Did you read any of the FAQs here about what is and isn't allowed? Politics as well as the non-science that you brought up in other posts, if you want to talk politics, go to another board about politics and if you want to talk about non-scientific conspiracies, go to ATS.

A perfect example of the government hiding something and keeping quiet is the Huffman, Texas UFO incident of 1980. The family got cancer immediately following the incident and sued the Army, Navy, Airforce, and the Nasa. They lost their case but the government did dig up the radiated portion of the highway later on and replaced it. I tend to lean towards the idea that they are working outside of the government jurisdiction. Dr. Edgar Mitchell from Apollo 14 says these black projects are operating without oversight. I agree.

Classic, if you haven't already, please read the extensive (and recent) thread on Mitchell. It should still be on the first page of the CT section.

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

High authorities do replace road surfaces at regular intervals, if they are doing their job correctly; what proof is there that the two events are connected?
No-one detected any radioactivity in connection with the Cash-Landrum Case, as far as I can determine.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

Let's try a different approach and examine the options, and the necessary assumptions...

A)
1. There are no alien spacecraft visiting us, therefor there is no coverup

B)
1. There are Aliens
2. These Alliens are capable of interstellar travel
3. They choose to visit the Earth
4. Once here they abduct people, create crop circles etc, but they never make any real contact
5. They only deal with the US (or is this a worldwide coverup?)
6. Everyone in the government keeps quiet about it

Does "B" sound really convincing?

The entire government? Who?

Was it like eburacum45 said? A road maintenance project by the DOT? Perhaps escalated due to a potential (percieved) liability?

Or could it have been an EPA directive? They determined levels high enough to take action, but no determination of cause?

Besides, a coverup would have replaced it before the case to hide the evidence.
And; on what grounds was the lawsuit lost? Was it a jury trial? Was any evidence dismissed?

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

You know, everyone gets the quote wrong. It's "power tends to corrupt." It means that it's possible to hold power and not be corrupted by it. Further, I encourage you to point to anyone in the world who holds absolute power. They may over their little corner of the world--I will, in the spirit of the board's rules, refrain from specific examples--but in the end, they're every bit as likely to be overthrown as dictators have been throughout history.

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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!"

They were admitted to the hospital and treated for radiation poisoning.

You are talking about the Cash-Landrum case. They did not have cancer. Two are still alive today and do not show any effects of cancer. The third, Betty Cash, died 18 years later at the age of 71. Four years PRIOR to the UFO incident, she had heart bypass surgery, which indicates she was having issues before encountering the UFO.

If they were exposed to radiation, it was not the type anybody is aware of. Having worked in the Nuclear Navy for over twenty years, I was somewhat familiar with the effects of radiation. The symptoms described sounded more like a reaction to something chemical and not radioactive. Had they been exposed to the point of receiving "burns" then they would have probably died of radiation sickness (esp Cash, who's health was not that good to begin with). The dose would have been too high to survive.

As for the digging up the radiated portion of the highway, can you provide evidence for this. BTW, when their car was checked after the incident, there were no signs of it being irradiated, so it is unlikely the road was irradiated.

Finally, where did all the helicopters come from that evening? Nobody can show any source of such a large quantity of helicopters during the christmas holidays. Helicopters need a base and none were close by. No soldiers/airmen/sailors families report their husbands or sons missing that night for a special event either. One would think such an unusual event would have more than three witnesses.

This is a classic case of sweep it under the rug disinformation. There were eyewitnesses. They were sueing for medical expenses. They had all of the symptoms assoiciated with radiation exposure and were treated accordingly. But anyway we can agree to differ on what either of us considers evidence. But then again most people don't accept testimonials. I believe this was on 20/20 when I was younger. Can you provide a link to the car being check for gamma radiation?

In fact you can deny what evidence is, yes. but the scientific "community" has a standard for the rigors evidence must endure in order to be accepted or treated as correct. And even then it may be looked over countless times and from every angle to be sure it was not misinterpreted.

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---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

...Alone.
Testimonials are fine as long as they are filling in missing pieces among other evidence. They are also fine when they are not being treated as a claim. But; a testimonial by itself boils down to my word against his, and does not normally carry any weight.
Who are you asking. Aren't you the one claiming it was radiation? Doesn't that mean you need to provide some evidence other than hearsay?

I would love to see some credible links (other than ofologists).

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

What constitutes as evidence is not a matter of personal opinion. And there are reasons why testimonials are not considered evidence in and of themselves. It's one of those "blah" days where I don't feel like exerting myself, so instead I'll point you here. Read it--it is dealing with criminal investigation and suspect identification, but it still very much applies to any kind of testimony.

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

John Schuessler checked the car for radiation in early 1981 and found nothing. Gamma radiation would not be detectable after the event by geiger counter in any case. Since the Cash-Landrum party did not die of radiation poisoning after this apparent event, I understand that they couldn't have received a dose of gamma high enough to explain the hair-loss and so on.

