You must be talking about blimps, Right?
Do you have images of hot air ballons or blimps looking like the UFO in the pictures?

Though for all hot air balloons enthousiasts.
Do you think that is a good idea to fly a hot air balloon so close of the trees?
:-k

http://www.ufoevidence.org/Photographs/Photo328.htm
http://www.ufoevidence.org/Photographs/Photo327.htm
http://www.ufoevidence.org/Photographs/Photo326.htm

Of course not. Just that I will not be badgered (or "wolverined") into making a concession I do not agree with.

:-s

I never questioned/doubted your intelligence, nor did I attack you. Rather, I pointed out the flaws in your presentation and attempted to offer food for thought. This doesn't mean I'm not interested in what you have to offer. It's an interesting discussion, and as you previously noted:

Hot-air ballons can be just about any shape.

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But all of them have a basket under the balloon where the pilot stands.
Whatever the shapes.
http://www.aerostar.com/images/Bruit.jpg

Rioux, do you think that it is possible to make crop circles from a hot air balloon?

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No. Not all hot-air ballons have a gondola for a pilot.

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Uhh, no.

Close. It's much bigger than that! Try 4". :P


Rioux you keep posting the same pictures. We've seen them. Reply to the questions/comments instead. How can you, from the pictures you keep posting, figure out what size the object it? There is nothing behind it, so it could be miles away and be miles in diameter.

So, I ask again. How big is it and how can you tell? What altitude is it flying at and how can you tell? Hey, why not add, how close to the trees is it and how can you tell?

Well?

The object is close to the trees because it share the same dark aera than the trees themselve probably caused by the angle with the sun and the camera.
http://www.leftmedia.org/UFO/UFOPhot...zeTypeAalt.jpg

When the object move farther away than the trees in a clear aera we see its silver metallic surface.
http://www.leftmedia.org/UFO/UFOPhot...zeTypeCalt.jpg

So the object cannot be miles away and be miles in diameter.

Sorry for the epistle everyone, I've clearly been thinking about this issue far too much lately...

I greatly appreciate your thoughtful response Wolverine, and your facility with proper skeptical methodology is inspiring.

Gzhpcu, I understand how the application of skeptical methodolgy can feel like a personal affront, and in some cases it is used that way, unfortunately--but I think some of the guys here are just trying express the rigorously objective kind of scrutiny that the skeptical method calls for--and it's these very principles that will, someday soon I hope, more clearly resolve the issues we're discussing here. In debates like this, I'm trying to learn how to better get in touch with my inner Spock, and I think it helps :-k

I’ve been thinking about the nature of skepticism a lot lately, and it seems clear that many people mistake this for ‘disbelief.’ The distinction is, in my mind anyway, the essential issue to this discussion (and much much more, of course). Disbelief is really no different than belief: neither is scientific. We often hear scoffing remarks about the ‘believers’ of ET visitations, but the ‘disbelievers’ are no better. Both make the mistake of taking the existing evidence or lack thereof, as ‘proof.’ But that’s unwarranted—we don’t know, we can’t be certain, one way or the other. Until we have a body of convincing evidence in either regard, the only sensible, skeptical position, is to be vigilant and discerning of the evidential aspects of the situation. So, while the burden of presently convincing evidence remains on advocates of the ETH, that’s a far cry from claiming that we already –know- they’re wrong, because we don’t—we just don’t have convincing data.

Understanding that, some people resort to the ‘logical fallacy’ arguments we’ve heard—viz, that ET’s couldn’t get here with any practicality because of the enormous distances involved, and ‘the laws of Relativity.’ Regarding practicality, that’s clearly a technical issue that we can’t establish as fact, because we cant assume that other forms of intelligent life would not have superior propulsion technology to us Earthlings. And the argument that Relativity bars such travel only demonstrates a lack of understanding of the physics involved. And this is especially dirty pool, because most people don’t understand Relativity well enough to argue the point.

