# What are UFOs if they're NOT alien spacecraft? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 26, 2024, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108 "2024-02-26T17:14:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![sunacres](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@sunacres](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunacres)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/161 "2024-07-27T17:08:48Z")
> [@robby](#): > > On this topic, another attraction in our solar system are the rings of Saturn. They are much more dramatic than most planetary ring systems and may well be pretty unusual, if not unique. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the rings of Saturn could by any stretch of the imagination be unique. On the other hand, like planetary life, our statistical sample is pretty small so we are free to speculate. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/162 "2024-07-27T17:24:32Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > > [@robby](#): > > > > On this topic, another attraction in our solar system are the rings of Saturn. They are much more dramatic than most planetary ring systems and may well be pretty unusual, if not unique. > > I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the rings of Saturn could by any stretch of the imagination be unique. On the other hand, like planetary life, our statistical sample is pretty small so we are free to speculate. That was poorly phrased on my part. To be clear, the rings of Saturn are surely not unique, but they may be well be unusual in the fact that they are big, massive, very bright rings, which is unusual even in our own solar system: all of the other gas giants in our solar system have rings too but they are small and faint. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/163 "2024-07-27T17:25:44Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the rings of Saturn could by any stretch of the imagination be unique. Other planetary rings were discovered more recently. Saturn’s were observed in 1610 but only known to be rings in 1655. Uranus’s in were discovered in 1977, Jupiter’s in 1979, and Neptune’s in 1989. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/164 "2024-07-27T18:11:15Z")
> [@sunacres](#): > > unique Unique, no; but they are likely quite unusual. Rings as spectacular as Saturn’s are [temporary](https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/planets/saturn/rings-of-saturn/nasa-research-reveals-saturn-is-losing-its-rings-at-worst-case-scenario-rate/) affairs, we’re just lucky enough to be around and able to see them at their height. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/165 "2024-07-27T18:20:49Z")
I agree with Tyson’s assessment, including his thoughts on light-speed travel. At best (or worst), some of these sighted objects could be some sort of supersonic craft created by our political enemies, and that we have no information about. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2024, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/166 "2024-07-27T18:32:01Z")
Quasi-off-topic, but so far nobody has bothered to start a new thread here, which surprises me. Anyway, Perseverance found a weird rock on Mars which appears to contain similar features to Terran rocks which once were part of a floodplain: > **[NASA’s Perseverance Rover Scientists Find Intriguing Mars Rock - NASA](https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-2020-perseverance/perseverance-rover/nasas-perseverance-rover-scientists-find-intriguing-mars-rock/)** > > The six-wheeled geologist found a fascinating rock that has some indications it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago, but further research is ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2024, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/167 "2024-07-28T20:55:15Z")
I don’t think this has been mentioned yet, so I’ll include it here. Better if it had been a couple posts above the @John_DiFool’s legit post. > **[Alien Theories](https://xkcd.com/2953/)** > > They originally came here to try to investigate our chemtrail technology, and got increasingly frustrated when all their samples turned out to just be water ice with trace amounts of jet exhaust. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2024, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/168 "2024-08-05T02:43:38Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Really the only reason we have for supposing that UFOs are vessels for extraterrestrial beings is a number of accounts that seem dubious and contradictory. That’s… not coherent. We suppose UFO’s are vessels for extraterrestrial beings because we are beings that shape our experiences and observe that we make things happen, and events happen for because of intensions, so if we observe something strange, we project that it must have a thinking cause that has intent. People have weird dream experiences, and interpret those experiences through the zeitgeist of the time. Whether it’s angels and demons, elves and fairies, incubi and succubi, or ghosts, it’s people projecting explanations. Aliens were the revolutionary idea that came when science began to show other planets were celestial