I have heard a theory that the 'ufo' was actually a misfunctioning rocket motor, associated with a failed rescue attempt for the Iranian hostages at the time. This weird and wonderful theory is intriguing enough to make me overcome my natural skepticism somewhat. Has that particular possibility been eliminated yet?

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

Hmmm....you seem to be just repeating what you heard and haven't looked very closely at the incident. The wiki entry talks about the check of the vehicle for radioactivity (see the section by Klass). I believe it is in the book about the incident as well.

"sweep it under the rug"? Hmmm...what can be swept if the evidence is clear cut? The problem is, the evidence is not clear cut. When they tried to sue, they failed because they could not identify where the helicopters came from and they could not identify that the military had such a craft in their posession. Another reason may be that they could not get testimony of medical officials to agree that what caused their symptoms had anything to do with radiation exposure. As I stated, the symptoms reported would have required a dose that was heavy and would have to have resulted in some form of blood issues that could easily be detected by blood samples. From what I understand of the case, nobody has ever produced blood data to indicate they suffered acute exposure to ionizing radiation.

"There were eyewitnesses". Other than the three individuals, did ANYBODY report this diamond in the sky that was extremely bright that night or the 20+ helicopters in flight. Were all the roads vacant that early in the evening? There are at least two interstates the fleet of helicopters and the UFO had to cross. There would have been hundreds of eyewitnesses. Instead we have these three and possibly two others (who did not see the UFO but only heard/saw helicopters and not as many).

Maybe they did see a large number of helicopters and a bright light but that does not mean they were exposed to radiation. Imagine that at the distance they were, what the pilots must have been exposed to! Time, distance, shielding were the three rules of thumb to follow in minimizing exposure to radiation. Considering that Cash was the most exposed in the open but was fairly far away, her dose would have been less than the pilots who were flying close to the object with minimial shielding provided by the helicopter glass and extended time. They should have all died because their dose would have been significantly more. I don't think there is ANY EVIDENCE to suggest a large number of helicopter pilots died in the week or two after the incident. As far as I am concerned, until people can identify the helicopter fleet and the pilots involved, the story is pretty much a dead end.

This was James Easton's look into the matter. It was discussed on JREF some time ago. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=41578

Easton tried to link "credible sport" to the incident. It was paper thin at best but he did try to look as close as he could. Such an exercise could involve a large number of helicopters and an object that was very bright (the JATO rockets underneath a C-130) that would appear to hover in the sky and give off heat. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that any such exercise occurred, that a large fleet of helicopters was out that night, and that they would be testing the C-130 out in an open area exposing the civilian population near Houston Texas (unless the C-130 JATO rockets accidently went off).

Youtube footage of the Credible Sport landing crash here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YOtm9UCQEc
Very spectacular attempt at a rocket assisted landing.

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Orion's Arm . The Starlark . Voices: Future Tense- Novella Contest Issue! . OA Flickr set

I do say that the slideshow presentation by Wendelle Stevens (that is videotaped - and is available to be viewed) is convincing - because he has been to those locations (most critics have not) and he does show the series of photographs that Meier takes in sequence.

To simply say - Oh, forced perspective photography was used - is not good enough - because this is possible under ideal conditions, with the right equipment. If you have one person riding a moped, he can't carry all the equipment on his back, and be un-noticed, while he set it all up - with one arm.

And so - which do you believe? That Meier is an expert faker, able to use the minimum of equipment, using very high quality models (again an expert at making models --- or that possibly he could be truthful, taking these photographs, simply by pointing and clicking them, in the short amount of time, he was there, at that location, witnessed by the owner of that property.

[quote=astrophotographer;1306356]...There is no evidence that can be produced to suggest that aliens are visiting the earth from outer space. So, as far as science can tell, aliens are not visiting the earth. Reading a link to Billy Meier, just indicates you are not very critical. I think many in UFOlogy have considered these hoaxed long ago. I think Kal Korff's book on the subject exposed most of it (not that I consider Korff a reliable individual these days).
If you are going to bring up the hoaxters (like Corso and Meier), then you have wasted five years looking into all of this. There are some UFO cases that are far more interesting and worthy of discussion (although I feel they have potential prosaic explanations) than these...

When I first read about the Billy Meier case - in the 90s' I was fascinated by it, having reading Gary Kinder's book "Light Years" - and it was from watching several UFO documentaries which put Meier down, that I lost interest in it. Particularly after a documentary which made the claim that Meier had used forced perspective photography. However about 5 years ago, when I started downloading various documentaries and other material (MP3 audio files, pdfs and text files, etc) - I noticed that there was a lot of Billy Meier material available. What caught my attention was Wendelle Steven's slideshow lecture video - that his argument was stronger than the forced perspective arguement. Also a lot of what Meier writes is very sensible and seems accurate. eg. the US being so corrupt in it's government. 9-11 shows this clearly. That our world is in such a mess, why would any sane ET civilisation want official contact with us?
Kal Korff cannot be trusted - when you have a critic who would fake his own creditials, etc.