Don’t start tossing tinfoil hats at me just yet. I caught a blurb on CNN earlier tonight, and I believe one of the supermodels they have passing for newscasters said that some group was claiming that 10% of reported UFO sightings are unexplained and the government has information its withholding from the public. Nothing new, but I thought it was odd for CNN to be reporting it. I couldn’t find anything on google, anyone know anything here?
Who said anything about tinfoil hats, the Grays or Area 51? 
Until a a flying object is identified, it’s an unidentified flying object. People see them all the time. However, it usually doesn’t take long to establish an identity - it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a, … it’s a, … – which throws out the overwhelming majority of UFOs right there. That leaves a minority of sightings which defy a simple and fast explanation. In time, most of these UFO reports are eventually identified.
However, the identification level does not reach 100 percent because of various factors. Maybe there was insufficient identification at the time of the sighting, maybe the witness provided incorrect information, yadda, yadda.
But of the final minority sightings which lack adequate and/or credible identification, how many of those could be classified as tinfoil hat-types, etc? Find credible and verifiable statistics for those and you have a case.
Maybe.
UFOs. Takes me back.
As Duckster says, it’s more like: a certain percentage can’t be definitely identified as thrown garbage can lids or lenticular clouds. But there’s no reason to suspect they are alien ships.
I give two examples of how even quite diligent and honest folk can be swayed:
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I was in Zion National Park. Heard strange noise approaching very, very quickly. Looked up from the canyon. Saw something looking very much like Fireball XL-5 tearing across the sky, breaking sound barrier. (Fireball XL-5 – a kid’s show I used to watch.) Realized years later it must have been one of the X-15s or something of that sort. But I’d never heard of them, and it looked VERY advanced to me.
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Was in home town. Main street. It’s foggy, we’re going slow. I look up to tall buildings to see how low the fog is getting. See rotating lights, hovering right in the middle of street. Alert driver to slow down. We stop and look as the lights get more distinct, and begin dropping to the street . . .
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(spoiler)
.
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It was a UFO. A spaceship, even. Hung on a cable from a helicopter as a joke. Bet lots thought it wasn’t a joke.
Tin is kinda expensive. Can we get you an aluminum foil hat, instead?
Remember that according to experts, 62.425% of all
statistics are made up, and have sources that can NOT
be verified.
Right. There is no justification for providing an explanation, unsupported by any evidence, for unexplained sightings. Why not just leave them as “unexplained to date?”
We can’t explain them, therefore they MUST be aliens!!
There is a group claiming to be releasing new information of government conspiracies about UFOs. I can’t find the link right now. You might head over to www.badastronomy.com and check out the message board there. Ask under the Lunar Conspiracies forum, and I’m sure someone can help you a lot quicker than I can.
Try this link:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/10/22/ufo.records/
Thanks Krispy , that’s the news piece I saw. All I’m wondering is why any UFO information is withheld by the military or feds? Where is the threat to national security in disclosing the specifics of a meteorite recovery? Why all the secrecy?
If they tell us about every event that does not involve secret military hijinx, it would be a simpler matter for people to figure out which events did involve classified military projects. That could be a threat to security. It’s not in the military’s best interest to demystify everything for everyone.
If they tell us about every event that does not involve secret military hijinx, it would be a simpler matter for people to figure out which events did involve classified military projects. That could be a threat to security. It’s not in the military’s best interest to demystify everything for everyone.
What if it was a U2 spyplane, or an SR-71, or some other top secret military spy plane involved in a covert mission of espionage, that allowed us to recover some secret from the Soviets that they never knew we had? Or some other secret military project? Say, before the era of satellites launching helium weather balloons to carry very high altitude radiometric equipment to check for Soviet atomic bomb testing, but that accidentally crashed in the middle of New Mexico, and some farmer found it, and the first soldier to respond didn’t know about the project, and thought the bits and pieces looked odd for a regular weather balloon, and announced to the media it was a UFO? Oh wait, that was Project Mogul and the Roswell incident.
I think I heard the Russians fostered an atmosphere of UFO craze to cover their secret missile launches and such. Get the people thinking it’s aliens, and keeps people from knowing the truth.
Could be an element of the US government had a similar idea? (If so, it backfired on them.)