First of all I wish to discuss the phenomena of seeing objects in the sky one cannot explain - unidentified flying objects or “UFO’s”. Granted people have always seen odd things in the sky but its really only in modern times, since the invention of aircraft and specifically the invention of flying at higher elevations, did we really start getting the biggest reports of UFO’s
To the pilots: it seems to me most pilots who have logged thousands if not 10’s of thousands of hours of flying time will have on occasion seen a sight in the sky which they cannot explain. This might be odd lights or the observation of strange “UFO’s” in the sky which the pilot has no idea what they are. Sometimes radar confirms that “something” is there, sometimes it doesnt.
To the pilots - is this true? Do you think most pilots eventually see a “UFO”?
On the nature of UFO’s. Why is there always the jump that any UFO is attributed almost automatically to alien spacecraft? It seems to me that alien origin is the most UN-likely of origins seeing the distance any alien space faring race would have to travel plus why the heck would an alien species go around playing tag with aircraft?
About 90 years ago my grandmother came running to her father and reported a UFO. Well actually she said it was a strange bird like object travelling across the sky. Her father who had heard of such things, said she was seeing her first airplane.
To me, that is what UFO’s are. Just something one cannot explain and over time people learn and eventually can go “oh I know what that is”.
So more to the pilots: over time it seems to me that something that previously was labeled as a “UFO” now might get another explanation? Do you feel that way?
To the general dopers out there - Do you think it’s wrong to point to alien origins as possible UFO sources or do you feel we should be exploring other options?
I have seen dozens, maybe hundreds of things in the sky I couldn’t identify. I think I was 7 the last time I thought any of them could have an alien origin.
Let’s move to the ground. How many times have you seen a non-flying object you couldn’t identify? Did you consider any of them to have alien origins? Did you suppose that aliens travel light years to come here and never land?
The persistent lack of evidence that “UFOs” are anything but terrestrial in origin makes the question moot. There is no prehistoric evidence of any kind of alien visitors or craft. There is no believable historic evidence of any such thing. There is no modern evidence of any such thing.
While this edges into proving a negative, the absolute resounding lack of anything but probably-misinterpreted lights in the sky, backed by the number of cases that have been shown to be terrestrial objects seen under unusual or misunderstood conditions, is pretty convincing that if aliens visit us, we will know. It won’t come down to blurry lights in a smartphone video, weird pieces of metal that have terrestrial elemental fingerprints, or odd marks on abductees’ bodies.
“UFO skeptics” Donald Menzel and Phillip Klass (among others) have long complained along the lines you suggest. In fact, Menzel (a director of the Harvard Smithsonian Observatory) went event further, claiming that the name “Unidentified Flying objects” prejudiced the viewer – many unrecognized things in the sky weren’t “flying” at all – they were meteorological phenomena, like glories or sundogs or subsuns. Many “radar UFOs” are similarly unsubstantial, due to radio reflections and the like.
Klass complained about the UFO reporting forms, that asked people to estimate size and distance and speed – the problem is that if you don’t know how far away it is, you can’t know how big it is (or how fast it was moving). Klass buttresses his complaint by looking at reports where the supposedly nearby object was actually a meteor or a piece of falling spacecraft rocket that was many miles further away than supposed.
Although “UFO” has become synonymous in the public mind with “alien spacecraft”, that was certainly not the original intent. Interestingly, according to Menzel’s books on the topic, they originally (at the observatory, at least) pronounced it not as “You -Eff-Oh”, but as “you-fob” Maybe if we called truly Unidentified Flying Objects (and even Non-Flying Objects) “you-fobs” we could reclaim the term to mean simply things that haven’t been certainly classed.
I have seen a few things, not necessarily a UFO, more like a ‘Your lying, there is no such thing as a 4 winged duck.’ The Green Flash over land. Almost having a fight with a stranger in an Florida FBO in the middle of the night who was insisting I was Kenny Rogers. Coming around a cloud and seeing a million rivets in a rather loose formation.
You can see why I don’t talk odd stuff anymore. I also like the rock carving of a guy in a space suit they show on some of the shows and places like here. ( Yanking AB’s chain here a bit. )
There’s no reason you can’t see a Green Flash over land. You just don’t generally see it there because you need to be able to see the sun disappear into the horizon, and that’s easier to get when it’s setting into a body of water.
Not sure about your 4-winged duck, flying rivets, and how much you resemble Kenny Rogers, though.
I’m more fond of the “Aztec Astronaut” who is clearly flying a rocket. And the “spaceship parking strips” that look an awful lot like a bird’s claw if you zoom out a little.
But then, all of that is from a dimwit who could actually write about realistic carvings of skeletons with the note, “How could ancient peoples have known what the skeleton looked like without x-rays?”
While it must be acknowledged that the orogin of life on Earth came from an extraterrestrial source, it is neither a necessary nor particularly insightful postulate; even if life did 't start on Earth, it was the result of an abiogenesis event somewhere, and unless the conditions for that event were totally unique in the history of the universe, they probably occur on Earth and elsewhere with regular frequency (as measured over the cosmic time scales of many hundreds of millions of years between the nucleosynthesis of carbon and nitrogen (and other elements that are necessary for our DNA-coded life) to the extent that the formation of life is virtually inevitable given any favorable conditions. The Murchison meteorite demonstrates nothing other than that complex organic molecules (but not living or byproducts of a living organism) exist off od Earth, a revelation that is not a surprise to any biochemist or astrobiologist.
Virtually everything you read or see about “ancient aliens” and “paleo-extraterrestial contact hypothesis” has its origins in one or more of Erich von Däniken’s nineteen published books and his Center for Ancient Alien Research. So, yes, one guy is essentially responsible for an entire field of ignorant speculation. The History Channel and other supposed “educational TV” outlets have simply discovered that it is quite profitable to make cheap docusortamentaries which uncritically present supposed evidence for the paleocontact hypotheses and “inexplicable” artifacts to a widely credulous public.
I can give you a list of about 100 FBO’s I dare you to walk in with that ‘tude’ and say they are just a service station with the implication that your apparent attitude ( tude ) suggests. <VEG>
Nice to see proof that you really are smart because you used the word Virtually at the start of your post.
Great weasel word. I bow to your superior intellect.
