Best UFO Pictures. Ever.

January 7, 2006 6:09 PM

What is it, Mulder? This website claims to feature many of the best UFO photographs ever taken. They are dated as far back as 1870 to present day. ET phone home!
posted by sjvilla79 (73 comments total)

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords. The lights are so pretty.
posted by sjvilla79 at 6:09 PM on January 7, 2006

http://www.ufocasebook.com/hillsdalelarge.jpg

Lens flare. I like to do my bit.
posted by fire&wings at 6:15 PM on January 7, 2006

posted by mr_crash_davis at 6:24 PM on January 7, 2006

I'm really open minded about UFOs, but the Jericho beach shot is a little silly as you can see trees behind the object, which is likely a mote of dust. There are some truly awesome shots here though: here, here and here are my favorites from 2005.
posted by moonbird at 6:30 PM on January 7, 2006

So, I guess this ship came to take GW officials up for some anal probing?
posted by caddis at 6:35 PM on January 7, 2006

didnt any of the morons with video cameras ever use a tripod???
posted by lemonfridge at 7:08 PM on January 7, 2006

"Best UFO shots of all time!" formally known as "Kitchen wear through the ages!"
posted by Mr Bluesky at 7:10 PM on January 7, 2006

All UFO photos that I've seen are crap; either uncompelling smudges, fakes, or impossible to know if they've been faked so of extremely dubious probative value. Fun to look at, but worthless really.

Photos taking simultaneously by multiple witnesses are much superior, but are suspicously rare. Such casework happened with the "Phoenix Lights" incident of 1997, and a respected UFO researcher showed to my satisfaction that the video taped light pattern over Phoenix was actually "flying" over the miltary base that was ~60 miles away.

Having said that, my favorite photo is:



solely because this case has good provenance (Belgian military saying "WTF?") and four separate witnesses from the 2000 Illinois "black triange" sighting described a very similar object.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 7:10 PM on January 7, 2006

Other double eposure artists can be found at this exhibit. Other UFO photos can be found at Worth1000. They're all just as real as the one's linked.
posted by skallas at 7:25 PM on January 7, 2006

posted by skallas at 7:26 PM on January 7, 2006

I want to believe ... I want to believe I didn't just waste 10 minutes.
posted by itchylick at 7:31 PM on January 7, 2006

More here.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 7:33 PM on January 7, 2006

This is an intersesting conundrum...if there are
alien crafts out there, there are many more people with cameraphones etc. to document their existence. On the other hand (probably the bigger hand), it is incredibly easy to fake these photos these days.

When I was in high school in the sixties, I faked a UFO photo in the darkroom with sand (for stars) and a cutout saucer-shaped thing for the UFO.

Things haven't changed that much.
posted by kozad at 7:57 PM on January 7, 2006

I have a friend, who while visiting Alaska in the late 1970's, stopped to take a panoramic photograph from the side of the road. Lying on the ground there at the pullout, was a lovely silver vintage hubcap, which his traveling companion proceeded to frisbee into the air, above the panorama before them. My friend caught this on film, and had us all going for 10 minutes or so, while showing pictures upon his return.

Photoshop has taken all the fun out of crafting UFO shots, these days.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:12 PM on January 7, 2006

Heh, skallas' link was actually pretty good.

It illustrates the central problem with the field. The images with the best provenance are generally shitty, and the clearest images have the worst bona-fides.

Eg. this one from the January 2000 Illinois case (above):



was taken by a police officer who drew what he was looking at:



and his description matches quite closely what the other 4 witnesses said they saw, and, like I said, the belgian triangle flap from 1989-1990.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:16 PM on January 7, 2006

Belgian triangle = B2 bomber. It's not that hard, people.
posted by frogan at 8:32 PM on January 7, 2006

Sure, frogan, that's exactly what they want you to believe.
posted by billysumday at 8:38 PM on January 7, 2006

No kidding, frogan. Do people ever see triangle-shaped UFOs these days, now that the B2 is common knowledge?
posted by brundlefly at 8:46 PM on January 7, 2006

A rancher just did. When you need to break government-spanning conspiricies involving massive cosmological events, only a rancher and a conspiracy theorist can take on the case!

Leslie Varnicle, state director of the Mutual UFO Network, has also looked into the deaths. She said a teenager spotted a strange aircraft in the Calhan area Oct. 21.

"You had the animal deaths and, in the same time and area, an observation of this V-shaped craft," Varnicle said. "In the back of my mind, I think there is a connection."

Wait, now its a rancher, a MUFOn, and a random teenager! The evidence is piling up! *faints* I mean, if we can't trust ranchers and teenagers, who can we trust?

I want to believe... that these people are just joking. Sadly, they really think beings have traveled billions of miles through outerspace, to secretly land, kill some horses, and speed off.
posted by skallas at 9:58 PM on January 7, 2006

>>only a rancher and a conspiracy theorist can take on the case!

Also, I smell sitcom.
posted by skallas at 9:58 PM on January 7, 2006

Belgian triangle = B2 bomber. It's not that hard, people.

B2 bombers can descend thousands of feet in a few seconds? This was on military radar. AFAIK the Belgian MoD still says it doesn't know what the deal was with this.

Look, it's OK to assert equipment malfunction, mass hysteria, etc, but to NOT forward an explanation that covers ALL of the observed properties of the incident is useless pseudo-science.

