If UFO's are real, how come virtually no mention of them until the mid 20th century

[Muldoon's Squishiness]

IIRC the first flying saucer report was by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 in Washington state and even that was misconstrued as Arnold didn't claim to see saucer shaped objects, but rather gleaming silver objects, which I believe turned out to be military aircraft.

It just seems highly suspicious to me that there is little or no mention of UFO's until humanity takes to the skies, and even then it takes up until the age of jet aircraft for sightings to start, not to mention the whole "alien abduction" phenomena. Plus there was all the paranoia of the Cold War.

Or am I missing something?

[Kewk]

Yes, actually you are missing a lot. There are 1000's of ancient pictures from every known civilization depicting what people have presumed as flying saucers.

In fact the Sumerians have the entire solar system carved into ancient tablets and believe in an alien race known as the Anunnaki.


Furthermore the History channel runs UFO episodes every now and then. When they do they show the pictures that I mentioned.

[Ale]

Because before the UFO term was coined people talked about fairies, demons and whatnot; the all sprout from the same sociological/psichological sources.

[Larry Mudd]

I think UFO sightings reflect a secular interpretation of the same sort of psychological (or even phenomenological, if you insist,) events that wer previously perceived as sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or sucubi/incubi, or visitation by faeries, etc.

The core event is the same, there are only superficial differences.

[CurtC]

But Kewk, that's completely different. The belief in aliens from other worlds coming in spaceships is a new phenomenon. Part of that new phenomenon is that a few people are presuming that old carvings etc. are of space aliens. Or are you saying that you really have the opinion that ancient people were actually trying to represent space aliens?

A hundred years ago, the idea of aliens from space hadn't occurred to people, so when they would see something they didn't understand, they'd attribute it to something other than spaceships.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by Kewk
In fact the Sumerians have the entire solar system carved into ancient tablets... They do not. There is no way for them to have known about Neptune and Pluto, and probably not Uranus, either. They certainly would have been ignorant of the asteroid belt, and none of the planetary moons other than Earth's are visible to the naked eye. Unless you can provide a reputable cite for this claim, I'm calling it bullshit.

[CalMeacham]

Well, if you're a skeptical type like me, you say that it's because there aren't any flying saucers now, and the whole mythology grew up since 1947. Kenneth Arnold didn't report flying saucers in his first report -- he said they were boomerang-shaped, and they moved "like a saucer skipping over the water". That the news reports could take this and twist it into "flying saucers" and have it stick says a lot about the credibility of the phenomenon.

But the truth is that there were reports of flying saucer-like things before 1947. In the latter half of the 19th century there were reports of "phantom airships" (possibly inspred in part by Jules Verne's "Robur the Conqueror"). See Phillip Klass' book UFOs Explained http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0394492153/qid=1062005934/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/102-0730319-2254503?v=glance&s=books , where he devotes an entire chapter to this. One report from the 19th century even has the mysterious airship populated by extraterrestrials, and crashing in Aurora, Texas. They even made a movie about this incident.

[Kewk]

Originally posted by CurtC
But Kewk, that's completely different. The belief in aliens from other worlds coming in spaceships is a new phenomenon.

The classification is the new phenomenon. The ideas of unexplained objects in the sky is not. Hence we perceive the drawing/carvings/paintings as UFO's now and classify them as such.

Im not saying that they believed that they were UFO's. You pointed out quite correctly that it is a new classification. They saw, painted, and we take it for what we believe it is now.


Originally posted by CurtC
Part of that new phenomenon is that a few people are presuming that old carvings etc. are of space aliens. Or are you saying that you really have the opinion that ancient people were actually trying to represent space aliens?[/B]

Again we are classify it in today’s terms as we see it. From what I have seen yes I would say it is possible that what was depicted was, and I stress possible, space aliens. But what we believe they classified it was as there gods. Such as the Sumerians and the Anunnaki.


Originally posted by CurtC
A hundred years ago, the idea of aliens from space hadn't occurred to people, so when they would see something they didn't understand, they'd attribute it to something other than spaceships. [/B]

6,000 years ago 2,500 BC the Sumerians believed they were created by beings that came from the sky. This is told and just as the Egyptians told their story. Only difference is the Sumerians used tablets and even archived them in a library system.

[SirRay]

Around the turn of the 20th century, there was an increase in sightings of Airships, often with pilots speaking strange languages (and, of course, sometimes not). There was some confusion whether these 'airships' were from other regions of Earth, or from different planets (I guess nobody had their stories straight)
There was a particular publicized one in a small town in Texas (I think - probably turn out to be Dallas or something) where the Airship supposedly crashed, and consequently the pilot was buried in the local graveyard... (yes, I think it was an elaborate hoax)

[SirRay]

And I finally got around to googling it:
Aurora, Texas 1897

Early 'Airship' sightings (http://ufos.about.com/library/weekly/aa052797.htm)

[Ale]

What´s up with Texas and UFO crashes? :confused:

[Kewk]

Originally posted by Q.E.D.
They do not. There is no way for them to have known about Neptune and Pluto, and probably not Uranus, either. They certainly would have been ignorant of the asteroid belt, and none of the planetary moons other than Earth's are visible to the naked eye. Unless you can provide a reputable cite for this claim, I'm calling it bullshit.

Bullshit or not is not it remains a possibility imo. You cannot disprove any of it not prove it.

If you are interested in actually researching it check out anything written by Zecharia Sitchin. His writings is where I get my information from. However the best I can come up with site wise is this: http://www.xfacts.com/sumerian.html

[Q.E.D.]

