Serving humanity soon
November 11, 2006 12:47 AM   Subscribe

Now that he's left the Ministry of Defense, he wants to warn us how very concerned he is about that huge triangular UFO police and military personnel (and hundreds of civilians) witnessed flying over RAF bases in Shropshire in 1993.
posted by Twang (75 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
This man is an embarrassment. Was there ever a more gullible soul?
posted by A189Nut at 1:04 AM on November 11, 2006


Oh, man, here we go. *adds "UFOs" to the list beneath "bicycles", "declawing a cat" and "emo"*

It's a vast universe. Strangeness happens. Being aware and prepared seems like a fine thing.


However, as I've discovered before I'm often startled by how willing MetaFilter's userbase is to ridicule merely discussing the possibilities of UFOs.

It's like we're irrationally falling all over each other in a race to be the most rational.
posted by loquacious at 1:44 AM on November 11, 2006 [2 favorites]


It always makes me laugh seeing articles or documentaries by Pope. He was an SEO in the Ministry of Defence which is a relatively lowly grade, yet he's presented as if he was an ultra-senior civil servant who was important within the department. What he's worked is interesting in itself, and I'm sure there is an interesting story to tell about that directorate within the MoD. But all the recent stuff of his I've seen has been so sensationalised and hyperbolic that it just loses any credibility.
posted by greycap at 1:55 AM on November 11, 2006


I'm still curious about what was up with the Mexican Air Force claiming to have seen UFOs a couple of years ago. Was there ever any further info released?

Air Force guys are some of the best observers in the world... their lives depend on it. I don't think they'd claim a UFO if they weren't pretty damn sure it wasn't anything they'd seen before.... and when those guys are sure, you LISTEN.

Note that UFO doesn't automatically mean "alien", although it certainly could.

I think it's very interesting that with the advent of practically everyone having a camera with them all the time, the number of UFO reports has gone down sharply. Other than the Mexican report, I can't think of anything major in the last five years. I'm not sure that any conclusions can be drawn from this, but it's interesting.
posted by Malor at 2:38 AM on November 11, 2006


Aliens from another planet probably aren't visiting us.

After all, extraterrestrial life probably requires an earth like environ and series of long shot events like what happened here... there just aren't enough "earths" out there which are close enough...

OTOH maybe UFOs are real but are demonic through projections from another dimension.

Duh.
posted by wfrgms at 2:41 AM on November 11, 2006


through = thought

Double Duh...
posted by wfrgms at 2:41 AM on November 11, 2006


OTOH maybe UFOs are real

Well, technically they are real. I mean, Stealth Bombers were UFOs to 99.9% of the world for years and years before the American government officially unveiled them to the public.

Even if hard, irrefutable proof of a strange flying craft were ever released to the public, Occam's Razor would suggest that a top-secret government project is the most likely explanation. At least until they start to kill all humans.
posted by The God Complex at 4:14 AM on November 11, 2006


Damn it, I already used my favorite UFO related quote today. And it just doesn't seem right to post it directly into two different threads.
posted by quin at 4:17 AM on November 11, 2006


The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
posted by EarBucket at 4:28 AM on November 11, 2006


Air Force guys are some of the best observers in the world... their lives depend on it. I don't think they'd claim a UFO if they weren't pretty damn sure it wasn't anything they'd seen before.... and when those guys are sure, you LISTEN.

While there's a lot in what you say, eyewitness testimony alone, no matter how expert the witness, is not enough for me in these situations. I'll need proper video that can't conceivably be anything else and artifacts that can't possibly be human (made of unearthly materials, "impossible" tech, etc.) before I'll except a single UFO story as anything other than a mistake. Even then, we're only into "there might be something to this" territory, not absolute certainty.

I want to believe, really. I want to believe in zero point energy too. But extraordinary claims etc.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 4:33 AM on November 11, 2006


Isn't the UFO phenomenon is dying out? I recall reading that many established amateur organisations in the US and Europe are losing members, and shutting down. It all seems so... 80s.
posted by A189Nut at 4:40 AM on November 11, 2006


Was this guy on Coast to Coast AM?
posted by PreacherTom at 5:39 AM on November 11, 2006


wfrgms writes "After all, extraterrestrial life probably requires an earth like environ and series of long shot events like what happened here... there just aren't enough 'earths' out there which are close enough..."

This has always bothered me. Just because life in this particular neck of the woods arose in these specific situations, there is no reason whatsoever why all life throughout the universe must therefore follow the same rules.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 6:41 AM on November 11, 2006


dirtynumangelboy, I once was privileged to listen to a fascinating back-and-forth in the dining hall at university among a physics major, a biochem type and a chem-E over alternatives to the carbon-cycle-based life we've evolved* here -- one guy batted around the idea of something based on (I think) chlorine; another suggested nitrogen/ammonia/methane. Nobody seemed to doubt that water would be involved.


*Yes, I said "evolved" -- and I've said elsewhere in the blue that I'm a believer -- I'm a human being and not a slave to consistency. Sue me.
posted by pax digita at 7:27 AM on November 11, 2006


I'll need proper video that can't conceivably be anything else and artifacts that can't possibly be human (made of unearthly materials, "impossible" tech, etc.) before I'll except a single UFO story as anything other than a mistake. Even then, we're only into "there might be something to this" territory, not absolute certainty.

Don't you think that might be setting the bar a tad high? I mean, if you have a hi-def clear video image of a UFO along with finding an alien-construction death ray gun or something... surely you can move past the "there might be something to this" territory.