While UFOlogy attracts unscientific new-agey touchy-feely people as a matter of course, which is of course extremely off-putting, after some degree of investigation I'm provisionally convinced there's possibly a nut kernel of actuality behind the phenomenon. cf. Hynek's piece from ~40 years ago for how one "scientist" came to this conclusion.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:02 AM on January 8, 2006

Do people ever see triangle-shaped UFOs these days, now that the B2 is common knowledge?

B2's float nearly soundlessly float over the Illinois countryside at 3AM, lit up like a Christmas tree, @ 100kts?

Actually the "nearly soundlessly" part would be expected for any advanced USG project -- simple noise cancellation would explain that -- but, again, B-2 simply isn't an explanation for what the eg. Illinois witnesses say they saw.

fwiw, I stopped following UFO crap ~10yrs ago, but finding out about the alleged particulars of the 2000 Illinois case last week (indirectly thanks to mefi) re-piqued my interest a bit.

The Illinois triangle has got the hallmarks of an interesting investigation (multiple, apparently independent witnesses, military/police sightings in the line of duty, radio transcripts / visual recordings to reconstruct the incident as it happened).
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:13 AM on January 8, 2006

The Belgian one may not be a B2, but I reckon this one is.
posted by greycap at 1:49 AM on January 8, 2006

I used to follow the UFO 'scene' when i was at school, I bought the magazine, watched television programs and so on.

It really caught my imagination at the time and there seemed to be some movement on the issue, and the testimonials from military, civilian flight and academic sources seemed compelling.

However then I started to notice the industry built up about it all, the books and video that were being sold - people were selling their 'evidence' with the promise they were gonna blow the whole thing open - but they never did. I got older and started questioning the 'evidence'.

The photos all appear to be either fakes or so blurry/indistinct as to be pointless to analyze. The testimonials and radar evidence amount to nothing.

I remember not to long ago being told that there were definitely WMDs in Iraq. It was clear. There where satellite photos, eyewitness accounts, paper trails, intent. Everything. Whole governments came to this conclusion. They were wrong.

Unless I see direct evidence - the ship, the crew, whatever - until i see unequivocal evidence that it is Alien, I will remain unconvinced.
posted by Meccabilly at 2:01 AM on January 8, 2006

First job out of Uni in the late 70's / early 80's, I did weapons research back in the US. Secret clearance, at times one or two levels above that, we were working on the F117 and other goodies long before the existance of these machines was known to the general public.

I've always been suspicious that they've retired the SR-71 without really announcing a successor. It wouldn't surprise me if a large percentage of these UFO sightings really were close encounters with some military machinery, either being tested or actually deployed.
posted by Mutant at 2:09 AM on January 8, 2006

However then I started to notice the industry built up about it all

this is to be expected. "True!" ET UFOs coming here are a compelling story, prolly the most compelling story I can think of. This moves a lot of merchandise, good, bad, or ugly.

Or all the dross could be part of the 'conspiracy'... one of the inherent dangers of the 'UFO conspiracy-theory' thing is that it makes the whole enterprise unfalsifiable. Crap science and laughably idiotic UFO promoters can viewed as just disinformation designed to poison the field... all I know is that if *I* were in a black disinformation campaign I'd sure as hell do things as Blue Resonant Human... BB was either a dude taking the piss out of UFOlogy, insane, or a rather creative disinfo guy. The deeper you go into this, the weirder it gets, and the rules of normal scientific investigation no longer apply (well, it does, but peer-reviewed UFO science is just another can of worms, and legitimate scientists have never wanted to come close to the field, for obvious reasons).

I remember not to long ago being told that there were definitely WMDs in Iraq. It was clear. There where satellite photos, eyewitness accounts, paper trails, intent. Everything. Whole governments came to this conclusion. They were wrong.

No, your above precis of the casus belli is what is wrong.

Elements within certain intelligence services, not "whole governments" were constructing a bill of goods for sale to the public. I knew it was total crap at the time. The satellite photos could have been anything, the eyewitness accounts were from the INC, paper trails (eg the Niger thing) were shown to be fabricated soon after being floated, and 'intent' didn't need to be documented because it was already a given.

Unless I see direct evidence - the ship, the crew, whatever - until i see unequivocal evidence that it is Alien, I will remain unconvinced.

Of course. The point of the exercise, to me, would be to just stay on top of what, if anything, is going on. ca. 10 years ago I reached the point where I was satisified that /something/ might be going on, but haven't found the need to devote any more time to it.

What I don't get is people snootily & unscientifically dismissing the good stuff out-of-hand, then claiming the moral scientific high ground. It's truly bizarre behavior. Understandable, but bizarre nonetheless.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:16 AM on January 8, 2006

It wouldn't surprise me if a large percentage of these UFO sightings really were close encounters with some military machinery, either being tested or actually deployed.

Sure. But the more interesting cases, like the Illinois 'black triangle' case from six years ago, sure make for weird USG testing/deployments.

Why would the government be flying fast-moving noise-cancelled dirigibles, lit up like a pinball machine, relatively low over the Illinois countryside late at night? Why would the USG toy with Belgian airspace back in 1989 like that?

I can of think of plausible anwers to these questions, but in the end IMV the 'USG black project' hypothesis is not dispositive, and is just another possible explanation to throw on the stack.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:24 AM on January 8, 2006

No, your above precis of the casus belli is what is wrong.