Well, that object shows eleven objects around what might loosly be called the sun. So, that's not quite right, either. I'd be interested in hearing your hypothesis of how the ancient Sumerians were supposed to have come by their knowledge of the solar system long before optics were invented.

And I found Sitchin's website (http://www.sitchin.com/). Quote like this:
Drawn into the center of that early solar system, the invader Nibiru/Marduk was fated to collide with Tiamat. One half of her was shattered and became the Asteroid Belt; the other more intact half was thrown into a new orbit and became the planet Earth. ...just scream "crackpot". If it's all the same to you, I'm fully prepared to dismiss this man and his theories out of hand.

[DarrenS]

Q.E.D. - your username seems particularly appropriate, given your last post above ;)

I think the whole question in the OP is a great example of reductio ad absurdum.

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Kewk
Bullshit or not is not it remains a possibility imo. You cannot disprove any of it not prove it.

If you are interested in actually researching it check out anything written by Zecharia Sitchin. His writings is where I get my information from. However the best I can come up with site wise is this: http://www.xfacts.com/sumerian.html

Stitchen's a Pseudohistorian. (http://www.skepdic.com/sitchin.html)

Zecharia Sitchin, along with Erich von Däniken and Immanuel Velikovsky, make up the holy trinity of pseudohistorians. Each begins with the assumption that ancient myths are not myths but historical and scientific texts. Sitchin's claim to fame is announcing that he alone correctly reads ancient Sumerian clay tablets. All other scholars have misread these tablets which, according to Sitchin, reveal that gods from another planet (Niburu, which orbits our Sun every 3,600 years) arrived on Earth some 450,000 years ago and created humans by genetic engineering of female apes. Niburu orbits beyond Pluto and is heated from withing by radioactive decay, according to Sitchin. No other scientist has discovered that these descendents of gods blew themselves up with nuclear weapons some 4,000 years ago. Sitchin alone can look at a Sumerian tablet and see that it depicts a man being subjected to radiation. He alone knows how to correctly translate ancient terms allowing him to discover such things as that the ancients made rockets. Yet, he doesn't seem to know that the seasons are caused by the earth's tilt, not to its distance from the sun.

Check out the links for some debunking of his 'work': Coast to Coast esposes some of Stitchen's errors. (http://www.facadenovel.com/sitchinerrors.htm)

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

The first documented UFO was in the Book of Ezekiel. A chap named Josef Blumrich did an entire book on the subject, "The Spaceships of Ezekiel," including a reconstruction of what the UFO looked like, which, IIRC, looked sorta like Kronos (http://www.imdb.com/Details?0050610).

And, I have to disagree with this "Holy Trinity" of pseudohistorians. How one can include Sitchin and omit Robert Charroux is puzzling.

[CalMeacham]

The first documented UFO was in the Book of Ezekiel. A chap named Josef Blumrich did an entire book on the subject, "The Spaceships of Ezekiel," including a reconstruction of what the UFO looked like, which, IIRC, looked sorta like Kronos.


UFO skeptic (and director of the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory, not to mention editor of Fundamental Formulas of Physics) Donald Menzel once wrote an interesting piece in which he suggested that the "wheels within wheels" of Ezekiel were inspred by ice crystal haloes, sindogs, and arches. Having seen and investigated such phenomena myself (and having myself suggested that several myths were inspired by the same phenomena), I find his explanation a lot more convincing than Blumrich's. I've read Blumrich's book, and he goes wayyyy out in his interpretations to come up with that craft. It's significant, by the way, that Menzel , Klass, and other skeptics ascribe a lot of "UFO" sightings to ice crystal haloes and other optical phenomena in the atmosphere.

[rookie523]

also from the website...

"Nicknamed “Metuselah planet,” the newly discovered planet is “almost three times as old as Earth.” It is the oldest extra solar planet so far discovered; it is almost as old as the Universe itself; and its discovery unsettles current theories about how and when planets could form around stars (suns)."

3 times as old as the Earth = almost as old as the Universe

[Pavlos]

what Kewk said : http://www.ufoartwork.com/

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by Pavlos
what Kewk said : http://www.ufoartwork.com/ Most of those paintings in the BC section are really a stretch to call them UFOs. I remain unconvinced that UFO lore predates the mid-twentieth century.

[anewthought]

Paintings on the walls of Pyramids clearly depict 'crafts' coming down from the skies.

Many passages in the bible mention beings 'descending down from the heavens'.

And there are more, too busy to go into detail. The point being: Just because someone in 10 BC didn't say 'ooh look that's a UFO' doesn't mean they didn't recall stories about things and/or people that mysteriously came out of the sky. Back before the birth of flight and before we had airplanes no one really KNEW or could CONCIEVE the fact that what they were seeing were flying craft. So how would they call them Unidentified Flying Object when back then the idea of 'flying object' didn't even exist as we know it today?

[robcaro]

Read the article about the Dogon Tribe in Africa.

http://www.mm2000.nu/sphinxv.html

[Cervaise]

Holy crap, they're invading.Originally posted by Kewk
You cannot disprove any of it not prove it.See, there's this thing called the "burden of proof." Somebody who says the Sumerians were drawing pictures of actual space aliens has a much longer row to hoe than somebody who asserts the same pictures are just random god-fearin' artwork same as anywhere else. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, as somebody once said. Extraordinary claims without extraordinary evidence can be safely dismissed as empty hypotheses.

