Here's a thought I've had for years:

Why do people who see UFOs that they claim to be alien spacecraft always say they have flashing lights? Why would any "alien spacecraft" have any lights on it at all? The only reason aircraft on Earth have lights on them is as a warning to other aircraft, and I can't imagine extraterrestrials would be concerned with compliance with FAA regulations. It can't be necessary to be able to see where they're going or to navigate; military aircraft often undertake missions operating in "stealth mode" without any visible lights at all. And I can't imagine they'd be using them for communication, they must have heard of radio or something a bit more advanced than sending "blinker" semaphore, like WWII Navy ships.

It would seem that anything flying around with lights on it is, there, likely NOT to be any sort of space aliens.

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If it wasn't for time, everything would happen at once!

I have posed exactly that question to UFO believers, and either gotten the response, "Uhhh; erm, uh..." or, "Because they're aliens! They don't think like we do!"

I have also asked government conspiracy believers why the government would fly super-duper top secret aircraft with their lights on so that everyone could see them. I have yet to hear a reasonable reply to that one, as well.

Edit: By the way, welcome to the board, bbws1o!

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Yes, they laughed at Einstein, but only because of his silly hairstyle; no one was actually laughing at his science.

Here's a thought I've had for years:

Why do people who see UFOs that they claim to be alien spacecraft always say they have flashing lights? Why would any "alien spacecraft" have any lights on it at all? The only reason aircraft on Earth have lights on them is as a warning to other aircraft, and I can't imagine extraterrestrials would be concerned with compliance with FAA regulations. It can't be necessary to be able to see where they're going or to navigate; military aircraft often undertake missions operating in "stealth mode" without any visible lights at all. And I can't imagine they'd be using them for communication, they must have heard of radio or something a bit more advanced than sending "blinker" semaphore, like WWII Navy ships.

It would seem that anything flying around with lights on it is, therefore, likely NOT to be any sort of space aliens.

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If it wasn't for time, everything would happen at once!

This leads me to believe that "alien spacecraft" UFO sightings are just based on what people have seen in movies and TV shows.

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If it wasn't for time, everything would happen at once!

The Galactic Aviation Administration has very strick regulations on running lights on all civilian and military spacecraft (see sections AT25580192/193 through /632 for all the regs). Its one thing entering the restricted airspace of a quarantined class D sub-culture (pre-FTL) for some joyriding, but you can really get in trouble if your running light are not properly displayed. Just don't go there!

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Regarding lights where there is no reason to have any, I once asked a Trekkie friend why Data had illuminated diodes in his head. Whenever an episode required opening up Data's head to put in a new chip or something, the closeup always showed some kind of circuit board with flashing LED's.

What were the LED's supposed to be for? No one was going to see them anyway.

The answer of course, was that people expected to see something happening so flashing lights just looked cool.

Same with the UFO's, people expect them to have flashing lights, and of course airplanes, helicopters, blimps, planets, and satellites can all have lights or appear to have lights, so all the mistaken UFO reports involve lights.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Well, now, they could have had some sort of diagnostic purpose for a technician who had a reason to pop the lid off Data's noggin for service or whatever. So that i could buy.


I could see an occasional flash of light reflected off a spacecraft's skin, after all, I have actually seen that from the ISS and the Space Shuttle. But an alien spacecraft flying with a bunch of marker/landing lights illuminated certainly makes no sense. Even on the Apollo missions, the landing craft didn't have external lights.

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If it wasn't for time, everything would happen at once!

That's news to me. See what you miss if you never leave Earth?

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If it wasn't for time, everything would happen at once!

Maybe they have their own version of the FAA telling that they must have those lights?

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"-UFO detected, interceptor launched"

ToSeeked in this thread

(Can you ToSeek nonsense? )

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

Well, it's to prevent midair collisions with their super-duper top secret and unbelievable expensive (and super-duper top secret!) aircraft.

This is, after all, the reason for positioning lights, and I've yet to see any aircraft without them.

LOL. Maybe it's to conform with FAA regulations. They don't want to get fined. :

Well, for both the UFO's and the lights in Data's head there seems to be an assumption: the lights are intentional, and not the unavoidable side effect of some other process or device. It is entirely plausible, relative to the rest of the UFO phenomenon and the Star Trek universe, that there are components that cannot function, or would be extremely inefficient, if they did not produce light as a side-effect. (note when I say the UFO phenomenon, I am referring to the public interest in UFOs, not the fact that people see things that can't explain with the information available) I am not trying to justify either, but in relation to how off-the-wall the rest of it is light does not seem that out of the ordinary.

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My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Dang! You beat me to it!

You are now the third person to suggest this

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I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
-Steven Wright



My Website: The Black Cat's Web Page

Ok, Ok. That's what I get for posting too fast before I read all the other posts.

The simple answer is, they don't know. Nobody does.

The flashing lights are just the paparazzi's cameras.

It gets really complicated if a solar sail is involved. Let's see, "powered craft yields to solar sail unless sailing craft is overtaking powered craft."

Gives new meaning to the phrase "ship on a starboard tack."

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"That's Not Blight. It's New Jersey" - The Wall Street Journal

Magsails have a similar rule; 'Magsail not to be operated within 10km of unshielded electronic equipment'
and so on.

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Lights on UFOS have always been a bugbear of mine; the standard answer from a UFO believer is that the motives of the aliens are too strange for us to understand using human standards.
Well, too much strange behaviour would be a bad thing if the aliens have evolved in a competitive universe; aliens with effective stealth would always win over those without.

So, here are some more possibilities which might apply, given the assumptions that a/ aliens exist and b/ they fly around lit up like Christmas trees...
1/ they don't care; they are so powerful that nothing we can do can harm them, and they are not interested in contacting our puny race. So why do they come here at all?
2/ their ships drives emit visible light as an unavoidable side effect of their propulsion; sorry, nothing they can do about it. Well in that case they should use different drives, or just use more surreptitious methods of observation inside the Earth's atmosphere. Otherwise they are going to be seen.
3/ They are doing it to annoy us; this is some kind of game or entertainment for them. Perhaps we are in a Rigellian reality show of some sort where they fly as low as possible to film and broadcast our reactions...
4/ Their psychology doesn't allow them to understand the importance of stealth. Perhaps they are unimaginative Vogons who have had common sense bred out of them.
4/a Following on from that idea, this is my favorite possibility; they might be post-intelligent creatures, which long ago developed an advanced interstellar civilisation but they made the support infrastructure too efficient. Given automated machinery which catered for their every need, and self repairing and self navigating starships, these creature would no longer need intelligence; they could live happily forever inside their flying servants for ever without thinking another original thought. They come to Earth because it is pretty; and they don't even realise that they have lights on the outside of their craft.

Just a few ideas.

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