of many modern phenomena can be extremely compelling.
This would be very interesting to read about. Slight tangent: I also remember seeing some stuff about how the brain is influenced by sociocultural things - like how people from christian-majority nations see heaven / hell / god imagery during psychosis but people from other, dissimilar cultures see different things. Or: how come people ingesting hallucinogens consistently report being one with god or being god? What's so special about the concept of god that triggers that kind of hallucination? Why isn't it as common to think that you're any other object, like a toaster?
Additionally, manifestations of paranoid schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders change with culture; during the Cold War, it was a common delusion that one was being monitored by the CIA or the KGB; nowadays many sufferers report that they're on a 24/7 reality TV show they can't escape from
There's an old 1900's illustration of UFOs,
saw it in a Ripley's Magazine way back in the late 90's - early 2000's.
They looked like stuff from that era:
Cigars, Hats, Zeppelins, etc.
They looked like stuff from that era:
Cigars, Hats, Zeppelins, etc.
It isn't uncommon to hear modern sighting described using these words as well. That doesn't really mean much since these are still common objects today.
Carl Jung's flying saucers is a good read.
He discusses the idea that of technological society automatically assuming that visitors have a "far more advanced technology", and the idea of the saucer being a completion the incomplete mandala of the industrial age. Very interesting stuff.
He discusses the idea that of technological society automatically assuming that visitors have a "far more advanced technology", and the idea of the saucer being a completion the incomplete mandala of the industrial age. Very interesting stuff.
Don't forget the non-verbal (Telepathic) communications and sleep paralysis.
I have heard it theorized by, let's call them enthusiastic evangelicals, that this indicates that what people now experience as UFOs are the same phenomena, caused by the same entities and done for the same purposes as the phenomena that people used to experience as Demonic visitations.
Me, I'm an open-minded skeptic. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and a lot of unanswered questions doesn't imply a particular answer.
I have heard it theorized by, let's call them enthusiastic evangelicals, that this indicates that what people now experience as UFOs are the same phenomena, caused by the same entities and done for the same purposes as the phenomena that people used to experience as Demonic visitations.
Me, I'm an open-minded skeptic. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and a lot of unanswered questions doesn't imply a particular answer.
Jacques Valee has a number of books on this subject. He's a bit on the spooky rather than skeptic side of the fence though, and argues for some sort of common underlying phenomenon.
I think he might be right to some extent -- even if it's a psychological phenomenon, that fits the bill for a common underling cause.
I think he might be right to some extent -- even if it's a psychological phenomenon, that fits the bill for a common underling cause.
Chariots has some interesting points in it, but there are heaps and heaps of parts that are either simply untrue or have been disproved. I do love his stance on pharmaceutical drugs.
I think Terry Bisson (or perhaps another author, can't quite remember who) wrote a story with this premise - that UFOs do exist, but they are actual factual faeries.
Amazing! I've been working on a UFO sightings visualisation as an example for a d3.js video course. This will be perfect :D
If anyone's interested: http://imgur.com/gallery/xTUxdi6
The whole visualisation is an animation going from 1945 to 2014. But it's not hosted anywhere yet (mostly because 14MB of data files make for a bad website).
The green colors show sightings per capita in a state, darker is more. The blue crosses are US air/navy bases. The yellow dots are the sightings themselves. And the red circles are sightings clustered into 120 clusters, then normalised by population.
The "result" is that most sightings happen near air/navy bases. And that there are strangely many sightings per capita in the north-west.
If anyone's interested: http://imgur.com/gallery/xTUxdi6
The whole visualisation is an animation going from 1945 to 2014. But it's not hosted anywhere yet (mostly because 14MB of data files make for a bad website).
The green colors show sightings per capita in a state, darker is more. The blue crosses are US air/navy bases. The yellow dots are the sightings themselves. And the red circles are sightings clustered into 120 clusters, then normalised by population.
The "result" is that most sightings happen near air/navy bases. And that there are strangely many sightings per capita in the north-west.
Look at the corridors that had lots of sightings. In my area of upstate NY, there were a ton of sightings later revealed to be due to testing the terrain following radars in cruise missiles. I guess the topography looked like whatever area of the former Soviet Union the missiles would target.
I'm sure Boeing has something to do with Washington's rate.
130,000 pages released, yet every commenter here is talking about their own beliefs.. incredible since this is supposedly a science community.. I clicked to see if anyone had looked at any of the pages yet and dug up some stuff to save myself some time..
Observations are typically lights seen by pilots or from the ground.
Conclusions range from meteors, astronomical bodies, other planes etc...
Honestly the thing that surprises me is how each report was completed in detail. There is usually insufficient data for a definitive analysis, yet each report must have days to complete.
Conclusions range from meteors, astronomical bodies, other planes etc...
Honestly the thing that surprises me is how each report was completed in detail. There is usually insufficient data for a definitive analysis, yet each report must have days to complete.
You would think UFO sightings would increase now that everyone carries a HD video camera with them at all times.
I see UFOs all the time. I'm just don't know that much about aircraft and am not good at identifying them. Doesn't mean we've made contact with extraterrestrial life or that it would be worth my time to videorecord anything.
There's an app for that:
http://www.flightradar24.com/apps
http://www.flightradar24.com/apps
At least half the time, its when I'm most of my attention is directed to observing the paths of moving vehicles in my surroundings. I fear it wouldn't be safe to pull out my phone then.
Try taking a photo of a plane in the sky with your phone sometime. You'll find that the angle of the lens is too wide to capture things far away.
Now, I agree with your basic premise that UFO sightings are probably mostly BS since the number of sightings has plummeted since people started carrying cellphones, but notice how people aren't reporting that they took a picture and now it too small for them to see. They just stopped altogether.
Now, I agree with your basic premise that UFO sightings are probably mostly BS since the number of sightings has plummeted since people started carrying cellphones, but notice how people aren't reporting that they took a picture and now it too small for them to see. They just stopped altogether.
What makes you think they stopped?
