Has anyone ever seen a UFO?

[Slowtrain]

Can we disprove bigfoot with radar?

[Amentep]

Im surprised nobody brought those discrepencies (tagets speed / distance) to the pilots attention over all these years. I mean, it seems pretty cut and dry with the application of one formula.

 

It depends on the listeners. Some may assumed as taks pointed out that the listeners may have assumed an expertise that wasn't there. But there are a number of people who will believe any unusual phenomenon even in the face of scientific evidence (for example the proliferation of ghost hunters having "ghost orb" photos taken with a digital camera which is usually, in fact, backscatter or near-camera reflection due to decreasing size in cameras - particularly digital ones).

[Gfted1]

keep in mind, i'm guessing about the type of radar he was using. the AN/APG-30 was probably the most advanced technology they used on the F-86 sabre, so it seems to be a reasonable assumption that 7600 miles/hour was not within detection limits.

 

Also the F86d had an AN/APG 36...

 

Not sure if that matters.

 

It depends on the listeners. Some may assumed as taks pointed out that the listeners may have assumed an expertise that wasn't there. But there are a number of people who will believe any unusual phenomenon even in the face of scientific evidence (for example the proliferation of ghost hunters having "ghost orb" photos taken with a digital camera which is usually, in fact, backscatter or near-camera reflection due to decreasing size in cameras - particularly digital ones).

 

I suppose. I would just hope people like that wouldnt be driving our fighters, lol.

[Slowtrain]

Part of it has to do with the credibility of the person making the claims. If some moron like myself who knows nothing about radar were to start talking about msyterious contacts, it would be pretty normal to doubt that I had any idea what I was talking about. But if a trained fighter pilot makes those same claims, I would have assumed that the pilot was more than competent in interpreting radar readings. Maybe they couldn't build or troubleshoot a radar array, but they should be able to know what it's telling them so they don't launch a missle at a flight of geese.

 

Also just to clarify for the sake of clarity, this particular had nothing to do with UFO Hunters as far as I know.

[taks]

the 36 is probably similar to the 30, i.e., an x-band pulse doppler radar, so similar numbers would apply.

 

i found some other discussions that have much lower numbers for the speed (like 800 kts) which is much more reasonable. i also tried to find actual parameters for these specific fire control radars but it seems there isn't much out there (uh, on the web). skolnik's "radar handbook" doesn't list any APG radars. it's no longer used so no surprise that information is hard to find.

 

taks

[SteveThaiBinh]

140 years of UFO sightings

[taks]

btw, i would not be surprised if there were some truth to a lot of these claims, at least, that there may be some advanced technology floating around in the skies that we (the public) are not 100% aware of. that does not mean, however, that it is a) extraterrestrial or b) alien, but neither does that exclude either possibility.

 

i want to believe, but i also want the information to be factual, not nonsensical.

 

taks

[Amentep]

I don't think its impossible for there to be UFOs that are of extraterrestrial origin, but I think there are far to many people who see something that on the surface is inexplicable and leap to the conclusion that it IS extraterrestrial (and just as many who insist quickly there is no way it could be extraterrestrial).

 

Which is sort of my take on most of the "paranormal" studies.

[taks]

exaaaaactly. oh, and by "alien" i mean, not of known human origin. i can't fully discount the possibility (albeit very low) that there is some extremely advanced civilization hidden under the sea somewhere that like to spy on their landlubbing neighbors.

 

taks

[Amentep]

Also known as "Our Secret Atlantean Masters"

[Walsingham]

Surely a reasonable question, irrespective, is why the UFOs show up sometimes and not others. If one assumes they are genuine UFOs what plan would that be consistent with? It seems fairly unlikely that they'd hide most of the time, and pop out occasionally.

[taks]

maybe they pop out more than we know, and we simply don't notice them all the times they do?

 

heck, maybe I AM one of them thar atlanteans?

 

taks

[Amentep]

Surely a reasonable question, irrespective, is why the UFOs show up sometimes and not others. If one assumes they are genuine UFOs what plan would that be consistent with? It seems fairly unlikely that they'd hide most of the time, and pop out occasionally.

 

Well the problem is that it assumes that all UFOs have a common origin. Even if assume a significant amount of UFOs aren't earthly in origin, that still leads a vast potential for multiple different extraterrestrials visiting the earth for a multitude of reasons.

 

So a consistent plan in terms of motivation can't really be created without making a large number of assumptions.

 

As far as we know, the greys come to investigate the dero in the hollow earth and then some other aliens come afterwords to try and figure out why the greys were poking around...

 

maybe they pop out more than we know, and we simply don't notice them all the times they do?

 

heck, maybe I AM one of them thar atlanteans?

 

taks

 

It was your ability in Maths that tipped us off.

[Slowtrain]

140 years of UFO sightings

 

 

Those are some pretty cool photos. No doubt many of them are hoazes and mis-ids, but still, you gotta wonder, would anybody have even thought of hoaxing a UFO photo in 1920? And there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of manmade objects in the sky at that point.

