This isn't in CT because it's not a CT . . . rather just ramblings. Thoughts that came to mind after reading a post. Whatever.

I think many of us have seen "weird" things in the sky that we can't explain. It was reading someone's account of such an incident that got me thinking about the weirdest thing I had ever seen. Which got me thinking about other things, such as group think, and the insistence of seeing an alien craft.

When I was young, my cousin used to come stay with us for a few weeks each summer. Probably around age 12 or so. Anyway, we were both really into the whole "UFO thing". Borrowing books from the library with all the "brilliant" and "obvious" photos of UFOs. Watching all the "documentaries" (and of course, the X-Files).

Anyway, the area we grew up in was a few miles from town, but even then, said town was pretty small. Now, it was only maybe 10 miles further to Columbus, which isn't small. So the skyline in Columbus' direction was never great. But the skies out towards oblivion were pretty good. Lots of stars. Little traffic to screw up your eyes. No street lights. Etc.

We would sit outside for hours some nights, with the sole purpose of spotting a UFO. We'd see lots of shooting stars, and airplanes (close enough to Port Columbus, Wright-Patterson, and Rickenbacher to get plenty of air traffic), and what were probably satelites . . . though at the time I didn't know enough to positively identify them as such, and by now the memory is too fuzzy to do the same.

Well, one night we were sitting there when suddenly a brilliant light caught our eye. It was green, and fast, and looked like it was only about a mile away and falling to the earth. It fell behind the tree line. Weird! Right?

We never knew for sure what it was. It's impossible to tell distance, so it was either something mundane like a flare or firework that was relatively close, or it was something cool like a meteorite that was relatively far. Or a UFO! OooOOoo.

There was no sound, and if it was a firework it would have had to have been close enough for the sound to carry to where we were. There were no planes overhead, so a flare seemed unlikely. I had never heard of a green meteorite.

So there we were, specifically looking for UFOs, when something we couldn't identify showed up with a dazzling green glow.

. . . but the whole reason I started this thread was, even at our age, even with our mindset on aliens and UFOs, even with the weirdness of the object, neither of us ever called it a UFO (of the alien variety). We called it weird. And odd. We were perplexed by it. But never did we say, and I can only speak for myself here, but I never even had the thought that I had just seen ET go zooming by.

Now, I'm not saying I'm smarter than anyone (now there's an ATM I don't want to defend!). And I'm not saying I've always been the most rational person (hey, I wore spiked leather bracelets in college). It's just that the incident was never enough to get me to think "Hey, aliens!"

Which is what made me start to wonder why there's that difference in people. Why some people can see something and want more information, and others are so willing to believe. I mean, who wants to believe more than a 13 year old UFO-obsessed boy?

It's funny how our minds work, and how we can all think about the same thing, yet all experience totally different thoughts.

. . . and for the record, if I had to place a bet on what it was we saw, I'd say it was a meteorite. But I'm unwilling to pin it down as such, not out of want for something more, but because I was so young, it was such a quick incident, and it's been so distorted by the years. Will never know for sure, but not knowing is not something that bothers me.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

The color of the meteor is dependent on the structure of whats in it and the atmoshpere its travelling through. Not sure what green is but I remember that red is nitrogen in the atmosphere and an iron meteor will burn bright yellow.

I did a quick Google for meteor color and came up with this:

http://www.cyprusastronomy.com/Meteors.htm

__________________
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Ooooo, I think I thought a thought. Ooo I did, I did, I did think a thought.

Yeah. I had since learned that meteors weren't always your typical yellow-orange balls of fire. But at age 12, astronomy was irrelevant -- we wanted UFO's!

ETA: Age 14, he would have been 12. Easy enough to figure out; they Olympic games in Atlanta were going on at the time.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

So it could have been a meteorite made of magnesium and iron?

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

I think... that on the one hand a lot of the sightings are misinterpretations of things that are common place and people just aren't educated enough to know the difference, but on the other hand there are a number of credible witnesses that most likely wouldn't make those types of mistakes. Not to mention there are countless stories and such that can be interpreted as sightings that are similar to what is talked about in those sightings...