Governments send countries to war and they came to the conclusion based on the faulty evidence - no need to nit pick so much...

Of course. The point of the exercise, to me, would be to just stay on top of what, if anything, is going on.

Well that may be, but I view it all in the same way I view the existence of ghosts - as unfounded and unlikely. If there was suddenly earth shattering evidence that came to light that significantly altered perceptions of UFOs then I suspect it would come to light on television, in papers and on ithe interenet, such as this post did. I may then change my mind.

What I don't get is people snootily & unscientifically dismissing the good stuff out-of-hand, then claiming the moral scientific high ground.

I can't really see how what I am doing is uncientific. I am simply waiting until there is sufficient evidence.

Sure. But the more interesting cases, like the Illinois 'black triangle' case from six years ago, sure make for weird USG testing/deployments.

I would suggest it is more likely to be a military experimental craft or a misundertanding then beings from another solar system/galaxy/dimention/whatever.

just another possible explanation to throw on the stack.

This is the point really. No explenation forward so far is - the evidence is not strong enough to point to a conclusion, so there is no point making one.
posted by Meccabilly at 4:11 AM on January 8, 2006

*misunderstanding - spell check!
posted by Meccabilly at 4:12 AM on January 8, 2006

I could swear that I first saw this article linked here on Metafilter?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:18 AM on January 8, 2006

BB was either a dude taking the piss out of UFOlogy, insane, or a rather creative disinfo guy.

It doesn't take more than about five minutes browsing his website to figure out that he falls into the first category.

It's satirical conspiracy theory that's been overly influenced by the work of Robert Anton Wilson.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:26 AM on January 8, 2006

I like all the tubes with dots on the sides. Folks, that's an aircraft with several seconds of exposure. I've taken photos of many of them .
posted by tomble at 4:43 AM on January 8, 2006

Haahahaah! Quack!
posted by tomble at 4:46 AM on January 8, 2006

"Why would the government be flying fast-moving noise-cancelled dirigibles, lit up like a pinball machine, relatively low over the Illinois countryside late at night? Why would the USG toy with Belgian airspace back in 1989 like that?"

Maybe there was a malfunction and whatever it was was NOT supposed to be lit up? Or perhaps they were just testing to determine reaction, much like The Air Force does to enemy radar systems before they go into combat? Who on this side of the military civilian divide knows why they do some of the things they do?

Just to keep this in context: if I'd told anyone back in 1977 that the US Airforce had planes that were effectively invisible to radar, that would have been viewed as implausible or just downright impossible.

Some of that crap we were working on is public knowledge now. Some isn't. And considering the size of the miltary's R&D budget, they've got a crapload lot of cash to build and experiment with all sorts of things. I hear (from public web sites) that they are now building / deploying planes that are invisible in the daylight. To the naked eye. So there you go.

I tend to agree with Meccabilly on this one: until I see physical proof, I'm inclined to believe in the post plausbile explanation. It's quite possible that some of those photos have captured nothing more than your tax dollars on display.
posted by Mutant at 4:51 AM on January 8, 2006

Or all the dross could be part of the 'conspiracy'... one of the inherent dangers of the 'UFO conspiracy-theory' thing is that it makes the whole enterprise unfalsifiable

Is "unfalsifiable" the same thing as saying "can't be disproved"?
posted by alumshubby at 4:56 AM on January 8, 2006

It doesn't take more than about five minutes browsing his website to figure out that he falls into the first category.

BlueResonantHuman's postings to usenet in the late 90s indicates he had a copious amount of time to devote to this effort.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 5:47 AM on January 8, 2006

Well, if its on usenet it must be true. With subjects lines like "UFO Debunkers: Take your horsewhipping like a MAN!!!/The Greys Will Supervise" I'm sure its all highly academic and well researched.
posted by skallas at 5:59 AM on January 8, 2006

Governments send countries to war and they came to the conclusion based on the faulty evidence - no need to nit pick so much...

the nit is the nut here. It's the difference between honest mistake and the utmost, impeachable, mendacity. The evidence wasn't "faulty", it's what the neocons wanted to see produced/manufactured, and it worked well, welll enough to get the US and UK into Baghdad at least.

I can't really see how what I am doing is uncientific. I am simply waiting until there is sufficient evidence.

vs.:

The testimonials and radar evidence amount to nothing.

There are about a dozen radar cases that I am aware of. "Radar-Visual" sightings are the gold standard of UFOlogy, and professional skeptics like Klass never could put an explanatory argument together that takes them apart.

So I think dismissing them as "amounting to nothing" is unscientific.

I would suggest it is more likely to be a military experimental craft or a misundertanding then beings from another solar system/galaxy/dimention/whatever.

Sure. The point is to formulate a hypothesis that fits the data.

We don't even know WHAT the data is, we only have the sworn testimony of 1 civilian and 4 peace officers' observations of a night-time UFO. Going over the radio logs, I can see how "suggestion" of a possible UFO could have cascaded into the police officers believing they were seeing more than they actually did, eg. a C-5 making a low & slow landing into the airbase there.

Though they did seem to be rather scientific about it -- one officer turned off his light-bar and rolled down his window to listen to the craft he was observing.

If this was a USG aircraft, and assuming Officer Barton's description is accurate as stated, the USG's got some 'splaining to do, and I'm not talking about special paints...

