Recent revelations about UFOs*cough*UAPs from the military

[sandcastles]

I found a few things about pre-1900 UFO sightings.  Anything much earlier is probably just artistic imagination and weird symbolisms.  Although Carl Sagan did cite the Sumerian legend of Oannes...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apkallu

https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/...story4.htm

http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2012/07...files.html

http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2016/09...-book.html

SF has lots of secret aliens living among us, like Clifford Simak's Way Station.

Is their any possibility Roswell really was a spaceship crashing, or is that totally discredited?  The alien might still be repairing his/her ship, sharing just tiny tidbits of tech with the Pentagon.

The apparent size of the UFO doesn't necessarily indicate its mass.  It could be a tiny vessel projecting an image or something.  A tiny vessel manipulating aircraft sensors.

Our planet might have had an earlier civilization 100 million or a billion years ago, and they're studying us.  The EG has articles on the Hiders, so the earlier civ. might be Hiders in the Oort Cloud, watching us covertly.

The prehistoric civ. might have suffered a disaster, lost a lot of knowledge and technology, and only recently
re-acquired it.

They might have been hiding in underground caverns until recently.

Different UFO sightings might have different explanations, some of them listed in the poll choices, some not.

[selden]

My understanding is that Roswell has been pretty much discredited.

Too many people are unaware of the extensive scientific research which makes use of helium-filled balloons to carry scientific payloads to high altitudes.

Personally, I was involved in high-altitude ballon-born gamma-ray astronomy in the mid-1970s. After observing for most of a day at altitudes above 100,000 ft, the telescope was cut loose to parachute to the ground. Once when we went to recover it, we found that someone had beat us to it and had “filled it with buckshot”. (Fortunately nothing was damaged.) We could only imagine what tales the shooter might have told his friends.

The launch site is located near the town of Palestine, in eastern Texas. At the time, the balloon launching station was run by NCAR. Currently it’s administered by NASA. Our telescope, which flew about a half-dozen times, usually landed somewhere in west Texas. It had to be cut down before it got too near the mountains, where it would have been unrecoverable.

If you’re interested, I created a model of the telescope for viewing in Celestia. It can be downloaded from https://www.classe.cornell.edu/%7Eseb/ce...index.html

[Drashner1]

My mother and I were talking on the phone the other day and she actually asked me about these recent revelations and what I thought about them. TBH I don't have a lot of thoughts about them atm as I have other things (OA related and not) on my plate just now.

That said, a thought that shook out of our conversation and that I figured I'd share here:

With probably some exceptions, natural phenomena seem to usually operate on/in connection with some kind of repeating cycle. In some cases the cycle may be quite a bit longer than the time frames humans usually deal in or notice, in others they repeat every year (or possibly less).

If UFOs (or at least some UFOs) are/are based on natural phenomena of some kind it would seem to logically follow that their appearances would follow some kind of repeating cycle, with the number of appearances waxing and waning again and again over some period of time and connection with some natural phenomenon (seasons, planetary orbits, sunspot cycle, cicada hatchings, whatever). Of course if the period of time for a cycle is significant longer than humans generally deal with that could complicate matters.

Anyway - this leads to the question - Is there any evidence of UFO sightings/the number of sightings corresponding with any kind of cyclic natural phenomenon that we are aware of?

Todd

[stevebowers]

There are more UFO sightings whenever the star Sirius is in the sky, because that star displays very distinct scintillations. I have also noticed that UFO reports are more common when Mars is at opposition, or when Venus is at maximum elongation, and during apparitions of Mercury. The other planet that causes UFO reports is Jupiter, but that planet is generally very constant in brightness, so can cause sightings almost any time it is in the sky.

I actually had a telephone report of a UFO which I could explain in real time, since it was caused by a close conjunction between Jupiter and Mars. Sometimes a conjunction can look very similar to hovering aircraft, with lights at each end. Plenty of people really don't recognise the objects in the sky, especially when they do unexpected things like make a smiley face.


Luna-Venus-Jupiter 1/12/08

[Vitto]

There are more UFO sightings whenever the star Sirius is in the sky, because that star displays very distinct scintillations. I have also noticed that UFO reports are more common when Mars is at opposition, or when Venus is at maximum elongation, and during apparitions of Mercury. The other planet that causes UFO reports is Jupiter, but that planet is generally very constant in brightness, so can cause sightings almost any time it is in the sky.

And almost always when a low resolution camera is around

On this matter I live on the saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (C. Sagan): to me the chance to get a """real""" UFO that want to stay hidden on a camera is the same to catch an invisible bomber with a speed cam.

[selden]

https://www.metabunk.org/home/ has several articles explaining how optical effects caused some of the UAP sightings. Some remain unexplained.

[Captain Genet]

There are less reports in Europe than in America, maybe because the general public here is more educated. Also, there are no UFO reports from professional astronomers.

If aliens want to study us, they can do it using a bee-sized probe orbiting our planet. Can anyone detect such a probe with 21st century tech?

[MacGregor]

Something to keep in mind, is that these likely aren’t monocausal. Some are probably misinterpreted natural phenomena, others are misinterpreted man made objects. As others have said, while some can’t be full identified yet, there’s no reason to think these are extraterrestrial or supernatural. I also don’t think this is a gov/mil PSYOP. People, including politicians, are curious about UAPs, so this report gets released which states that some incidents are not currently identifiable. That doesn’t strike me as a gov cover up or misinformation campaign.

[Drashner1]

There's also the issue of how such a massive operation (apparently lasting for decades across multiple governments and multiple countries and multiple American administrations (if we just count the US here) could work over so long with no leaks, screw ups, etc.

Contrary to popular belief, 'the government' is not hyper-competent in any given area such that it could keep this up for this long. Nor is it hyper-incompetent. And it's funny how many people believe it is both these things at the same time btw. The same goes for basically any other human institution.

However, the tendency to ascribe superhuman levels of (in)competence and nefarious purpose to groups/govs that one doesn't know well or really understand is well documented across history.

Todd

[selden]

It has long seemed silly to me to attribute any single characteristic to so large an organization as a government. It consists of many different individuals, each with their own agenda and often working, more or less effectively, at cross purposes.