How many crashed spaceships would you personally have to visit before you said "yeah, they're real"?

Most mefites would admit it is almost a mathematical certainty there are other lifeforms in the universe. Given the sheer scale of the universe, it is reasonable to believe at least some of these lifeforms might have attained the ability to fly into space (like us).

UFO's are merely improbable, not impossible. What's unlikely is that any alien cultures would find it noteworthy to visit this uninteresting star system in an uninteresting galaxy.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:57 AM on November 11, 2006


I'm often startled by how willing MetaFilter's userbase is to ridicule merely discussing the possibilities of UFOs.

It's like we're irrationally falling all over each other in a race to be the most rational.


Ditto.

And talk to any commercial pilot (off the record, of course). They see this stuff almost every day.
posted by wfc123 at 8:06 AM on November 11, 2006


Don't you think that might be setting the bar a tad high? I mean, if you have a hi-def clear video image of a UFO along with finding an alien-construction death ray gun or something... surely you can move past the "there might be something to this" territory.

No, then we move into "is this extraterrestrial or an elaborate cover-up for secret terrestrial development?" territory.

How many crashed spaceships would you personally have to visit before you said "yeah, they're real"?

I wouldn't need to personally, but I would want to hear from a blue ribbon panel of independent astrophysicists at that point.


Given the sheer scale of the universe, it is reasonable to believe at least some of these lifeforms might have attained the ability to fly into space (like us).

Given the sheer scale of the universe it is also very probable that these other cultures are unreachably distant and we will never ever encounter each other. They could easily be billions of galaxies away from us. Enormity cuts both ways, but wishful thinking has a way of closing the gaps.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:07 AM on November 11, 2006


Is belief in UFOs (as in visitors from other worlds already here but somehow always eluding us) a sort of religious response? I don't mean that all or even most atheists are Ufoists (or vice versa), but there's a bit of a homomorphism between eager Ufoism and the sky god cults so popular around the world. I also don't mean that seeing UFOs started religions (wasn't that Erich Von Daniken's idea?), but just that it might be the same psychological mechanism being satisfied by entertaining thoughts of invisible superior beings (extraterrestrial or supernatural) watching over us. Maybe a kind of daddy/mommy urge that can't be fulfilled by real parents when we grown up.
posted by pracowity at 8:08 AM on November 11, 2006


homomorphism between eager Ufoism and the sky god cults

I think I have the concept for my indie film project now.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:19 AM on November 11, 2006


when the sky cracks open it's unlikely to be 'aliens' coming through.
posted by quonsar at 8:19 AM on November 11, 2006


And talk to any commercial pilot (off the record, of course). They see this stuff almost every day.

All the pilots around the world see UFOs every day, really? If they speak out, what is going to happen? Jetblue will defer their pay bump?
posted by Falconetti at 8:25 AM on November 11, 2006


We're either alone in the universe,
Or we aren't.
Either way,
The implications are staggering.
posted by davelog at 8:49 AM on November 11, 2006 [2 favorites]


My own personal view is that Life is very common in the Universe but that last, crucial step of consciousness and intelligence is extremely improbable.

That is, if and when, we find other habitable planets, they'll be full of creatures like dinosaurs.
posted by vacapinta at 8:55 AM on November 11, 2006


This guy was interviewed in BBC Radio 4: I'll put a link up as soon as I've ripped it all down. Didn't sound like a fruitcake to me.
posted by imperium at 8:56 AM on November 11, 2006


Given the sheer scale of the universe, it is reasonable to believe at least some of these lifeforms might have attained the ability to fly into space (like us).

I certainly accept that it is highly likely that this is true. Especially the "like us" bit. Note that we are not buzzing rednecks on unimaginably distant worlds, nor can we sensibly imagine ever having the technology to do so.
posted by nowonmai at 9:02 AM on November 11, 2006


And talk to any commercial pilot (off the record, of course). They see this stuff almost every day.

Know that from experience? Cause I couldn't find a single air traffic controller with "unexplainable" imaging. I'd be very interested to hear that "any commercial pilot" sees this stuff almost every day. Or most pilots every other month, for that matter. Some pilots every other year; that I can believe.
posted by dreamsign at 9:48 AM on November 11, 2006


I hope I don't indict myself as being insufficiently irrational, but it's probably worth noting that:
1) No one denies UFOs. Some people think that since UFOs are a phenomenon that can be explained by a variety of well-known psychological processes, there's no reason to assume that they're aliens, or demons, or ghosts, or anything else that's supernatural.
2) The universe is incredibly huge. That does make it very, very likely that there is life out there, even intelligent life (in fact, it seems likely that the universe is infinite in extent, in which case it's pretty much a guarantee). That said, the universe is also incredibly sparse. The distances between stars is so large, that any aliens that can fly in space "like us" simply could not visit us. They would have to be able to fly much, much better than us.
3) Any alien visitors would have to have a completely insane psychology. In order to get here, they'd have to build an amazing spacecraft, burn an incredible amount of fuel, and staff the craft with a crew that almost certainly couldn't return within a (human) lifetime due to relativistic effects. So think of the mission to the moon, only about a trillion times bigger. Then they get here and what? They buzz airliners, they "probe people", they mutilate cattle. I hope the alien taxpayers at home REALLY like movies of messing around with humans, because it seems that's all they're getting from this.
posted by Humanzee at 9:51 AM on November 11, 2006


Yup, all these people are insane liars.
posted by dbiedny at 10:03 AM on November 11, 2006


I've met some extremely gullible people who weren't insane liars.

