6 ms·

Newly released UFO files from the UK government

57 points by jjp9999 14y ago

Locke1689 14y ago
Doesn't Bayesian statistics solve this pretty easily? I have a lot of priors for weird aeronautical and weather phenomenon (e.g., St. Elmo's fire/ball lightning), meteoroids, missiles, balloons, and secret prototype aircraft. I have no priors for technologically advanced alien life.
revscat 14y ago
I think at this point that there are (somewhat simplistically) two opposing camps in this debate. The first believes that UFOs are entirely the result of terrestrial phenomena, and take the Sagan/de Grasse Tyson view. The other viewpoint is that there is sufficient evidence to point to some sort of extraordinary phenomena which belies common explanation. Now, this is obviously a simplistic breakdown. Broadly speaking, however, this is usually what we see in such debates. (With typically much ridicule being thrown about by both sides.) Files like these, though, give even the most hardened skeptics room for wonder. While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate. These files are, unfortunately, just more in the circumstantial category. Although they have the "official" seal of approval they are still, at root, not hard evidence. It is frustrating to those of us who are curious about this that nothing beyond eyewitness reports ever seems to surface, no matter the source. I think most people at least pay attention to these news items, but do not know what to make of them beyond raising more questions.
- nazgulnarsil 14y ago
  if humans are all cognitively similar we shouldn't expect a large number of similar reports about things to be surprising.
  - Kelliot 14y ago
    Should we also expect to follow pop culture? the classic description of a grey turning up following science fiction and newspaper publishing.
- samstave 14y ago
  Also, we will never know if accounts that would be considered hard evidence were not simply destroyed and not included in any surviving record. While I am personally on the fence about believing the accounts any gov has - clearly we know basically nothing of the universe relative to its size and existence.... so I will withhold judgement in any form - but lets look at the examples through history: The earth is flat. The Sun revolves around the earth. Germs dont exist. What is this radiation malarky? There are no other planets in the universe. There are no other solar systems like ours in the universe. Lets kill eachother over imaginary rulers and their rules. etc etc etc People are STUPID. So, are there UFOs? No idea - but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are. I'd prefer to just keep seeking, keep experiencing life and the wonders of all that is. The fact that Humans exist proves there is some intelligence in the Universe, lets just hope we are not the pinnacle as that would be rather sad.
  - andrewfelix 14y ago
    "...but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are" I would suggest rather than depend on personal observation and anecdotal evidence you listen to groups of others who are actively seeking out information. We no longer believe the earth is flat because of a consistent and large amount of data has told as otherwise.
    - samstave 14y ago
      I wasn't really meaning I was going to only rely on personal observation per se, I am just saying that humans are intrinsicly historically wrong about everything. Thus I will not just say "those people told me that there are no other sentient beings capable of anything such as flying through space to visit a remot planet, so they must be correct!" We have already sent probes beyond our system and to many planets within our system and we only discovered FLIGHT 100 years ago. Just imagine 1,000 years from now.
      - pyre 14y ago
        > Just imagine 1,000 years from now Like flying cars in the year 2000? ;-)
- Permit 14y ago
  >While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate. I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
  - andrewfelix 14y ago
    Exactly. You could argue that God exists based on witness accounts.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      I know god exists. elvis told me only last week, and the king never lies.
  - calebmpeterson 14y ago
    > I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Honestly, where is the barrier between the two? I'm not suggesting it doesn't exist, just genuinely asking where it is, or at least where it's near?
    - grimboy 14y ago
      Well, roughly and someone may have a better answer. Data is collected in a structured, systematic way, and the sample is carefully chosen. Anecdotes are not structured or collected in a systematic way, but worst of all the sample you've taken is the people who've chosen to speak up.
    - nazgulnarsil 14y ago
      Anecdotes ignore selection effects. Data tries to control for them.
  - c3d 14y ago
    Why would radar recordings or radioactive soil samples not count as data (in the same sense that fossils are data)?
- sage_joch 14y ago
  Interesting; I had always taken Sagan's opinion as gospel, but I suppose there is room for questions. A bit of googling shows both Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich have seen a UFO, and they're honest people. That certainly doesn't make me a believer, but it's nice to see there's at least a small possibility.
  - ladzoppelin 14y ago
    Keep in mind that UFO just means that it is unidentified and not necessarily from another galaxy. In my opinion Sagan and Hawking are right and that actual visitation from an alien species would be really unlikely given the size of the universe.