My pet theory is that UFOs are an intrinsically 20th century phenomenon. TV no longer has that iconography on all the time, so we're not getting poked and prodded with the images anymore, and for anyone paying attention to our ever-improving 21st century understandings of the limits of technology, the idea that advanced races would be visiting us in huge spacecraft that sometimes get accidentally seen is absurd. If they wish to observe us without being seen, then it is very easy to imagine that they have long since modified our brains in such a way that they can simply edit themselves out, and also ensured that nobody is capable of witnessing the modifications, either. The idea of a War of the Worlds scenario where perhaps we could fight off an invasion is a very 20th century idea... in the 21st century it's pretty clear that if a starfaring culture wanted us out of the way, we'd be dead before we even realized a conflict had started. And I mean that literally; if they so chose, every human on the planet simultaneously dropping dead with no human-detectable advance warning wouldn't be all that challenging. Alternatively, at an unknown time in our past our entire planet's information content was hoovered up, we're running in a simulation, and the real solar system has long since been converted to computronium in the real world.
Personally I still favor life being more rare than we credit it with, and that we are fundamentally alone. But regardless, the idea that we're being visited in sometimes-observed spacecraft by apparently only quasi-competent aliens is absurd in light of what we know now. If "they" are among us, they are not quasi-competent, they are competent to a level that we can barely imagine.
Personally I still favor life being more rare than we credit it with, and that we are fundamentally alone. But regardless, the idea that we're being visited in sometimes-observed spacecraft by apparently only quasi-competent aliens is absurd in light of what we know now. If "they" are among us, they are not quasi-competent, they are competent to a level that we can barely imagine.
I think you may be on to something about it being an intrinsically 20th century phenomenon. It may work out like Spritualism, where the movement ran strong for a relatively brief period and then petered out under the withering light of popular scrutiny. Its effects on our culture are still omnipresent, but very few people subscribe to it nowadays because the idea that the dead are with us and want to communicate to us - but only for the sake of performing party tricks and sharing the most tedious of banalities - is hard to really take seriously.
The UFO meme's not so different. Super-advanced races using their incomprehensibly superior technology to fling themselves across the near-infinite vastness of space are visiting us in order to. . . prank aircraft pilots, share tedious banalities and diddle butts. The word 'risible' again comes to mind.
The UFO meme's not so different. Super-advanced races using their incomprehensibly superior technology to fling themselves across the near-infinite vastness of space are visiting us in order to. . . prank aircraft pilots, share tedious banalities and diddle butts. The word 'risible' again comes to mind.
With higher resolution, blobs and smears suddenly become ordinary terrestrial objects.
I've long suspected the reason that all videos of UFOs are smeary/unclear is because if they were clear, we would be able to see which kind of aircraft it is in the footage, and it wouldn't be a UFO (but an air balloon, commercial aircraft, glider, etc.).
One thing that is certain is that if no alien air crafts have ever visited earth, then all UFO videos/pictures must necessarily be unclear, because otherwise we'd see that it's not a flying saucer.
One thing that is certain is that if no alien air crafts have ever visited earth, then all UFO videos/pictures must necessarily be unclear, because otherwise we'd see that it's not a flying saucer.
Perhaps it's because those pictures and videos are taken in the night, or in the day in a very bright sky?
Also, they are often far away so zoom level is set on max.
Also, they are often far away so zoom level is set on max.
I tried to take a picture of a deer once in a park with my phone. I knew where the deer had run to, so I had everything on my side. Alas, the deer run when it saw me, and given how slow the auto-focus of my phone was, all I got was a small blur. Not even I would believe me.
I gained some respect that day for anyone who claims to have seen something, and yet has no decent evidence.
I gained some respect that day for anyone who claims to have seen something, and yet has no decent evidence.
Maybe the slow, error-prone autofocus and ridiculous number of UI steps required to launch many phone cameras were part of the coverup conspiracy ;-). Seriously though, I've had the same problem. Why can't my phone just give me manual focus?
obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1235/
One problem with the conclusion: Type UFO video 2014 and you'll see that there are still hundreds of hours of video taken about this every single year... So, I'd say the evidence keeps mounting for something its just more convenient (then ever) to ignore it.
> its just more convenient (then ever) to ignore it
Why would it be convenient to ignore it if it was real? Legitimate evidence of extraterrestrial life would be, by and large, the most significant event in human history, and incredibly inconvenient to ignore for a virtually unlimited number of reasons.
Why would it be convenient to ignore it if it was real? Legitimate evidence of extraterrestrial life would be, by and large, the most significant event in human history, and incredibly inconvenient to ignore for a virtually unlimited number of reasons.
Information overflow causes people to ignore even the most dire and well recorded parts of science (see climate change). Why would this be any different? Its socially taboo. Its also scientifically taboo. There are lots of ways to fake imagery these days. People prefer to believe what they already believe even in the face of massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. Thats well proven.
A video of something you can't readily identify is not an evidence of space aliens. It's not even an evidence of it being extra-terrestrial. It could very well be a normal aeroplane or an optical illusion. Given that one is far more likely than the other, it's hard to assume that it's from the outer space. There is no actual evidence of aliens, I'm afraid.
Actually the few cases that remain unexplained are exactly that sort of evidence (or some other intelligent control). Sorry to say but you obviously havent looked at the actual evidence from military personal and equipment that show high speed right angle turns of devices that defy the laws of physics as we understand them. There are literally 1000s of cases on record about this that have been left in the unexplainable category.
Well can you find any such cases amongst the released 130,000 pages and link to them? It would really help your case.
The ability to ignore things has no bearing on whether those things exist.
Try filming a distant moving object with a commodity phone camera, especially in lower light. Everyone has a camera, yes, but it's the wrong kind of camera for capturing anything useful in this area.
If you wanted to get a good UFO photo or video what you'd really want is a high-resolution infrared camera. Unless our UFOnauts (whatever/whoever they are) are exempt from physics, anything using energy for any kind of powered flight must emit infrared whether it wants to or not.
If you wanted to get a good UFO photo or video what you'd really want is a high-resolution infrared camera. Unless our UFOnauts (whatever/whoever they are) are exempt from physics, anything using energy for any kind of powered flight must emit infrared whether it wants to or not.