Burden of proof doesn't rest on the disprover in these cases. Otherwise I could say that your head is full of Quantum Chee-TosTM, and when you say, "Nuh-uh," I give you a hatchet and say, "Prove it."

It don't work that way. Sorry, "Dr." Bauval, you'll need to go elsewhere to find a credulous audience for your claims. We don't play that game here.

[Cervaise]

Originally posted by robcaro
[B]Read the article about the Dogon Tribe in Africa.Then read this one (http://skepdic.com/dogon.html). :rolleyes:

[bonzer]

Originally posted by Kewk
If you are interested in actually researching it check out anything written by Zecharia Sitchin. His writings is where I get my information from.

And you might find some of the articles about his theories linked to from Doug Weller's archaeology page (http://www.ramtops.co.uk/) of interest (they're grouped towards the bottom).

[Michael Ellis]

Lack of any 1920's style "Death Rays", that's why.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by anewthought
Paintings on the walls of Pyramids clearly depict 'crafts' coming down from the skies. Any such paintings were more likely depicting their gods with various modes of aerial transportation, not being from another planet. The idea that other worlds might exist with intelligent beings on them is fairly new, certainly not before about 500 years ago.

Originally posted by anewthought
Many passages in the bible mention beings 'descending down from the heavens'. Yes, they were called angels. There is nothing to suggest these weren't divine beings of some sort.

Originally posted by anewthought
And there are more, too busy to go into detail. The point being: Just because someone in 10 BC didn't say 'ooh look that's a UFO' doesn't mean they didn't recall stories about things and/or people that mysteriously came out of the sky. As I stated above, people in 10 BC had no thought of other planets with alien beings living on them. To them the Earth was not only the center of the Universe, but the place where all life originated and resides. Things that came from the sky in that time were always thought to be divine in origin.

[squid]

I have seen lots of old painting or carving of what appear to be aliens or space ships too but I am not jumping to conclusions that they were actually witnessed by anyone. Couldn't have the painter or arthor of such images just have had a vivid imagination?
Previous poster CurtC said "A hundred years ago, the idea of aliens from space hadn't occurred to people, so when they would see something they didn't understand, they'd attribute it to something other than spaceships." Why do you assume they would associate something strange as something other than something from another world? What if someone saw something strange and wrote about it or made a drawing of it with the assumption is was from another world? What if someone or thing from the distant future found drawings, books or movies that we see and read today. They would think monsters, beasts and aliens were common in 2003.
And another thing...I can only think of one thing that we do not have a live video of...a good video of a UFO. We have live footage of murders, airplane crashes, tornados, explosions but no decent UFO...I wonder why?

[toadspittle]

Sounds like tomato/tomahto quibbling to me, QED (or perhaps "boomstick"/"rifle"). Ancient people, steeped in the lore of their era, claimed to see things in the sky and called them gods. Modern people, steeped in the lore of our technical society, claim to see things in the sky and call them aliens. What's the diff?

[Q.E.D.]

Because today we're supposed to know better. Back then they were called "pious". Today we call them "crackpots".

[squid]

Originally posted by toadspittle
Sounds like tomato/tomahto quibbling to me, QED (or perhaps "boomstick"/"rifle"). Ancient people, steeped in the lore of their era, claimed to see things in the sky and called them gods. Modern people, steeped in the lore of our technical society, claim to see things in the sky and call them aliens. What's the diff?

One makes for a much better movie:)

[Kewk]

Originally posted by Q.E.D.
Any such paintings were more likely depicting their gods with various modes of aerial transportation, not being from another planet. The idea that other worlds might exist with intelligent beings on them is fairly new, certainly not before about 500 years ago.

Yes, they were called angels. There is nothing to suggest these weren't divine beings of some sort.

As I stated above, people in 10 BC had no thought of other planets with alien beings living on them. To them the Earth was not only the center of the Universe, but the place where all life originated and resides. Things that came from the sky in that time were always thought to be divine in origin.

What's to say these "angels" are not alien beings that genetically created us? Rather than made from one supreme being.

Not saying you, Q.E.D, do not believe in aliens or god... but I cannot see how a person can believe in one and not the other. It is one in the same to me regardless. If there is a god he/she/it is not of this planet. He/she/it had to originate somewhere or somehow.

I honestly don't have a strong belief in either. I do believe in the possibility of them both. There is strong evidence for both. Some people need a higher power to look up to. i tend to believe in myself and it seems to have worked thus far :) Even if I wanted to believe in “god” there are too damn many to choose from.

[Walloon]

A Century of UFO Landings, 1868-1968 (http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/timeline.htm)

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by Kewk
but I cannot see how a person can believe in one and not the other. It is one in the same to me regardless. If there is a god he/she/it is not of this planet. He/she/it had to originate somewhere or somehow. Well, we can agree here. I don't believe in either one--on the other hand there are countless people who do believe in a god, yet scoff at the UFO believers, and vice versa. I think they're both equally silly, personally. But that's me.

[slipster]

The possibility of intelligent life on other planets has been a subject for speculation for a very long time.

As noted above, there was considerable excitement in the 1890s over sightings of a mysterious "airship" over the United States. Such reports appear to have started in California and then worked their way progressively eastward.

Numerous stories were published at the time of how the ship had been revealed to be the invention of a mysterious genius, or of a secret society of inventors. Other stories said that it conveyed visitors from another world. Still others identified individual sightings as simple phenomena such as the planet Venus during an unusually bright appearance or as hoaxes.

Daniel Cohen wrote a very good survey of the phenomenon called The Great Airship Mystery. He concluded that the sightings were divided among honest mistakes of natural phenomena and hoaxes.