So for me it seems that there is no direct evidence, but there is quite a bit of credible non-evidence.

Fazor wonders about the various conclusions different people arrive at from viewing the same [or similar?] phenomenon. I conclude that at age thirteen our young observer wasn't saddled with an agenda or preconceptions as well as having a grounding in science and its methods.

The mere fact that you both were getting books and doing the research indicates that you both were more looking for knowledge rather than gratification. It may or may not have something to do with intelligence but I think it more comes down to personality type.

"Research" would have to be applied loosely. Very little critical thinking; those were the types of books with the big glossy photos, and the only information to go along with them was like "Mr. Flakey I. Witness took said photo on Aug 23, 1977 outside his ranch in Ivantattention, NZ."

And, like many CT'ers, we weren't interested in the mundane explanations. I mean, it's obviously moving too fast to be anything earthly! The guy said so!

Glad I grew out of that.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Fazor - this made me recall the nights my brother and I would spend our nights in suburbia Omaha, NE staring up at the sky. We often would see the odd streak in the sky, a satellite or two, and for sure plenty of airplanes (SAC was headquartered there).

We also used to stay up looking specifically for alien-type UFOs. ANd like you we never found anything to be identifiable as such. Then again we also used to do this after watching Doctor Who and Red Dwarf in succession, dosing up with caffeine, then rattling on for hours about what we wished would fall out of the sky and onto our back deck. Which at the time was mostly an Amiga computer.

Anyway to the point. Some people's minds switch automatically to the fantastic instead of going through the successive states of inquiry.

__________________
---"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)---

Meteor falls can appear different than depending on where you are observing them from. One of my favorites was while I was flying a helicopter with a full search and rescue crew aboard. We were doing landings at the airfield at night and facing the Gulf of Mexico. As we approached final landing, at about 20 feet in the air, three bright green lights fell slowly on the horizon(over water). I radioed the tower and asked if they had seen the flares as I assumed that they were rescue flares. The tower reported that they had seen them. As we prepared to takeoff and head the general direction that we had observed them, the tower called back and stated that they had a report from the Coast Guard that a flare had been spotted at a location roughly 100 miles down the coast from us. This was when I realized we had witnessed a meteor fall instead, as there would be no way that a commercial flare of any kind would be observable from locations so far apart. The length of the burn and apparent slowness of the fall was very deceptive..

__________________
"A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again."

Alexander Pope, 1709

Fazor - you guys saw a genuine, U.S. - certified UFO!

Doesn't matter if these yahoos above managed to identify it as, well, something.

To you, it was indeed a UFO.!

Eh, I'm hesitant to say something is a flying object until it can be determined as such. A meteor, which it likely was, isn't flying, it's falling. . . though since they both start with 'F' the acronym still holds.

__________________

I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Along these lines, here's another story.

I was in the U.S. Navy, age 19, and was in the nuclear submarine program training as a computer technician -- working on the onboard computers that fire and guide the nuclear missles, basically. To get into that program I had to pass the most rigorous physical and mental tests. Well, I had come home to Texas on vacation and my dad gave me his Dodge Polara, which I drove back to Virginia. Problem was, it had a faulty gas gauge and somewhere way out in the middle of nowhere in Virginia, under a cold crystal clear night, I ran out of gas. Nothing to do but wait for daylight or some farmer to come driving by at about 2:00 a.m. So I got out of my car and lit up a cigaratte. Looking up, I noticed what I at first thought was a satellite. It was flashing various lights, was wayyyyy up there, was making no noise and was generally headed in one direction. Then it suddenly disappeared. I thought WTF. Later, it appeared again far away on the opposite side of the night sky. I watched it drift for a while, then it moved very fast and then disappeared. I started getting scared. Up until then, I really hadn't thought about UFOs and considered them impossible. But for about one hour, that THING, whatever it was, made numerous appearances in the sky in all different locations, sometimes staying still, sometimes moving extremely fast, but always disappearing and then suddenly showing up somewhere else. I was not drunk, stoned or hallucinating. I know what I saw. I never told anybody about, not until a few years ago when the History Channel started running programs about possible alien sitings, and one of the more credible accounts described seeing exactly what I saw. Here's the truth: For all you non-believers, the reason you don't or can't believe is because you've never seen one. If you haven't had a chance, watch the program recently shown on the History Channel titled "I Know What I Saw", featuring extremely credible witnesses to UFO sightings -- including two former astronauts, former governer of Arizona, military and government officials, etc... -- and a bunch of "good old boys" who know what they saw. What most frustrates me about the U.S. Government denial of these UFO's and all the misinformation that exists on UFO's is this: there IS a way to do interstellar travel, obviously, but as long as everybody is in denial mode, we can't shake our top notch scientists up and say hey -- it is technically feasible, figure it out! As long as we're all in denial about the reality of UFOs, then we have the luxury of sitting around bemoaning the fact that interstellar travel is "impossible". Well, someday we'll figure it out, if the aliens don't eat us first!