I've always wanted to set up cameras in remote areas and see if they capture anything.
I can't speak to their veracity but there are new sighting that happen all the time that are largely ignored. Check out reddit.com/r/ufos.
The night time quality of my phone camera is awful. I could record a full moon and you couldn't tell what it was.
Maybe in a few years.
Maybe in a few years.
Search youtube for UFO and you'll find thousands of videos with sightings.
I personally think that they are all fakes or explainable objects, but who knows, maybe there are real UFOs in those videos ?
What kind of video would it take for us to believe ?
What kind of video would it take for us to believe ?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Video is so easily faked that no mere video of ETs would be believable.
I don't know if sightings have increased, per se.
But there are a lot of sightings captured on cell phones these days.
Many are obvious fakery. Some seem more interesting.
But there are a lot of sightings captured on cell phones these days.
Many are obvious fakery. Some seem more interesting.
They're camera shy, so they've stopped coming around.
that old quote about magic comes to mind... so many mysteries about to get real boring.
But when someone does film something interesting and weird are we going to give it more credence or less because of this?
The interesting question is how much of it was serious investigation of space aliens and then how much of it was operational security for secret programs and concern over soviet spy craft.
I looked at a couple of reports, one was explained as a meteor, another as a missile, another as aircraft lights, pretty mundane stuff to be spending time on. The investigators would know that the report came from near live ranges and such.
I looked at a couple of reports, one was explained as a meteor, another as a missile, another as aircraft lights, pretty mundane stuff to be spending time on. The investigators would know that the report came from near live ranges and such.
> he interesting question is how much of it was serious investigation of space aliens
0%
0%
There had to be at least a few goofballs involved.
.. and how much was people calling their congressman saying, "You need to investigate these unidenitfied thingies." Because I think that's 100%.
I want to believe
How is this still so crazy when we have 100s of interviews by military and intelligence personnel talking about this stuff openly: https://www.youtube.com/user/csetiweb/videos?shelf_index=0&v...
What exactly discredits all of them?
What exactly discredits all of them?
The fact that there are literally millions, if not billions, of people walking, driving, riding in trains, and flying every single day with quality cameras on them and not a single one of them has captured a single shred of credible evidence. To quote Tim Minchin, every extraordinary claim that has ever been presented by humans has turned out to be "not magic".
I think a good reference point is the Chelyabinsk meteor[0]. Just afterwards, we had plenty of high resolution videos from dash cam, smartphones, etc, with different angle, time and location.
I would expect about the same in quantity and quality for a major UFO sighting.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
I would expect about the same in quantity and quality for a major UFO sighting.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor
You are comparing natural phenomenon with life forms. A better comparison would be silver back gorillas which up until the 70s were considered a myth. Or giant squid which are still somewhat unsubstantiated even today because they actively avoid us.
Silverbacks are male Mountain Gorillas, Diane Fosey studied them for 18 years starting in 1967 and George Schaller studied them back in 1959 and he wrote 2 books about them.
The giant squid is rare but not unsubstantiated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBRZuafewzI
The giant squid is rare but not unsubstantiated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBRZuafewzI
Giant squid are in no way "unsubstantiated." Dead ones have been washing up on shores around the globe for centuries. Live ones were elusive until recently, but we now have a lot of footage of those, as well, thanks to things like deep sea oil exploration and various ocean science missions.
If there are aliens, even if they can easily elude us, it seems likely that there would still be traces of them had they visited. Some sort of technological foot prints, whether they be emissions from ships or communications, or actual pieces of technology that have been left behind or broken off. Something, somewhere, you'd think.
If there are aliens, even if they can easily elude us, it seems likely that there would still be traces of them had they visited. Some sort of technological foot prints, whether they be emissions from ships or communications, or actual pieces of technology that have been left behind or broken off. Something, somewhere, you'd think.
You mean evidence like the 100s of hours of unexplainable phenomenon recorded each year (see google search of ufo video 2014). Including that which was release from classified status by an arm of our armed forces which chose to not only investigate, but to classify the investigation.
And for the record, we have more video and imagery of these unexplained phenomenon then we do of the giant squid. They, for whatever reason, just dont leave bodies floating up on the beaches.
And for the record, we have more video and imagery of these unexplained phenomenon then we do of the giant squid. They, for whatever reason, just dont leave bodies floating up on the beaches.
I am not sure your comparison is apt. Strange things in the sky tend to be viewed by much more people than animals that are actively hiding in unexplored/hard to reach areas. I am totally ready to believe there are plenty of things we don't know about the deep sea for example.
Um, but if this phenomenon is a creature why wouldnt it try to stay out of sight? Further if 'things in the sky' are easier to find why were the bird of paradise only recently discovered and recorded? Answer: because their rare and prefer locations that arent very occupied by humans.
Hell we have whole tribes we've only just discovered. If something doesnt want to be found, its not impossible for it to stay hidden.
Hell we have whole tribes we've only just discovered. If something doesnt want to be found, its not impossible for it to stay hidden.
These sound a lot like arguments from ignorance. "We don't know for sure, therefore it must be true!" The dash cam videos are an excellent counterargument. If someone is lucky enough to film an alien on grainy blurry film, why is nobody lucky enough to get one on an HD dashcam?
I don't think you can claim that giant squid are avoiding humans: rather our respective habitats simply don't overlap enough to have noticed them until we could build vehicles capable of exploring where they are found.
A sentient species capable of interstellar travel would almost certainly be able to avoid detection by humanity if they wanted to, I will agree.
A sentient species capable of interstellar travel would almost certainly be able to avoid detection by humanity if they wanted to, I will agree.
> I don't think you can claim that giant squid are avoiding humans: rather our respective habitats simply don't overlap enough to have noticed them until we could build vehicles capable of exploring where they are found.
Well, we've got documented reports going back continuously to the ancient Greeks of giant squid, and photographic evidence going back almost as far as common photography. So, its not so more that we needed "vehicles capable of exploring where they are found" to substantiate them as we needed photography, etc., for people other than those who directly encountered them to be able to clearly distinguish the real reports of giant squid from all the rumors of fantastic beasts that lack such evidence.