So I’ve been checking up on Special Relativity to see if I was right in a previous post when I mentioned that to a traveler moving at relativistic speeds, it’s possible to traverse huge distances in brief subjective time. Spending an appreciable time at velocities at a significant fraction of C, a being visiting the Earth could get here in very quickly, as he/she/it measures time. In other words, it doesn’t take a minimum of 4 years for a traveler to get to Earth from the Centauri binary star system if relativistic speeds are experienced along the way. In fact, if the pilot could survive the acceleration forces (or if the propulsion system accelerated all matter of the ship and pilot uniformly), it’s feasible to travel here from there in, say, an hour. This is the correct understanding of present Relativity theory—not that it takes four+ years subjective time to travel four LY’s.

Interestingly, if your craft can generate a constant acceleration, distance takes on new meaning to a traveler—greater and greater distances become less and less significant. For example, from http://astsun.astro.virginia.edu/~jh...s/quest7.html:
That leaves us with a perfectly open question. As the Drake Equation thread demonstrates, most of us arrive at the possibility that at least one (or perhaps many more) form of intelligent life exists in our galaxy right now. And they could have technology capable of Relativistic velocities. Therefore, they may at some point visit the Earth. So, logic doesn’t exclude the possibility, and a negative can’t be proven evidentially, so there’s no scientific basis to reject the possibility of alien visitations. To do so is to expose nothing more substantial than an unconsidered ‘belief’ as equally baseless as the position of the ‘ufo believers.’ ‘They are here’ and ‘no they’re not’ are equally unscientific positions to take.

Certainly, I agree that the current fringe-enthusiast policy of ‘looking for flying saucers’ is a far cry from the more reasonable ‘investigating the atmosphere for unusual phenomena,’ and despite my somewhat galvanized interest on the topic, it is indeed the latter that I’m suggesting. I don’t rule out the ETH for the reasons we just covered, but I also don’t rule out several other more prosaic explanations because the situation can be interpreted equally convincingly for many of them until we have more data, which I think we should try to acquire with scientific methods. Let’s not let the intellectually repugnant positions of the UFOists bar us from looking carefully and objectively at the issue of rare and possibly exotic aerial phenomena.

I accept that I do not have a clear sense of how much observational power we currently exercise viewing the sky, from below and from above. Perhaps you or someone here could help the laymen like myself understand the likelihood of these observational mechanisms detecting an interesting phenomenon in the sky. I’d like to have a reasonable idea of how much we can see between these different resources, and what the chances are that such information would be given consideration by trained eyes.

Since I’m not sure how else to better do this, I can only suggest that, as a benchmark of sorts, we were to take a typical aerial sighting of an unidentified object (presumably) and try to gauge what might be detected if such a scenario were to occur as reported, given the tools at hand. To establish one possible variety of case, let’s look at a typical ‘sighting’ report as if it’s a reasonable assessment of the event. Let’s say for argument’s sake that a 30ft object were to enter the atmosphere at some high rate of speed, say, Mach 5, then stop over an inhabited suburb in broad daylight, and hover a few stories off the ground for ten minutes, then execute a rapid series of zigzag motions as it climbed and exited the atmosphere at the original velocity…for approximately a total time near Earth of twenty to thirty minutes. If we further go on to postulate that this happens three times a year (and arbitrary number), somewhere over the surface of the Earth, is there any way we can take a reasonable guess at how likely it would be for us to spot such activity with our current sources? Of course, I don’t expect a calculation, just an impression from someone who is familiar with our current observational capabilities. Do we really have a reasonably good chance of detecting this, and would you expect us to glean any scientific evidence from such an event? Certainly our capabilities have increased dramatically over recent years, and I wonder how long it might take, given a situation as described, before we would have a likelihood of gathering some solid scientific piece of data to evaluate.