objects like Earth. “They must be inhabited.” Boom, strange sightings, hallucinations, and dreams are now aliens. In spacecraft, because humans need spacecraft. People then attribute any strange observation to the common expected story. Dubious and contradictory is the hallmark they are not the same things. Looking for one common explanation is dubious. > [@Lumpy](#): > > So what else could they be? Common experiences that the observer has never experienced. I’ve seen three or four UFOs in my life. The first - driving at night, large flash in the sky, with a sparkle trail like a big firework. “What was that?” Then I learned about bolide meteors. Driving home from work just before dusk, saw a bright flash of light in the empty blue sky. Looked around, discovered a small plane from the small airport behind my apartment and the angle in the sky from the setting sun. Light momentarily flashed off the plane because of the geometry of motion. One day midday I was driving around the lake and spotted an odd, flashing ball moving around in the sky. Later, I noticed my apartment complex had some mylar balloons tied out. Each time I didn’t know what it was at first, but then identified the “flying object” afterwards. But imagine if I were less observant, and more credulous. They might still be unexplained observations. “Aliens did it!” ---
**Author:** ![Bookkeeper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bookkeeper/32/281_2.png) [@Bookkeeper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bookkeeper)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2024, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/169 "2024-09-03T01:42:50Z")
There’s a lot if ignorance and credulity involved in the “unexplainable” sightings. I came across a UFO sighting post a number of years ago, where the poster had taken video of two glowing balls flying in formation and rapidly receding into the distance, and breathlessly reported it an an obvious UFO sighting. I, however, could clearly see the faintly illuminated shape of the distinctive vertical fin and downturned tailplanes between the two glowing twin jet exhausts of the F-4 Phantom jet climbing to altitude. “Unidentified” only because the observer hadn’t a clue what they were looking at. “A plane? In the sky? Nonsense - it **must** be a UFO!” ---
**Author:** ![Cryptoterestrial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Cryptoterestrial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cryptoterestrial)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/170 "2026-06-13T20:21:51Z")
I created this accounts specifically to call the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) as the dumb, cartoon explanation for them which made sense in 1947 but which does not do a good job of explaining this phenomena… Even though I fully believe in UFOs. My username “Crytpoterrestrial” refers to a theory that other intelligent life evolved on this planet other than humans and that this accounts for the phenomena. At any rate, we seem to deal with a trickster-like, duplicitous phenomena that wears many masks and has many guises. Writers like Jacques Vallée have talked about this for around sixty years now. ---
**Author:** ![Cryptoterestrial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Cryptoterestrial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cryptoterestrial)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/171 "2026-06-13T20:26:15Z")
> [@Bookkeeper](#): > > There’s a lot if ignorance and credulity involved in the “unexplainable” sightings. I came across a UFO sighting post a number of years ago, where the poster had taken video of two glowing balls flying in formation and rapidly receding into the distance, and breathlessly reported it an an obvious UFO sighting. If a person misidentifies mundane phenomena for UFOs, how does that debunk other UFO sightings? I mean, you may misidentify a person as, say, a robber, but that doesn’t mean robbers don’t exist. I myself saw a strange light falling from the sky one night. After a little research, I determined that I had likely seen a military flare. So what? ---
**Author:** ![Cryptoterestrial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Cryptoterestrial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cryptoterestrial)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/172 "2026-06-13T20:29:30Z")
> [@Chefguy](#): > > I agree with Tyson’s assessment, including his thoughts on light-speed travel. At best (or worst), some of these sighted objects could be some sort of supersonic craft created by our political enemies, and that we have no information about. Jacques Vallée, the ufologist who I mentioned in another reply, has said for years that military technology and psyops account for _some_ UFO encounters. But a book like Carl Sagan’s _The Demon-Haunted World_ would have presented _all_ UFO activity as just plain fake and not worth investigating. Only hard work by UFO believers has gotten the layperson to even consider that UFOs might exist in any form. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/173 "2026-06-13T20:30:34Z")