Well, we've got documented reports going back continuously to the ancient Greeks of giant squid, and photographic evidence going back almost as far as common photography. So, its not so more that we needed "vehicles capable of exploring where they are found" to substantiate them as we needed photography, etc., for people other than those who directly encountered them to be able to clearly distinguish the real reports of giant squid from all the rumors of fantastic beasts that lack such evidence.
The "giant squid was considered a myth" thing is much like the "the earth was considered flat" thing; both are largely myths themselves. Nobody who has put any research or thought into the matter has doubted the existence of giant squids for a very long time. They have been scientifically studied for centuries, about as long as we've been scientifically studying anything. Before then, fishermen were finding specimens all the time.
The only thing that is actually doubted is nonsense like the existence of squid the size of ships, big enough to take on Naval vessels. Much like the round nature of the Earth was never in question, just the idea that it was small enough to make sailing right around it a sensible thing to do.
The only thing that is actually doubted is nonsense like the existence of squid the size of ships, big enough to take on Naval vessels. Much like the round nature of the Earth was never in question, just the idea that it was small enough to make sailing right around it a sensible thing to do.
Could you describe what constitutes credible evidence? Eye witness testimony is often consider credible evidence of crimes with life/death sentences.
From a scientific standpoint Im not sure what you'd need for something like this. After all up until recently the long standing testimony by pilots about sprites, elfs, ball lightning (atmospheric electrical phenomenon) and the like had no credible evidence except eye witness.
Further there is a ton, literally 1000s of hours of video and 1000s of images. Most are fake but many (including in the op report) remain unexplained. Its exceedingly unscientific in the face of unexplained evidence to simply say - 'nah nothing is happening there, lets just ignore it and the corroborating evidence and not investigate any further'.
Im not saying I know the answer, Im saying ignoring all the exceedingly large masses of information is ignorant. Exceedingly so when we literally have the evidence you're claiming doesn't exist (video and pictures gallore).
From a scientific standpoint Im not sure what you'd need for something like this. After all up until recently the long standing testimony by pilots about sprites, elfs, ball lightning (atmospheric electrical phenomenon) and the like had no credible evidence except eye witness.
Further there is a ton, literally 1000s of hours of video and 1000s of images. Most are fake but many (including in the op report) remain unexplained. Its exceedingly unscientific in the face of unexplained evidence to simply say - 'nah nothing is happening there, lets just ignore it and the corroborating evidence and not investigate any further'.
Im not saying I know the answer, Im saying ignoring all the exceedingly large masses of information is ignorant. Exceedingly so when we literally have the evidence you're claiming doesn't exist (video and pictures gallore).
I'm really no expert, but I think you'd need more than one eye witness to begin with. Then there is the obvious difference between your two examples: There aren't a lot of explanations for somebody seeing a person stabbing another person, then again there are a lot of explanations for somebody seeing light that moves in strange ways. The same is true for video footage and photographs. Hardware fails all the time and a lot of these technologies have quirks. Remember the old photographs with creepy looking kids in the background and that kind of thing? There are very good and easy to understand explanations for these events (images burning in, similar to plasma screens). Remember what the word "UFO" means to begin with. I'd need at least some evidence that proves the thing is actually an aircraft, let alone an extraterrestrial one.
By the way. Pilots were crazy high back in the day, weren't they? Amphetamines and that kind of thing? Just saying.
Also, you complain about people not investigating these events. That's obviously not true. It's just that (so it seems, anyway) if nothing ever comes out of it, people stop investigating.
By the way. Pilots were crazy high back in the day, weren't they? Amphetamines and that kind of thing? Just saying.
Also, you complain about people not investigating these events. That's obviously not true. It's just that (so it seems, anyway) if nothing ever comes out of it, people stop investigating.
Which calls into question convictions based on eye witness testimony. There is a large body of research on how fallible, impressionable, and fungible human memory is. It's not reliable.
Further there is a ton, literally 1000s of hours of video and 1000s of images. Most are fake but many (including in the op report) remain unexplained.
The best thing UFO advocates could do would be to pre-emptively debunk stuff, classify and label the fake stuff as fake or explainable by simpler causes, abandons old inconclusory evidence, and promote the small proportion of genuinely inexplicable phenomena that remain. I used to be very interested in UFO stuff but have completely given up looking at websites and so on because ther is too much shit to wade through. Lowish evidentiary standards were somewhat tolerable when the resources required to organize and study it were so much greater - there was a limit to what any one author could do. But with the internet, forums, worldwide mapping software, open-source image-processing tools and what-all else, UFO classification should be many many times better than it is, just as most scientific endeavors have benefited from digital technology. Instad there are forums like Godlikeproductions and prisonplanet that are mostly populated by gullible and/or mentally ill people.
If you want this issue taken seriously, then treat it seriously - use standards of evidence, consider things in their social context (eg many UFO reports were classified because of cold war paranoia and the desire to maintain a strategic military advantage), winnow out the wheat from the chaff, and invite people to falsify rather than endorse difficult cases. As you pointed out elsewhere, many people have trouble processing complex scientific information like climate change and so are reflexively skeptical about it. Well, that's the environment you're stuck with too, and UFO research has a long way to go before it can even start to be taken seriously as a topic of scientific inquiry by the general public.
Even looking at relatively well-curated sites like http://www.ufoevidence.org/ the front page still has 'Featured!' cases from 1959, 1974 that are nothing but reports of a single eyewitness. Mysterious? Sure, but of zero evidentiary value a half-century later, and therefore a waste of time. UFO advocates' collective inability to let go of such nostalgia cases tells us more about their psychology than about any physical phenomenon.
The best thing UFO advocates could do would be to pre-emptively debunk stuff, classify and label the fake stuff as fake or explainable by simpler causes, abandons old inconclusory evidence, and promote the small proportion of genuinely inexplicable phenomena that remain. I used to be very interested in UFO stuff but have completely given up looking at websites and so on because ther is too much shit to wade through. Lowish evidentiary standards were somewhat tolerable when the resources required to organize and study it were so much greater - there was a limit to what any one author could do. But with the internet, forums, worldwide mapping software, open-source image-processing tools and what-all else, UFO classification should be many many times better than it is, just as most scientific endeavors have benefited from digital technology. Instad there are forums like Godlikeproductions and prisonplanet that are mostly populated by gullible and/or mentally ill people.