I’ve always assumed that such an event would be well beyond our means to detect and substantiate, if such a thing were to happen once or twice. And further, if we managed to detect and establish this event in some credible way, who would have the data and what would happen to it? I suppose that my suggestion for an equipped and qualified team of highly responsive, professional scientific investigators, was born from a concern that we’d very likely never see, or perhaps learn of, such an event if it were to occur, unless we prepared a proper context to record such an event—an open, publicly available research database of detected aerial phenomena. But maybe that’s no longer true, given current surveillance technology and infrastructure.

And if you’ll indulge me on a kind of thought experiment, I’d like to consider the idea of ‘false memories’ for a moment--maybe you can explain where my reasoning goes awry. If an abundance of these apparent sightings cases are attributable to erroneous recollection, then why are so many of these reported accounts so similar in nature—that is, focused on aerial phenomena exhibiting specific, unusual movements? Why do we not hear a similar number of accounts of something else that’s alarming and memorable…gremlins, for example? Seriously. We’ve all heard about gremlins, from folklore to Hollywood films, so, by the ‘false memory’ model, shouldn’t people be occasionally taking blurry photos of their neighbor’s cat, thinking they saw a gremlin? The land should be rife with rumors of these fanciful little demons appearing and disappearing, reeking havok across the countryside. So, where are they?

I should also clarify about the naïve notion of placing an option on tax forms to give a buck to aerial phenomena research—I didn’t intend to suggest that this entailed a vote in favor of the argument, but rather only a possible means to see that real research into unusual atmospheric phenomena could be funded without drawing on money from other programs. Sure, half the people in our country believe that ET’s are visiting our world…but I suspect about half also believe in angels and devils too :roll: I’m just being practical—if the people want work done to investigate, then give them the option to fund a genuine scientific study, one perhaps organized by the government or academic scientists.

I don’t think there’s any good argument against a vigorous research program focused on unusual events in our atmosphere. We explore the bottom of the sea in search of new species, conditions, and phenomena…and I think that a skyward search has only become taboo in scientific circles because of a small, vocal, and occasionally belligerent number of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who relentlessly push their own personal beliefs and agendas in the public eye. Let’s not let that blind us to the possibility that we may have much more to learn about some aspects of our sky.

This is true, but only from the viewpoint of the traveller in the spacecraft. It would still take nine years or more for a round trip from the point of view of someone on Earth. Incidentally the amount of energy required to travel that fast would be phenomenal; on the order of a supernova (although perhaps a little less than a blazar). Worse would be the friction with the interstellar medium: each dust grain which hit your shield would explode with the force of an Hiroshima bomb.
So interstellar travel would never be trivial; the impression I get is that if the ET hypothesis is correct, the aliens achieve all this technical wizardry in travelling from star to star then fly around with their lights on impersonating hot air balloons and oil platform flares.

My own estimate of the Drake equation figures gives around 400 civilisations in our galaxy alone; but that is because I am optimistic about the length of time advanced civilisations persist (once they reach a certain level of sophistication, a very long time indeed, in my opinion).
But this estimate is not confirmed by the Fermi paradox; if there were 400 advanced civilisations with an average age of several million years in our galaxy, then they would already be here; they would not just be arriving from Proxima (there is nothing much there anyway) but they will have been here for millions of years.
All the indications are that Earth-type planets are rare; and an advanced civilisation would have mapped all such planets millions of years ago, and put an outpost or a whole civilisation here. No such outpost or civilisation is evident- so my estimate based on the Drake equation appears to be wrong.


You see, that would be such incredibly irrational behaviour that I despair of ever understanding an extraterrestrial species that did such things. And with all their lights on too.


Some of the modern defence radar is very good, I live nead a phased array station at Fylingdales which could probably pick up such a so-called 'fastwalker'; yet many unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) are not detected on radar at all, and this radar invisibility seems to be switched on and off at random- are they simply being mischievous?