Oh wait, I should try your tactic. What I mean to say is:
No, none of those people are merely gullible.
posted by dreamsign at 10:22 AM on November 11, 2006


pracowity: Is belief in UFOs (as in visitors from other worlds already here but somehow always eluding us) a sort of religious response? I don't mean that all or even most atheists are Ufoists (or vice versa), but there's a bit of a homomorphism between eager Ufoism and the sky god cults so popular around the world.

I knew a guy once like this. At first he seemed pretty rational about the whole thing (well, as rational as you can be about being a UFO nut). But as he explained more and more, it was clear that his belief had a spiritual aspect to it. That they were here to teach us, to take us to the next level. And this wasn't an idea he developed on his own, many books, groups, etc . . . have the same undercurrent.

Its really a shame, because it made me much more skeptical of every UFO tale. I always kept an open mind about UFO's (anything is possible, right?). However, when you find out a bunch of people reporting this stuff desperately WANT it to exist, the evidence is no longer unbiased.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:30 AM on November 11, 2006


Stealth aircraft.

It's a TRIAGLE for Jeebus sake. In 1993 they were still unique and little seen. The light from out of the bottom is likely a the after-burner kicking in, and the angle merely looked like it was coming out of the bottom or hovering. I've seen the B-2 at night, the profile and the matte black plays tricks with your eyes. It DOES look like it's hovering when it makes a landing pass. And the after burner looks like a search light.

When I was out mountain biking in Eastern Washington in the 1980's pre-dawn one morning I got knocked off my bike by sonic boom of an SR-71. It flew right over the tree tops. At first I seriously thought it was a frigg'n pterodactyl.

I worked for the college radio station and I wanted a story on it so I called Fairchild AFB and the Press Liaison Officer swore there was no such aircraft at the base. HE told me it was a UFO. A couple years later it became public knowledge the SR-71 was based there.
posted by tkchrist at 10:40 AM on November 11, 2006


Humanzee as far as the "rational" hurdles to space travel, they, the UFOians, may not be organic entities at all. They could be mechanical with less limitations on them physically. Sent out by the millions. On one way trips. Not traveling past relativistic speeds at all. With a long enough time line it wouldn't matter. And there could be, perhaps, a technology for energy to send them out that could be less expensive than what we currently understand. If they are there they are AI.

Or, yes, these glowing flying lights could be some other kind of natural phenom we don't understand. Yet.

As far as the abductions? It's a neurological glitch. Like night terrors or something. You know? In the old days people though it was a Succubus stealing your soul. People SWORE they saw forms and demons. Now we know night terrors are simply crossed wires in the brain during sleep.
posted by tkchrist at 10:57 AM on November 11, 2006


Occam's Razor would suggest that a top-secret government project is the most likely explanation.

Not if the offered explanation DOES NOT EXPLAIN the evidence.

There are some classic cases . . . "RB-47", "Bentwaters", "Edwards AFB", the "Illinois Triangle" sightings of 2000, hell, I'll even throw in the "Phoenix Lights" sightings since some people are still saying what they saw was not over the outskirts of town but overhead.

While I am officially agnostic about the above cases, I do find the, let's be honest, hysterical, skeptic response more interesting than the actual factuality of the incidents themselves.

"Secret government program" could I suppose explain most incidents these days, but I don't find it buyable for events from the 1950s.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 10:59 AM on November 11, 2006


UFOs exist. I'm sure that there are many flying things that aren't readily identifiable.

Alien life forms exist. As commented several times above, space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. It would be harder for me to imagine that in all the infinite worlds nothing ever evolved. Ever. It seems presumptuous to assume that earth has some special factor that none of the billions and billions of other worlds in the universe have.

Intelligent alien life forms exist. See above point.

Intelligent alien life forms are visiting earth. Unlikely. See the space being really big point again.

The very thing that makes it likely that there are uncountable numbers of planets with life on them and many of those with intelligent life is also the thing that makes it less than likely that we are being visited. Space is really really big.

This point has already been made in the thread, I just wanted to reiterate it.
posted by quin at 11:12 AM on November 11, 2006


You don't have to be insane or a liar (or even particularly gullible) to be mistaken. I'm sure that the majority of UFO sightings are from honest, sane people that have misinterpreted things that they've seen. That said, if you think that there is nobody lying about UFO's, you're crazy. Why would UFO's be the only subject no one lies about?

The "millions of mechanical probes" thing may explain how the aliens could survive the rigors of space travel, but stretches the possible motivation of the original aliens even thinner. Why would they go to the trouble to send out all these probes at subrelativistic speed, only to wait thousands of years (at least) to have them play screwy games like buzzing some hick lifeforms on another planet? The real question is, how long after they sent these probes out were they still snickering?

The "neuronal glitch" theory that you're talking about is hypnagogia.

Oh, and Heywood Mogroot: I'm willling to swear before congress, under oath, that I'm COMPLETELY HYSTERICAL. Seriously, I just bit off all the fingers on my left hand.
posted by Humanzee at 11:15 AM on November 11, 2006


Appreciate the caselist, HM. Looking forward to sifting through those accounts to see if I agree.

For my part, I have a very vivid memory of my dad taking me to a UFO conference at my home town's university when I was a child. I was blown away that so many adults were taking the subject seriously. Of course, that was before I learned how many people take Feng Shui seriously.

tk, I certainly can't say that some UFO's can't be alien-sent automatons. And you can't say for sure that they aren't angels. Or time travelling humans. Or machines built by the whales before they evolved into oceanic creatures without opposable thumbs. It's all "possible" if you use the quotes.