When I was about eight, I went through a phase much like Fazor described in the OP. (Actually, between the reading UFO books, the strange poetry and drawings, and the not socializing with other kids, it's a wonder nobody was freaked out by me.)

During that phase, I once was sitting in my room at night doing something I can't remember, when I randomly looked out the window and saw a large, yellow disk hanging in the sky.

"Is this a dream? Is this a book? Nothing important or interesting ever happens to me, I must be dreaming, but I'm not. It's a flying saucer!" I looked at the window for a closer look, and saw my face reflected in the glass... and then my desk, and then the rest of my room...

It was the reflection of my desk lamp.

And I suddenly felt stupider than I ever had in my life.

__________________
I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

What frustrates me about such sightings is that people see something they can't explain, and jump to the conclusion that it is intelligent extraterrestrials. I'm sure that any intelligent aliens would be clever enough to switch the lights off on the outside of their spacecraft when flying around in our skies.

Perhaps they are stupid aliens.

This could in fact be the case, if (for instance) they have become so dependent on their own technology they have lost all semblance of common sense. Milan Cirkovic calls this state 'postintelligence'. In which case they are probably not worth making contact with.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

But why wold they care about their lights being on? Doesn't that assume that they want to be hidden? Maybe they just don't care if they get spotted or not. They don't want to meet us, but they don't care if we see them.

Maybe they want to be spotted because they are interested in the reactions they get?

__________________
I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

That is a possibility, and a worrying one. People have been affected badly by UFO sightings, changing their life and raising expectations that are not met. This has been going on for sixty years and more. Sixty years of flying around with lights on, but refusing to make contact- this seems like a blatant disregard for our culture and opinions, or a cruel psychological experiment. Kids poking ants-nestswith sticks.

If the extraterrestrials do not care about our feelings, they apparently have a cruel aspect which does not suggest they would be good companions.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

When I saw what I saw, it was wayyyy back in 1973 during the first OPEC oil embargo against the US -- long gas lines, no gas, etc... -- which helps explain why I was driving around without enough gas. After seeing what I saw, I pretty much forgot about it for many years, not really knowing what it was and not wanting to accept it as a UFO. It wasn't until, like I said earlier, a few years ago when History Channel started running programs with people explaining what they saw that it finally occurred to me, hey I saw that too, and I just don't have any other explanation except that it was a UFO of the extraterrestrial type. The French government did a study and came to the conclusion that they don't know what these relatively small percentage of "verified" sightings are, but that the extraterrestrial explanation is the best one. And to be honest, now that I've accepted alien visitation as fact, the thing that most concerns me is that they are often spotted travelling in groups of two or three or more -- if you can believe the accounts, some of which I do. Our universe has been around for 14.5 billion years. It is entirely probably, even likely in my opinion, that there are civilizations out there that are a million or more years ahead of us in technology. To them, I would guess that we ARE nothing more than ants in a colony, interesting to observe, not worth messing with (for now), and in fact nothing more than extremely primative organisms. I agree with eburacum45 that they probably would not be good companions for us, the same way that I wouldn't be a very good companion for a neanderthal should I happen to come across one -- because I'm too busy, limited in patience and preoccupied with my own agenda. Well, we can only speculate at this point, but it is interesting.

