Ufology

[kensei]

I listen to a LOT of radio shows and read articles and soforth that reference ancient astronauts and how mankind may have been created by aliens visiting Earth eons ago that became thought of as gods and eventually became responsible for the creation of religions, etc. Even the Bible gets interpreted as descriptions of contact with E.T.s, and there are authors out there who write that peoples' encounters with benign and hostile aliens are really encounters with angels and demons. And I am very tired with all of it. I happen to be a religious person, AND I happen to believe that extraterrestrials visit Earth, but I don't think the two have anything to do with each other, apart from the fact that the same divine creator would be the source of all of it. Angels are angels, demons are demons, aliens are aliens. I have heard interviews with two different scholars (don't ask me to remember their names) debunking Sitchin and his theories on the Annanakie (or however you spell that). He said he had decoded the Sumerian texts and found all this lengthy and fascinatingly detailed E.T. stuff in them, but both the debunkers referenced a fairly recent public translation of those texts finally being published, and that none of what Sitchin talked about was anywhere to be found in them. When asked about this, all Sitchin could say was, "It's all in my books." I let Sitchin go at that point.

The UFO phenomenon to me is much more about modern cases and what can be gleaned from them. Things like accounts I have heard about both the Phoenix lights and the similarly shaped objects seen over the Hudson Valley of New York and how a few people in both cases reported seeing not just lights but structured craft- hundreds of feet wide in Hudson Valley, and up to a mile wide in Phoenix. Things like every single witness to the Travis Walton abduction in Arizona in 1975 passing lie detector tests about what they'd seen. (One failed initially, but retested years later and passed.) Things like the Hickson-Parker abduction case in Pascagoula, Mississippi, wherein the two men while sitting in a police station after the event were listened in on while they sat in a room alone together without knowing they were being listened to, and talked not about how they were going to get away with their lie but despaired about how no one would believe them about what had just happened. These are things that stick in my mind after many years of reading a lot of UFO books that I don't have in front of me now, so again, don't ask me for references. I just think there is a human element to the subject that can't be ignored. People get accused of telling these stories for attention, but the kind of attention they often get is hardly the kind anyone woul want.

[Scorpio]

When was the first modern verified UFO sighting?; something even predating Foo fighters of WW2 ?. I personally doubt it.

[kensei]

When was the first modern verified UFO sighting?; something even predating Foo fighters of WW2 ?. I personally doubt it.

There was a wave of "airship" sightings in the late 19th-early 20th century, though I believe many of those were experimental man-made craft (the Wright Brothers not being the first to get off the ground, just the first to go public with it). Then there are really old cases- an ancient Roman report of a "burning shield" passing across the sky, a painting from the middle ages of a cityscape with what looks exactly like a modern flying saucer in the sky, things like that. As for when the "first modern verified" sighting was? Well, skeptics would say that none of them are verified, but there's a theory that they started to appear in wide numbers in the 40s in response to the atomic bomb.

[Scorpio]

Faster than light travel is the real hurdle for alien visitors. If i can be convinced by the physics behind the theory, then the whole premise seems more reasonable. We will have to wait untill humans have developed the technology no doubt;but when will that be?.
If the theories are valid, then i believe that travelling to the nearest star systems ( a few parsecs ) will become a pratical reality by the final quarter of the 21st century;Engineers and astro-physicists would probably consider this a wildly optimistic claim.

[Steven Russell]

But is it? From a human point of view, travel to nearby stars is impractical if we concede that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.

Perhaps it can but let's assume for a minute it can't. Even on Earth, some creatures seem to live life at different speeds than others. Try swatting a housefly or catching a mouse with your bare hands. An extraterrestrial species could live life at a completely different speed to us. If you had a lifespan of tens of thousands of years, a ten-year hop to the nearest planet would not be out of the question.

Best wishes,
Steve.

[Scorpio]

2013 might be the year when science fact catches up with science fiction, and the idea of engineered UFO's seem a little less fancifull. The aforementioned year will see the debut of a new plasma rocket engine that apparently can reduce a return mission to mars to thirtynine days.

[Abby Normal]

But is it? From a human point of view, travel to nearby stars is impractical if we concede that the speed of light cannot be exceeded.

Perhaps it can but let's assume for a minute it can't. Even on Earth, some creatures seem to live life at different speeds than others. Try swatting a housefly or catching a mouse with your bare hands. An extraterrestrial species could live life at a completely different speed to us. If you had a lifespan of tens of thousands of years, a ten-year hop to the nearest planet would not be out of the question.

Best wishes,
Steve.

A very perceptive point. and i agree.

I would imagine an advanced lifeform would have learned to bio/cyber/robo engineer themselves to greatly increase there lifespans.

Just look at how far the avg lifespan of human beings here on earth have increased.

[Scorpio]

If an interstellar craft includes a crew of organic beings such as ourselves, even if there is no reason why it should, then cryogenics seem the logical answer. All bio-cell activity ( cell division is the process of ageing ) ceases if you reduce the temperature sufficiently. Its all a matter of damaging the cells during the freezing process.

[louisa]

Hello. I am new to this board but have had a lifelong interest in the subject of UFO's.