[Walsingham]

140 years of UFO sightings

 

 

Those are some pretty cool photos. No doubt many of them are hoazes and mis-ids, but still, you gotta wonder, would anybody have even thought of hoaxing a UFO photo in 1920? And there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of manmade objects in the sky at that point.

 

Besides biplanes, zeppelins, barrage balloons, and Lord Lucan?

[Amentep]

Besides which, even if the photo dates to 1920, the identification of a weird flying object may not have come until later. Until then people might have just thought it was some weird bit on the photo. Need some history of the photo to know for sure.

[Slowtrain]

140 years of UFO sightings

 

 

Those are some pretty cool photos. No doubt many of them are hoazes and mis-ids, but still, you gotta wonder, would anybody have even thought of hoaxing a UFO photo in 1920? And there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of manmade objects in the sky at that point.

 

Besides biplanes, zeppelins, barrage balloons, and Lord Lucan?

 

 

I said that there wasn't a whole heck of a lot, not that there weren't any. That statement was relative to humanity's presence in the skies around and above earth today.

[Slowtrain]

Besides which, even if the photo dates to 1920, the identification of a weird flying object may not have come until later. Until then people might have just thought it was some weird bit on the photo. Need some history of the photo to know for sure.

 

That's true. But my point was more that the public awareness of UFO's didn't really take off until the 40's and 50's. If someone in the 20's was interested in making some sort of hoax photo, they most likely would have choosen a medium with ectoplasm coming from her nose as the photo subject not a flying saucer. Seances and the paranormal were very much a part of the public consciousness even then, UFOs were not.

 

Anyway, I'm not saying that age makes them any more real than a contemporary photo, only that I find it interesting that photos of UFOs go back that far.

[Amentep]

Besides which, even if the photo dates to 1920, the identification of a weird flying object may not have come until later. Until then people might have just thought it was some weird bit on the photo. Need some history of the photo to know for sure.

 

That's true. But my point was more that the public awareness of UFO's didn't really take off until the 40's and 50's. If someone in the 20's was interested in making some sort of hoax photo, they most likely would have choosen a medium with ectoplasm coming from her nose as the photo subject not a flying saucer. Seances and the paranormal were very much a part of the public consciousness even then, UFOs were not.

 

Anyway, I'm not saying that age makes them any more real than a contemporary photo, only that I find it interesting that photos of UFOs go back that far.

 

Yeah, I understand what you're saying about faking it, but that doesn't mean that an unfaked picture couldn't have an object in it that is only seen as being a UFO in retrospective viewings of the photo, but at the time wasn't considered to be anything more than...oh, dust on the lens or something.

 

Documenting UFOs goes back far into history (Chinese documents indicate appearances of what is believed to be Halley's Comet in 240 BC; Shen Kuo a scholar and official wrote of testimony from people in the 11th century who saw a fast moving, glowing pearl shaped object); there are a number of sightings in the late 1800s and early 1900s that all predate the 1940s & 1950s UFO craze.

[Gorgon]

There seems to be a theory that they are optical illusions created by the earth's magnetic field.

[Hell Kitty]

but at the time wasn't considered to be anything more than...oh, dust on the lens or something.

 

That's exactly what the first few pictures in that list look like to me, or marks on the photo or some such. I wonder who decided they were UFOs?

[Slowtrain]

Defintely that first picture, taken in 1870, is pretty meaningless. To me it just looks like a black blob on a white background. It could just as easily be a dragon as a UFO.

 

The second one could be a plane, since it appears to be larger and darker to the left than to the right, faintly indicating a ****pit trailing back to a tail assembly.

 

The third one is slightly more interesting since it appears round with areas of even spaced highlights, but without knowing how close to the camera it is, you can't really tell if it is a tiny chunk of something flying by in the wind or something larger up in the sky.

 

The fourth one looks more like a small bit of something flying by close to the lens. It appeats to have the same light source as the man, lit from above, shadowed below. The shadow line would seem to indicate that it is somewhat spherical.

 

 

But yeah they are all pretty vague.

 

By the time you get to the 1950's all photos have to be considered hoaxes first and foremost, since some people seem to really enjoy creating those sorts of things for whatever reason, and by the 1950's the modern UFO craze was in full swing.

Edited November 13, 2008 by CrashGirl

[Hell Kitty]

Defintely that first picture, taken in 1870, is pretty meaningless. To me it just looks like a black blob on a white background. It could just as easily be a dragon as a UFO.

 

I don't even know what's supposed to be going on in that one.

 

[Slowtrain]

I guessed that the white background was either clouds or mountains covered with snow or both blending together and the black object in the center was the UFO. But really I have no idea. I can't even tell if it is a photo of a large and distant vista or an extreme close up of somebody's arse end.

[Hell Kitty]

I'm pretty sure the dark part is a dragon.