I think you were probably right not to consider it a UFO. There are a number of explanations possible for what you saw; extraterrestrials is way down the list of likelihood, in my opinion. Don't take those documentaries at face value; they give a very distorted picture of the real situation. That was not actually an official study by the French government, but a study by private individuals (and a biased study at that).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMETA
Note that many UFO believers distort the facts concerning COMETA, but the official line of the French Government is that the makers of the report did "not respond to any official request and does not have any special status'".
Why would groups of unidentified phenomena be more unsettling than single phenomena? Most of the groups of UFOs seen nowadays are paper fire lanterns. Nothing to be concerned about there, except the slight fire risk.There is no geological, archaeological, paleontological, genetic or astronomical evidence that extraterrestrials exist or have ever come to Earth, which is a little puzzling. Bear in mind that I do in fact believe that they exist, which makes this lack of evidence even more puzzling (to me).

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

You're right eburacum45, it may not have been an alien UFO that I saw, just a man-made UFO. And I hear what you're saying about those documentaries -- most of them are absurd, with just a sparse amount of credibility if any -- except one. If you haven't seen "I Know What I Saw" as featured on the History Channel a couple of weeks ago, then you really should watch it. Listen to two astronauts, a former governor and many other pilots and high ranking military experts describe what they witnessed. Until or unless then, I really don't care if anybody believes that alien UFOs exist or not. But to me it's obvious, and I know what I saw, and there is no logical explanation for what I saw except UFO -- whether alien or not. If not alien, then some government somewhere on this planet is doing a very good job of keeping incredible technology secret, which is arguably more likely than an alien visitation.

Two astronauts?
Edgar Mitchell is one of these, and he has publically stated that he has never personally seen a UFO, in space or on Earth. He is a believer, but with only hearsay evidence.
The other astronaut who is featured, the late Gordon Cooper, also never saw any UFOs in space, but did apparently see something long before he was an astronaut. There is no independent historical record of Cooper's sighting.

Governor Fife Symington was a witness to the Phoenix Lights event, which has been debunked quite effecively on this forum; however that doesn't mean that he is not sincere.

Col Halt from the US base at Rendlesham (in my own country) was another witness to an event which has been reasonably well debunked in this forum. Some questions remain, but over time the stories are getting more fantastic; a phenomenon which is almost as interesting as the UFO phenomenon itself. Stories seem to grow and change with time, even in a single person's memory.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

That's right. Gordon Cooper was difficult to understand but still clearly in command of his senses when the recorded interview took place. He described seeing a saucer shaped aircraft that he said (paraphrased) no technology that he was aware of could account for. He said he watched it hover, then take off and disappear with extreme speed. He described that he was told by his commanding officer to not discuss the event with anyone. But those two astronauts and even Governor Fife Symington are minor witnesses in the "I Know What I Saw" program. I encourage you to watch the program rather than merely look up the program credits. If nothing else, you'll have a lot more opportunity for debunking...:-). Hey, you don't secretly work for The Men In Black squad, do you? Just joking... No proof of alien visitation whatsoever, just a lot of people seeing some very unusual things, and a lot of speculation. Have we kicked this dead dog enough?

Another point on this topic (kick that dog one more time!). I just did a search on BAUT for "Phoenix Lights event" and believe I found the forum discussion that "debunked quite effectively" that UFO sighting. But if you watch the "I Know What I Saw" program, you'll see the debunking get debunked. According to the show and many sources, the U.S. Government has an active interest in debunking each and every possible UFO sighting, real or not. Shortly after the UFO sighting, experienced by hundreds of people apparantly all seeing the same thing, a few military jets flew into the area and did drop flares which somebody video taped, and there's no way that would be mistaken for a UFO sighting.

Specifically, what was their "debunking"?

That's an interesting claim, but what's the evidence?


Why couldn't flares cause UFO sighting claims?

__________________
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

What is "shortly" in this context?

Was the flyby anticipated? Was the flyby at a time when people were already looking?