    - joering2 14y ago
      Not necessarily -- a fact alone that they could visit Earth implies that their technology is sophisticated enough to fight gravity, travel at speed of light (or faster) and do plenty of other things that may not even been covered by science-fiction just yet. Now, before you say it doesnt matter whether you travel at the speed of light, faster or slower, the moment you catch up with space debris, you become a crashed and burnt debris yourself. If all physical objects vibrate at some rate, then as wild as my imagination can go, it may be possible to speed up this rotation of a physical object so much that would eventually become... a wave.
      - lobster_johnson 14y ago
        It's not sufficient for the aliens to be sophisticated. They would also have to exist in exactly the right time frame. Consider the age of the universe: 14.6 billion years. Earth was formed about 10 billion years after the universe, and it took 5.4 billion years for the Earth to see the emergence of a civilized species, which has existed for an absolutely microscopic amount of time compared to those enormous intervals. How long does a species last, realistically? Counting from its "space age", would a species survive a thousand years, ten thousand? Extinction from natural disasters, epidemics, war and the like could be averted by scattering oneself across a solar system or wider. How many civilizations could reach that stage? I have absolutely no doubt that a myriad of alien life exists. But I think the chances that there exists alien species that: * has evolved before us or roughly at the same time, * has not driven themselves to extinction * achieved the technological capability for crossing galaxies, and * is willing to do so …is exceedingly slim. Even if a species develops space-faring tech needed to visit Earth, I think it's extremely unlikely that their existence will coincidence with us. They are either all dead by now, or they will be dead before we/they develop the tech to visit, or they don't exist yet, and we will all be dead first.
- derekp7 14y ago
  Let's say I flipped a coin a million times. Now lets assume multiple witnesses saw me flip the coin so that heads came up twice in a row. There may be hundreds of such reports. Maybe even thousands. Would you conclude from that group of reports that I can, on demand, always flip the coin so that it comes up heads twice in a row? Or even that every time I flip the coin it comes up heads? Before taking a group of reports as evidence, keep in mind that this is selection bias.
- chmike 14y ago
  Eyewitness reports contains facts that can be checked objectively. I.e witness reports powerlines oscillating in opposite phase in presence of UFO. There are also photographs showing strange things like a fuzzy dark mass beneath the UFO or multiple dark rings around the UFO. This can be explained as light polarisation in presence of intense magnetic field. It is even possible to estimate the strength of the magnetic field. This is something eyewitness can't make up. There are also reports of rotating compass. This can be explained and can only happen if precise conditions are met i.e oscillating intense magnetic field. By knowing the properties of the compass it is possible to determine the frequency of the magnetic field. If there is some reality in this phenomenon, it is possible to find evidences in the testimonies that can be indirectly objectively checked. This is science process.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  I don't think there is anything difficult to deny for skeptics. There are fundamental, and very serious problems with the whole ET visitation thing that make the whole thing just untenable. Where are they? I mean this would be a "big freakin' deal". The idea that the government could cover this up is ridiculous. World governments can barely keep secrets from eachother. You'd have to believe in basically MIB and neurolyzers. The physics of this ... is basically an appeal to magic in the guise of "advanced technology" (and don't give me the whole "any sufficiently advanced technology ... line). Now, it seems to be a big coincidence that there are many, many definitive hoaxes, I mean admitted by the perpetrators, but yet that the phenomena is still exists ("Sure we have faked this thing a million times, but it just so happens that it's real, I promise"). So we have to believe 1) ET doesn't want us to know about him and 2) ET is mega advanced but is so stupid that a bunch of rednecks and believers in woo/psi have discovered him (not that every "believer" is like that but clearly Joe Bob has discovered, so ET is evidently a mega physicist but sucks at basic hide and seek even with dimension traveling technology?). It's just too much nonsense.
  - c3d 14y ago
    I don't think tenants of the ET hypothesis all assume a MIB-style government cover-up. We don't have to believe your 1) or 2) either. Here are a few more likely explanations: 1) ET doesn't know how to communicate with us. We don't know how to communicate with most animals on the planet, yet they share most of our DNA. How would you communicate with a being that has no notion of sound, has a sense of smell based on silicon biology, can't touch you without dying or killing you, and has a vision only in deep infrared? 2) Interstellar travel, while possible, is very expensive, so scientific expeditions behave like our own expensive scientific expeditions say, to the moon: touch, collect samples, and go. 3) There's a sort of prime directive or at least an attempt at letting us evolve in our own way. As for the faking argument, it's like saying that because there's been a few Titanic movies, the Titanic didn't exist... It's the opposite: there's interest in faking it only because there is something. Otherwise, we'd also routinely see fake witches, fake angels and daemons, fake faeries, fake invisible people and fake ghosts.