I do have a theory about the erratic movements of many UAP;
-ahem-
once someone sees an unidentified phenomenon in the sky, his/her body and mind goes into a high-adrenaline mode; many people report being 'spooked' or that their sense of time changes. This causes that observer to focus upon the object and it becomes subjectively magnified in their mind- perhaps similar to the well known 'Moon at the horizon; illusion, or perhaps more like the relationship between the hunter and the prey. In short, a kind of tunnel vision develops, and the object becomes magnified.
Now the second physiological effect comes into play; in order to see objects clearly, our eyes constantly make small involuntary movements, which shift the image of the object from one location on the retina to another; this tiny shift also appears to help with edge perception and prevents the receptors in the retina becoming accustomed to the visual input (and therefore ignoring it). These involuntary movements are called Autokinesis.
I believe that in a situation where someone observes an UAP the two involuntary, unconscious effects of adrenaline rush and autokinesis cause the object to apparently dart all over the sky.
This is a flight or fight response; but as humans evolved to fear predators and hunt prey on the ground, where visual cues would eliminate the effects of autokinesis, then the 'wobbly eye syndrome' was never removed by evolution. In general tiny objects in the sky posed little threat to our hominid ancestors, so we are quite simply not evolved to observe them accurately.

Add this mechanism to the unreliability of memory and many similar seeming phenomena are perhaps not so puzzling after all.

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Johnno, nice quick try, already better than many "real" UFO photos .
Make sure to have the shadows cast in exactly the same direction as the photo, it will "absorb" the model even more in the pic. Even though the cutting and pasting is done very well, it still looks a bit like a separate object. I don't know what would improve that, some trial and error I guess? Maybe it is that I'd expect the object to look a bit more faint and hazy, that far away in the sky. And I had some problems in finding the light source location in the basis picture too, I mislooked at the mountains at first. Maybe another ground picture would give better results? (though I love the rocket launch combination ) But I'm sure with some trials you'll get really nice results, and it looks like a lot of fun to do it!! If only I had time and a camera, we culd do a little contest .

And remember, 13° (although I would make your Star Wars object float flat like in your pic, that looks better in that case)

I noticed that I made my "old" one not grainy enough, too clear and with too much of the image space dedicated to the UFO to compare with the "real" old UFO pics. Instead, I should just have added 3 black pixels in the sky :roll: .

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Scourge,
I have no problem with the application of skeptical methodology. What I do not like, is being told "to have the courtesy to answer the question", when I am doing what I consider my best to answer the question, and am being told that I am discourteous.

Thanks, after all it was just quick and dirty. Didn't use the same palette, just copied and pasted, so you can probably spot the difference if you play around with any graphics program for a bit and check out the colours pixel for pixel. But I intend to do better later on.


Yeah, this was just a old pic I had of the model after I built it, taken with a flash against a cardboard background. I'm sure it'll turn out much better when I take the model(s) outside, put up a tripod, take a pic of the sky, then set up the model(s) straight away and take another pic against the same patch of sky, with the model(s) up in front of it. Then copy paste. Should turn out much better than taking some old pic from a indoor enviroment and try to make it look like it's outside.

But as I said earlier, won't get a chance til saturday or sunday.

Johnno:

Sorry, I've done some editing of my last post while you were answering. It is changed a bit from the original message (I noticed I mislooked on the mountains). I'll watch my edits more closely in the future. Your answers still apply though.

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Replying to the updated stuff I didn't cover in my previous reply.

Hehe, I posted at 2:37am my time, after working on it for like half an hour. The problem is that the model is quite small to begin with, not a lot of detail, so no matter how small you make it it'll still be pretty much the same colour because there aren't small shadows that break up the colours. So it'll still look kinda artificial, after all, it's just a model. But yeah faint and hazy would do. I'll give it a go when I do the next picture.

The reason I chose that picture was because of the rocket launch, nothing else. Just trying out the different techniques and functions.

Trust me, it'll be better when I go out with the models and put em up against the sky

Amaze us Johnno. If it gets really good, maybe put a "FAKE PICTURE" across the image, just in case

As seen on GLP: "Star Wars was no fiction!!"

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I appreciate your thoughts on this eburacum45, but I see an apparent contradiction here that maybe you could clear up for me:

From the second statement, I gather that for the sake of argument, you’re willing to entertain the possibility that regardless of the challenges, interstellar flight would be feasible and practiced by a sufficiently advance race, is that a reasonable interpretation?