While Cohen suggested that Jules Verne's two novels about Robur could have had an influence on people, he admits that the books had been published in a previous decade. An even more likely influence, I suspect, is Mark Twain's little-remembered novel Tom Sawyer Abroad. It was still being serialized in the children's magazine St. Nicholas when the sightings started. This story tells how Tom, Huck and Jim go to St. Louis to see an airship being displayed there by its inventor. It takes off accidentally after they sneak on board. The story was profusely illustrated, and many of the drawings show a fantastic craft which looks to be part tall-masted ship and part blimp.

In the years leading up to World War I there were a series of airship sightings over Scotland. It has been suggested that war anxieties could help account for these. During World War II a number of Allied flight crews over Europe reported seeing "Foo Fighters". This name derives from the nonsense language of the then-polular comic strip Smokey Stover. These "fighters' were glowing shapes which seemed to pace aircraft. Many of them are believed to have been natural phenomena such as St. Elmo's Fire.

During the early 1930s there were a number of sightings of an airship over Canada. Shortly before his disappearance, W. D. Fard, founder of The Nation of Islam, announced that this was "The Mother Ship", a secret weapon of the Japanese which was going to lay waste to The United States until only 144,000 people were left.

Following World War II there were numerous sightings of "phantom rockets" over Sweden. War anxieties could again be a cause, as the rockets seem to have always have come from the direction of The Soviet Union.

And then, of course, came Kenneth Arnold's classic sighting. As noted above, he said that the things he saw seemed to move like saucers skipped on water. A wire service editor in a hurry had written the phrase "flying saucers" in a story which was sent out.

While UFO spotting is largely a modern phenomenon, the possibility of life on other worlds has been speculated about for a very long time.

In the late 19th Century a number of Spritualist mediums claimed to have obtained information about life on Mars and other planets while in trances.

In the early 19th Century a New York paper published the notorious "Moon Hoax". Starting with some fairly innocuous stories about a powerful new telescope built by a real-life English astronomer, the paper published stories about how life could be observed on the Moon. There were people there with bat wings.

In the 18th Century Voltaire wrote a story called Micromegas. In it two giants from space visit Earth. They are so large that when one of them picks up a whale, it is in his hand like a tadpole is in the hand of a man. This story, incidentally, discusses (and spoofs) an attempt by some astronomers to use "geometric logic" to demonstrate that Mars "should" have two moons.

Jonathan Swift aludes to this idea in Gulliver's Travels, saying that the people of the scientifically advanced country of Laputa have found that Mars has two moons. Erich Von Danniken cites this in Chariots of the Gods but does so to know apparent purpose except to get readers to say "ooooh.....spooky".

One can trace the belief in extraterrestrial life much farther back than this. Comedian George Carlin used to observe that the idea of reincarnation doesn't make much sense, as the world's population keeps growing, so that something must be happening beyond the mere recycling of former inhabitants of this planet. In fact, Hindus have since ancient times speculated that there is life on other planets, and that spirits from such planets can be reincarnated here.

Nevertheless, sightings of exraterrestrial spacecraft has largely been a phenomenon of the late 19th Century and after. Writers on UFOs, especialy in the 1950s and 60s, attempted to demonstrate that it was a longstanding phenomenon. Two stories related by Frank Edwards in his book Flying Saucers: Serious Business, are prime illustrations. One story concerned some monks in England during the Middle Ages who saw a ship hovering over their monastery. An alien creature wearing a space helmet descended to the ground via a ladder. The other story was the one about a craft crashing in Aurora, Texas.

The Aurora story was published during the great Airship scare of the mid-1890s. Numerous writers have demonstrated that details in the story do not match up with facts about the town as it was at that time, and have shown that the town was anxious to draw attention to itself. IIRC, Aurora had been passed over in favor of a neighboring community for a railroad station, and the economy was declining.

The story of the monks was first published in England in the 1950s. It was a pure hoax; some schoolboys simply made it up and sent a letter about it to a paper.

Many other efforts to prove that UFOs were sighted in earlier appear to be similarly bogus; often they consist of interpreting an artifact without providing any historical or cultural context. One I have found particularly interesting is the claim that flying saucers can be seen in the Bayeaux Tapestry. They look remarkably like clouds.

Although belief in life on other planets is of longstanding, the OP is correct: the vast majority of UFO sightings have occured since the time of Kenneth Arnold.

There once was a vogue for suggesting that this was because we had only recently become interesting to the aliens; possibly they were drawn here by television and radio broadcasts, or by the invention of the atomic bomb. This latter idea featured in the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still. As it became apparent that nearby planets do not support intelligent life, and as people became more sophisiticated about the tremendous distances between objects in space, this idea has lost popularity.

A more likely explanation is that it is only in relatively recent times that a great many people have been actively disposed to believe in the possibility of spaceships.

Frank Edwards noted that descriptions of craft in early UFO sightings were greatly different than in more recent sightings, and suggested this was proof that the aliens were advancing technically. In fact, the early airships resembled the blimps and dirigibles people were soon able to perfect. And flying saucers? They had already been depicted in pulp magazines for years before a wire service editor misintrepreted what Kenneth Arnold said.

[Muldoon's Squishiness]

Originally posted by squid
And another thing...I can only think of one thing that we do not have a live video of...a good video of a UFO. We have live footage of murders, airplane crashes, tornados, explosions but no decent UFO...I wonder why?

