UFO is told to down a US missile

[ar81]

Last year I saw a UFO that challenges everything I know about physics. Given what I know, a metallic ellipsoid can't just rotate like it did and fly straight. Despite of that, I refuse to believe every urban legend on UFOs, until I see evidence with my very eyes.

 

[Coolhand]

rendlesham is regarded so highly because of the people involved and the detail that their accounts go into it's more than just an unxplained light in the nighttime sky. either you assume that they were outright lying, were fooled or did actually encounter something. I mean the guy (again, the deputy commander of the base, not some country yokel or hick) alleged that he actually came close enough to touch the thing... assuming it never happened, you have to ask the question, why would he, and his men, be lying?

http://www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/

 

[GregBurch]

For those who have seen things that seem to defy the laws of physics that they understand I pose this question:

Why are these kind of phenomena ALWAYS of the kind that are evident entirely on the reports of observers and NEVER provide any kind of tangible evidence that is testable other than through the scrutiny of the reliability of the reporting observers?

It seems to me that this is a very legitimate question, because the one thing that all UFO "evidence" has in common is this characteristic: it consists entirely of observer reports. Which leads one to ask, what other kind of phenomena depend entirely on observer reports for evidence of their existence, and never on the existence of tangible evidence?

 

[GregBurch]

rendlesham is regarded so highly because of the people involved and the detail that their accounts go into it's more than just an unxplained light in the nighttime sky. either you assume that they were outright lying, were fooled or did actually encounter something. I mean the guy (again, the deputy commander of the base, not some country yokel or hick) alleged that he actually came close enough to touch the thing... assuming it never happened, you have to ask the question, why would he, and his men, be lying?

http://www.rendlesham-incident.co.uk/

I had never heard of this incident before encountering this thread this morning, so I can't say I'm that familiar with it. I quickly scanned a transcript of the contemporary tape recording Col. Halt made, but didn't see him recount that he touched the object -- did I miss something?

 

[Coolhand]

Sorry, not Holt, Sgt Penniston. he made drawings of the heiroglyphs on a separate occasion... Holt alleges he saw it fly through the trees, dripping molten metal and shooting beams of light.

 

[Bullethead]

Lenticular cloud?

I've never thought lenticular clouds were a good explanation for UFOs. I've seen a lot of them and there's no way to mistake them for anything else. First, they're way too big--even the smallest ones are miles across. Second, they have no noticeable motion. They're a visible manifestation of standing waves in truly huge air currents. These air currents can't change direction fast enough to make the cloud move fast enough to see happening. Nor do these things suddenly vanish.

So while from certain angles and under certain lighting conditions they look like flying saucers, it's always obvious that they're clouds. They're just clouds that look like flying saucers, as other clouds look like people, animals, or other terrestrial objects.

Ball lightning?

I guess ball lightning is a good name for these blobs of light I was talking about, because they seem to be electrostatic things. Problem is, what I was talking about happens when there are no storms around. That's why some folks think they might have to do with tectonic activity, and call them earthquake lights, even if the earthquake involved is too small for people to notice, at least in the areas I'm familiar with (west Texas and SE Missouri). But whatever causes them, they seem definitely to be the result of some natural, non-paranormal process that we just don't understand yet.

I've seen actual ball lightning twice. Once it came out of a telephone handset, and the other time out of a radio handset. Both times, there was a bad thunderstorm going on and lightning had just struck close by. Both times, the ball was about 4 inches wide and shimmered between violet and electric blue, while appearing to be rotating VERY fast. Both balls skipped and hopped along the ground in an irregular path, crackling and spitting, for a second or 2, then disappeared, without damaging anything. They didn't last long enough for me to jump out of their way, so fortunately they didn't come right at me . They left that ozone smell behind them.

 

[Bullethead]

It seems to me that this is a very legitimate question, because the one thing that all UFO "evidence" has in common is this characteristic: it consists entirely of observer reports. Which leads one to ask, what other kind of phenomena depend entirely on observer reports for evidence of their existence, and never on the existence of tangible evidence?

