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> Whenever an actual event occurs (meteor, explosion, and so on) we have video footage from multiple angles uploaded almost immediately. There are a few proble

> Whenever an actual event occurs (meteor, explosion, and so on) we have video footage from multiple angles uploaded almost immediately. There are a few problematic assumptions in this line of thinking: you assume the event is as dramatic as a meteor or explosion, occurs in a highly populated area, and involves no discretion on the part of the object. This is typically not the case, although you could argue that people recalling the same specific details in smaller witness groups, but across many different incidents, could constitute the same idea. Even with this in mind, I can think of a few truly mass sightings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrozavodsk_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrozavodsk_phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407 And you should read these if you are interested in an account where either the Navy fabricated this weird hoax, fake data and got a squadron of pilots to lie about it very convincingly, or the whole event is real. Multiple radar, multiple pilot visuals, multiple angles. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings... https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33371/here-are-the-detailed-ufo-incident-reports-from-navy-pilots-flying-off-the-east-coast https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33371/here-are-the-det...

peteretep 6y ago
> I can think of a few truly mass sightings All of which occured before the advent of ubiquitous hand-held cameras, security camera footage, and dash-cams. Can't help but feel had these been captured we'd have found simple explanations for each, and people's memories of them would be less malleable. Re the naval sightings, the article you've linked to says "experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents". Most interestingly, the captioned video: "That footage, published previously but with little context, shows an object tilting like a spinning top moving against the wind. A pilot refers to a fleet of objects, but no imagery of a fleet was released." A kernel of truth + some imagination.
- soco 6y ago
  Apparently as soon as we mass produced portable camera devices, the aliens ran away...
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Ghosts too
  - BuildTheRobots 6y ago
    Lack of digital footage doesn't seem incongruous. If we accept that aliens are capable of travelling vast distances to be able to visit the planet then they're capable of technology significantly advanced from where Humanity currently is. With 'magic' levels of technology, the ability to disrupt a CCD sensor doesn't seem beyond the pale. (I don't think I actually believe aliens are here and walking amongst us, but I'm not sure I can see a lack of evidence as being evidence of them not being here either).
    - krapp 6y ago
      It would be ironic if the aliens were here all along but were using cloaking devices, and the UFOs people were seeing really were swamp gas, Venus, etc.
    - soco 6y ago
      And they gave the same technology to Nessie, Bigfoot and everybody else.
    - cabite 6y ago
      And the fact many people say a UFO just "dematerialized" or "fade out"?
- cabite 6y ago
  The Nimitz or Tic-Tac incident the Navy has communicated about. One of these involved multiple pilots in several waves during several minutes/hours and was recorded by a system that integrates various data sources from multiple ships and aircrafts.
godelski 6y ago
What the user above is saying is about smartphones. To give an example, with one of SpaceX's initial launches I had a bunch of friends send me photos (I was working as a rocket scientist at the time). I literally got a dozen photos. The same thing happened with an unannounced Navy missile test. I got tons of messages and Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc was littered with photos. All the links you listed are from the pre-cellphone era. This is fine, but not what the parent was talking about, so the response isn't great. Personally I'm not aware of a UFO phenomena that took place with the criteria the parent listed (multiple angles and recordings). But I have personally seen that criteria for claims of UFOs but in reality be explainable man made phenomena. As to the Navy stuff Occam's razor would say that these are edge cases where the instruments fail. Having viewed these videos this seems like a reasonable explanation. Sure, it could be aliens, but sensors being wrong is an extremely common occurrence so it is a much simpler answer. Edge cases where sensors fail are also cases where human sensors are likely to fail too (this should be unsurprising if you've studied a bit of computer vision). So > either the Navy fabricated this weird hoax, fake data and got a squadron of pilots to lie about it very convincingly, or the whole event is real Is a false dichotomy. Sure, those are two options, but a third option is that people simply don't know what they saw but it was a natural phenomena. Ignoring that case isn't helpful to the discussion and more likely to convince people that you're a crackpot (I don't mean this in an offensive way, just trying to help you set up your argument better. I want you to have the strongest argument you can make because that's how we find answers).
- lend000 6y ago
  Also a response to the sibling comment: at a certain point you need to actually look into it yourself/read linked articles before commenting. If you look at the truly mass sightings throughout history (that I know of), most of them have occurred decades or centuries apart. It's the sheer volume of less prominent activity that compels me. I certainly hope we will eventually get one with a hundred different angles with the newest 2025 smartphone cameras. Although keep in mind even the newest iPhones can't take a great photo of a jumbo jet at cruising altitude. And if, hypothetically, there was an intelligence, and it was intentionally being discreet, it doesn't take a lot of creativity to imagine they might be smart enough to go about their business while doing a decent job of avoiding the situation that would provide incontrovertible proof. While that seems like a cop out, so is claiming the Nimitz incident could be explained by some mysterious natural phenomena, without actually offering an explanation. If you actually put in the effort to consume all the information available on just that specific incident, it leaves little room for alternatives between the two options.
user-the-name 6y ago
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings... This one is a great example: The video linked here has been thoroughly explained to be very dull, boring things that were misinterpreted by the people filming them. For instance, the second video, with the supposed fast-moving object over water, is very clearly just a regular bird, plus parallax effects from filming from a moving plane. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-delonges-to-the-stars-academy-bird-balloon.9569/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-de... for more.