If you want this issue taken seriously, then treat it seriously - use standards of evidence, consider things in their social context (eg many UFO reports were classified because of cold war paranoia and the desire to maintain a strategic military advantage), winnow out the wheat from the chaff, and invite people to falsify rather than endorse difficult cases. As you pointed out elsewhere, many people have trouble processing complex scientific information like climate change and so are reflexively skeptical about it. Well, that's the environment you're stuck with too, and UFO research has a long way to go before it can even start to be taken seriously as a topic of scientific inquiry by the general public.
Even looking at relatively well-curated sites like http://www.ufoevidence.org/ the front page still has 'Featured!' cases from 1959, 1974 that are nothing but reports of a single eyewitness. Mysterious? Sure, but of zero evidentiary value a half-century later, and therefore a waste of time. UFO advocates' collective inability to let go of such nostalgia cases tells us more about their psychology than about any physical phenomenon.
> Eye witness testimony is often consider credible evidence of crimes with life/death sentences.
You mean eye witness testimony backed up with actual forensic evidence like a dead body or a missing person, right? It's not eye witness testimony disconnected from physical reality, because there are tons of crank pots that wouldn't stand up under cross-examination.
You mean eye witness testimony backed up with actual forensic evidence like a dead body or a missing person, right? It's not eye witness testimony disconnected from physical reality, because there are tons of crank pots that wouldn't stand up under cross-examination.
Or, as XKCD puts it, http://xkcd.com/1235/.
You know if you dig past a comic you may find that there are literally 100s of hours of video uploaded every year about this. Just type UFO video 2014. Its not like this ever stopped, people just stopped reporting about it significantly.
What i find quite surprising is that by some magical coincidence just as us puny humans mastered digital photography and managed to miniaturize electro optical sensors to a point where they can be emended into virtually any device and then sent out 100's of millions of people armed with these sophisticated cameras the UFO phenomenon pretty much died out...
For the most part the "latest" UFO shots you can find out there are grainy film cameras shots from the early 90's just about when the X-Files was fresh and cool. As we get closer to the 2000's for some reason all of those photos dry out, i guess ET's are just camera shy.
For the most part the "latest" UFO shots you can find out there are grainy film cameras shots from the early 90's just about when the X-Files was fresh and cool. As we get closer to the 2000's for some reason all of those photos dry out, i guess ET's are just camera shy.
Thats just patently false. Anyone type UFO video 2014 in google. You will literally get 100s of hours of crappy film shot by people at the expected quality for anyone trying to shoot a moving ariel object with a cell phone. There has been NO drop off of sighting reported or videos created.
My guess is YOU stopped paying attention b/c xfiles was no longer cool...
My guess is YOU stopped paying attention b/c xfiles was no longer cool...
Your multiple replies on this page stating the same information remind me, as much as it would be cool and interesting for UFOs to be alien spacecraft, many in the pro-UFO community come off sounding a little obsessed and some come off sounding downright nutty. If there is so much 'real' evidence, it would have spoken for itself by now. The same goes for other supernatural occurrences (ghosts etc). Mulder's famous poster said it best - "I want to believe".
I ask you to think, for just a moment, how your outlook would change if you were to witness something that's not readily explainable.
I suspect that his passion on the issue was inspired by an experience. I have known a couple of people who saw things that defy explanation and you pretty much can't make them shut up about it.
I'm not screaming ERRMUHGERD ALIENS! I'm just saying that many people see things that defy the mundane explanations of passenger aircraft, birds, swamp gas and the planet Venus. It's perfectly normal for someone who has had such an experience to be interested in the subject matter.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
I consider myself to be an open-minded skeptic.
I'm in the "Hey Stan, did you find that proof yet? No. OK. I'll be over here, let me know if you find it" camp.
I suspect that his passion on the issue was inspired by an experience. I have known a couple of people who saw things that defy explanation and you pretty much can't make them shut up about it.
I'm not screaming ERRMUHGERD ALIENS! I'm just saying that many people see things that defy the mundane explanations of passenger aircraft, birds, swamp gas and the planet Venus. It's perfectly normal for someone who has had such an experience to be interested in the subject matter.
To quote Donald Rumsfeld, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
I consider myself to be an open-minded skeptic.
I'm in the "Hey Stan, did you find that proof yet? No. OK. I'll be over here, let me know if you find it" camp.
I think it's far more likely for me to have a hallucination than to be witnessing some supernatural events. For example, many 'ghost' sightings are in houses with higher than usual levels of carbon monoxide.
I've seen some of those vidoes, none of them look better than the 50X zoom sony cams one from the 90's...
And by all accounts considering that the amount of people with cameras increased by at least a ten fold since the 90's we should've the same an increase in UFO sightings as well, which well unless you count the text to speech youtube flicks about planet X and the anunaki didn't really happen.
And by all accounts considering that the amount of people with cameras increased by at least a ten fold since the 90's we should've the same an increase in UFO sightings as well, which well unless you count the text to speech youtube flicks about planet X and the anunaki didn't really happen.
No one thing discredits all of them, and personally I think that Occam's razor compels us to agree that in the vast majority of reports people are describing an actual phenomenon they saw.
However, the sheer variability of these reports does discredit the idea that there is a common explanation for all of these sightings. And that's where things like the alien visitation hypothesis begin to unravel. For the most part UFOlogists fail to see the forest for the trees - they look at each story individually, and never really spend any time trying to figure out how they could all possibly fit together into a single coherent story. Occam's razor also compels us to seek different explanations for different phenomena in the absence of any compelling evidence to show that they are, in fact, related.
The problem is, it's nearly impossible to come up with explanations for every single isolated anecdote by virtue of that very isolation. Skeptics understand this truism so implicitly that they oftentimes even fail to realize it's worth mentioning.
