UFOs have been in the news a lot lately, and I’ve been wondering if reports of UFOs are genuine. I believe a lot of the eyewitness testimony; they’ve seen some strange things. Do you believe in UFOs, or have you ever seen any? What do you think they are? I think they’re either a secret technology that one of the world’s governments have come up with, a private corporation’s technology, a lone genius’ technology, or aliens. I don’t know which one is true. What do you think?
Philosophicus
I think that most of them are common or not so common aerial phenomena which the viewer misinterprets because of unfamiliarity or simply because deep down he “wants” to see an alien spacecraft. For example, Kenneth Arnold’s original description of his famous sighting – a formation of crescent shaped metallic objects (not saucers), which seemed to be skimming through the air like stones skipped over a pond. Any birdwatcher instantly recognizes a description of a flock of large birds flying at just the right distance that you can’t quiet make them out, but the movement of the wings up and down that gives you that almost characteristic skimming motion. I think most UFOs boil down to something like that, if only they could be investigated thoroughly.
Advocatus,
Ok, fair enough. There’s some UFOs that don’t sound like common aerial phenomena though, like the UFOs in the Nimitz encounter. It was on the first couple episodes of that new History Channel show, Unidentified (Fridays at 10pm). The UFO was a white tic tac-shaped object about 40 feet long, and it moved in ways that defied the current understanding of physics, like moving erratically at rapid speeds, accelerating to top speed in a split second, and changing turns immediately, like a ping pong ball bouncing off a wall. They moved at speeds of 24,000mph at the fastest (it was measured by military technology). There’s been eyewitness testimony of weird objects like that. What do you think that thing was? The case is on YouTube if you want more details, but I summed it up nice.
Philosophicus
First I want to say that there was a time when the History channel was pretty reliable as far as history was concerned. But in recent years they’ve gone overboard with the paranormal stuff. Those programs are rarely balanced, giving the skeptical side of the story or even acknowledging that there is a skeptical side. Some programs, like “Hanger One” and “Project Blue Book” start with real incidents and distort the facts, sometimes even making stuff up out of whole cloth. I’m NOT saying that this is the case with the documentary you mentioned, because I haven’t seen it. This is actually the first time I’ve ever heard of the “Nimitz encounter”.
I watched the YouTube and it certainly does look bizarre. But a film like this you have to watch with skepticism. You have to pay attention to exactly what they say are facts and what are almost-facts, and what is speculation. One thing I would like to point out is the images of the UFO that you see in the film are NOT video taken from the aircraft! They are RECREATIONS. So we are relying on what the airmen say that they saw or what they think they saw. Refer to our discussion of ghosts. Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to details. And recalling in detail something that you saw at a later date, especially something that scared you, is generally even less accurate. I’m not even going to attempt to explain what it was, because I’m not a jet pilot and I’m not familiar with the kind of things they come up against in their work. It would be way outside my expertise. I’m 61 years old and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to just say, “Hey, I don’t know what that is.” But just because I don’t know what it is doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t. Even if no one knows what it is, that doesn’t mean it was an alien spaceship.
Advocatus,
Fair enough. I’m not sure which account of the Nimitz encounter you watched, but there was some limited footage of the white tic tac UFO that the government released. I trust most of the eyewitness accounts of the UFOs people see, and even though eyewitness testimony can be unreliable, certain things stand out like the maneuverability of the craft and a rough shape. Some people describe changing colors. I know most sightings could be airplanes or other known phenomena; my interest is just piqued now lol. I’ve been reading this book called UFOs by Leslie Kean. She’s telling some interesting accounts pilots have had with these aircraft and how they maneuver. They fly away at blinding speeds and move erratically, like someone using a laser pointer to play with a cat. I still try to keep a logical and scientific mind when I think about these things though. I’m just a little more open to the possibility than a lot of atheists.
Philosophicus
I also believe that eyewitnesses are telling the truth – as far as it goes. But ask yourself – if the object is really making such incredible maneuvers that defy the laws of physics, how can mere human eyes be judging the speed that accurately? I’m thinking of the Gorman case back in the 50’s, where a military pilot was chasing a UFO, and he claimed that it was flying rings around him. The investigation found that it was a lighted weather balloon he was chasing! I don’t know what was going on in the Nimitz case, but I just have a different threshold of incredulity than you do. At my age I’m willing to say, “I don’t have enough information to decide what that is. I’m just going to suspend judgment for the time being.”