Smartass answer: Because the vast majority of people who claim to have witnessed UFO's are of the backwoods hillbilly variety and are unlikely to own a video camera, being much more likely to spend their money on improvements to their still.

Non Smartass answer: Because a great number of UFO sightings convieniently seem to take place in very deserted places/in the middle of the woods/very late at night, when people aren't likely to be carrying around video cameras.

[Q.E.D.]

And the real answer is, because UFOs as alien spacecraft don't exist. We have plenty of video of UFOs, but I'm > 99.9999% certain that not one of them is a spacecraft built by intelligent beings from some place other than Earth. The vast majority are fakes, and the rest is divided among unusual atmospheric phenomena, conventional aircraft, astronomical objects and film/videotape glitches.

[Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor]

I notice that Von Däniken was mentioned.

Just to show how "respectable" a "scholar" he is go here--

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/169_daniken.shtml

He's building a "Theme Park Of The Gods" based on his so-called "scholarship". :dubious:

[Super Gnat]

Site debunking Sitchin. ('http://www.facadenovel.com/va_243%20page.htm')

[Kewk]

To add on the video taped UFO encounters...

I have seen a lot on of them on the various UFO TV shows on scifi and all variations of the history channel. While there are plenty that look authentic none of them are anywhere near as compelling, to me, as the Arizona sitting about (and im making a very vague guess) 5 years ago.

If I remember correctly there were 6 glowing lights in the sky and were there for quite sometime. Everyone saw them, period. All the various news channels covered including local and national. Possibly worldwide.

It was dismissed as military. lol.

From all the video shown of the event there is no way I can believe that.

I will try to find some sites with more info on this particular event.

[Kewk]

http://www.ufocasebook.com/phoenix31397.mpeg


This video sucks but here is the Arizona video I spoke of.




"March 13, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, USA. One of the most celebrated, yet controversial events of the 1990s was the fly over of anomalous objects in Phoenix, Arizona. Seen by literally thousands of residents in the metropolis, the film taken at that time is almost indisputable proof of UFOs. Debunkers have offered every imaginable explanation for the bright, circular object or objects that stirred the imagination of onlookers, but nothing short of UFO will do."

http://ufocasebook.com/bestufovideos2.html

[Q.E.D.]

I can't say as I find that video particularly compelling. It's just some lights in the sky that could really be anything from hot-air balloons with lights to a large meteor breaking up. It ain't aliens, I'll tell you that much.

[Cervaise]

Originally posted by Kewk
What's to say these "angels" are not alien beings that genetically created us?Common sense?There is strong evidence for both.I'd like to see it. As a rationalist, I find strong evidence quite compelling. But so far, what the ufologists have offered can be called strong the same way waving a single ground of coffee at a cup of cold water makes a strong beverage.

[godzillatemple]

I think you guys are missing the obvious answer here. There's virually no mention of UFOs visiting Earth before the mid 20th century because that's when they started visiting us. Duh!

:D

Barry

[Kewk]

Originally posted by Cervaise
Common sense?


Common sense is subject to ones upbringing, culture, gender, and race even. I doubt the validity of a common sense at all. No such thing exists to me really.

Point being: What is common to you and your people is not common to the next.

[Super Gnat]

Meatros! I didn't even notice you had posted. Some people think you've disappeared ('http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=207274&perpage=50&pagenumber=1')

[commasense]

Originally posted by Kewk
To add on the video taped UFO encounters...

I have seen a lot on of them on the various UFO TV shows on scifi and all variations of the history channel. While there are plenty that look authentic none of them are anywhere near as compelling, to me, as the Arizona sitting about (and im making a very vague guess) 5 years ago.

If I remember correctly there were 6 glowing lights in the sky and were there for quite sometime. Everyone saw them, period. All the various news channels covered including local and national. Possibly worldwide.

It was dismissed as military. lol.

From all the video shown of the event there is no way I can believe that.

The official story of this sighting (which Kewk ridicules) is that the lights were flares of some sort dropped on parachutes by a military plane some distance from Phoenix. One reason this was not taken seriously by some people was that many witnesses reported that the lights were directly over the city. Also, the pattern of lights, which from some points of view looked like a wedge, allowed some people to "connect the dots" and imagine a huge solid structure supporting all the lights.

But the Discovery Channel, TLC, or one of those networks, did a show in which they took one of the tapes, which seemed to show the lights suddenly blinking out one at a time, and superimposed on it a daylight shot, from the same location, of the mountain range in the distance (not visible in the nighttime tape with the lights, of course.) Every time a light went out, it was exactly as it passed behind the line of the remote mountains. QED.

The flares were extremely bright and human vision has a hard time accurately placing very bright light sources in a dark sky with no other frame of reference. Hence the many reports of meteors hundreds of miles away as nearby UFOs.

IIRC, the waters were also muddied by an early (incorrect) denial by the Air Force that military planes were flying in the area at the time.

[DasUnterMensch]

Originally posted by BogieBlanca
Smartass answer: Because the vast majority of people who claim to have witnessed UFO's are of the backwoods hillbilly variety and are unlikely to own a video camera, being much more likely to spend their money on improvements to their still.

Non Smartass answer: Because a great number of UFO sightings convieniently seem to take place in very deserted places/in the middle of the woods/very late at night, when people aren't likely to be carrying around video cameras.


Not to mention it being the best time to be under the influence of the product of said still.

Having partaken of such produced by the Appalachian side of my family…HoooWeeee! Blind ain’t the only thing it can make ya.