But in my book, probable counts for a hell of a lot.
posted by dreamsign at 11:16 AM on November 11, 2006


Intelligent alien life forms are visiting earth. Unlikely. See the space being really big point again

It's really a stupid point. The Pacific Ocean is an immense, uncrossable expanse to a 3 year old, too.

Technology has a way of shrinking distances.

Let's take a putative alien race that's been space-faring for, oh, 500,000 years.

Where would you put our chemical rockets on their tech tree? 50% towards the end? 5%?

From what I can see, we don't know jack shit about the universe or how it works. Our present "knowledge", such as it is, was thought up within living memory.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:25 AM on November 11, 2006


I publish UFO Magazine. We just celebrated our twentieth anniversary and we fill the magazine with evidence. Eye-witness, government whistle-blowing, science -- we are bursting at the seams every month. I will send anyone a free sample today, first-class mail, and maybe you can better inform yourself about what's going on.We have a somewhat clear photo of one on the cover on the website right now, but these craft could be inter/outer/dimensional strobing in and out of our space and getting a true image is hard with our current technology. Harder still is reading the normally intelligent responses on MetaFilter turn into torch-wielding peasantries at the mere mention of UFO.
posted by filament at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2006 [1 favorite]


Humanzee, you going on about possible alien motivations is, IMV, hysterical, in that it is illogical, if not unscientific.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:27 AM on November 11, 2006


"The aliens will visit us when they can make money by doing so." -- David Byrne
posted by neuron at 11:29 AM on November 11, 2006


I think Heywood has got a point. We don't know shit. We are at the stage where we only THINK we know shit.

Certainly what we know about the universe is based upon our own technological and philosophical bias.

While I feel the FTL travel is likely impossible in the physical universe- virtual immortality is not. If you live nearly forever and have the ability to turn-off your consciousness for a couple thousand years it really doesn't matter how long it takes to get anywhere.

As for motive? "Why not" is a motive. Why did we go to the moon? That is a very complicated set of motives. Politics, Prestige, lots of reasons. We expended untold energy for ideological reasons.

People get hung up on the screwy stuff. It's understandable. I think there are several very different phenomena at work. I don't think abductions, crop circles etc show any evidence of having been related to UFOs at all. And in fact show more evidence of being exclusively terrestrial in origin.

Where as it is undeniable there are "UFO's." There was a time when governments took them very seriously because trained combat pilots were reporting them.

It may appear these things are buzzing farmers fields when in fact that may be our observing only a small part of the total activity or phenomena.
posted by tkchrist at 11:43 AM on November 11, 2006


Dreamsign, I was spit-balling one possible explanation for the hurdle distances present in space travel. And we think of these things as hurdles because of our own limitations and bias.

I would say that if extraterrestrial life is possible at all it is probable that we share most of the same physical limitations... and probable that all life would be motivated to overcome those limitations. The longer a civilization survives the more probable it is they are overcoming their limitations.

I to find it less that probable that life forms are hitting the lottery and landing here. But if we suppose they are as an intellectual experiment then there are a narrow set of circumstances that would make that possible. It's ok to make educated guesses. Scientific, even.
posted by tkchrist at 11:59 AM on November 11, 2006


these craft could be inter/outer/dimensional strobing in and out of our space

You know, this is one of the single largest glaring problems in the UFO community.

There was a time when aliens were visiting us in metallic saucers from Venus or Saturn. Now they "phase" through multiple dimensions in glowing balls of energy.

No one sees metallic saucers anymore - yet throughout the 40s and 50s - the era of pulp sci-fi (rocket ships and ray guns) thats all they saw! (And don't even get me started on the bogus origin of the "flying saucer" meme - itself an invention of the newspapers...)

As I've said before, the aliens have gone from discs to disco. Why the change? Did the galactic federation decide to roll out new models of UFOs just to mess with us?

In other words - which is more likely: 1) Aliens gave up on perfectly fine metal saucers and went with the "strobing" discoballs, or 2) humans are unreliable idiots and see whatever Hollywood tells them they should see. (Think The Day the Earth Stood Still vs. Close Encounters of the Third Kind.)

(Same thing with UFO occupants... no one sees LGMs anymore, rather everyone sees the Grey archetype... a change that coincides nicely with Strieber's creepy work of fiction which sold a ballizon copies.)
posted by wfrgms at 12:06 PM on November 11, 2006


Heywood Mogroot, I don't disagree with any of your points, which is why I said unlikely not impossible.

It is not unreasonable to believe that there are spacefaring intelligent aliens. Nor is it outside of the realms of possible that their technology might be thousands of years ahead of ours.

But were such aliens to exist, trying to make sense of their motives would be pointless. They might as well be gods.

And then statements like "They are so advanced we can't make sense of their actions" starts sounding suspiciously like "he works in mysterious ways"

And that is exactly where I start to take issue with the concept. The arguments necessary to convince me that aliens of this sort are visiting earth start to sound remarkably like the arguments used to convince me that there is a God (Christian or otherwise). In the end it almost always comes down to taking some bit of proof on faith.

Which is why until someone provides me with some shred of credible evidence that such creatures are visiting us, I will fall back on the logic that the reasons we haven't been visited, are the same reasons we haven't visited someone else. Because space is really big.
posted by quin at 12:23 PM on November 11, 2006


wfrgms: we can only filter what we see through what we know.