He stated it was not moving very fast but not very slow either. Upon stopping the vehicle, he turned off all the lights and his squad car's radio in an attempt to hear any noise possibly coming from the object. No noise was evident. As it approached, he noticed the distinct shape of the object. It appeared as a massive, elongated, narrow triangle. It appeared larger in length than width. The apparent size of the object was conservatively estimated to be approximately 75ft in length and 40ft in width. At each corner, Officer Barton observed a massive, bright, white light. These lights did not waver in intensity and appeared to be pointing straight down. He stated they did not light up the ground, but were very bright. In addition to these, there was one smaller flashing red light. This was situated closer to the two rear white lights, yet in the midline of the object (figure 2). He noticed that the object was blotting out the stars above it, as it passed by him. He still could not discern any noise emanating from the object. At this time, the object appeared to be closest to Officer Barton. He estimated the object was no more than 100 feet distant and approximately 1000 feet above the ground. Then he observed the object rotating in the sky from a southerly heading to that of a southwesterly direction. As it rotated, the object did not bank as is expected of conventional aircraft. Rather, the object pivoted in mid-air without tilting to one side or the other and remained completely level.
At this point, Officer Barton radioed Central Command to tell them what he was observing as well as its current location. In between transmissions, he stopped for a moment as he observed the craft make a dramatic increase in speed. The object was moving at a relatively slow pace at the beginning of his transmission. However, it then accelerated so fast that he could barely track the movement with his eyes. Officer Barton said the speed was remarkable. He was able to observe the rear of the object before this display of velocity. His best analogy is in comparing it to the Millenium Falcon spacecraft from the motion picture Star Wars. It appeared to be rectangular and illuminated by white light. Through the middle of the light, running lengthwise, was a band of multi-colored illumination. He stated that there were not individual colored lights that you could discern. Rather, it appeared as a band of various colors, which blended into each other.He continued the transmission by informing Central Command that the object should now be around the town of Shiloh that is situated approximately 8 miles to the Southwest.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:07 AM on January 8, 2006

I'm sure its all highly academic and well researched.

skallas, you apparently missed my point wrt "Brother Blue". His 1000+ posts to usenet were highly disruptive to the UFO community's postings there. If I were a government counter-intelligence dude, I'd be quite proud of that work. It would be masterful, as evidenced by your reaction to it.

Is "unfalsifiable" the same thing as saying "can't be disproved"?

no, I'm just trying to say that I'm aware that the "conspiracy!" charge makes everything weird. Eg. scientists in normal disciplines don't have to contend with bad actors salting the evidence with wacky stuff that looks legit. Attributing to USG interference everything tacky/damaging about UFOlogy is some sort of hazardous thinking, similar to fundies crediting God for the good coincidences and Satan for all the bad events.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:13 AM on January 8, 2006

the nit is the nut here.

I've no idea what you are talking about.

The evidence wasn't "faulty", it's what the neocons wanted to see produced/manufactured, and it worked well, welll enough to get the US and UK into Baghdad at least.

It still persuaded governments to go to war... what exactly do you dissagree with in what i am saying? I think perhaps one has a stick up one's ass.

There are about a dozen radar cases that I am aware of. "Radar-Visual" sightings are the gold standard of UFOlogy, and professional skeptics like Klass never could put an explanatory argument together that takes them apart.

Radar evidence is not bullet proof evidence. Faulty equipment or false readings could be the cause. If there are only 'about a dozen' cases, I am far more inclined to believe that equipment was faulty/in error then Aliens buzzed them.

The point is to formulate a hypothesis that fits the data.

Hypothesis: Not aliens.

We don't even know WHAT the data is, we only have the sworn testimony of 1 civilian and 4 peace officers' observations of a night-time UFO.

That's sort of my point.

Though they did seem to be rather scientific about it -- one officer turned off his light-bar and rolled down his window to listen to the craft he was observing.

Are you being sarcastic?

the USG's got some 'splaining to do

Since when did the 'USG' have to explain anything they didn't want to?

I think perhaps you have been sniffing to much 'special paint' - only jk...
posted by Meccabilly at 7:58 AM on January 8, 2006

[the "faulty" evidence] still persuaded governments to go to war...

No, it persuaded the people to go along with it.

George Bush, March 2002:

"Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out!"

"Downing Street Memo", July 2002:

"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy"

Radar evidence is not bullet proof evidence. Faulty equipment or false readings could be the cause.

Of course, that's why I was referring to "radar-visual" cases, where independent observers see something odd and it shows up on radar traces.

If there are only 'about a dozen' cases, I am far more inclined to believe that equipment was faulty/in error then Aliens buzzed them.

Dismissing evidence out-of-hand is not scientific. No big deal; it's your loss, not mine. I just find your ability here to be so irrational amusing.

The point is to formulate a hypothesis that fits the data.

Hypothesis: Not aliens.

That's not a hypothesis. Hypotheses explain observations, not arbitrarily dispose of them.

Occam's razor can only go so far. If the officer's testimony about the aircraft accelerating 'like the millenium falcon' is accurate, the ET hypothesis gains in strength vs. the USG hypothesis.

You are free to dismiss the officer's testimony as either a cognitive disorder, driven by the "need to believe" perhaps, or due to him wanting to be in on the hoax. Me, I see no real reason to form those judgements, other than one's own mental needs to deny the corpus of evidential weirdness that exists out there.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:36 AM on January 8, 2006

[the "faulty" evidence] still persuaded governments to go to war...