[Arcite]

Originally posted by BogieBlanca
IIRC the first flying saucer report was by Kenneth Arnold in 1947 in Washington state and even that was misconstrued as Arnold didn't claim to see saucer shaped objects, but rather gleaming silver objects, which I believe turned out to be military aircraft.

It just seems highly suspicious to me that there is little or no mention of UFO's until humanity takes to the skies, and even then it takes up until the age of jet aircraft for sightings to start, not to mention the whole "alien abduction" phenomena. Plus there was all the paranoia of the Cold War.

Or am I missing something?

Like godzillatemple said: the aliens visiting us didn't invent their flying saucers until the period of time we know as the 20th century. Before that, they were driving around in their internal combustion engine cars, flying in their conventional aircraft, and surfing their version of the internet, just like us! ;)

[bibliophage]

The hamsters were looking up in the sky at some bright lights over Chicago the last time I tried to do this, so let's try it again:

Off to Great Debates.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

[Bruce_Daddy]

Originally posted by Q.E.D.
. . . but I'm > 99.9999% certain

So you're telling me there's a chance. . .

[BrotherCadfael]

Are some of these UFO believers the same guys who chime in with comments about "Magical Sky Pixies" whenever anyone indicates a beilef in Christianity?

Just askin'

[Meatros]

Originally posted by Super Gnat
Meatros! I didn't even notice you had posted. Some people think you've disappeared ('http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=207274&perpage=50&pagenumber=1')

:D

You never saw me...understand....

:D


Eh, I just got a new job and it's keeping me busy, which sucks...I need my dope fix....

:D

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by Bruce_Daddy
So you're telling me there's a chance. . . Sure. It's possible that some time during the Earth's 4.5 billion-year history that a bunch of alien dudes visited in some sort of spacecraft. Unlikely as hell, yes, but still possible.

[stick monkey]

And another thing...I can only think of one thing that we do not have a live video of...a good video of a UFO. We have live footage of murders, airplane crashes, tornados, explosions but no decent UFO...I wonder why?

I do not believe in UFO's.

However, until very recently, there was not live footage of (non-staged) murders, airplane crashes, or car crashes for that matter. For while they may happen hundreds or thousands of times a day, not many people carry video cameras around with them all the time, and they aren't always on, or pointing in the right direction. Only when we started installing stationary cameras on high-traffic roadways, and it became common for people to carry video cameras to airshows and the like did we start catching regular occurences of these things on film AS they happen.

While, like I said earlier, I don't believe in UFOS (at least not the whole 'little green men' idea, though i will admit that there are often occurances of people seeing something and not knowing what it is, hence the unidentified part); if they do exist, they would be extremely rare (space is pretty big, and the number of species that could possibly even travel interstellar space is pretty small), much rarer than a plane or car crash certainly. And the likelyhood that they would occur where any one person would see them, would be much lower statistically. And the likelihood that one person would have a camera, on, with film, pointed in the right direction, for the few moments it would be around would be much lower. And the likelihood that same person wouldn't have something in his past to suggest he may have made it all up, even more low.

[Cervaise]

Originally posted by stick monkey
However, until very recently, there was not live footage of (non-staged) murders, airplane crashes, or car crashes for that matter...While your point is noted (and likewise I acknowledge that you are not arguing in favor of the UFO-as-flying-saucer position), it's worth considering that, of everything we routinely point cameras at, the sky is one of the most-photographed and most-scrutinized subjects, certainly far out of proportion of the number of actual things in it to scrutinize. Meteorologists, air traffic controllers, astronomers, Alfred Stieglitz (http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/objects/o69332.html) ;)... Their days are full of looking up.

And yet, the overwhelming majority of flying-saucer reports do not come from these people who spend so much time looking at and recording the sky. They know what Venus looks like and where it's typically found. They know better than to mistake a V of migrating geese brightly lit from the ground as an edge of lights on a triangular craft. No, the largest fraction of UFO reports comes from people who, based on lack of experience, are the least likely to know what they're looking at, or to record it accurately with whatever apparatus or device they have at hand.

That's telling, I think. So while there is something to what you say, I must say I don't find it the most compelling argument in the advocate's arsenal.

[eburacum45]

There have been many mysterious reports of lights in the sky, angels, succubi, night hags, all the modern reports are replicated in mythology and in strange folk tales , or reports gathered by interested parties like Charles Fort;
this basically means that the psychological mechanisms that lead to reports of flying saucers and close encounters today were active then.
Misinterpretation of natural phenomena, sleep paralysis, delusions, lies amd misreporting happened then and they still happen today.

Oh yes, there are aliens on other worlds; that much is almost certain.
They are not here.
_________________
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[HPL]

Originally posted by Arcite
Like godzillatemple said: the aliens visiting us didn't invent their flying saucers until the period of time we know as the 20th century. Before that, they were driving around in their internal combustion engine cars, flying in their conventional aircraft, and surfing their version of the internet, just like us! ;)

What about the FTL Drive or Dimesional Portal or whatever the hell they use to get here? :)

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Originally posted by BrotherCadfael
Are some of these UFO believers the same guys who chime in with comments about "Magical Sky Pixies" whenever anyone indicates a beilef in Christianity?

Just askin'
IANA UFO believer but this would not necessarily be a contradictory position. Aliens from another planet would at least be a natural phenomenon as opposed to a supernatural belief.

Actually, given the vastness of the universe the evolution of life on at least some other planets would seem to be a mathematical certainty. The notion that life would uniquely arise on one planet, alone among trillions of star systems is actually almost absurd in its unliklihood. It would probably require supernatural intervention for there not to be other life in the universe.