Interpretations are going to be vastly different between the person who happened to look up shortly after the flare was dropped than one who sees them being dropped.
The former, may not notice the jets at all. Perhaps they heard them and caused them to look, but at that distance, they were already gone.

__________________
Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Hello Van Rijn. The "debunking of the debunking", if I remember the program content correctly, is that a) multiple residents of the area and witnesses to the sighting all described seeing the same thing and it wasn't flares, b) residents of the area are accustomed to seeing military aircraft in the area and have seen them drop flares before, and what they saw was definitely not flares, c) a video tape is shown of a military jet dropping flares and if you or anybody were to watch that video it is clear that those lights are definitely not UFO(s), and the sound of the jet is also a dead giveaway. As to what's the evidence that the US Government has an active interest in debunking UFO sightings, I'll have to leave that to others to explain -- it's pretty obvious though, isn't it? And flares probably could and may have caused UFO "sighting" claims -- don't know about that, but it's possible. NEOWatcher, in the program I believe "shortly" was about an hour after the sighting, if I remember the program content correctly. I don't know if the flyby was anticipated or if people were already looking. Good point on different people having different interpretations. And on a final note: I realize this is a forum for (primarily) hard core scientists and that "you guys/gals" are trained to be skeptical of any claim that can't be backed up by hard scientific evidence. And you're all super smart, which is why I like this forum so much. In the many years since I first saw what I saw, I never mentioned it to anybody, but after I realized that other people saw the same approximate phenomena as me, that's when it became "obvious" to me that a) I had seen an alien-originated UFO or b) I had witnessed man-made technology that defies explanation, and that was about 33 years ago. I choose to believe "a", because it makes more sense, to me. I never posted what I witnessed on a forum until this one, and I'll never do it again. I'm not a UFO enthusiast or conspiracy nut. It is obvious (to me) that we (planet earth) are and have been experiencing alien UFO visitations for quite a while, however. I understand the need for people to deny and challenge that this is really happening, and I don't seek to change anybody's mind. Hey -- watch the program and then I'll be very interested to hear the debunkings!

In fact the flares dropped during the later, 10pm event were mistaken for an unknown craft or crafts, and were videotaped by Chuck Rairdon and Mike Krzyston (among others) for this reason. Despite watertight proof that these lights were flares many miles away, some still hold that the 10pm event was an extraterrestrial craft (or crafts).

The 8pm event was different. This appeared as a moving chevron of lights across the sky, at a speed calculated to be around 400mph. Most observers thought it was a single craft, but one (Mitch Stanley, an amateur astronomer) managed to take a look using his telescope.
From here
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1997-...-ufo-cover-up/
This is why the 8pm event is also generally regarded as explained as well. On the other hand, no-one has actually identified the planes responsible yet (unlike those responsible for the flares) so I suppose they are still technically UFOs.

__________________
New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

Just out of curiosity, I did a Google search for "Phoenix Lights" and came up with the following link: http://www.thephoenixlights.net/ And there is Governor Fife Symington on video, along with video of "the flares" -- or whatever it is, but definitely NOT two airplanes. I guess with a first name like "Fife", you can't blame the dude for being so gullible as to believe that a bunch of stupid flares was a UFO (joke -- and no offense Fife, I've got one of those off the wall first names too).

And a quote from that link I just posted: (CNN November 9, 2007) -- In 1997, during my second term as governor of Arizona, I saw something that defied logic and challenged my reality. I witnessed a massive delta-shaped, craft silently navigate over Squaw Peak ... this dramatically large, very distinctive leading edge with some enormous lights was traveling through the Arizona sky. As a pilot and a former Air Force Officer, I can definitively say that this craft did not resemble any man-made object I'd ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares because flares don't fly in formation. —Fife Symington III ---- End of quote: But it was flares, right? Fife Symington has been throroughly debunked, along with all the other people who saw the exact same thing as him -- right?

I could go into a long several-paragraph statement about reliability of human observation, especially at night, and especially in regards to points of light on a dark background. But as this has already been covered rather heavily in other similar threads I'll just say "read up" and look at optical illusions.

__________________
---"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)---