Any one being proven mundane does little. As you say. But when they’re substantially _all_ proven mundane and the remaining few are readily explainable as nearly certainly mundane, eventually you come to a statistical argument that any new ones will follow the familiar statistical pattern of being mundane. ---
**Author:** ![Cryptoterestrial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Cryptoterestrial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cryptoterestrial)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/174 "2026-06-13T20:36:02Z")
How has the US military and other specialists gotten tricked, though? And why do UFO encounters go back so long? See example below. > **[Strange Victorian Era Airships | New England Aviation History](https://newenglandaviationhistory.com/airships-and-flying-machines-real-and-imagined/)** > > Strange Victorian Era Airships ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/175 "2026-06-13T20:51:06Z")
> [@Cryptoterestrial](#): > > How has the US military and other specialists gotten tricked, though? And why do UFO encounters go back so long? Because people are gullible and prone to believe in the inane instead of what can be logically explained. How have the “military and other specialists” been tricked? The military are just ordinary people without necessarily having any scientific background. Flying a jet doesn’t bestow any training in scientific analysis. And what other “specialists” are you referring to? Plumbers? ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/176 "2026-06-13T20:54:54Z")
It seems amazing to me that now that most adults (in much of the world at least) carry an easy to use video camera around with them all the time, the number of UFO sightings seems to have fallen way down, But they’re called UFOs because we haven’t identified all of them. That’s what the U means. I doesn’t mean they can’t be explained, just that there’s not enough evidence for those particular cases. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/177 "2026-06-13T20:58:13Z")
You mean like this?: [![](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/settled.png) ](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/settled.png) from **[xkcd: Settled](https://xkcd.com/1235/)** And that was as of nearly 15 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/178 "2026-06-13T21:01:15Z")
> [@Cryptoterestrial](#): > > My username “Crytpoterrestrial” refers to a theory that other intelligent life evolved on this planet other than humans and that this accounts for the phenomena. > > At any rate, we seem to deal with a trickster-like, duplicitous phenomena that wears many masks and has many guises. Writers like Jacques Vallée have talked about this for around sixty years now. OK, saying that any given UFO is the result of a mischievous intelligent being from this planet, sure, that’s one reasonable possible explanation. But why assume that that mischievous intelligent being isn’t human? Surely, there’s enough of us to go around. And then there’s the same problem as with the alien explanation: If they’re living on the same planet as us and we’ve never met them directly, they must be very, very good at remaining hidden. So why have we seen UFOs? ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/179 "2026-06-13T21:16:49Z")
> [@Cryptoterestrial](#): > > If a person misidentifies mundane phenomena for UFOs, how does that debunk other UFO sightings? Of course it doesn’t. Every UFO/UAP sighting has a different explanation, different circumstances, different witnesses, even if some of these incidents resemble each other. Some sightings take detailed analysis to understand the circumstances, while others are fairly straightforward. I recommend Mick West’s investigations into the recently released UAP clips from the US government, and into the rash of reports showing Starlink Satellites filmed from planes. In some cases there is not enough data to explain the reports; almost all of these unexplained sightings do not have photographic or video evidence to back them up, so the possibility remains that the witnesses were mistaken about some, or many of the cases. So far no indisputable evidence of intelligently controlled craft has been released, and after eighty years I expect this will remain to be the case for the foreseeable future. But maybe one day something will come up. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2026, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108/180 "2026-06-13T21:25:31Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > It seems amazing to me that now that most adults (in much of the world at least) carry an easy to use video camera around with them all the time, the number of UFO sightings seems to have fallen way down, I dunno why this keeps being repeated (c.f. the XKCD pic too), as a quick search on YT will reveal ALL the UFO sightings you could ever _possibly_ wish for, in endless abundance. Annnd are you really going to be able to conclusively judge the veracity of a given video, and then exclaim, “Oh! I finally found an authentic UFO video at long last! I’m now a confirmed believer!” [Note I am otherwise a extraterrestrial skeptic, mostly from the Fermi/Drake angle than the UFO one.] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-ufos-if-theyre-not-alien-spacecraft/998108.md?page=10)