Now, having said that, interstellar travel is a much different proposition and much more unlikely. Whatever intelligent life there is would likely be so sparse and so scattered that it would be virtually impossible to traverse the immense distance between "populated" star systems. It would take hundreds or thousands of years even at the speed of light...and that's assuming that one species would have some way of even determining that planet X, in a star system 367,000 light years away, has intelligent life on it.

I would certainly hope, given the tremendous expenditure of time, technology and "human" resources it would take to launch such an endeavor, that once the aliens got here they would have some more significant motive than to kidnap hillbillies and ram metal rods up their asses.

Anyway, I don't think it's inconsistent to be atheistic or agnostic yet believe that life can arise on other planets. I do think that interstellar travel is next to inconceivable as a practical possibility, regardless of sci-fi inventions like "warp speed."

[Leaper]

Dana Scully: UFOs. Extra-terrestrial visitors from beyond who apparently have nothing better to do than buzz one mountain for 700 years.

Fox Mulder: It sounds like crap when you say it.

[stick monkey]

That's telling, I think. So while there is something to what you say, I must say I don't find it the most compelling argument in the advocate's arsenal.

Like I said, I don't believe in UFO's, though I refuse to rule out the possibility of their existence outright. I don't find my contention a compelling argement for UFO's, and would hope you don't either. I just don't find the inverse of the argument a compelling reason against them either, which was my point.

While it is true that in modern times that man spends a lot more time and energy looking up and recording what we see, we aren't watching that much of it. And most of those that are looking up, are too busy looking for specific things (stars, airplanes, clouds, thunder cells, hurricanes, comets, et cetera) to notice all the other subtle stuff that may be happening around them. It's too easy to dismiss a random radar blip or dot in the sky as a natural event, technical glich, or image artifact (which would be what most (read: probably all) of them are, anyway)

I don't think we would ever find conlusive proof of UFO's (the little green men kind) unless they (read:the little green men) wanted us to, or a reputable group (read: peer reviewed) of scientists and educated individuals with a lot of resources specifically went looking for them. I don't advocate the use of such vast resources at present mind you, it would be much nicer to spend that kind of time/money/energy on something like, I don't know, education. But, if we were to ever find evidence of life on other planets (whether through SETI, or a bigger hubble or similar telescope) then it might be worth it to look for evidence of intelligence of same.

[Voyager]

I'd like to echo the recommendation for the Great Airship Mystery. What I find compelling about this book is that it documents "UFO" observations very similar to those today - except that when contact is made, it wasn't with an alien, but with an inventor from New England who is going to unveil the airship to the public real soon now. These sightings and encounters are even more compelling than UFO sightings, especially since they were more plausible. There were lots of them, some seen by many people. Yet none of them happened! This is a great example of how eyewitness accounts and anecdotal evidence are not proof.

[laigle]

Jeez people, hasn't the obvious conclusion occured to any of you? Once we invented nuclear weapons, the aliens couldn't come down and change the batteries on the mind control beam transmitters any more. If you just wore your tinfoil hats you'd have known all along!

Seriously though, as many have said there's been no lack of stories about mysterious objects in the sky. Which isn't surprising. We're still working on documenting and explaining all the lights and such that are seen regularly. People don't like not understanding things, and ghost/alien/etc stories are pretty good campfire fare, so people make up "I've seen this all before" stories when there's a bit of ball lightning or an oddly shaped cloud. Then to top it all off, there's plenty of wierd stuff out there for people to point to. "Superadvanced" technology from specialist cultures like the furnaces at Tijuanaco or the Pyramids or a hundred other things. Religions based on "beings from the sky."

Look, if another civilization went to the effort and expense to build interstellar travel, they aren't going to use it to buzz some half drunk redneck on the way to hook up with his cousin. They're either gonna use it for exploitation or exploration, and either way it's not going to be much of a secret when they shell out the cure to all disease or decide to use our pineal glands in soup. So if you see something up there, it's probably a perfectly natural phenomenon. Or else it's the Air Force testing out their new hypersonic stealth fusion-powered spy zeppelin, which ain't much of a stretch these days.

[Q.E.D.]

Mmmmm...pineal gland soup. Just like Mom used to make.

[Cervaise]

Personally, I prefer pituitary. Not as cloyingly sweet.

[owlofcreamcheese]

it really does seem likely that if a race was visiting us that there WOULD be a time before they were. I mean likely they had some sort of development into a techological society. so it very likely could be a case that there was a time before UFO visited, either before the alien society existed to visit us, or because they just hadn't found us yet. maybe reports of them only started when the UFOs actually started being around.

[Q.E.D.]

Or maybe they've never visited us and all the reports claiming they have are pure crap. Guess which way I'm leaning?

[Hizzex]

Why can't some of you people just accept the fact that we are not alone in the universe? And since we aren't, there is a very good possibility that some of these species (other than us) could have a faster evolution rate than us, hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of years faster than us, I believe in aliens, not necassarily little green w/ big black eyes and big heads, but different species throughout the universe-absolutely.

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by Hizzex
Why can't some of you people just accept the fact that we are not alone in the universe? And since we aren't, there is a very good possibility that some of these species (other than us) could have a faster evolution rate than us, hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of years faster than us, I believe in aliens, not necassarily little green w/ big black eyes and big heads, but different species throughout the universe-absolutely. I do too. However, physics poses some rather extreme limits on what can and cannot be done in terms of travel arrangements. The vast distances between stars make travel between them highly impractical. Even the most liberal estimates state that there at at most 10 advanced civilizations in our galaxy, and given that the Milky Way is 210,000 light years in diameter, this leaves a HUGE gap between neighboring civilizations. Look, as much as I'd like to meet an intelligent alien being, it ain't gonna happen. Get over it.