Not that I'm a UFO believer, but to be fair, there are some UFO reports purportedly including physical evidence of some sort. None of it is convincing to me, but I give the guys credit for trying. They know few people believe only eye witness testimony .

UFO guys often say, bitterly, that "eye witnesses can send a man to the electric chair but can't prove UFOs are real". I guess they fail to understand the differences in the situations.

Anyway, back to your question. There are quite a few things that leave no physical evidence behind, only witness reports. Any airplane flying over, for instance. Where you have several witnesses, they're either all in on a hoax or they all saw something. What that something was, though, there's no telling. There are plenty of natural conditions of weather and lighting that can make mundane things look unrecognizable. There are also a few strange, rare, yet still perfectly normal physical processes that most people wouldn't recognize or even know about. But I think these together account for all non-hoax, non-halucination "UFO" sightings.

As I said before, I can't imagine any aliens smart enough to fly all the way over here just buzzing around like in so many sighting reports. Either they'd land and say "take me to your leader", or we'd never know they were here. Nothing in between. So failing a UFO landing in front of God and everybody, and being carried by all the world's media, and alien tech suddenly showing up on the shelf at Circuit City, I'm really not going to believe any "UFO sighting" is actually an alien spacecraft.

 

[Coolhand]

As i've mentioned in another thread, i've seen an event that doesn't seem have any obvious explanation and many have been suggested explanations or i've considered myself, like balloons or projected lights but none seem to fit the bill. i don't believe in alien visitors but i believe there are more things flying around the sky than the public are aware of. I don't think anyone could logically deny this since there are plenty of examples that have come to light many years later, like many secret spycraft that were kept hidden from the public, SR71, U2, F117, etc... if that trend has continued then there must be things flying around today that we don't know about. So things can exist but yet no actual evidence is in the public domain. Also if there is evidence then there's always a way to dispute it no matter how real it is, we all for the most part believe that man landed on the moon but people still dispute it.

It's purely hypothetical of course, but you say there's no middle ground between no contact at all and full contact? Would an Alien civilisation have no way of contacting our leaders, would they have to land somewhere and ask for directions or would they be smart enough to work it out for themselves?

If you were an alien civilisation, interested in earth for some benign reason, would you land in the middle of the whitehouse lawn or the middle of red square or whatever and potentially freak nearly everyone of the comparatively primative population out, or would you try and go straight to the top and make some limited contact that way? Letting the leaders of the earths nations decide what they want to do about disclosing your existence. if it were me, i'd either do that, or hide myself completely if i just wanted to observe for whatever reason.

 

[dougkeenan]

This one was pretty conspicuous!

 

[Atlantis]

Maybe these UFO sighting are just bored alien teenagers engaging in criminal mischief.

 

[Bullethead]

It's purely hypothetical of course, but you say there's no middle ground between no contact at all and full contact? Would an Alien civilisation have no way of contacting our leaders, would they have to land somewhere and ask for directions or would they be smart enough to work it out for themselves?

Exactly. There'd be no middle ground, as in fly-by sightings that lead to nothing. Anybody smart enough to cross interstellar distances in reasonable time would be able to figure out where the native leaders lived, how to talk to them, and how to avoid being seen by them if desired. So either the UFO drivers would stay hidden, or they'd leave no doubt of their existence.

Like I said above, I'm sure a hypothetical alien would think a lot like us, due to convergent evolution. That works whether we're the natives or we're the visitors in the scenario. And you know how people want to go to Mars, because they think they can learn more than the robots. Don't you think that would apply double for a chance to study an alien civilization? Why send people to another star if you don't want them to talk to the natives?

So yeah, there'd be no real "take me to your leader". I was just using that old cliche' because it's an overt alien landing scenario that leads to no doubt at all that they really exist. The plan from the beginning would be either to stay hidden from all or be known to all. If the former, there'd be some attempt to talk before landing, to avoid unfortunate accidents, and then a landing in full view. Nobody who wants to explore a civilization at another star is going to play along with a native government cover-up conspiracy--they've spent too much money getting there. OTOH, if the mission was to stay hidden, there'd be no fly-bys or such things as make up all the "UFO" sighting reports.