No, it persuaded the people to go along with it.

I've no idea what issue you have with this... It all seems to make sense to me - i've no idea what issue you are taking with the statement that i made.

Of course, that's why I was referring to "radar-visual" cases, where independent observers see something odd and it shows up on radar traces.

So what can we conclude from these accounts? What conclusion do we come to.

That's not a hypothesis. Hypotheses explain observations, not arbitrarily dispose of them.

You cannot explain these observations as there is not enough evidence to form a conclusion.

Occam's razor can only go so far. If the officer's testimony about the aircraft accelerating 'like the millenium falcon' is accurate, the ET hypothesis gains in strength vs. the USG hypothesis.

Because the millennium falcon is a 'space-ship' isn't it.

It is Occam's razor that leads me to beleive it was not aliens. I am not drawing any conclusions about what these things are, however I suspect there are a variety of sources; from faulty equipment, to mistaken/incorrect eye-whitnesses, to fabrication and any number of other factors.

No television crew has yet produced convincing footage of a UFO that would lead me to beleive that it is of alien origin - why not? There are plenty of them around working every day.

Why is there not a single clear photograph?

It is a single whitness - how can we trust his account. Perhaps he was drunk or misstaken.
posted by Meccabilly at 8:53 AM on January 8, 2006

It all seems to make sense to me - i've no idea what issue you are taking with the statement that i made.

You have made claims that the US and UK governments had evidence that made them go to war. This is an incorrect appraisal of the situation[1]. They wanted to go to war, and generated the evidence to produce the necessary casus belli. The whole UN rigamarole was at the explicit behest of Blair, Bush would not even had bothered with the UNSC kabuki drama if he could have had his way.

So what can we conclude from these accounts? What conclusion do we come to.

Depends on the incident. The RB-47 incident was a pretty good one. I'm left with a simple "WTF?". Same thing with the Belgian flap of 1989-90.

[1] Downing Street Memo:
"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

You cannot explain these observations as there is not enough evidence to form a conclusion.

We can reach tentative, conditional conclusions based on various aspects of the testimony. eg. *if* the 'millenium falcon' acceleration observation is bona fide (eg. the object moved 8 miles in under a minute), then we are left with two hypothesis to explain the evidence: ET or USG.

If the officer had been on duty in the middle of Nevada, USG would make more sense. But seeing such an object, aimlessly cruising ~1000ft above the winter Illinois countryside just doesn't make much sense for the USG. The ET side is not dispositive, but given the nature of the phenomenon it's something of a cumulative case to be made; kinda like the evidence necessary to promote "Continental Drift" from hypothesis to theory.

Why is there not a single clear photograph?



It is a single whitness - how can we trust his account.

LOL. Everyone is a "single witness". The Illinois case is interesting because there were *4*, separate cops in different departments, communicating over the radio, about the incident.

Perhaps he was drunk or misstaken.

Perhaps not.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 9:17 AM on January 8, 2006

You have made claims that the US and UK governments had evidence that made them go to war. This is an incorrect appraisal of the situation.

That is an incorrect apraisal of what i was saying.

We can reach tentative, conditional conclusions based on various aspects of the testimony. *if* the 'millenium falcon' acceleration observation is bona fide (eg. the object moved 8 miles in under a minute), then we are left with two hypothesis to explain the evidence: ET or USG.

We have no way to varify what he saw and those are not the only conclusions we can reach.

I could say i saw an egg transform into a giant rabbit and fly away. *If* we assume my observation was correct then it must be either Magic or God. However I could be hullucinating, mistaken, drunk or lying. Can you see where i'm going with this?

The photograph shown above could easily be a fake. In fact i can make one if photoshop in ten minutes.



posted by Meccabilly at 10:39 AM on January 8, 2006

imagine if i spent 20 mins.
posted by Meccabilly at 10:40 AM on January 8, 2006

Did this remind anybody else of the Millenium Falcon?
posted by EarBucket at 10:46 AM on January 8, 2006

it reminds me of a smudge
posted by Meccabilly at 10:47 AM on January 8, 2006

Oh, I don't think it's an alien spacecraft, if that's what you're saying. I just think there's a striking resemblance.
posted by EarBucket at 10:49 AM on January 8, 2006

its not bad ;)
posted by Meccabilly at 10:54 AM on January 8, 2006

This is the problem with American ufology today. Everyone believers and debunkers alike, are hung up on the ET hypothesis, which has very little evidence to support it.

I mean, UFOs and UFO related phenomana (anything strange that's either been rleated to UFOs by proximity in time and space, or that have no obvious connection, but have been connected in some matter by ufologists,) act nothing like an intelligent spacefaring species. They don't even interact with the physical world in a way that corresponds to anything that is known or considred possible.

Yet UFO hawkers and believers are still very attached to the idea that UFOs and their occupants, as well as the entities of abduction stories and so on, are actual physical things that exist soley within a materialistic framework.
posted by Snyder at 12:00 PM on January 8, 2006

>If I were a government counter-intelligence dude

You must be right. Wherever you ufo-believers and ufologists are wrong its a hoax from a few bad apples. Whenever you guys think you're right and no one believes you its counter-intelligence feeding the foolish skeptics. Only the true believers know the truth and as usual its taken on a great deal of faith and wish-fulfillment. Carry on.
posted by skallas at 1:19 PM on January 8, 2006

skallas: I do not believe 100% that "Blue Resonant Human" was AFOSI or whatever. More like 10%. I put him 85% into the anti-UFOlogy crank category, and 5% into the insane category. Whatever he was, he was not a bona-fide UFOlogist.