frankydp 14y ago
Found a great paragraph.. "I am afraid we have a slight political problem. This ufologist is of course the Earl of Clancart, with whom HMG exchanged views in the Lords Debate. I feel our political masters would think it improper if the RAF News should be too rude about him. I suggest the problem could be resolved without altering any of the text from "Brinsley ...." to ".....interior of the earth" but toning down the faintly derisory setting and letting the idiocy of the Earl's ideas speak for themselves."
- blueprint 14y ago
  Could you link or cite the PDF? Curious to know what that was about the interior of the Earth.
jay_kyburz 14y ago
Having seen a UFO myself I can safely say that there _are_ aircraft with capabilities far above that what I would expect from our own air force in our skies. A friend and I witnessed formations of lights sweeping across the horizon making 90 degree turns in the blink of an eye. There you go.
- dfischer 14y ago
  My father says the same thing. I've heard others describe similar formations and "sweeps across the horizon." I don't doubt it at this point. I really just have two thoughts, maybe three. 1) I really want to see it for myself. 2) Is it of present-tine Earth origin? 3) Please come to me and take me somewhere magical!
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  lights =/= aircraft There are a myriad of natural phenomena, optical illusions and - dare I say - mental aberrations that could account for one seeing lights in the sky. I've seen several objects in the sky that I've not been able to immediately explain. Having been 'tricked' in this way and later realising the 'natural' explanations the idea of UFOs being explained as extra-terrestrial is not at all surprising to me.
  - spitfire 14y ago
    I've seen a UFO once, it was probably either a Beechcraft or a Cessna. It was unidentified, flying an most definitely and object.
- ary 14y ago
  On the very, very slight chance that this isn't a troll it should be voted down to oblivion for being the purest form of anecdote.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    No self respecting troll would troll a discussion involving UFO's. It's like trolling youtube comments, or children's birthday parties.
gfodor 14y ago
If you're a scientifically minded skeptic, I'd encourage you to read this book on the UFO phenomenon: http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342503506&sr=8-1&keywords=leslie+kean+ufo+book http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offici... It's a very good read. Also, in all UFO threads there should be a disclaimer that you are not making a point by pointing out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object not Alien Spaceship; most people when referring to the truly unexplainable cases use them interchangeably since extraterrestrial origin is one of the few hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence, though it's never obviously conclusive.
- mbenjaminsmith 14y ago
  Another well researched book is: http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronology/dp/1571743170/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronolog... It covers the intersection of military/governmental organizations and the phenomenon, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century. The short version would be to search YouTube for Richard Dolan. He's a great speaker and presents the information in a way that should be palatable for even the hardest skeptic.
  - quesst 14y ago
    Yes, I have read that book and several others on the subject and have been blown away. As both an open-minded and scientifically minded skeptic, it would be intellectually dishonest - even foolish - to deny that something extraordinary is going on that is worthy of investigation by science. While most cases can be explained away, about 5% of the cases deserve further study. For example, there are well documented cases of objects spotted moving at speeds of 20 or 30,000 miles per hour and making right angle turns and other impossible maneuvers, backed by both air and ground radar readings, and dozens of eyewitnesses. Or of massive objects the size of a football field gliding at low speeds, with no sound at all, over an entire city, and observed by hundreds of people. Something strange is going on in our skies, and sadly mainstream science and media are dismissing it, even ridiculing it.
Hari_Seldon 14y ago
The Obama administration has some believers http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-startling-ufo-connections http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-s...
leke 14y ago
Hold on a sec, I thought the UK outed all their UFO cases a number of years ago.
mootothemax 14y ago
I love the idea that governments, so incompetent in oh-so-many ways, are capable of a multiple-decade coverup involving one of the most fantastic discoveries possible, somehow managing to prevent leaks of any meaningful data, including any mention whatsoever in data dumps such as, e.g. WikiLeaks. And yet still people choose to focus their energies on UFO conspiracies, despite releases like these showing the true meaning behind the term UFO: stuff that looks weird in the sky and can't be identified by the viewer.