However, the sheer variability of these reports does discredit the idea that there is a common explanation for all of these sightings. And that's where things like the alien visitation hypothesis begin to unravel. For the most part UFOlogists fail to see the forest for the trees - they look at each story individually, and never really spend any time trying to figure out how they could all possibly fit together into a single coherent story. Occam's razor also compels us to seek different explanations for different phenomena in the absence of any compelling evidence to show that they are, in fact, related.
The problem is, it's nearly impossible to come up with explanations for every single isolated anecdote by virtue of that very isolation. Skeptics understand this truism so implicitly that they oftentimes even fail to realize it's worth mentioning.
One of the most compelling things to me is the astronauts testimonies. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Gene Cernan, and Gordon Cooper all have reported either first hand experience or second hand knowledge.
Also presidents of the USA. Reagan and Carter both have UFO stories they have talked about openly.
Also presidents of the USA. Reagan and Carter both have UFO stories they have talked about openly.
Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomena: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray_visual_phenomena
This may account for some of them. Gordon Coopers experience didn't happen in space though. Not saying it's proof but it does cause me to raise an eyebrow.
You may want to read a downthread comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917287
UFOs still exist. Most are explainable as something mundane, aircraft, weather, whatever. There are still a small percentage of strange experiences out there.
But that does not mean they are "aliens" - they are just unexplained. They may be caused by anything - weather, ball-lightning, volcanic activity, marsh gas, psychological oddities. They are deserving of study.
But that does not mean they are "aliens" - they are just unexplained. They may be caused by anything - weather, ball-lightning, volcanic activity, marsh gas, psychological oddities. They are deserving of study.
I´m airline pilot with 16 years of professional experience, I spent my first 3 to 4 years as a pilot looking outside to see if I could see a UFO.
Of course I didn't see anything strange. But I am routinely fouled by Venus. I've observed Venus at dawn thousands of times, but now and then it seems that there is a light following us. I look at it thinking it's another airplane, then when I can't identify it as such, I remember that I´m looking at Venus. It's fun it happens after so many years knowing the phenomenon.
When I was a kid I used to live in the country, not far from the airport (my father was a commercial pilot too). It was common to see airliners doing a visual landing traffic to land, passing just overhead. One afternoon, I was coming out to feed the dogs when I saw a very bright green light, just the same type of green that shines at the right wing of airplanes, but this light's trajectory was 90º to the normal traffic one, and was heading away from the airport. At first I thought It was a crashing airplane, but it was completely silent. It was very weird, I stared at it for a minute or so, till it disappeared to the East. I thought then that it was a hight (and heavy) meteorite composed of Cu. Next day the local newspaper talked about it, how everybody reported it to the police, and how it was in fact a meteorite that brushed the higher atmosphere and rebounded again to the space.
If you are expecting or believing in alien UFOs, it´s easy to mistake something like this for a real UFO. I read some time ago this report http://www.amazon.com/Conclusions-Controlled-UFO-Hoaxes-Inst... It's about a couple of guys that join a UFO sighting group, and start doing fake UFOs with helium balloons and a flash to see how they responded to it (spoiler: not very accurately or sceptical). Highly recommended.
When I was a kid I used to live in the country, not far from the airport (my father was a commercial pilot too). It was common to see airliners doing a visual landing traffic to land, passing just overhead. One afternoon, I was coming out to feed the dogs when I saw a very bright green light, just the same type of green that shines at the right wing of airplanes, but this light's trajectory was 90º to the normal traffic one, and was heading away from the airport. At first I thought It was a crashing airplane, but it was completely silent. It was very weird, I stared at it for a minute or so, till it disappeared to the East. I thought then that it was a hight (and heavy) meteorite composed of Cu. Next day the local newspaper talked about it, how everybody reported it to the police, and how it was in fact a meteorite that brushed the higher atmosphere and rebounded again to the space.
If you are expecting or believing in alien UFOs, it´s easy to mistake something like this for a real UFO. I read some time ago this report http://www.amazon.com/Conclusions-Controlled-UFO-Hoaxes-Inst... It's about a couple of guys that join a UFO sighting group, and start doing fake UFOs with helium balloons and a flash to see how they responded to it (spoiler: not very accurately or sceptical). Highly recommended.
Don't forget drones.
I've always had a passing interest in UFOs and similar mysteries. The sense I get from reading a bit into the subject is that when you subtract the obvious cranks and cultural mythology there does exist a hard core of very hard to explain UFO cases with hard evidence associated with them. It's a minority of cases overall but they do exist.
The evidence isn't strong enough to confirm any of the leading hypotheses (ETs, classified tech, etc.), so they still remain in the mystery category.
A common misconception about a basically scientific worldview is that you can't have mysteries, that everything has to be settled. This is absolutely wrong. Of course there are mysteries. If there weren't, science would stop. I'm perfectly comfortable with mysteries and with answering "I don't know" to certain things.
The evidence isn't strong enough to confirm any of the leading hypotheses (ETs, classified tech, etc.), so they still remain in the mystery category.
A common misconception about a basically scientific worldview is that you can't have mysteries, that everything has to be settled. This is absolutely wrong. Of course there are mysteries. If there weren't, science would stop. I'm perfectly comfortable with mysteries and with answering "I don't know" to certain things.
If you are genuinely curious about officially documented reports about UFOs (not aliens), then I highly recommend reading "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record" by Leslie Kean.
http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offici...
In a field where many of the books are written by either true believers or debunkers, this is a fresh take on the phenomena, carefully researched and conservatively written by an investigative journalist.
http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offici...
In a field where many of the books are written by either true believers or debunkers, this is a fresh take on the phenomena, carefully researched and conservatively written by an investigative journalist.
Doing a word frequency analysis from the site of the reports 1940-1960. What happened in Dayton Ohio and in Ohio in general?