The earliest reports of UFOS in the (19th century) media have people seeing airships.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:28 PM on November 11, 2006


No one sees metallic saucers anymore -

Actually, we get reports of those every single day. By phone, email, and snailmail. We just don't have room for each one. You're trusting the same mainstream media outlets to tell you these truths, which is pretty ironic. The truth about whatever is going on in our skies is inconvenient to fossil-fuel interests and a very big embarrassment to our military, who sort of can't protect us. It also blurs the border between countries and between realities. Finally, it makes our current science look primitive. Controlled media demands that you laugh about it, and you do.

posted by filament at 12:36 PM on November 11, 2006


In the end it almost always comes down to taking some bit of proof on faith.

I'm just 'agnostic' on this. . . I see no real reason to discount -- as untrue, or specious -- the stories told by eg. Kenneth Arnold, Jesse Marcel (and his son), Jimmy Carter, etc etc; these stories are just interesting factoids that I file in the 'possibly true' bin.

But until evidence more compelling than squigs of light and fuzzy frames of video the answer to the UFO question doesn't have much importance to me. I already believe that other life forms exist, that human science really has no standing to say what technologies they possess.

WHAT they are doing here, if they are in fact here, is a more important question. And so far, it's a bunch of oddball stuff like formation flybys, microwaving grain fields, cow tipping.

My favorite UFO hypothesis is the ETTH -- irresponsible ET teenagers showing off for their ET friends are responsible for the great bulk of sightings.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:39 PM on November 11, 2006


irresponsible ET teenagers showing off for their ET friends are responsible for the great bulk of sightings.

That would make so. much. sense. And it tickles my irony-gland. I like it.

Alien 1: Dude, check out what I made

Alien 2: What did you do to your car? What's with all the blinky lights and shit?

Alien 1: Tonight we are going over to Earth, gotta make my ride look pimp.

Alien 2: Sweet, we gonna grab some locals?

Alien 1: Maybe one or two, I figure we snag 'em, probe 'em and drop them off a couple hundred miles away.

Alien 2: Ooh, let's put all their clothes on inside out. That always fucks with them.

Alien 1: Totally. All right man, Beer me! I gotta get loose before the drive.
posted by quin at 12:54 PM on November 11, 2006


I agree with the "space is really big" discussion above completely, and I too think that is the single largest barrier to us encountering other sentient life. The chances of simply finding us would be very, very slim. I think once our radio waves had had enough time (a few thousand years? Tens of thousands?) to fan out significantly enough to possibly reach them, finding us should be trivial.

In fact, if there are (approaching) an infinite number of planets, then it would take something also approaching an infinite number of space-faring societies to investigate them all. Which perhaps is true, I'm in no position to say.

I do feel it extraordinarily unlikely we are visited, but not because we're the only sentient life in the universe, but because we are a very tiny needle in a profoundly large haystack.

filament: I'm glad you're in this thread, even though I imagine you'll have a few people aiming the hoses at you soon enough.

You likely know more about this subject than I have the capacity to learn in the next few years, so I would appreciate your opinion on two questions:

1. Does photoshop and digital imaging make your job of attempting to collect "proof" easier or more difficult? (i.e. you can get more data from some terrible media, but yet you are probably faced with an exponential increase in "fakes")

2. If you take the most well-respected people in your field (or related) who truly believe we are regularly visited by extraterrestrials... is there any sense of consensus on simply "why"? What is the "conventional wisdom" concerning why "they" would take any interest at all in us... is it science? Conquest? Amusement? Are we lab rats or hamsters or cockroaches?
posted by Ynoxas at 1:25 PM on November 11, 2006


"Secret government program" could I suppose explain most incidents these days, but I don't find it buyable for events from the 1950s.

Given other developments--like the B2 Stealth Bomber, which was kept secret for a very long time--I don't know how any rational person could suggest a government project isn't what Occam's Razor would suggest. It clearly is.

Does that mean it's not possible for it to be something else? No, of course not. I just means if a photograph of an unidentified flying craft was released, I'd think "government craft" before I thought "alien craft".

As someone mentioned, something like a Stealth Bomber still looks weird, and we've known about them for fifteen years or so. If someone spotted one before the American government publically acknowledged their existence, they could easily have jumped to the "alien craft" conclusion, especially at night.


It's really a stupid point. The Pacific Ocean is an immense, uncrossable expanse to a 3 year old, too.

Technology has a way of shrinking distances.


True, but I haven't seen much to lead me to believe that defying gravity to exceed the speed of light is a distinct possibility. Of course, that doesn't mean I don't wish that were true (or some kind of wormhole in space). Hell, I love science fiction film/literature, but I don't think it's as inevitable as the technological advancements that allowed us to build boats.
posted by The God Complex at 1:27 PM on November 11, 2006


I disagree completely with the idea that attempting to fathom the motivations of (potential) aliens is illogical, unscientific, or hopeless. It's perfectly valid to point out that traveling across intersteller space is a massive undertaking. It's perfectly valid to suppose then, that they'd have some sort of motivation for doing this (presumably exploration, or curiosity about different cultures). It's perfectly valid to point out that what people claim to see UFO's doing (flying in screwy formations, performing strange acrobatics, etc) doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything that's worth the initial investment.

If you want to suppose that their technology violates our current understanding of the laws of physics (and therefore traveling to Earth is just as easy as nipping off to the movies) fine. Then it might make sense that the aliens we see are idiots messing around with us. I think though, that it's interesting to point out that that is essentially where the alien hypothesis has to go. Meanwhile, the hypothesis that UFOs are misinterpreted natural and human phenomena (with a few outright frauds) is perfectly compatible with the known laws of physics.

