I recall an optical illusion in which one sees a triangle that is not there--you have three circles in an equilateral triangle configuration. Each has a 60-degree slice cut out, so that one could drop a filled equilateral triangle into the gaps. Even though there is no triangle there, you can almost see the edges as changes in the paper's whiteness that isn't actually there.

Similarly, lights in the sky can lead one to imagine lines not there--especially with it being dark outside and you're used to filling in details you can't see readily. (e.g. colors--people swear they see colors in darkness, but they are based on what you expect them to be--experiments have been done with, say, purple apples, etc. that people would swear look red in the dark. They really look gray. Now you can see colors of sufficiently-bright light in the dark, like Sirius looking blue white and Aldebaran looking orange).

__________________
-----
Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

Typical SNAFU for the military. Usually, the media contacts the base Public Affairs officer. He makes a cursory check and says no activity. Media reports no jets in the area. Media then talks about UFOs. PAO or his superior looks closer and suddenly realizes they did have jets in the area. This just plays to the conspiracy UFO buffs. I am sure somebody will FOIA for the flight logs to make sure. Then again, maybe they won't since it will be much easier to cry conspiracy.

A similar thing happened with the 1997 Arizona case. Originally, the reports were there was no activity by base aircraft. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to check up on the squadron visiting from Maryland, which had left the base by the time it was big news. They were the ones that dropped the flares to produce the 10PM videos.

I am sure somebody will FOIA for the flight logs to make sure. Then again, maybe they won't since it will be much easier to cry conspiracy.
I doubt they'll bother, at least not those who want it to be a UFO. This evidence would only disprove their fantasy. Besides, even if we did get the logs, they'd just say the AF made them up after the fact to cover up the UFO sighting. *shrugs*

__________________
I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Theory of Zombie Relativity:
1) Everyone Else is a Zombie relative to You
2) Whether or not it matters is related to the inverse square of the distance between their teeth and your brain
(Quoted from Demigrog)

I can also cite at least two examples of people who really know the sky who mistook, at least initially, very ordinary objects for something unusual. Neither of them went all the way to alien spacecraft in their initial thoughts, but they both thought, "That can't be an alien spacecraft!" And, indeed, it wasn't in either case. In one, it was ducks. In the other, it was the Moon against clouds.

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I believe I know who one of those two people is.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

A story on CNN now says it may have been 10 planes on a training mission.

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

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

I believe I have heard both stories before. I could add my experiences as well. Although I never thought they were "alien spacecraft", I was puzzled when I saw events I was not familiar with. Based on those experiences, I can easily grasp why people mistake events they are not familiar with and turn them into UFOs.

As I related here:

http://www.bautforum.com/life-space/...ml#post1155152

when I initially saw the Goodyear blimp (especially with it distorted as a reflection off a window) I did, for a bit, seriously consider the possibility that it was an alien spaceship. To be sure, I was a lot younger then, and I did identify it in a bit, but from that experience, I can easily understand how people can misidentify things.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Even though there is no triangle there, you can almost see the edges as changes in the paper's whiteness that isn't actually there.

Yes: negative and implied spaces. Some of the most engaging art employs that phenomenon, and architects have used it for years to great practical advantage. One of Alexander's classic design patterns is the creation of an "enclosed" outdoor space by a careful arrangement of built objects into the suggestion of a perimeter.

When we apply our knowledge of human perceptual factors to eyewitness testimony, it's important to emphasize that we're not accusing the witness of lying or hallucinating. People can be mistaken to an ordinary degree and still be very mistaken.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

And I can't remember the name of the other!

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Can we get a merge on these two threads, maybe? It's not only redundant, it's redundant.

__________________
"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Well the woo woo's are already jumping on the recent aircraft explanations. I suppose if the AF had said that they had aircraft up and running, the Whackamundoes would say they were chasing the UFO, and if not then they are "covering up a major sighting".....Linda MH is making a big deal out of the blimp+F 16's, turning this prosaic occurance into a gigantic aircraft/spacecraft of some sort....