In which case, maybe they have been aware of us for millions of years, dropping by now and then to observe the course of evolution here. This hardly seems like a leap—I would hope that we’d have a similar interest in other life-bearing planets if we had the means to visit them…and the ethics to not impose the potentially shocking knowledge of our visitations upon the sentient denizens of other worlds until it seemed that they were ready to know about us. I think it’s fairly clear that we are not ready for the revelation of technologically-superior extraterrestrial observers in our atmosphere, but they may be letting us know in a gentle way that they're around. This argument reasonably satisfies Fermi’s (apparent) paradox.

I also question the statement that such a journey would require energy ‘on the order of a supernova’…that sounds a bit hand-wavy to me. Besides, I’ve posted this link previously, that indicates one proposed method for drawing antiprotons right out of the quantum vacuum, which may be an avenue capable of producing the requisite energies for Relativistically-rapid speeds. It was written by the long-standing research manager for high-energy physics at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center, so I offer it as one credible concept to explain how large energies might be available to propel a craft between stars. I’m skeptical of these ‘staggering energy requirements of acceleration' arguments in general actually—maybe someone can help me clear this up.

For the sake of argument let’s say you have an on-board source of antimatter production as Dr. LaPointe has proposed. At the moment you launch from some position in space reasonably free of gravitational influences, it requires ten watts per kilogram to produce an acceleration of 10 meters/sec2. In due time you’re velocity becomes some significant fraction of the speed of light. But from your POV, doesn’t it require the same amount of energy output to produce the same force of acceleration, or do you notice that as you acquire speed, you’re not getting the same level of acceleration for your energy output? This sounds contrary to Relativity theory to me. If every observer moving at any velocity experiences the same conditions as an observer at rest, then you should still get 1G for your ten watts/kg…right? Only your apparent mass, viewed by an observer in your original reference frame, would perceive an increase in your mass. On board your craft, the mass hasn’t changed one whit.

Excuse if I’m flouting my ignorance here, by I’m unaware of any such indications. To the contrary, I've heard speculation by an astrophyicist that as many as -half- the stars around here could have Earth-like planets (though I imagine most of these could be in orbits unfriendly to life).

Based on the above argument, I think this is a premature conclusion. Discretion may indeed the better part of valor, even among our ET neighbors.

This was discussed in the opening pages of this thread, but to sum up, there may be no better way to encourage the awarenesss and acceptance of ET life, than by making these kinds of brief appearances to relatively small numbers of witnesses--without creating a psychological shockwave throughout the world. Certainly, a more convincing demonstration of their existence, like a landing on the Kremlin lawn, would be both dangerous to our cultural stability, and somewhat rude (viz, who invited you?)


Well, as the phrase ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ suggests, we may be witnessing several unrelated phenomena, and I conceded that I think the vast majority of apparent ‘sightings’ of such phenomena are misidentifications, hoaxes, or novel psychological or brain phenomonena. However, I don’t accredit –all- reports and accounts (or even all of the photographs for that matter) to these explanations.

I don’t know what would happen if Fylingdales array picked up something unusual, do you? Honestly, I would like to know.

Additionally, I would think that a civilization advanced enough to produce craft that can travel to us, would likely have the capacity to be witnessed only if and when they opted to be. Why they’d opt to be, or not to be, may be related to a long-term program of slow enculturation regarding their existence, as I mentioned above. But in any case, that kind of anomalous behavior isn’t sufficient to constitute a ‘logical fallacy,’ so I try to keep an open mind.

That sounds reasonable, but I have a couple of problems with it. One being—why has this problem never been identified? After all, pilots would have encountered this problem in significant enough numbers to warrant a study by now…and they seem to see just fine over huge aerial distances, even under stress.