Maybe these UFO sighting are just bored alien teenagers engaging in criminal mischief.

If so, I'd expect to see the specific types of physical evidence. There'd be landing sites littered with empty alien beer cans, alien cigarette butts and drug paraphernalia, used alien condoms, forgotten alien cell phones and CD players, and/or alien gang graphitti.

 

[adamb193]

Don't worry they're probally Asgard.

 

[Coolhand]

Exactly. There'd be no middle ground, as in fly-by sightings that lead to nothing. Anybody smart enough to cross interstellar distances in reasonable time would be able to figure out where the native leaders lived, how to talk to them, and how to avoid being seen by them if desired. So either the UFO drivers would stay hidden, or they'd leave no doubt of their existence.

I think you misunderstood, i think there would be chance of a middle ground where only certain people know of their existence without a 'take me to your leader' scenario, as illustrated in that pic above. and this would seem to be the logical way to do it, assuming they were benign and just wanted to study us or whatever. Like i said you wouldn't want to frighten the primative, violent civilisation and threaten their belief systems, we all know what happens when peoples belief systems are threatened.

Anyway, If you believe those things, that intelligent aliens are visiting us right now as some people do then the middle ground between all out contact and no contact is where we would be at today, depending on who you talk to... only certain groups knowing the truth, high level government and military and so on. I'll stop there before getting too deeply into conspiracy theory territory though.

Like I said above, I'm sure a hypothetical alien would think a lot like us, due to convergent evolution. That works whether we're the natives or we're the visitors in the scenario. And you know how people want to go to Mars, because they think they can learn more than the robots. Don't you think that would apply double for an alien civilization? Why send people to another star if you don't want them to talk to the natives?

So yeah, there'd be no real "take me to your leader". I was just using that old cliche' because it's an overt alien landing scenario that leads to no doubt at all that they really exist. The plan from the beginning would be either to stay hidden from all or be known to all. If the former, there'd be some attempt to talk before landing, to avoid unfortunate accidents, and then a landing in full view. Nobody who wants to explore a civilization at another star is going to play along with a native government cover-up conspiracy--they've spent too much money getting there. OTOH, if the mission was to stay hidden, there'd be no fly-bys or such things as make up all the "UFO" sighting reports.?

Which is why, the sightings, crop circles, conspiracy theories would indicate this 'middle ground'. if you take them at face value as signs of alien craft of course.

they wouldn't stay hidden because it cost them too much money to get here? well who says they would have any concept of money... perhaps they'd be like the federation from startrek, well Unless they're ferengi or something like that

perhaps you're right, but again if you take some UFO sightings as being alien craft, then they aren't doing a very good job of hiding themselves completely. Perhaps it would be difficult to study us without revealing themselves in some way... through abductions, crashes or tentative contact with leaders.

 

[GregBurch]

Sorry, not Holt, Sgt Penniston. he made drawings of the heiroglyphs on a separate occasion... Holt alleges he saw it fly through the trees, dripping molten metal and shooting beams of light.

Back from work, I did a little more Googling and returned finally to the site to which I referred earlier. In particular, I found and studied this page;

http://www.ianridpath.com/ufo/rendlesham2b.htm

and the one that follows that has the contemporary statements given by the eyewitnesses, and some analysis in light of things they've later said. I also came across this site:

http://rendlesham-incident.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=354&start=0

a discussion forum in which one of the eyewitnesses participated earlier this year. One interesting thing I noted is that the fellow who makes an appearance on the forum, a John Burroughs, seems to be saying things today that are considerably more dramatic than he did back when he signed a witness statement a few days after the incident. The same is true of the Pennington fellow: The alleged drawings of "hieroglyphs" seem to pretty clearly be a later invention.