I also call bullshit on controlled media mocking ufology. Discovery, History, and SCI-FI channels frequently have believer-oriented UFO documentaries, and almost never have skeptically-oriented shows. The media is controlled by corporate interests, and goes where the money is.
posted by Humanzee at 1:33 PM on November 11, 2006 [1 favorite]


I also call bullshit on controlled media mocking ufology. Discovery, History, and SCI-FI channels frequently have believer-oriented UFO documentaries

My husband is a frequent personality on these shows and they are construed as entertainment. Most people only believe the networks and their news outlets -- not the cable shows. The Peter Jennings special was a particularly egregious example of network spin, bias, fear, ridicule. We devoted an entire issue to rebuttal.And I can answer those two questions from Ynoxas and I really thank you for asking: 1. We have one of the top Photoshop experts in the world as a columnist and I like to run the more interesting photos by him before I print them. He knows what he's looking at and tells us his honest opinion. There are fakes and there are troublesome real ones. 2. The big Why: If we listen to those who say they are abducted, those doing the abductions like to keep track of their creation, which is us. They also have an interest in the resources of this planet, which we are ruining. They have always been here, and there are many different varieties of them, with different agendas.To me, the spookiest part of the story is the fact that some governments have struck deals with some of them.
posted by filament at 2:01 PM on November 11, 2006


fathom the motivations of (potential) aliens is illogical

How are you with the statement that we are like ants to ET types? Would you disagree with this?

It's perfectly valid to point out that traveling across intersteller space is a massive undertaking

...for us. How can you possibly make any scientific assertion about what is possible for other, older, smarter, technological civilizations?

At best, the capabilities of putative ETs go into the "known unknown" pile.

the hypothesis that UFOs are misinterpreted natural and human phenomena

Read the biography of J Allen Hynek; he too thought that, then he opened his mind to the more interesting cases -- the "irreducible" core -- that simply would not fit in that pigeon hole.

I also call bullshit on controlled media mocking ufology

The mockery is there if you look. Nobody with cred can go out on a limb on this. From my perspective most of what I've seen on TV is in fact anti-UFO debunking stuff dressed up in a pro-UFO package. Bryant Gumbel on the Roswell thing is one of the few exceptions.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:02 PM on November 11, 2006


Is there intelligent life in the Universe?
I don't know, but I haven't quite given up on Earth yet!

But seriously, if we accepted large numbers of corraborated, reliable eyewitness accounts as proof, we'd have to accept the following "truths":
*Aliens have landed on earth.
*Humans have not landed on the moon.
*Humans have landed on the moon.
*All religions are true, including the ones that claim that they are the only true religion.
*Reincarnation is true.
And, most tellingly:
* In Portugal, the Sun itself can dance around in the sky, spin on its axis and "advance threateningly" towards the Earth.
posted by spazzm at 2:07 PM on November 11, 2006


but I haven't seen much to lead me to believe that defying gravity to exceed the speed of light is a distinct possibility

there's nothing to the ETH that requires exceeding the speed of light. Most of the interesting sightings feature rather impressive accelerations, but how they got here is a secondary question.

(not that I think it's scientific to state what we think we know now about the universe and how it works is the absolute truth)

As for secret government craft, you still need to have the explanation match the evidence. Eg. RB-47 of 1957.

Or the Belgian UFO flap of 1989 . . . or the Illinois Triangle of Jan 2000. I don't pretend to know what happened with these cases (between mass delusion, fraud, instrument error, etc), but 'government craft' really doesn't fly with me.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:10 PM on November 11, 2006


spazzm: the field, or at least the part that interests me, does not go on pop psychology but on actual hardcore observation and testimony. Get back to me when you've got a multisensor trace of a phenomenon confirmed by multiple eyewitnesses, like the RB-47 case above.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:11 PM on November 11, 2006


What do you mean to suggest that we're like ants? If you mean that we're somehow uninteresting, then why would they come here and put on airshows for us? I personally don't think that aboriginal Australians are like ants, even though my society has technology that is thousands of years more advanced. I have no idea how arrogant aliens might be though.

Traveling across intersteller space isn't just difficult for us. According to the laws of physics (as we know them) it is inherently difficult for anyone. Any theory that involves regular intersteller travel must confront this; either by recognizing that the travelers are going to tremendous effort, or by claiming that our current understanding of the laws of physics is incorrect.

I have a limited amount of time to devote to this stuff, so I skimmed over the Wikipedia artical on Hynek. It looks to me that he ultimately made the same hysterical torch-wielding argument that I did ---that huge numbers of aliens traveling all the way to Earth to play pranks makes no sense. However, his conclusion was that the aliens are able transcend what we know of the laws of physics. That is certainly a possible conclusion. I just don't think that it's the most likely one.
posted by Humanzee at 2:47 PM on November 11, 2006


the field, or at least the part that interests me, does not go on pop psychology but on actual hardcore observation and testimony.

Hardcore testimony?
If there's one thing that has been repeated by independent, repeatable and carefully designed experiements, it is that humans are not reliable witnesses.

What the explanation for the RB-47 incident you mention is, I don't know. But that's the problem with a lot of UFO discussions: Flying-saucer believers produce some sort of UFO incident, supported only by "testimony" (aka. eyewitness accounts) and say to sceptics "how do you explain that?"

It's not the role of the sceptic to produce an explanation - it's the role of the proponent of a theory to produce evidence that supports it. A hypothesis is not true until proven otherwise.

