Talk:How do we know UFO sightings represent anything extraordinary

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Contents 1 Things to change 2 Including Buzz Aldrin video is possibly disingenuous? 3 Slightly Longer Argument (used on Clipmarks) 4 Notes 5 References 6 Can the existence of UFOs be confirmed by anecdotal evidence?

Things to change

• Pull Aldrin ref and instead use Malmstrom? Make sure to use links to the direct FOIA docs.
• Might be worthwhile to think about culling Thornton? Nah it provides historical perspective how the data is good enough that even the person who originally came up with the debunking explanation reverted on their position.
• Research big sur further or consider cull.
• Need to make sure I hit on all the possible reasons why people establish a reason for believing. Thus I need to add:
  • a quick paragraph mentioning Dr. Amir Aczel's book "Probability One," the Drake equation, Fermi's paradox, Gemini missions, arthobaceter,
  • Mention the scientific means to actually study the phenomenon (ie/ Beeblebrox)
  • Mention Bob White's object, perhaps Roger Leir's work, and in general the best of the best physical evidence cases outside of radar that are tangible.

Including Buzz Aldrin video is possibly disingenuous?

I originally wrote:

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on 11/24/2007 made an appearance on Larry King Live (youtube vid) and said that as the panels were floating away from Apollo 11 that he, Armstrong, and Collins tracked a point of light in space, that wasn't a star, that was moving and changing directions. — Brief Proof of UFOs, part 5 from Larry King, July 13, 2007[1]

As someone pointed out on ATS:

“

Just a heads-up on Buzz Aldrin's admission. He actually did a sort of a back-flip and recanted having ever had a close encounter. Again it was on the Larry King Show Larry King[2]

”

Part 6 of the video has Buzz saying,

LARRY: Buzz what did you see? BUZZ: What did I see during the flight? LARRY: Yes BUZZ: We saw one of the four panels to 99.999% and these are three guys who have flown in space twice and have looked out at the stars and all sorts of things. —Larry King, July 13, 2007[3]

Slightly Longer Argument (used on Clipmarks)

Lets start with something that we can all agree was conducted in a scientific manner. Did you know the Viking 1 mission detected "the presence of an active agent that was inhibited by heating" which satisfied the pre-mission criteria for detecting microbial organisms?

That was 32 years ago.

A large number of scientists still believe this is proof of life on Mars. (1)

Next up, it's common knowledge that Kenneth Arnold started the UFO craze in 1947 when he told news reporters he had seen several objects that "flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." Most skeptics claim that there aren't any substantive documents describing UFOs pre-dating Arnold's story and that the reason there were more first-hand accounts after Arnold's story was because people were then inclined to see UFOs after having the idea placed in their heads.

Well, did you that know in 1942 the government instituted a mandatory black out of the entire city of LA & fired 1400+ Anti-Aircraft rounds at a single, quoting the military, "unidentified aircraft"? The shelling lasted for more than an hour! Despite numerous confirmed hits the craft remained airborne and eventually flew off without ever being identified. (Read the 1942 LA Times article - picture included).

Going even further back there's an account from 1878 in Denison, Texas from a farmer who gave this account to a local newspaper,

“

... Tuesday morning while out hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eves to discover its character. When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed." "When directly over him it was about the size of a large saucer and was evidently at great height. Mr. Martin thought it resembled, as well as he could judge, a balloon. It went as rapidly as it had come and was soon lost to sight in the heavenly skies. ... (source)

”

There are numerous other historical accounts (IE/ foo fighters in WWII, 1561 woodcut from Nuremberg, etc) that are unambiguously UFOs.

It's important to note that UFO sightings aren't just seen by the general public. In 1948 green fireballs were seen over the south-western skies of the US near nuclear weapons research sites. Famous meteoriticist Dr. Lincoln La Paz declared they weren't normal meteors. In 1949 the USAF started Project Twinkle under the direction of Dr. Anthony Mirarchi.

(NOTE: the rest is the same as the above Brief Proof of UFOs) </div>

Notes

References

Can the existence of UFOs be confirmed by anecdotal evidence?

I suppose that it's possible to confirm that many of the people who see UFO's genuinely see something. But will this every confirm that there is anything interesting behind some of these sightings, something as interesting as extraterrestrial spacecraft?

People report sightings of ghosts. Nowadays, "Ghost Hunters" collect photographic and audio data which, in the opinion of some, shows the existence of ghosts. Apparently there is a large volume of such evidence. However, I don't think this data is good enough to prove the existence of ghosts as a physical phenomena. Yet the activities of the "Ghost Hunters" on TV are more systematic that the actions of most UFOologists. The people who study UFOs too often put themselves in the role of historian or social scientist. They are interested in the past. They interview witnesses, they look at evidence that witnesses managed to collect. They too rarely try to actively monitor or detect. For example, the primary interest of UFO enthusiasts in detecting UFO's by gravitational variations doesn't center on trying to set up such equipment. It centers on a historical effort (http://ufo-joe.tripod.com/gov/shbay.html) by Wilbert Smith and focuses on rumors of suppression, conspiracy etc. A project to detect UFOs by magnetic fields (http://www.nicap.org/madar.htm) is also only of historical interest. Both these projects could probably be done today with modern equipment, better and more cheaply that they were done in the past.

The most well known current attempts to detect UFOs are the conspiracy theorist Ed Grimsley's exercises to use night vision equipment. I conjecture that it would not be hard to do something scientific with night vision equipment. It would require using the equipment that astronomers use to direct telescopes. Two night vision telescopes would be set up several miles apart and they would be directed so as to center the same distant star in their field of view. Videos of what each telescope saw would be taken. The videos could be analyzed to eliminate debris that appeared in only one of the telescopes. The range to any moving object seen in both scopes could be estimated by the parallax.

What are the odds that any scientific effort will be made to detect UFOs and obtain solid information about them? I'm afraid there is not much chance of that happening. UFO enthusiasts are suited to be historians or social scientists. They want to interview people and analyze old documents.

Tashirosgt 15:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)