Your statement above is incorrect. I acknowledge the field is riddled with hucksters looking to make money on easy marks, and civilian witnesses looking for their 15 minutes.

Once again, it is an unfortunate, but somewhat sensible /implication/ of the ET hypothesis that the USG is covering up the UFO phenomenon. When I see behavior that looks like counter-intelligence, it makes me go "hmm". You can't see it from the wayback machine, but BRH's website was plastered with fake government-esque (CIA, etc) shields, and he occasionally signed his posts as "CIA ~blah blah~ directorate".

Crackpot taking the piss most like, but I do know that if I were doing counter-intelligence I'd be tempted to do exactly what "BRH" did. He was entirely disruptive, and people like you doing a casual once-over of the groups he was in would be naturally repulsed by his silliness.

UFOlogy is the weirdest thing. Should the USG be engaging in a long-term disinfo campaign, we would expect the field to be discredited with flakes and fakes. And it is.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:40 PM on January 8, 2006

Sure the pictures are unconvincing, but have you read the copy at the linked site? Also from ufocasebook.com:

Jan. 1, 2006-Rumors are rampant in all over the world that extraterrestrial civilizations are preparing for a spectacular event in 2012. No one knows what Mayans really meant by the coming cataclysmic event of 2012. But now many think tanks are predicting that the earth will be in severe danger in 2012 and beyond. And at the right moment in 2012 or beyond, the extraterrestrial advanced civilizations will eventually come to rescue the human civilization.

According to researchers, the Federation of the Universe representing all the 88 star constellations will officially visit earth in 2012 and reveal themselves. It will bring an end to all UFO cover-ups in various countries.

In many countries all over the world the rumors are floating around that many Governments are being contacted at this time slowly to announce their presence and coming official visit.

According to some, the human civilization has finally reached a level when the earth can officially become part of the Federation of the Universe.

Another messiahic cult it seems. I don't know how otherwise intelligent people take this stuff seriously. So when 2013 rolls around and there's no space Jesus will the ufologists and New Agers go back under the rocks they came from?
posted by skallas at 1:42 PM on January 8, 2006

act nothing like an intelligent spacefaring species.

How do you expect an intelligent spacefaring species to act?

They don't even interact with the physical world in a way that corresponds to anything that is known or considred possible.

100 years ago we were tossing powered gliders off of sand dunes. We don't know shit about what are the ultimate boundaries of physics. And, actually, the UFO behaviors aren't /that/ weird. From the corpus of thousands of "good" witnessessings of UFOs, they nearly all fly inertialessly essentially, and can accelerate rather well.

*if* the craft seen in the 1940s and 1950s was real -- and I can direct you to USAF documents saying they are -- we should have been seeing this technology hit the civilian sector by now if they were man-made.

The ET hypothesis is pretty simple. If it ain't terrestrial, it's gotta be ET. I really don't understand the problem with this.

It's not like there aren't "billions and billions" of other planets the ETS can come from, and "billions and billions" of years for intelligent ET cultures to have developed elsewhere.

People bring up the Fermi Paradox -- the universe should be full of ET, and the skies should be full of ET UFOs. Hello?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:51 PM on January 8, 2006

I don't know how otherwise intelligent people take this stuff seriously.

What stuff?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:53 PM on January 8, 2006

>>Should the USG be engaging in a long-term disinfo campaign, we would expect the field to be discredited with flakes and fakes.

Isn't it much more likely that the problem isn't the big bad evil goverment conspiracy (is X-files still on??) but the complete lack of concrete evidence and overzealous believers? Or the attitudes expressed at the linked site of finally getting to the truth at 2013 because of the end of the Mayan calendar? Even the phrase "I want to believe" admits extreme-bias and a wish-fulfillment mentality. Or that in a world teeming with cameras and camcorders, a world supposedly visited quite often in the flesh by Grays/Greens/Purples usually with a message the best you guys can do is Fox's Alien Autopsy.

The Fortean Times had a great piece on UFOs a few years back. The timeline was especially eye-opening. In the 50sthe UFOs warned of humanity abusing nuclear weapons. In the 70s they warned of polution. Interesting how they just reflect the concerns of the day. The modern sightings, to me, are doing the same thing, and the concern now is the futureshock of a rapidly advancing technological society. Also, the Mayan stuff really points toward the fear of living in a mysterious world and that the great fathers in the sky will come down and finally embrace us into their heavenly communion. Sounds a tad religious doesn't it?

The cult of UFOs are really just another aspect of the New Age religion. You have all the classic signs of a religious cult. Admissions of mysterious powers. A big conspiracy to keep believers down. The promise of a revelation to end all doubt. Persecution of the believers, etc.

I would have a lot more respect for ufologists if they just finally admitted that they were doing religion and not science.
posted by skallas at 1:53 PM on January 8, 2006

>>and I can direct you to USAF documents saying they are

And the ones that don't like the Conrad report or the Blue book study? Those are the conspiractors working in all levels of government for over 60 years without a single piece of alien technology mailed to the New York Times. Right?
posted by skallas at 1:56 PM on January 8, 2006

>>Whatever he was, he was not a bona-fide UFOlogist.