I have a great deal of respect for Timothy Good - the author of many books on the subject, including Above Top Secret. This is a fascinating book full of eyewitness accounts by the military and by airline pilots. He has written other books, equally absorbing.

I was wondering if anyone here has read the book 'The Uninvited?' by Clive Harold (not to be confused with many other books of the same title).

I have spoken to one of the main characters (or should I say 'victims) in this case and she is an old lady now, and entirely plausible.

[Scorpio]

Hello. I am new to this board but have had a lifelong interest in the subject of UFO's.

I have a great deal of respect for Timothy Good - the author of many books on the subject, including Above Top Secret. This is a fascinating book full of eyewitness accounts by the military and by airline pilots. He has written other books, equally absorbing.

I was wondering if anyone here has read the book 'The Uninvited?' by Clive Harold (not to be confused with many other books of the same title).

I have spoken to one of the main characters (or should I say 'victims) in this case and she is an old lady now, and entirely plausible.

Hi, I did read Above Top Secret a few years ago. I thought some of the cases mentioned in the book did not do Ufology any good.
I think anecdotal evidence without some empirical form of evidence to back it up should be avoided.

[louisa]

Hi, I would agree with you. However, Timothy Good has researched his sources well. These aren't simply accounts like "Mrs. Bloggs of Moose Droppings, Iowa, looked up in the sky last year and saw an unexplained flying object". All the cases in Timothy Good's books are given by either persons in the military or airline pilots. He names these and give times and dates.

Airline pilots and military personnel are very reticient about talking about these kinds of sightings, therefore any accounts should be treated seriously.

Timothy Good lives very close to me in Bromley, Kent (UK) and he gives lectures at schools about the subject, with slide shows. He is also a professional violinist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, so I'm presuming he's a well educated person.

[Phil H]

I have several of Mr Good's books.

They are well written and interesting, yet the problem for me remains that there is so little corroboration, not much that cannot be explained by other (perhaps less unorthodox) causes - aircraft on triels/meteorological events, the moon, reflections etc.

Where there are crashes the clean-up is so complete that no trace is detectable - is that really conceivable? Where something is seen, there are never more than a handful of witnesses. I do not dispute that they may all have seen something - only that it was not alien.

To my mind the best evidence that aliens have visted earth in recent years would be that such an occurance might explain leaps in technological advance through reverse engineering or shared science. But that would imply a HUGE, global and highly successful cover-up conspiracy.

I can conceive of the reasons for such a cover-up - the shock, the impact on the religious beliefs of millions, the psychological effect on earthlings of finding that not only are we alone, but we aren't even in the top class - would be historically enormous and perhaps unleash all sorts of distructive forces (mental and physical). I just question whether Governments are capable of keeping such a big secret for a sustained period.

Phil

[louisa]

Well I think they must be capable because they have covered it up.

Talking about reverse engineering - what is to be made of Corso's book about it...I think it's titled 'The Day After Roswell' ?

Surely somebody in his position wouldn't make something like that up, would he?

[kensei]

Louisa- have you seen Leslie Kean's 2010 book "UFOs- Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record"? It's an excellent collection of reports by witnesses who couldn't be considered anything but credible heavy hitters.

And Phil- IF there has been a huge coverup by governments of alien presence on Earth, recovered UFOs, back-engineered technology, etc., I would hardly refer to it as "highly successful." If it had been that, no one would be talking about it. Instead, the fact that books and films and t.v. specials have spelled out practically every detail of what governments are alleged to be up to in places like Area 51 to the point where it's become part of pop culture would seem to indicate that the coverup has been one of the worst attempts at secret-keeping ever attempted.

I've always said that about the whole field of "conspiracy theory." What does the term mean? Simply that someone has a theory that someone else has conspired, which people certainly do all the time. But somehow the term's become synonymous with "crazy nonsense," and for each well known conspiracy theory someone will skeptically say, "There's no way something that big could have been kept secret for so long." To which I say- exactly! The only reason we're talking about it at all is because you're absolutely right!

Then of course there's always the point of view that if you want to work in some top secret operation on a grand scale that mustn't ever be fully revealed and proven, make sure it's something so crazy-sounding that even if every detail of it leaks out you will still have complete immunity because the mainstream will never believe it.

[Jonathan H]

Timothy Good's book 'Above Top Secret' is fun, but as an expose on government cover-ups it is terminally weak.

Good simply believes every UFO/alien tale he is told, the classic example of his being hoaxed -- it did not take much -- is that he believed the 'Majestic-12' document forgeries (which were also fun, especially the coyote who took off with a dead alien) which are the real moment when 'Roswell' became the UFO incident.

Conspiracy 'theorists' miss that the U.S. Army/Air-Force was initially -- and secretly -- panicked by 'flying saucer' reports, believing the craft to be extra-terrestrial visitors, or worse invaders. This was Project Sign. But cooler military heads began to grasp that the accounts by reliable witnesses were mistaken about what they thought they were seeing in terms of speed, trajectory and shape (plus that the original sighting of 'flying saucers', by reliable witness Kenneth Arnold, were of no such thing).