As for RB-47, it is with little surprise that I note that the linked website does not contain any instrument output (e.g. logfiles) and that part of the "evidence" is an interview conducted in 1969 - more than a decade after the alleged incident. I also note that none of the persons in questions were tested for amphetamines, which I believe is sometimes used on flight missions.
posted by spazzm at 2:50 PM on November 11, 2006


Damn.

"One thing that has been established by independent..."

Sorry.
posted by spazzm at 2:53 PM on November 11, 2006


Double damn.

"...role of the proponent of a hypothesis to produce..."

It's very early. So sorry.
posted by spazzm at 2:55 PM on November 11, 2006


However, as I've discovered before I'm often startled by how willing MetaFilter's userbase is to ridicule merely discussing the possibilities of UFOs.

It's like we're irrationally falling all over each other in a race to be the most rational.


The current level of evidence for UFO's is on par with the faked moon landing, the 9-11 conspiracy, crop circles, and those flying bars... There are many examples of and motivations for these beliefs being mistaken, but very few ways to make sense of the idea that the sightings could be real but suppressed. In order for the theory to be true, the aliens and/or the government would have to be a) committed to keeping the truth from the public for some reason, and b) capable of actually doing so. Neither premise really makes any sense.

As for questions of how likely it is that intelligent life has evolved elsewhere, I'd say that's a truly impossible question. From our understanding of things now, the universe is about 10-15 billion years old, and the planet has been around less than half that time - about 4.5 billion years. But humankind? our entire history takes up one millionth of the time the planet's been here. Our ability to create technology which can actually get off the planet is so recent that there are still people alive who were born before we figured that out.

So, is earth a major slacker that nurtured non-reflective life for far longer than other planets? Or a strange anomaly that developed reflective life at all? How can we possibly know the answer to that? we only have one data point. We still don't understand how life got started at all, let alone how consciousness developed, so presumptions about how it "must" work elsewhere can hardly be said to be based on anything but feelings... maybe every other planet out there is like the rest of the ones in our neighborhood, barren & lifeless. Maybe not. If not, maybe some of them have developed consciousness; maybe not. If they have, maybe they have created technology and an interest in finding us, as we have them. If this is so, I expect we will receive radio signals and other non-corporeal information long before actual spaceships make actual trips. In fact, it may end up being far easier to "meet" in virtual space / via hologram / etc, than to actually try traveling for thousands of years in metal discs.

I do not say these things in an attempt to "out-rational" anyone. I just think people who take this stuff seriously are not really thinking about it...
posted by mdn at 3:32 PM on November 11, 2006


wfrgms' comment got me thinking ... So let's say for a minute we have been visited, and they have landed, and people have seen them. I'd like to know if Earth is some kind of interstellar vacation spot, because as this chart shows, we've been visited by more than 10 different races, most of which look unusually humanoid. Why do they abduct people, work in secret with governments, and not just come out and say "Hi, how's it going" leads me to skepticism much easier than belief.
posted by Zack_Replica at 5:09 PM on November 11, 2006


So after hanging around Fortean circles for a good many years, it's pretty clear to me that:

1. Very few of these stories are hoaxes.
2. A fairly large number of these stories are honest people who see very rare natural phenomena and are honestly fooled.
3. A lot of the people who claim to have directly talked to the UFO people are honest but crazy.
4. There's a fairly large number of sightings that don't fit into the first three categories and really are "unknown".

My personal feeling is that the chances that UFO's are beings like us riding around in technological forms of transportation ("space ships") is about nil, for a lot of reasons:

1. "either we'd never see them, or they'd appear on the White House lawn" (if they were that technologically advanced).
2. difficulties with speed of light and astronomical distances and quantities.
3. dramatic differences between sightings would seem to mean that there are many different types of aliens observing -- simply too preposterous.

Jacques Vallée also has a good list of reasons against ETH (the extra-terrestrial hypothesis).

Vallée's classic work seems to show a strong correlation between geomagnetic disturbances and UFO sightings. Other work by researchers seems to show that there are temporal lobe phenomena at work....
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 8:03 PM on November 11, 2006


Nemo saltat sobrius
posted by Smedleyman at 8:55 PM on November 11, 2006


Why would they go to the trouble to send out all these probes at subrelativistic speed, only to wait thousands of years (at least) to have them play screwy games like buzzing some hick lifeforms on another planet? The real question is, how long after they sent these probes out were they still snickering?

While not a believer in the UFO's are aliens hypothesis at all, I do have to say that I start getting pretty weird after about five or six hours in the car, let alone a millenia long journey with a virtual bodiless existence run on some supercomputer through the dark void of space.

Fucking Fermi's paradox yo! Why is it that the UFO types always seem so massively egotistical? Why do you always wave around your technical star trek style phase change mumbo-jumbo and then clap your yaps shut with a quick snap when called upon to explain an even slightly plausible FTL technology or in the case of the subrelativistic immortal "mechanical" brains the way in which energy could be generated to sustain computation to the level of consciousnesses across the EMPTY WASTES OF SUNLESS INTERSTELLAR SPACE?