57 points by jjp9999 14y ago

Doesn't Bayesian statistics solve this pretty easily? I have a lot of priors for weird aeronautical and weather phenomenon (e.g., St. Elmo's fire/ball lightning), meteoroids, missiles, balloons, and secret prototype aircraft. I have no priors for technologically advanced alien life.

revscat 14y ago

I think at this point that there are (somewhat simplistically) two opposing camps in this debate. The first believes that UFOs are entirely the result of terrestrial phenomena, and take the Sagan/de Grasse Tyson view. The other viewpoint is that there is sufficient evidence to point to some sort of extraordinary phenomena which belies common explanation. Now, this is obviously a simplistic breakdown. Broadly speaking, however, this is usually what we see in such debates. (With typically much ridicule being thrown about by both sides.) Files like these, though, give even the most hardened skeptics room for wonder. While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate. These files are, unfortunately, just more in the circumstantial category. Although they have the "official" seal of approval they are still, at root, not hard evidence. It is frustrating to those of us who are curious about this that nothing beyond eyewitness reports ever seems to surface, no matter the source. I think most people at least pay attention to these news items, but do not know what to make of them beyond raising more questions.

nazgulnarsil 14y ago
if humans are all cognitively similar we shouldn't expect a large number of similar reports about things to be surprising.
- Kelliot 14y ago
  Should we also expect to follow pop culture? the classic description of a grey turning up following science fiction and newspaper publishing.
samstave 14y ago
Also, we will never know if accounts that would be considered hard evidence were not simply destroyed and not included in any surviving record. While I am personally on the fence about believing the accounts any gov has - clearly we know basically nothing of the universe relative to its size and existence.... so I will withhold judgement in any form - but lets look at the examples through history: The earth is flat. The Sun revolves around the earth. Germs dont exist. What is this radiation malarky? There are no other planets in the universe. There are no other solar systems like ours in the universe. Lets kill eachother over imaginary rulers and their rules. etc etc etc People are STUPID. So, are there UFOs? No idea - but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are. I'd prefer to just keep seeking, keep experiencing life and the wonders of all that is. The fact that Humans exist proves there is some intelligence in the Universe, lets just hope we are not the pinnacle as that would be rather sad.
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  "...but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are" I would suggest rather than depend on personal observation and anecdotal evidence you listen to groups of others who are actively seeking out information. We no longer believe the earth is flat because of a consistent and large amount of data has told as otherwise.
  - samstave 14y ago
    I wasn't really meaning I was going to only rely on personal observation per se, I am just saying that humans are intrinsicly historically wrong about everything. Thus I will not just say "those people told me that there are no other sentient beings capable of anything such as flying through space to visit a remot planet, so they must be correct!" We have already sent probes beyond our system and to many planets within our system and we only discovered FLIGHT 100 years ago. Just imagine 1,000 years from now.
    - pyre 14y ago
      > Just imagine 1,000 years from now Like flying cars in the year 2000? ;-)
Permit 14y ago
>While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate. I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".
- andrewfelix 14y ago
  Exactly. You could argue that God exists based on witness accounts.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    I know god exists. elvis told me only last week, and the king never lies.
- calebmpeterson 14y ago
  > I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data". Honestly, where is the barrier between the two? I'm not suggesting it doesn't exist, just genuinely asking where it is, or at least where it's near?
  - grimboy 14y ago
    Well, roughly and someone may have a better answer. Data is collected in a structured, systematic way, and the sample is carefully chosen. Anecdotes are not structured or collected in a systematic way, but worst of all the sample you've taken is the people who've chosen to speak up.
  - nazgulnarsil 14y ago
    Anecdotes ignore selection effects. Data tries to control for them.
- c3d 14y ago
  Why would radar recordings or radioactive soil samples not count as data (in the same sense that fossils are data)?
sage_joch 14y ago
Interesting; I had always taken Sagan's opinion as gospel, but I suppose there is room for questions. A bit of googling shows both Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich have seen a UFO, and they're honest people. That certainly doesn't make me a believer, but it's nice to see there's at least a small possibility.
- ladzoppelin 14y ago
  Keep in mind that UFO just means that it is unidentified and not necessarily from another galaxy. In my opinion Sagan and Hawking are right and that actual visitation from an alien species would be really unlikely given the size of the universe.
  - joering2 14y ago