peteretep 6y ago

> I can think of a few truly mass sightings All of which occured before the advent of ubiquitous hand-held cameras, security camera footage, and dash-cams. Can't help but feel had these been captured we'd have found simple explanations for each, and people's memories of them would be less malleable. Re the naval sightings, the article you've linked to says "experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents". Most interestingly, the captioned video: "That footage, published previously but with little context, shows an object tilting like a spinning top moving against the wind. A pilot refers to a fleet of objects, but no imagery of a fleet was released." A kernel of truth + some imagination.

soco 6y ago
Apparently as soon as we mass produced portable camera devices, the aliens ran away...
- peteretep 6y ago
  Ghosts too
- BuildTheRobots 6y ago
  Lack of digital footage doesn't seem incongruous. If we accept that aliens are capable of travelling vast distances to be able to visit the planet then they're capable of technology significantly advanced from where Humanity currently is. With 'magic' levels of technology, the ability to disrupt a CCD sensor doesn't seem beyond the pale. (I don't think I actually believe aliens are here and walking amongst us, but I'm not sure I can see a lack of evidence as being evidence of them not being here either).
  - krapp 6y ago
    It would be ironic if the aliens were here all along but were using cloaking devices, and the UFOs people were seeing really were swamp gas, Venus, etc.
  - soco 6y ago
    And they gave the same technology to Nessie, Bigfoot and everybody else.
  - cabite 6y ago
    And the fact many people say a UFO just "dematerialized" or "fade out"?
cabite 6y ago
The Nimitz or Tic-Tac incident the Navy has communicated about. One of these involved multiple pilots in several waves during several minutes/hours and was recorded by a system that integrates various data sources from multiple ships and aircrafts.

godelski 6y ago

What the user above is saying is about smartphones. To give an example, with one of SpaceX's initial launches I had a bunch of friends send me photos (I was working as a rocket scientist at the time). I literally got a dozen photos. The same thing happened with an unannounced Navy missile test. I got tons of messages and Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, etc was littered with photos. All the links you listed are from the pre-cellphone era. This is fine, but not what the parent was talking about, so the response isn't great. Personally I'm not aware of a UFO phenomena that took place with the criteria the parent listed (multiple angles and recordings). But I have personally seen that criteria for claims of UFOs but in reality be explainable man made phenomena. As to the Navy stuff Occam's razor would say that these are edge cases where the instruments fail. Having viewed these videos this seems like a reasonable explanation. Sure, it could be aliens, but sensors being wrong is an extremely common occurrence so it is a much simpler answer. Edge cases where sensors fail are also cases where human sensors are likely to fail too (this should be unsurprising if you've studied a bit of computer vision). So > either the Navy fabricated this weird hoax, fake data and got a squadron of pilots to lie about it very convincingly, or the whole event is real Is a false dichotomy. Sure, those are two options, but a third option is that people simply don't know what they saw but it was a natural phenomena. Ignoring that case isn't helpful to the discussion and more likely to convince people that you're a crackpot (I don't mean this in an offensive way, just trying to help you set up your argument better. I want you to have the strongest argument you can make because that's how we find answers).

lend000 6y ago
Also a response to the sibling comment: at a certain point you need to actually look into it yourself/read linked articles before commenting. If you look at the truly mass sightings throughout history (that I know of), most of them have occurred decades or centuries apart. It's the sheer volume of less prominent activity that compels me. I certainly hope we will eventually get one with a hundred different angles with the newest 2025 smartphone cameras. Although keep in mind even the newest iPhones can't take a great photo of a jumbo jet at cruising altitude. And if, hypothetically, there was an intelligence, and it was intentionally being discreet, it doesn't take a lot of creativity to imagine they might be smart enough to go about their business while doing a decent job of avoiding the situation that would provide incontrovertible proof. While that seems like a cop out, so is claiming the Nimitz incident could be explained by some mysterious natural phenomena, without actually offering an explanation. If you actually put in the effort to consume all the information available on just that specific incident, it leaves little room for alternatives between the two options.

user-the-name 6y ago

> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings... This one is a great example: The video linked here has been thoroughly explained to be very dull, boring things that were misinterpreted by the people filming them. For instance, the second video, with the supposed fast-moving object over water, is very clearly just a regular bird, plus parallax effects from filming from a moving plane. See https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-delonges-to-the-stars-academy-bird-balloon.9569/ https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-de... for more.