[Brutus]

Originally posted by Hizzex
Why can't some of you people just accept the fact that we are not alone in the universe?

Fact? Hardly.


And since we aren't, there is a very good possibility that some of these species (other than us) could have a faster evolution rate than us, hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of years faster than us, I believe in aliens, not necassarily little green w/ big black eyes and big heads, but different species throughout the universe-absolutely.

There is an equal chance that this imaginary life on other planets is just now figuring out the mysteries of toilet paper. Not to mention, ameoba of today are about as 'intelligent' as amoeba of millions of years ago. Evolution doesn't neccesarily equate 'more intelligent'.

I love a good consipiracy theory. Ghost stories? Bring 'em on! And who can resist tales of some alien visitors dicking with the 'rural types'. But recognize that these are all stories, with little or no basis in hard science.

It is much easier to say 'That light in the sky was from The Mothership', then it is to have the discipline to build a telescope, observe what is actually happening, put the whole mash through the scientific process, etc.

[substatique]

If UFO's are real, how come virtually no mention of them until the mid 20th century[?]
Because the beings we call aliens, gods, and angels are not based on the same principles of life as the inhabitants of Earth. They interact with our minds differently than cats or fish or other people. We can only "see" them as reflections of ourselves. Although everything is actually seen as a reflection of ourselves, we construct a worldview that "explains" the more common ones. This worldview blinds us to the fact that everything we experience is a self-created illusion (David Bohm and Karl Pribram (http://www.new-universe.com/pythagoras/holographic.html) are not pseudoscientists).

Therefore, the forms the mysterious beings take when we observe them depend on our preconceptions, which are determined by such things as Ezekiel, Verne, and von Daniken. If our kosmology includes robed, winged, haloed androgynes, we will see angels. Some people (usually poor Catholics) still see angels today. If our kosmology includes technology, Darwin, and anthropocentrism, we will see creatures that look like extrapolations of humanity's future: humanoids in flying machines.

If our kosmology refuses to acknowledge these beings at all, we will rationalize them away as Venus, military craft, or hallucinations. People who do so will fail to communicate with the beings, which may lead to problems for them. But the problems can probably be rationalized away, too--at least for a while. The advantage of living in an inescapable illusion is that nobody can tell you you're wrong.

[Cervaise]

You forgot to mention the lizard people who secretly control the world's governments.

[t-keela]

This thread Cervaise appears to me to be disinformation put forth by the Illuminati who are in cahoots with our alien overlords.

Q.E.D. I am a bit surprised at you even taking part in this thread.

Oooh, mm-hmm, now I see. :smack:

You're one of their dupes, admit it.

[t-keela]

BTW, isn't their an historical account describing a war having taken place in the skies over India. Flying machines, different races of folks, Gods and Devils etc.

I think it was written before the last century IIRC. ;)

[t-keela]

Try looking up Vimanas and see what ya come up with and make note of the date in which the texts were written.

I don't think the idea of spaceships or alien races is a new one.
Whether you believe these accounts are fiction or not is irrelevent. The fact is that man has at the very least referred to these ideas in the past.

[t-keela]

and [B]BB[/] the OP, why no mention of UFOs until 1947?

I suppose a possible logical solution could be, that is when they first arrived. Assuming we accept the premise "If UFO's are real,"

Therein lies most of the problem here, I think.

later~ :)

[Q.E.D.]

Originally posted by t-keela
This thread Cervaise appears to me to be disinformation put forth by the Illuminati who are in cahoots with our alien overlords.

Q.E.D. I am a bit surprised at you even taking part in this thread.

Oooh, mm-hmm, now I see. :smack:

You're one of their dupes, admit it. Eh? I'm not saying that UFOs are visiting alien spacecraft--I'm virtually certain they're not. However, I do think it's possible, even likely, that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, and perhaps even intelligent life. Or have I misunderestood your remarks?

[t-keela]

Originally posted by Q.E.D.
Eh? I'm not saying that UFOs are visiting alien spacecraft--I'm virtually certain they're not.

See, you deny the Illuminati have ties with alien visitors.

However, I do think it's possible, even likely, that there is life elsewhere in the Universe, and perhaps even intelligent life.

Yet you leave open the possibility. Disinformation deliberately posted to confuse the ignorant masses.

Or have I misunderestood your remarks?

Actually, I think we probably underestand each other quite well. ;)


You just surprised me with the use of tautologies and absolutes offered as your proof. You're usually more concise in your responses, at least what I've read of them.

But what the Hell, it's Labor Day, we shouldn't have to work too hard trying to prove something doesn't exist... now where have I heard that before. :dubious:

[stick monkey]

Why can't some of you people just accept the fact that we are not alone in the universe? And since we aren't, there is a very good possibility that some of these species (other than us) could have a faster evolution rate than us, hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of years faster than us, I believe in aliens, not necassarily little green w/ big black eyes and big heads, but different species throughout the universe-absolutely.

Because some of us require proof (or at least non-circumstantial coroborated evidence) before we dogmatically accept something as fact. While I am perfectly happy to concede that it's possible that life, even hyperintelligent (smarter than we are) life, is a possibilty somewhere else in the universe (and even maybe a statistical liklihood), that's a far cry from saying it's a 'fact'.