    Not necessarily -- a fact alone that they could visit Earth implies that their technology is sophisticated enough to fight gravity, travel at speed of light (or faster) and do plenty of other things that may not even been covered by science-fiction just yet. Now, before you say it doesnt matter whether you travel at the speed of light, faster or slower, the moment you catch up with space debris, you become a crashed and burnt debris yourself. If all physical objects vibrate at some rate, then as wild as my imagination can go, it may be possible to speed up this rotation of a physical object so much that would eventually become... a wave.
    - lobster_johnson 14y ago
      It's not sufficient for the aliens to be sophisticated. They would also have to exist in exactly the right time frame. Consider the age of the universe: 14.6 billion years. Earth was formed about 10 billion years after the universe, and it took 5.4 billion years for the Earth to see the emergence of a civilized species, which has existed for an absolutely microscopic amount of time compared to those enormous intervals. How long does a species last, realistically? Counting from its "space age", would a species survive a thousand years, ten thousand? Extinction from natural disasters, epidemics, war and the like could be averted by scattering oneself across a solar system or wider. How many civilizations could reach that stage? I have absolutely no doubt that a myriad of alien life exists. But I think the chances that there exists alien species that: * has evolved before us or roughly at the same time, * has not driven themselves to extinction * achieved the technological capability for crossing galaxies, and * is willing to do so …is exceedingly slim. Even if a species develops space-faring tech needed to visit Earth, I think it's extremely unlikely that their existence will coincidence with us. They are either all dead by now, or they will be dead before we/they develop the tech to visit, or they don't exist yet, and we will all be dead first.
derekp7 14y ago
Let's say I flipped a coin a million times. Now lets assume multiple witnesses saw me flip the coin so that heads came up twice in a row. There may be hundreds of such reports. Maybe even thousands. Would you conclude from that group of reports that I can, on demand, always flip the coin so that it comes up heads twice in a row? Or even that every time I flip the coin it comes up heads? Before taking a group of reports as evidence, keep in mind that this is selection bias.
chmike 14y ago
Eyewitness reports contains facts that can be checked objectively. I.e witness reports powerlines oscillating in opposite phase in presence of UFO. There are also photographs showing strange things like a fuzzy dark mass beneath the UFO or multiple dark rings around the UFO. This can be explained as light polarisation in presence of intense magnetic field. It is even possible to estimate the strength of the magnetic field. This is something eyewitness can't make up. There are also reports of rotating compass. This can be explained and can only happen if precise conditions are met i.e oscillating intense magnetic field. By knowing the properties of the compass it is possible to determine the frequency of the magnetic field. If there is some reality in this phenomenon, it is possible to find evidences in the testimonies that can be indirectly objectively checked. This is science process.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I don't think there is anything difficult to deny for skeptics. There are fundamental, and very serious problems with the whole ET visitation thing that make the whole thing just untenable. Where are they? I mean this would be a "big freakin' deal". The idea that the government could cover this up is ridiculous. World governments can barely keep secrets from eachother. You'd have to believe in basically MIB and neurolyzers. The physics of this ... is basically an appeal to magic in the guise of "advanced technology" (and don't give me the whole "any sufficiently advanced technology ... line). Now, it seems to be a big coincidence that there are many, many definitive hoaxes, I mean admitted by the perpetrators, but yet that the phenomena is still exists ("Sure we have faked this thing a million times, but it just so happens that it's real, I promise"). So we have to believe 1) ET doesn't want us to know about him and 2) ET is mega advanced but is so stupid that a bunch of rednecks and believers in woo/psi have discovered him (not that every "believer" is like that but clearly Joe Bob has discovered, so ET is evidently a mega physicist but sucks at basic hide and seek even with dimension traveling technology?). It's just too much nonsense.
- c3d 14y ago
  I don't think tenants of the ET hypothesis all assume a MIB-style government cover-up. We don't have to believe your 1) or 2) either. Here are a few more likely explanations: 1) ET doesn't know how to communicate with us. We don't know how to communicate with most animals on the planet, yet they share most of our DNA. How would you communicate with a being that has no notion of sound, has a sense of smell based on silicon biology, can't touch you without dying or killing you, and has a vision only in deep infrared? 2) Interstellar travel, while possible, is very expensive, so scientific expeditions behave like our own expensive scientific expeditions say, to the moon: touch, collect samples, and go. 3) There's a sort of prime directive or at least an attempt at letting us evolve in our own way. As for the faking argument, it's like saying that because there's been a few Titanic movies, the Titanic didn't exist... It's the opposite: there's interest in faking it only because there is something. Otherwise, we'd also routinely see fake witches, fake angels and daemons, fake faeries, fake invisible people and fake ghosts.