Also, having seen something unidentified myself, I can say that the first thing that occurred to me was ‘some special kind of airplane’—it was the motion that led to the conclusion that it was either an –extremely special- airplane of some kind, or something else entirely. Further, I’ve had tunnel vision once in my life, and I remember it well—and neither my experience nor any other account I’ve read has indicated it. The awe settled in only after the known solutions failed. Besides, ‘fight or flight’ regarding something far off in the sky seems like a reach.

But otherwise, I could see how some combination of such an effect, if it exists, along with some kind of significant fault in recollecting a striking event, which I’ve never encountered before personally, could conspire to produce the sensation that I had observations that I never had. But that doesn’t explain more compelling cases, like NC More’s, where the thing hovered for half an hour, as over a dozen observers watched, then saw it dart off, all at the same time, and in the same way. Certainly the ‘fight or flight’ response isn’t going to last for half an hour, among all 15+ witnesses, and produce the same effect in all of them at the same time?

A person can come up with any number of pet theories to explain how all these sightings are some kind of witness failure, but those often seem to me even more unlikely than the idea of ET visitations. Because in the final analysis, the reluctance to consider the ETH as a viable explanation does not stem from the reasoning of the hypothesis itself but from a personal/cultural belief that 'it just isn’t happening.' I don’t see any aspect of the hypothesis that makes it less likely than many other explanations, in fact, collaborative aspects of the reports, and some few number of interesting photos, incidences of radar confirmation of eyewitness testimony, all rather seem to make it a forerunner among the known explanations. In any case, whether it’s all some weird kind of subjective misperception, or a bon afide material phenomenon, the only avenue to arrive at a sensible explanation is a proper, thorough investigation (read: not by ufo kooks). Which I think is long overdue, don't you?

I see. Probably would have been best to let Wolverine insist on his own answers, Johnno.

Wolverine's been reasonable with you, hasn't he? Firm, perhaps, but I think he’s really trying to examine the issue from a clear skeptical perspective, which is, ultimately, the only way to maintain a productive discussion on all sides. I think he meant the word ‘mired’ to refer to some of the less constructive forms of debate in the thread in general which tend to prevail when we depart from the skeptical mode of inquiry, not as a personal attack.

Frankly, I'm surprised at the latitude some of the guys have given me...and by the disparagement of some others.

But I personally advocate your inquisitive interest in this topic, and I for one would like to see the Disclosure people have a chance to openly present their case to Congress. Because even if they don't get the response they'd like, all the testimony would become a matter of public record and we wouldn't have to shell out for the books... Seriously though, I think a Congressional investigation could cut through a lot of Bravo Sierra ;)

There may be something of interest in their efforts, and I'd like to know the whole story, scrutinized through official channels. I don't imagine folks like you and I could get the military personnel records that might help us sort out the wheat from the chaff among the witnesses they've enlisted, but Congress could just snap their fingers.

If they do have a compelling case, it might lead to any number of productive political actions, like a release of official reports, classified photos, footage, or maybe even that scientific investigation I've been clamoring for.

And maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't be having this problem if people stopped dodging questions and answered them instead, without having to be asked 3 times.

Depends where the unusual thing was, and where it was headed. Assuming they'd already checked for a SSR transponder code (otherwise it wouldn't be unusual, would it?) they'd probably phone up air traffic control in the area to see if they knew of any aircraft in the area that had probs with their transponders, failing that and depending on what was going on, they'd probly scramble a pair of jets to intercept.

I imagine that's the normal course of action in most countries (who have a AF and radar surveillance).

Hmm--any guesses on how long it would take before they'd send up interceptors?

And if the contact actually happened, and lasted for say half an hour or so in a given region--who'd find out about it outside of military channels? Would that fall under 'need to know' criteria?

Well, I haven't checked a map, so don't know exactly where the site is, but hypothetically I'd say that if a unidentified object shows up on radar, and is heading for a large city or military base etc, especially now after 9/11, I bet they'd be pretty quick to check it out.

Also depends where the closest alert fighters are on standby, if it looks bad I'd guess a few minutes at the most (from detection to liftoff if the jets are on standby).