Hi I’m researching reports of strange activity related to UFO’s any information you can send to me i’d appreciate
unidentified citizen,
“Hi I’m researching reports of strange activity related to UFO’s any information you can send to me i’d appreciate”
Here’s a UFO sighting right in Buffalo, NY over the Niagara River. People have seen these coming out of the water, and they hang out in lake Erie, too. They look like the UFOs described in the Nimitz case.
Philosophicus
Your imagination is running away with you, Philo.
Take photographs and videos and show us this UFO.
LoisL,
Did you watch the video? It’s in my last post.
Philosophicus
I watched the video. It tells me nothing about UFOs. They are UFOs, that’s it.
LoisL,
“I watched the video. It tells me nothing about UFOs. They are UFOs, that’s it.”
Thanks for watching the video. I think it’s a good shot of UFOs. What do you think they are? We don’t know what they are, but you can speculate. The only possibilities I can come up with, assuming the video is authentic, are that they are human-made, alien-made, artificial intelligence, or some weird species nobody has discovered yet.
Philosophicus
They are natural phenomena and we haven’t yet figured out their source. I see no reason to assume they are an indication of alien activity. That’s for science fiction, with the emphasis on fiction. If anyone ever comes up with objective evidence, instead of speculation and wishful thinking, that they are connected in any way with life from outer space, I’ll wait for expert scientists to analyze and test the evidence and explain exactly how the phenomenon connects to alien life.
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Talking about the video you mentioned, my reaction is that it looks like a hoax. The blobs of light look semi-transparent and just judging from the way they move, they move like camera artifacts. I’m not an expert in optics though. That’s just my gut reaction.
“More than a third of Americans believe that Earth is actively being visited by aliens, so it’s no surprise that any given UFO report will find a base of believers who honestly and seriously interpret it as another case of alien visitation. It’s no secret that this is both completely unevidenced and physically implausible, so the majority of us are often amazed that so many people could cling so dearly to such an untenable belief. Today we’re going to look at one example of such a claim: the famous Kecksburg UFO of 1965, aggressively promoted for the past two decades by television science channels as a case of alien visitation. We’ll look at the reports, then devise a methodology that even the true believers can use to see whether alien visitation is indeed the required conclusion.”
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While I find the History channel very spotty, I cannot help but be perplexed by the Nimitz photos. I have seen these reported elsewhere. The seem to have actually come from the military and the persons interviewed appear to be reputable. Considered at face value, it does not appear to be a result of some redneck taking pictures with a brownie in his backyard. Contrary to most reports there are multiple witnesses, from different viewpoints, and they UFO’s were caught both visually, on infrared sensors, and on radar. Again, at face value this seems to rule out illusions.
I completely reject aliens. I do not believe that any military plane in development could possibly defy known physics like these do. Humans could not withstand the apparent accelerations. Alien or military they would need a base to return to for repair and refueling. Were is it? We have satellites imaging every inch of the ground now. and from the ground we track everything in orbit bigger than a baseball.
True believers would resort to a government cover-up, but who in government can keep a secret? I am just hoping that one of CSICOP’s contributors can provide some help in a future issue.
I agree that the Nimitz incident seems totally puzzling. I have a hard time believing that the Navy has super-advanced technology that they would be testing out there without telling their own pilots about it. I also have a hard time believing that a Navy officer would cooperate with some civilian making a documentary about the incident (15 years later!) if he had the slightest notion that he was revealing military secrets. What else is left? I really don’t know.
But here is an article that Joe Nickel originally wrote in Skeptical Inquirer 'way back in 2004 when the incident first happened, if it adds any perspective at all. https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/
To me the strangest thing about the so-called Nimitz incident is the fact that the Navy apparently had no interest whatsoever in investigating it. They didn’t even debrief the pilots on what they saw! The incident was totally forgotten until 13 years later a documentary suddenly appears. By the way, I unintentionally misstated the case above. Joe Nickel didn’t write that article in 2004, because nobody heard of the incident until 2017.
That immediately raises my suspicion. Why didn’t the Navy investigate? Obviously it couldn’t be because the UFO’s were classified technology. If that were the case, they would simply have briefed the pilots on what they saw, and the incident would have truly been forgotten. They wouldn’t have stirred it up again 13 years later. It seems to me that Joe Nickel’s conclusion is the only thing that makes sense. The pilot must have seen some ordinary technology, like a drone or something, but in circumstances that made it seem strange to him. He misinterpreted what he saw. But he couldn’t accept that he had been fooled. The old “I know what I saw” syndrome made itself felt. Once his ego was on board, he couldn’t back down.