City and state 20 Miami Florida 21 N W PACIFIC 21 Duluth Minnesota 21 LasVegas Nevada 22 KansasCity Missouri 22 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 23 Houston Texas 23 Seattle Washington 25 Fairborn Ohio 26 N E Pacific 26 LosAngeles California 26 Washington D C 27 Albuquerque NewMexico 27 Dallas Texas 27 Denver Colorado 28 ColoradoSprings Colorado 30 SanAntonio Texas 31 Baltimore Maryland 31 Cleveland Ohio 32 Brooklyn NewYork 32 Columbus Ohio 32 Kettering Ohio 36 Chicago Illinois 41 N W 41 Cincinnati Ohio 42 BLANK 69 N W Pacific 71 ILLEGIBLE 140 Dayton Ohio
By state 57 Japan 59 Oklahoma 59 Tennessee 62 Nebraska 66 Alabama 67 NorthCarolina 72 Kansas 73 E 73 Mass 76 Louisiana 78 Nevada 81 Maine 90 Kentucky 92 Alaska 98 Arizona 111 Georgia 113 Minnesota 117 Iowa 117 Massachusetts 131 Calif 137 Virginia 139 Maryland 140 Missouri 141 Oregon 141 Wisconsin 149 NewJersey 155 Indiana 156 Washington 160 Colorado 165 NewMexico 191 Illinois 197 Michigan 199 Pennsylvania 216 N 237 Florida 244 W 427 Texas 461 NewYork 565 California 731 919 Ohio
City and state 20 Miami Florida 21 N W PACIFIC 21 Duluth Minnesota 21 LasVegas Nevada 22 KansasCity Missouri 22 Philadelphia Pennsylvania 23 Houston Texas 23 Seattle Washington 25 Fairborn Ohio 26 N E Pacific 26 LosAngeles California 26 Washington D C 27 Albuquerque NewMexico 27 Dallas Texas 27 Denver Colorado 28 ColoradoSprings Colorado 30 SanAntonio Texas 31 Baltimore Maryland 31 Cleveland Ohio 32 Brooklyn NewYork 32 Columbus Ohio 32 Kettering Ohio 36 Chicago Illinois 41 N W 41 Cincinnati Ohio 42 BLANK 69 N W Pacific 71 ILLEGIBLE 140 Dayton Ohio
By state 57 Japan 59 Oklahoma 59 Tennessee 62 Nebraska 66 Alabama 67 NorthCarolina 72 Kansas 73 E 73 Mass 76 Louisiana 78 Nevada 81 Maine 90 Kentucky 92 Alaska 98 Arizona 111 Georgia 113 Minnesota 117 Iowa 117 Massachusetts 131 Calif 137 Virginia 139 Maryland 140 Missouri 141 Oregon 141 Wisconsin 149 NewJersey 155 Indiana 156 Washington 160 Colorado 165 NewMexico 191 Illinois 197 Michigan 199 Pennsylvania 216 N 237 Florida 244 W 427 Texas 461 NewYork 565 California 731 919 Ohio
Project Blue Book itself was based out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which is outside Dayton, Ohio.
Thanks for pointing that out, possibly false positive then.
What I find interesting is that these documents were classified at all if there was nothing to them.
I'm sure some of the documents can be tied to secret test flights, but why classify and keep secret the rest of the documents. I wish someone would ask that question, what if any justification was there for classifying them in the first place.
Edit: Looking at some of the documents, it seems that many of the reports of sightings are essentially people reporting celestial bodies, aircraft, or weather phenomenon. I am rather certain that there is really absolutely nothing in here to be found. This strikes me as the equivalent to clearing out filing cabinets of useless documents. It's probably a matter of finding the needle that may or may not have slipped through in a huge haystack.
Mildly amusing statement from one of the more interesting reports I cam across (Last Report, last page): "...leads me to believe, or at least to suspicion, that the accusations of NEGLIGENCE heaped upon you (as individual officers in Bluebook and collectively by some independent investigators in recent years may not be entirely unfounded." http://projectbluebook.theblackvault.com/documents/1960s/196...
I'm sure some of the documents can be tied to secret test flights, but why classify and keep secret the rest of the documents. I wish someone would ask that question, what if any justification was there for classifying them in the first place.
Edit: Looking at some of the documents, it seems that many of the reports of sightings are essentially people reporting celestial bodies, aircraft, or weather phenomenon. I am rather certain that there is really absolutely nothing in here to be found. This strikes me as the equivalent to clearing out filing cabinets of useless documents. It's probably a matter of finding the needle that may or may not have slipped through in a huge haystack.
Mildly amusing statement from one of the more interesting reports I cam across (Last Report, last page): "...leads me to believe, or at least to suspicion, that the accusations of NEGLIGENCE heaped upon you (as individual officers in Bluebook and collectively by some independent investigators in recent years may not be entirely unfounded." http://projectbluebook.theblackvault.com/documents/1960s/196...
Information is classified by default, and only ever declassified when there is a high degree of confidence that the information is no longer sensitive.
The concern almost certainly has nothing to do with the possibility that someone might have seen an alien spacecraft, but the risk of revealing information about military aircraft movements.
The concern almost certainly has nothing to do with the possibility that someone might have seen an alien spacecraft, but the risk of revealing information about military aircraft movements.
It has been alleged that the US Air Force actively encouraged UFO conspiracy theories to draw attention away from secret weapons programs.
See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men
See for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men
If you consider the Drake Equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation), there are probably millions of alien civilizations in our galaxy alone that could send craft to our planet. If that is true, they would certainly observe and study us, much like we observe and study lesser animals. And to avoid harm to their subjects, the aliens would likely avoid detection. So, even though I think 90% of UFO evidence is terrestrial phenomena, the odds are in favor of alien race(s) visiting us, so it's possible some UFO evidence is of alien craft.
Or if you choose different values for the variables in the Drake Equation for which we have only a single known data point -- i.e. most of them -- there is probably exactly one civilization in the galaxy.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the statistics and distances involved here. Millions of civilizations? Only if you take the most optimistic of all statistical stretches. I personally think that there are at most a dozen civilizations that are within our technological range +- 10,000 years (really generous given the enormity of time) and the speed of light conspires to keep them forever beyond our reach.
Aliens do not walk among us.
Aliens do not walk among us.