frankydp 14y ago

Found a great paragraph.. "I am afraid we have a slight political problem. This ufologist is of course the Earl of Clancart, with whom HMG exchanged views in the Lords Debate. I feel our political masters would think it improper if the RAF News should be too rude about him. I suggest the problem could be resolved without altering any of the text from "Brinsley ...." to ".....interior of the earth" but toning down the faintly derisory setting and letting the idiocy of the Earl's ideas speak for themselves."

blueprint 14y ago
Could you link or cite the PDF? Curious to know what that was about the interior of the Earth.

jay_kyburz 14y ago

Having seen a UFO myself I can safely say that there _are_ aircraft with capabilities far above that what I would expect from our own air force in our skies. A friend and I witnessed formations of lights sweeping across the horizon making 90 degree turns in the blink of an eye. There you go.

dfischer 14y ago
My father says the same thing. I've heard others describe similar formations and "sweeps across the horizon." I don't doubt it at this point. I really just have two thoughts, maybe three. 1) I really want to see it for myself. 2) Is it of present-tine Earth origin? 3) Please come to me and take me somewhere magical!
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
lights =/= aircraft There are a myriad of natural phenomena, optical illusions and - dare I say - mental aberrations that could account for one seeing lights in the sky. I've seen several objects in the sky that I've not been able to immediately explain. Having been 'tricked' in this way and later realising the 'natural' explanations the idea of UFOs being explained as extra-terrestrial is not at all surprising to me.
- spitfire 14y ago
  I've seen a UFO once, it was probably either a Beechcraft or a Cessna. It was unidentified, flying an most definitely and object.
ary 14y ago
On the very, very slight chance that this isn't a troll it should be voted down to oblivion for being the purest form of anecdote.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  No self respecting troll would troll a discussion involving UFO's. It's like trolling youtube comments, or children's birthday parties.

gfodor 14y ago

If you're a scientifically minded skeptic, I'd encourage you to read this book on the UFO phenomenon: http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Officials/dp/0307717089/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342503506&sr=8-1&keywords=leslie+kean+ufo+book http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offici... It's a very good read. Also, in all UFO threads there should be a disclaimer that you are not making a point by pointing out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object not Alien Spaceship; most people when referring to the truly unexplainable cases use them interchangeably since extraterrestrial origin is one of the few hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence, though it's never obviously conclusive.

mbenjaminsmith 14y ago
Another well researched book is: http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronology/dp/1571743170/ref=pd_sim_b_2 http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronolog... It covers the intersection of military/governmental organizations and the phenomenon, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century. The short version would be to search YouTube for Richard Dolan. He's a great speaker and presents the information in a way that should be palatable for even the hardest skeptic.
- quesst 14y ago
  Yes, I have read that book and several others on the subject and have been blown away. As both an open-minded and scientifically minded skeptic, it would be intellectually dishonest - even foolish - to deny that something extraordinary is going on that is worthy of investigation by science. While most cases can be explained away, about 5% of the cases deserve further study. For example, there are well documented cases of objects spotted moving at speeds of 20 or 30,000 miles per hour and making right angle turns and other impossible maneuvers, backed by both air and ground radar readings, and dozens of eyewitnesses. Or of massive objects the size of a football field gliding at low speeds, with no sound at all, over an entire city, and observed by hundreds of people. Something strange is going on in our skies, and sadly mainstream science and media are dismissing it, even ridiculing it.

Hari_Seldon 14y ago

The Obama administration has some believers http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-startling-ufo-connections http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-s...

leke 14y ago

Hold on a sec, I thought the UK outed all their UFO cases a number of years ago.

mootothemax 14y ago

I love the idea that governments, so incompetent in oh-so-many ways, are capable of a multiple-decade coverup involving one of the most fantastic discoveries possible, somehow managing to prevent leaks of any meaningful data, including any mention whatsoever in data dumps such as, e.g. WikiLeaks. And yet still people choose to focus their energies on UFO conspiracies, despite releases like these showing the true meaning behind the term UFO: stuff that looks weird in the sky and can't be identified by the viewer.