Someone get Charlie Stross in here and we can hash out how much sense his Accelerando singularity hypothesis makes: Sufficiently advanced intelligence converts all the mass in their solar system to computers, crowds around the sun to use the energy and to keep bandwidth latency low and becomes godlike and then goes insane and crawls up its own asshole, that sounds very much more likely to me than some race of intelligent beings cracking the speed of light or something equally totally vastly improbable and then sliding across the universe to tickle someones asshole or play silly buggers with the Mexican airforce or warn us that we are going to fuck up the earth if we keep using Petroleum - oh and warning us so subtly that only the fringe people catch on, instead of just landing on top of the whitehouse, sticking out a pseudopod and waving a big sign that says "Stop driving SUV's earthscum!"- OH MY GOD AL GORE IS A RED LECTROID FROM PLANET TEN!!!! Oh but wino you say, we could never understand the motivations of extraterrestrials, they are so incredibly inscrutable! Fuck off I say, if they are that fucking coy about everything, that fucking precious that they cross the universe to basically pull some frat party pranks, fuck 'em, send 'em back, they're not unfathomable, they're fucking pricks! If you see an alien beat him to death with a shovel before he gets you drunk and draws a cock and balls on your forehead when you pass out.

Fuck me, I love scifi and I'm sure that there is plenty of other intelligent life out there, it just ain't fucking coming here.

Of course if I'd be happy to be wrong, but science, rationality and logic aside, UFOs don't pass my egotism test: How can this theory be used to assuage the feelings of smallness and existential dread of the average human brain?
posted by Divine_Wino at 9:57 PM on November 11, 2006 [1 favorite]


Oh also Loq, all of my dubious ranting aside, I'd love to "discuss" what UFO's might be, but "discussion" doesn't play well on mefi and elsewhere in subjects like this and theism and emo and declawing cats because we are dealing with belief and faith, it's irrationality all the way down. "You just don't see what I see" and "You are unwilling to let go of the security blanket of rationality" and so on, come the singularity we'll all live in a Matrioshka brain and literally live inside each others minds and create our own alien societies from alife scratch and torture them with assplay and flybys and won't that be grand!!!111!!!

The wiki article on the Fermi Paradox seems pretty good, btw, although I only skimmed it.
posted by Divine_Wino at 10:26 PM on November 11, 2006


hysteria: ^

bottom line for UFOs for me now is just keeping an eye and ear open on the news. Some observers are more credible than others, and some observations are more interesting than others.

As for UFOs on the White House lawn, what I was getting at with my ant:human question above is the anthropomorphization of these putative visitors, be it technological limitations, motive, etc.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:00 PM on November 11, 2006


Divine_Wino is hysterical, but not the kind of hysterical you're thinking of. Plus, I suspect he may be um... under the influence. For Xenu's sake, he suggested fighting off the alien with a shovel before he "draws a cock and balls on your forehead". Hardly a standard warning from UFO deniers. I don't think I've heard anyone put it that way before, but I think he's onto something: if aliens are visiting Earth, they're real assholes.
posted by Humanzee at 11:15 PM on November 11, 2006


Sober as a judge sadly... Although I did down an entire medium cherry coke earlier this evening. I'm high on SCIENCE baby... well science and hysteria and banana peels... not for the faint of heart... I don't deny UFO's btw, I just seriously doubt they're being piloted by extraterrestrial intelligences. I can't identify plenty of things I see in the sky.

Hell I was watching bird flocking behavior today near Laguardia airport and that shit totally flipped my lid, crazy patterns, I wonder if the radars messes with them or if they just knew I was watching them. Now I'm going to bed, I hope a space dracula doesn't eat me in my sleep, that would be lame... Keep watching the skiiiiiiiieeeeessssss!
posted by Divine_Wino at 11:31 PM on November 11, 2006


@Ynoxas

"I do feel it extraordinarily unlikely we are visited, but not because we're the only sentient life in the universe, but because we are a very tiny needle in a profoundly large haystack."

Space is full of pre-amino compounds. The universe could be *reeking* with life. We could be getting visited only by the bikers of the galaxy ... I mean, who else would go to Zap, North Dakota?

There's stuff going on in the sky all right. But I seriously think it's all terrestrial. For example: what other lifeform would be stupid enough to go leaving stupid radiation footprints behind?

Lights in the sky? Pfft. Give me a plastic sack and a box of birthday candles.
posted by Twang at 11:40 PM on November 11, 2006


Hell I was watching bird flocking behavior today near Laguardia airport and that shit totally flipped my lid, crazy patterns...

If you want to wack your shit the fuck out, start looking for letters in those bird patterns. Seriously, you'll start to (almost) see them.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 2:49 AM on November 12, 2006


I guess if I could just follow up with my comments up thread I would say that anyone who believes that aliens from another planet (or dimension) are visiting us (or have visited this planet) are either very young and immature or are grossly ignorant or some combination of the two. For gods sake go to school and sit through a ton of molecular biology courses... then you'll be much more capable of formulating ideas about life...
posted by wfrgms at 3:56 AM on November 12, 2006


Here's that interview with Nick Pope on the BBC's very reputable PM programme.
posted by imperium at 11:43 AM on November 14, 2006


In response to wfrgms's comment:

And before the 19th century where people spotted airships, people filtered the UFOs through religious
notions and saw demons, angels, the devil, etc.
No wonder the Greeks and ancient civillizations had such imaginative mythologies--it was UFOs!

The aliens just seem to take on the form of whatever we are capable of imagining them as being. Post-relativity theory we know interstellar travel is likely physically impossible, so instead we think about 11 dimensional string theory, and the aliens have to adjust their appearance in order for us to still believe in them. Hence the balls of plasma and fire, and the geometrical shapes.

Considering humanity in all of its absurdity, our civillization has probably been participating in an intergalactic reality tv show and the UFOs were just the hidden cameras.
posted by archae at 11:48 PM on November 14, 2006


Post-relativity theory we know interstellar travel is likely physically impossible

Little green men aside, this is simply not the case.
posted by Ynoxas at 6:28 AM on November 17, 2006


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