And how would you know that? Is there an accredited university that hands out degrees? Or is ufology not studied because the smoking man calls up the Dean of the local state U and threatens to kidnap his kids or somesuch?

>>The ET hypothesis is pretty simple. If it ain't terrestrial, it's gotta be ET.

That's your limited imagination coming to a conclusion you like. First off, you don't know its not terrestial. In fact most of the evidence points to ordinary astronomical phenomenon. Secondly, the ET hypothesis isn't just the most logical way out of the UFO problem, you have a community of believers who claim communion, adbuction, and even the receiving of pancakes from aliens (see my profile).

ET, seems to me, what you guys want it to be.

>>People bring up the Fermi Paradox

People should also bring up the limitation of the speed of light, the estimated age of a space-faring civilization, and the size of the universe. A human-like race on a planet a 500 million light-years away will never get here.

>>but BRH's website was plastered with fake government-esque (CIA, etc) shields

Hold on, this guy is a disinformation agent because he openly uses his federal shield? Umm. Ok.
posted by skallas at 2:04 PM on January 8, 2006

People should also bring up the limitation of the speed of light, the estimated age of a space-faring civilization, and the size of the universe.

ZZZzz. Unscientific anthropocentric guesswork. We know very very little about the universe beyond our atmosphere, and are only on our current paradigm for a generation or three. 50 years ago science was still rejecting the idea that the continents could slide around.

After 100 or 300 more generations of stasis in our understanding of physics, you'd have more of a point, but to me acribing limitations to what putative ET can and can't do technologically is the height of human folly.

A human-like race on a planet a 500 million light-years away will never get here.

So? The galaxy is only 60,000 ly in radius, oh Scientific One.

Hold on, this guy is a disinformation agent because he openly uses his federal shield? Umm. Ok.

No, it goes a bit deeper into the rabbit hole than that. There's military intelligence, right? Then there's military counter-intelligence. Then it makes sense (philosophically) that there's counter-counter-intelligence. Etc. Etc.

Here's my question to you. *If* there was a disinformation campaign, why *wouldn't* the USG spooks poison the field with kooks and frauds?

This is just an observation, since obviously it can't prove anything (kooks and frauds would still exist regardless).
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:19 PM on January 8, 2006

EarBucket: looks more like Noah's Ark to me. Maybe they've been looking in the wrong place (Ararat) all this time?
posted by deborah at 2:21 PM on January 8, 2006

Those are the conspiractors working in all levels of government for over 60 years without a single piece of alien technology mailed to the New York Times. Right?

No, not all levels of government, just like not all levels of government has access to the formula for radar-absorbent paint. Anyway,The "conspiracy theory" angle bores me because it lets people with fragile outlooks on the world like you concentrate on that weirdness, rather than the excellent actual cases like the Illinois sighting in 2000.

I understand why you'd rather talk about spooks and conspiracies, it's easy to ridicule that; but the Illinois sighting has none of that. Just one guy driving to a police station saying he saw something weird, and later, 4, separate police officers giving their accounts of seeing pretty much the same weird thing tooling down over the Illinois countryside, with the unfolding of the incident recorded on radio transcripts.

I find no reason to ridicule the 5 witnesss who say they saw something that night. That their descriptions match very, very closely what hundreds of people say they saw in Belgium, including the alleged videotape, gives me pause actually.

Either they are hoaxers (entirely possible) or they saw the same thing in 2000 the Belgians say they saw in 1990.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:26 PM on January 8, 2006

How do you expect an intelligent spacefaring species to act?

While we only have one example of an intelligent spacefaring species to look at, we can still judge the actions of an alleged ET on that basis. Why do the Greys show up, perform things like the stoppage of time and moving through solid objects, perform rather primitve medical procdeures or give out strange, oft-times conflicting information, or, as skallas says, warn us of whatever apocalyptic scenario is most popular?

Did 3 basically human looking aliens travel millions of light years to give a farmer pancakes? (Escpecially when that story has more in comon with farie lore?) Do the Hopksinsville goblins, with their one known apperance, behave with anything resembing rationality?

We don't know shit about what are the ultimate boundaries of physics.

That may be true, but their powers seem to vary for no discenable reason, (for example, being able to pluck people from a NYC skyrise with no witnesses and leave zero evidence of their intrusion, but are incabable of completely mindwiping their abductees or performing medical procedures without the primitve tools more at home in a 1950's science lab. Why do the MiBs act confused by things like ball-point pens or jello, or make ominous but ultimately worthless threats? Why travel interstellar distances to have sex?

From the corpus of thousands of "good" witnessessings of UFOs, they nearly all fly inertialessly essentially, and can accelerate rather well.

What about the "falling-leaf" description that is also common?

The ET hypothesis is pretty simple. If it ain't terrestrial, it's gotta be ET. I really don't understand the problem with this.

Because it ignores nonmaterialistic explanations. That something might not be a confabulation, hoax or delusion, but not empircally real in a materialistic sense. The ultra-terrestrial hypothesis is one such nonmaterialistic hypothesis, and I think is just as credible, if not moreso, then the ET hypothesis.
posted by Snyder at 2:28 PM on January 8, 2006

Snyder: there were no grays in the Illinois UFO case.

"Grays" != UFO. I prefer sticking to the easier cases, like the radar-visual sightings, rather than jumping straight to the more contentious stuff, which could in fact be entirely bogus, either through cultural pollution/wish fulfillment (people want to be abducted).