While the Drake Equation indicates that there are probably loads of other intelligent species in our galaxy, there's no reason to think that it's practical for them to visit.
Especially that a craft will have to travel for millions of years to get here!
Heck, we only evolved very recently on this planet. If humans don't go extinct in the next 2-5 million years, then maybe its possible to get a visitor (but I wouldn't bet on it).
Heck, we only evolved very recently on this planet. If humans don't go extinct in the next 2-5 million years, then maybe its possible to get a visitor (but I wouldn't bet on it).
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I mean, come on...http://cl.ly/ZNIU/Image%202015-01-20%20at%201.13.21%20PM.png
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This one really gets me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b6WobAoTaI
I'm not a conspiracy theory type but I wonder how much was declassified vs. how much was not. Do you wonder if this is the mundane stuff the US Air Force releases to be able to give them an argument against UFO phenomenon?
I loosely follow this subject. I get excited when guys like Stanton Friedman speak. I got real interested in this subject when the whole Rendlesham Forest thing exploded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident
And even Niel Armstrong believes. Wasn't there an unencrypted radio communication that was recorded between NASA and one of the space shuttle missions where the astronautes describe a UFO being observed of some sort?
All this just makes me wonder how much is not declassified or if it is declassified that it's probably down played as something other than a UFO???
I loosely follow this subject. I get excited when guys like Stanton Friedman speak. I got real interested in this subject when the whole Rendlesham Forest thing exploded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident
And even Niel Armstrong believes. Wasn't there an unencrypted radio communication that was recorded between NASA and one of the space shuttle missions where the astronautes describe a UFO being observed of some sort?
All this just makes me wonder how much is not declassified or if it is declassified that it's probably down played as something other than a UFO???
I'm not sure about Neil Armstrong - although I can't find any evidence supporting the view that he believed in UFOs.
Buzz Aldrin doesn't though:
On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us. There were many explanations of what that could be, other than another spacecraft from another country or another world - it was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels. Which one? I don't know. So technically, the definition could be "unidentified."
We well understood exactly what that was. And when we returned, we debriefed and explained exactly what we had observed. And I felt that this had been distributed to the outside world, the outside audience, and apparently it wasn't, and so many years later, I had the time in an interview to disclose these observations, on another country's television network.[1]
I'm not sure it can be much clearer than that.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a5vg8/i_am_buzz_aldri...
Buzz Aldrin doesn't though:
On Apollo 11 in route to the Moon, I observed a light out the window that appeared to be moving alongside us. There were many explanations of what that could be, other than another spacecraft from another country or another world - it was either the rocket we had separated from, or the 4 panels that moved away when we extracted the lander from the rocket and we were nose to nose with the two spacecraft. So in the close vicinity, moving away, were 4 panels. And i feel absolutely convinced that we were looking at the sun reflected off of one of these panels. Which one? I don't know. So technically, the definition could be "unidentified."
We well understood exactly what that was. And when we returned, we debriefed and explained exactly what we had observed. And I felt that this had been distributed to the outside world, the outside audience, and apparently it wasn't, and so many years later, I had the time in an interview to disclose these observations, on another country's television network.[1]
I'm not sure it can be much clearer than that.
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2a5vg8/i_am_buzz_aldri...
Interesting. He certainly takes on a different tone about the experience in this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlkV1ybBnHI
That is entirely consistent with what he says on Reddit.
Notice that the editing makes it seem like he thinks it was some suspicious object, but if you just take what he says it is basically "we saw something, it wasn't clear what it was." Even in the edited interview it is clear they thought it was part of the rocket, because they asked where it was.
Clearly it didn't seem very important to them then: they kept an eye on it but weren't concerned.
Turns out it wasn't the rocket, just some panels from it.
That makes a lot of sense physically, and is consistent with what he says there and later on Reddit.
Notice that the editing makes it seem like he thinks it was some suspicious object, but if you just take what he says it is basically "we saw something, it wasn't clear what it was." Even in the edited interview it is clear they thought it was part of the rocket, because they asked where it was.
Clearly it didn't seem very important to them then: they kept an eye on it but weren't concerned.
Turns out it wasn't the rocket, just some panels from it.
That makes a lot of sense physically, and is consistent with what he says there and later on Reddit.
On the other hand, everything that has ever been declassified regarding UFOs suggests the phenomenon is mundane. That the government has probably taken advantage of the popular culture of UFOs to cover up their own projects with false reports and sightings makes the waters purposely murky.
Belief isn't evidence of anything but a convincing story. People believe in things which turn out to have been untrue, misconstrued or plain fraud all the time (see: the Cottingley fairies, Piltdown man, WMD in Iraq.)
Yes, there always could be some super-super secret treasure trove of classified information showing that UFOs are really alien spacecraft but it also seems increasingly likely that none of them are.
Belief isn't evidence of anything but a convincing story. People believe in things which turn out to have been untrue, misconstrued or plain fraud all the time (see: the Cottingley fairies, Piltdown man, WMD in Iraq.)
Yes, there always could be some super-super secret treasure trove of classified information showing that UFOs are really alien spacecraft but it also seems increasingly likely that none of them are.
I checked out Friedman's website: http://www.stantonfriedman.com/index.php?ptp=ufo_challenge
Anyone know what these 5 major studies he references on that page are?
Anyone know what these 5 major studies he references on that page are?
I'd be curious to know as well.
Given his claim that the NSA and CIA are hiding UFO data, I have to wonder why none of that was released by Snowden.
Given his claim that the NSA and CIA are hiding UFO data, I have to wonder why none of that was released by Snowden.
Some was. The authenticity and motive is obviously in question but there are some UFO related documents in the Snowden files that have been released so far. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2573193/Flying-sauce...
Because his claim is false?
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The form of the myths mirrored each other almost exactly - strange night visitations, kidnappings and often sexual violations.
From memory the paper argued that they represented "the unknown" in the human psyche , and the rise of science had forced the myths to take a more scientific form.
I wish I could find the paper.
(I guess some will argue that this is actually evidence that UFOs have been visiting since prehistoric time. Enjoy, I guess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_the_Gods%3F )