All of which makes me have serious, serious doubts about the weight to give to any of this. As I posted in another thread, as a trial lawyer, I've been dealing with the problem of eyewitness testimony to dramatic events for over two decades, and I find it to be deplorably unreliable evidence.

I certainly wouldn't take this case to court.

 

[GregBurch]

Before I move on to other things, here are links to a couple of items regarding the unreliability of eyewitness testimony. The first relates specifically to the research that's been done in the criminal legal area, but does a very good job of surveying the literature on the subject:

http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/FACULTY/gwells/annual_review_2003.pdf

The second relates to eyewitness reliability in the context of observations of putative paranormal phenomena:

http://www.csicop.org/si/9511/eyewitness.html

Both are worth reading for those unfamiliar with the empirical work that's been done on this important subject.

 

[Coolhand]

I certainly wouldn't take this case to court.

Unless those glyphs are mentioned in an official dated report (which they may be, i haven't looked into it that much really) then its impossible to say when they were drawn, not that the time they were drawn really has any bearing on whether it was real or not - if he's bs'ing then he could have done that on the night just as well as years later.

Halt apparently asked for sketches to be made after the first incident, before he went out for his encounter so thats presumably when the drawings of the craft were made. I haven't read anything thats suggested that halt saw the glyph sketches prior to the second encounter.

Also, if penniston was playing a hoax, it's a very, very strange coincidence that a similar event happened again a few nights later for a completely separate set of people, unless you consider that it was a hoax that they were all in on. And why would they pull such a hoax? surely if found out they'd face some serious reprimands, demotions, whatever... they'd really nothing to gain that i can see from pulling such a stunt. Unless perhaps it was something they were ordered to do as public disinformation excercise.. though again, why?

I don't know who this burroughs character is btw, what part he played or how his story changed, i'm not an expert on the incident, i've just heard the story a couple of times over the years and i've always found it interesting. I don't think halt's story has ever changed. however if someones story is embellished over time it doesn't mean there's no truth to the story at all.

 

[Coolhand]

Well, I've stayed up extra late and read through that ian ridpath site, it does a pretty good job of debunking the incident... Halt actually comes off as something of a bumbling idiot, chasing a lighthouse through the trees, across fields and falling in a ditch at one point before giving up and calling it a night. One thing that i couldn't quite work out was how the lighthouse was visible, then i found the site linked to a pic of the lighthouse, illuminated at night, from somewhere east of the 'landing site' and the lighthouse light is visble quite clearly from that far inland - despite it having an opaque section to prevent the beam from shining over the land, probably more of a reflection or something from inside? perhaps he realised after a while what it was, at that point he gave up and ran with the story to stop himself from looking like a moron in front of his men and superiors. It doesn't seem to explain everything in the transcript though, the other lights/objects which seem to move (the splitting up into smaller balls of light that he described later?) the multicoloured lights, and the beam which shoots to the ground though possibly that was something to do with the powerful lighthouse light... no mention of the 'molten metal' though, which does seem to have crept in later, though the tape and / or the transcript might not be complete.

Also, if that lighthouse was the cause, then wouldn't it have been noted earlier at some point, or if the lighthouse wasn't noted as the cause of the sighting, wouldn't it have been sighted time and time again as the lighthouse was used until they finally realised what it was? was there some unique optical or atmospheric affect on those nights? I wonder how long the first team who sighted the light had been stationed on that base.

 

[TR1978]

Even an apollo-astronaut believe in the Aliens it seems:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ms-aliens-HAVE-contact--covered-60-years.html

:blink:

 

[GregBurch]

Even an apollo-astronaut believe in the Aliens it seems:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ms-aliens-HAVE-contact--covered-60-years.html

:blink:

I was aware of Mitchell's embarrassing ESP "experiement" during the AS-14 mission, but didn't realize what a fruitcake he really was till I googled him after seeing the article you linked to.

... pretty sad ...

 

[TR1978]

... pretty sad ...

My thoughts exactly..