As for contact, if the object wasen't moving they'd probly send helicopters as well. I figure the jets'd buzz around for a while, take pics, stay close in case it turns hostile etc. If there aren't eyewitnesses it's going to be second hand information either way, doubt anyone would risk their job/go to jail just to put forward some printouts and/or pics or whatever, which the military then would claim were faked, and there's no proving if they're real or not anyway.

Well, that was assuming that we were using a propulsion system using propellant and fuel; to achieve a gamma factor sufficient to compress four light years into an hour, you would need to accelerate not at one gee, but at millions of gees. You would need to carry enough fuel to accelerate to that velocity, and to decelerate; you would also need to accelerate the not-yet-burned fuel and not yet expelled propellant, at millions of gees. It all adds up.

Yes; an interesting idea; but even this production process will consume energy, and the antimatter reaction would produce gamma rays, which are difficult to use for propulsion. This 'Casimir effect antiproton drive' is actually very tempting, but would still require reaction mass and propellant to convert the energy into velocity; either that or a perfect reflector of gamma rays to extract momentum directly from the photons themselves.
Details, details; but really the most improbable thing in your suggestion is the attempt to concertina four and a half years into an hour...
at that velocity you would hit the interstellar medium like a brick wall.

if you were to consider more moderate gamma factor I would agrre that interstellar travel is almost certainly possible... I think 10%c is a good compromise speed, as the friction with the interstellar medium would be fierce, but survivable.
Another velocity I am fond of is 0.71c, which gives you enough time dilation to traverse one light year in every year of ship time. But even this velocity would rip the front of any ship made of physical materials to shreds.

Yes; it can probably be done; but the energies involved remain phenomenal, no matter how you obtain them.

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There are studies, of course;
http://employees.oneonta.edu/gilbers...all%202004.htm
here is one, which suggests audio-visual crossover effects;
and many witnesses are pilots, often under stress- so the idea that pilots 'see fine' is debateable.

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I'll pick just two, because this is such a pathetic discussion: Unfortunately, no - but we have shown that hot air balloons can be made to look like the one in your picture. We have also shown that hot air balloon UFO hoaxes have succeeded in the past. Therefore, it is trivially obvious that those pics could be of a hot air balloon.
No, they don't. It isn't required to be underneath - it can be inside.

Rioux, this feigned ignorance thing won't fly - any elementary school kid who is half-decent in science knows how a balloon works and knows they can be made in whatever shape one pleases. Since not many elementary school kids can type, I'm not buying that you're a six-year-old. Drop the argument-from-ignorance B.S.

In any case, this is moot, since we've shown such balloons have been built. You can't argue that it can't been done because it has been done.

Anyway, here are some better shots of that balloon: http://groups.msn.com/UfoandParanorm...iangleufo.msnw

Another example of a balloon mistaken for a flying saucer:
http://www.rense.com/general60/jala.htm

The ring around the bottom is shrouding the gondola and the gap between that and the main envelope allows air in (keeping the shrouded gondola cool). The inside of the balloon is reflective, and the propane flame illuminates it. It says the pics were taken in Wisconsin, which I believe, which means its probably a different balloon.

Do you see the gondola under the balloon. I can see the gondola.Lets see if other peoples can see it because you seem to have a vision problem.
Pathetic effectively.
http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/examx.JPG

http://www.rense.com/1.imagesG/examx2.JPG

There's no telling what it is, except a few dark pixels. Could be anything, could be a bird or it could be a cow the aliens are dropping after mutilating it.

Rioux are you going down the same road as gzhpcu? You seem to be very selective about what you reply to. You told me to fake a picture, I did a quick sample, and you didn't even comment on it. I've asked you what your approximations are for the UFO craft you showed earlier, and you still haven't replied.

Well?

I see in one balloon pic something (like darker pixels) that might be a gondola. However, in pics of the balloon that are about equal in size to the "UFO" pics, I can't see a gondola in either picture.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

You miss my reply on page 13