The ultra-terrestrial hypothesis is one such nonmaterialistic hypothesis

The UFO sighting in Belgium in 1990 got radar returns, both from ground radar and F-16s.

Advanced space-faring aliens may be a hypothetical, but I don't consider it that big a deal, given the size and age of the universe. Can anyone really assert what human science is going to look like in 1M years, that no advances in eg. antigravity and sublight speed travel? I find the idea laughable. Even with our present understanding, at 0.999c the galaxy is a lot smaller, to the occupants at least.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:46 PM on January 8, 2006

Anyway,The "conspiracy theory" angle bores me because it lets people with fragile outlooks on the world like you concentrate on that weirdness, rather than the excellent actual cases like the Illinois sighting in 2000.

The weirdness is important. The 2000 Illinois case is interesting, but all to often researchers Budd Hopkins and Jerome Clark, to name two, ignore or conceal anything that does not fit with the ETH, which has has as much evidence as the UTH, that is to say, zero, but at least the UTH has the advantage of being more elegant and encompassing.
posted by Snyder at 2:53 PM on January 8, 2006

"Grays" != UFO. I prefer sticking to the easier cases, like the radar-visual sightings, rather than jumping straight to the more contentious stuff, which could in fact be entirely bogus, either through cultural pollution/wish fulfillment (people want to be abducted).

I agree, and I hope you don't think I'm attacking you with my posts, I just disagree with you on the ETH. I think it's good that you're not confabulating multpile phenoma into the ETH, and that you're treating the Belgium/Illinois cases in an intelligent matter.
posted by Snyder at 2:58 PM on January 8, 2006

What about the "falling-leaf" description that is also common?

What about it?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:00 PM on January 8, 2006

You said that "nearly all" of "good" sightings "fly inertialessly essentially, and can accelerate rather well," which is a very common description, but the "falling-leaf" description is also commom, and I wouldn't describe the inertialless and rapid movement being in "nearly al" sightings, escept for high-speed aircraft seen from a long distance.
posted by Snyder at 3:07 PM on January 8, 2006

"Falling leaf", to my undertanding, doesn't mean the witnesses saw the UFOs glide down with the winds, but IMV means erratic to-fro jittering. Jittering at the macro scale correlates with inertialessness.

btw, I consider "good" sightings to exhibit behaviors that conventional aircraft cannot do. If it's tooling up at 29000ft at 600KIA, I'm not interested in it, no matter how many lights the observer(s) say it has.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:18 PM on January 8, 2006

with the ETH, which has has as much evidence as the UTH, that is to say, zero

pure sightings are evidential to some extent, it just depends on the credibility and qualifications of the witness. If the cops in the Illinois case said they saw a guy kill someone, that guy would likely be in jail now.

The Illinois witnesses were describing an aircraft, not a spiritual phenomenon. Either they are pulling our legs, or were truly incompetent observers, or they saw something very interesting in the sky, something very similar to the Belgian flying triangle case.

fwiw, I have legs in each of those categories, but I lean more toward the latter than with the other, more weird, "UFO" stuff that is reported.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 3:33 PM on January 8, 2006

"Inertialess" sounds like "not real": lights, optical illusions, tricks of the mind, dreams, tales.
posted by pracowity at 3:41 PM on January 8, 2006

"Inertialess" sounds like "not real": lights, optical illusions, tricks of the mind, dreams, tales.

Or tech a bit more advanced than us. Depends on whether your belief system allows high-tech ET to exist, be able to find us, and be able to send craft here. I have no problem with any of these propositions.

If the craft don't do anything weird, the skeptics say they (with some justification) that the UFO were unknown terrestrial. If the UFO do exceed conventional capabilities, the skeptics would say they are "tricks of the mind, dreams, and tales".

Nice defense mechanism you've got there. fwiw, I agree that as long as it's just weird lights in the sky the whole UFO thing isn't worth the investment of much time or effort.

But the proof, should one be interested, is in the evidence, such as it is. Such cases as RB-47 are interesting advances in the science of UFOlogy. There's no cut&dried answer yet, but only mental midgets require that degree of evidential clarity before taking the issue seriously.

In the Illinois case, Officer Barton said he saw the object scoot (from a slow cruise) ~8mi across the sky rather quickly. He could be lying, or was drunk, or whatever. But the officer in the next town says he saw a similar object to what Barton saw.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:14 PM on January 8, 2006

pure sightings are evidential to some extent, it just depends on the credibility and qualifications of the witness.

Not evidence of ETs. Just that they saw something in the air. There is as much evidence that it was from the future, another dimension, or that it was the conscious expirence of the brain being stimualted by light waves through either unconcious or concious manipulation, either by humans, ETs, UTs derro, or something else.
posted by Snyder at 10:41 PM on January 9, 2006

If the cops in the Illinois case said they saw a guy kill someone, that guy would likely be in jail now.

Yeah, but just seeing that dosen't prove the murderer was from Halifax or Illionis or the Gobi desert or even Earth. We can use Occam's razor, and make some educated guesses based on our knowledge and expirence, but as evidence, we only know that, at it's core, the officers saw something that looked a guy killing another guy. It's one thing to say that's waht they actually saw, another thing to suppose that the murderer was therefore from the Peruvian rainforest, or even from Chicago.
posted by Snyder at 10:46 PM on January 9, 2006