Dale

__________________
"Ad astra per aspera"

Until then we have to use our brains to understand life. I have two friends I met and several years apart who mentioned seeing a UFO. One more personal then the other and each has no reason to create their story about what they saw. In one account the craft appeared out of a canyon in the mountains of North Carolina and hovered over the valley before shooting off at a high rate of speed and having multi-colored lights, the other was on farm land about 200ft. over the trees, seen by others as well and when they walked in the direction of the craft it went up at a diagonal very fast then paused and shot off out of site, also with multi-colored lights. To many years have gone by for us as humans to not be using these aircraft if we have created them. My point is that until you have experienced the extraterestrial or supernatural you are lost trying to explain. By the way I have seen two ghost in my life so far, one can feel them and hear them. They litterally take your breath away when you see one. I just dont sit around with a camera waiting to take a picture, they are to smart and fast to be exposed anyway. Happy hunting

My point is that until you have experienced the extraterestrial or supernatural you are lost trying to explain.

Circular. By that logic the first time anyone experienced the paranormal he would be at a loss to explain it, not having had any previous experience. Sorry, the paranormally-inclined do not constitute a brotherhood who are somehow automatically blessed with exactly the appropriate insight necessary to self-validate their interpretations.

It is untrue that people who were not present at the actual sighting categorically cannot explain the sighting based on a witness's description. Ordinary phenomena unknown to the witness may be correctly identified by a knowledgeable investigator if the observation is describe specifically and correctly. The witness' interpration (especially an indirect identification) is not gospel.

By the way I have seen two ghost in my life so far, one can feel them and hear them.

How would you know if they were not ghosts? If someone described some experience to you, would you be able to say, "No, that wasn't a ghost?" And if you could say that, how would you know?

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I don't think that questioning the military's turnabout answer as being a "woo-woo" or "Whackamundo." Maybe these critics are pointing something out.

First, in 1947, the USAAF releases a statement that "it has captured a UFO" then retracts it.

Then the military explains it as a weather balloon. Or target balloon. Then it's Mogul spy balloon. Then it might have been crash-test dummies. Now I think it's back to one of the balloon explanations.

Now flash-forward . . . .

The military says they had no flights and it was what -- a reflection off from two commercial flights. Then we had blimps. Now the military says it was their aircraft.

Sorry. I'm just a bit skeptical. I'm not saying it's alien spacecraft either. I'm skeptical of the military's response and waiting to see how this pans out.

Don't confuse what the word 'skeptical' means.

The story did not change in 1947- but more details were clarified over time too.
You have been reading CT'ist and tabloid views if you think the military kept 'changing its story.' That is not reliable evidence.

Sources?

I suggest you get your facts straight because they are wrong and sound a lot like UFO propoganda to me. As far as Roswell is concerned, they did not say they recovered a UFO but a "flying disc". I suggest you read 1947 articles before July 9, 1947 to determine what a "flying disc" was considered to be. Fast forward a few hours and they identify the "flying disc" was really the remains of a weather balloon and RAWIN target. Fast forward again to 1994 and the USAF says they were weather balloon and RAWIN reflectors but they were not from a normal weather balloon but a cluster of balloons used by the NYU project in conjunction with project MOGUL. The 1997 "crashed dummies" report did not change this and still stated MOGUL was the source of the debris. They only suggested that reports of alien bodies may have been from tests involving dummies dropped from high altitude. The first was a misidentification because nobody knew what a "flying disc" really was in July 1947 and the other two were essentially the same thing and only the source was changed. The last report repeated the 1994 report and only added a potential solution for other stories told (something UFO groups complained were not addressed in the first report!).

Dealing with the military is not what you think. Having served for twenty plus years, it is not a machine that deals with publicity well. Planned events are easily reported but unplanned occurrences just don't get reported correctly the first time around. This is because the media usually gets the first word from the Public Affairs officer, who is usually a junior officer who is told not to say much at all or is given limited information. As a result the answers are incomplete or inaccurate. My guess is the PAO, who really is not in the loop on all base operations, did a brief check and did not know about the flight in question. He reported there were no flights. The media reported this but somebody in the chain of command told the PAO, there was a flight once they became aware of the error after seeing the media reports.

You should be skeptical of the AF. However, I suggest you be just as skeptical of all the other claims made by various individuals, who may or may not be accurately reporting what happened.