Unidentified Flying Objects seem to be here to stay. Once, I wrote a piece Revealed: 5 secret solutions to the UFO mystery which I hoped would be my last word on mysterious lights in the sky but the interest continues. Recently I have been having a conversation in the comments section of the òÀÜRevealedòÀÝ post with òÀÜPaulòÀÝ discussing whether UFO sightings are proof of visitations by alien spaceships. I think some of the points raised are important enough to justify a post of their own.
Image- Gordon Cooper, the youngest of all Mercury astronauts and the first man to sleep in space, saw UFOs? (Image credit: NASA)
(NB I use the term òÀÜufologistòÀÝ as shorthand for someone who believes UFOs are sightings of otherworldly craft.)
Paul asks if I believe that statements on UFOs by astronauts such as Major Gordon Cooper, Ed White, James McDivitt, Dr Edgar Mitchell, James Lovell and Frank Borman count as evidence for the reality of alien spaceships.I certainly do not.Every human, no matter how well educated or trained, is capable of error or eccentricity.There is also the distressing propensity of ufologists to selectively quote, exaggerate or misquote astronauts to boost their case.
Gordon Cooper, once toldˆà interviewer Yvonne S. Durfieldˆà “I don’t take UFO’s seriously. I would be very skeptical.” That was in 1960 but by the 1970s Cooper seems to have become a believer in alien visitations and has been associated with several UFO stories. He covers some of these in his autobiography Leap of Faith (2000), a book which has been criticised for some factual confusion. In the 1970s Cooper claimed that òÀÜhundredsòÀÝ of UFOs had overflown his base near Munich, Germany in a 48 hour period during his fighter pilot days in 1951 (but none of his colleagues remember this, nor was it reported through official channels).
In 1957 Cooper was based at Edwards Air Force Base, twenty years later he recalled in an interview “…the case of one (UFO) that landed out on the dry lake bed (at Edwards AFB) right out from a number of camera crews we had who filmed it. And the film was there and was sent forward to the safekeeping somewhere in Washington, never to be seen again.” Ufologists often claim Cooper witnessed this himself, but he never said this, nor was the film classified (stills from it appear in at least one book). The object was identified by meteorologists who also observed it at the same time as the camera crew as a weather balloon.
Edgar Mitchell has never claimed to have personally seen alien spacecraft or beings, however he believes reports that others have done so.That is his privilege but it is not evidence of extraterrestial spacecraft.
Ed White and James McDivitt reported sighting an object they could not identify during the Gemini 4 mission in June 1965. At the time NORAD was unable to find the object in their catalogue of satellites and space debris and a UFO legend began. The mystery did not last long though, the object was in exactly the right location for the spent booster from the missionòÀÙs launch vehicle. The booster was not in NORADòÀÙs database as it had only been placed in orbit 30 hours earlier and the list had not been updated.
James Lovell and Frank Borman are said to have reported a òÀÜlarge, spherical objectòÀÝ in orbit during the Gemini 7 mission in December 1965. This is not true.The pair did report sighting a òÀÝbogeyòÀÝ which appears to have been the Titan rocket which placed them in orbit or even just a piece of debris shed byˆà the booster.
Lovell and Borman have never claimed to have seen an alien spaceship..In an interview Borman said
“Right after we got into orbit we were supposed to ‘station keep’ or fly formation with the booster,” Borman says. “We were flying formation and taking photographs and infrared measurements and I started calling it a ‘bogey,’ which is an old fighter pilot term. Well, a lot of the UFO freaks on the ground picked this up and said we had seen a UFO because we had referred to our booster as a bogey.
“Just this past year I got a call from a producer at ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and they said, ‘We read your account about your seeing a UFO on Gemini 7 and would you come on the program?’ I told them: ‘I’d love to come on your program because I’d love to straighten that out.’
“I explained what it was I saw, and I said, ‘I don’t think there were UFOs,’ and the producer said, ‘Well, I’m not sure we want you on the program.’ “
Paul goes on to say òÀÜthese people are educated and trained well enough to tell the difference between a Chinese lantern and a UFOòÀÝ. My response is no one is perfect. Military personnel, pilots, air traffic controllers and astronauts are widely said to be òÀÜtrained observersòÀÝ with superior abilities of visual identification and recall. Alas, this cannot be taken for granted (even Allen Hynek, an astronomer who took UFOs seriously saidˆà in The Hynek UFO Report,ˆà òÀÜSurprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnessesòÀÝ) . Here are some of many examples where military personnel saw things that were not really there or interpreted real objects as something else:
- RV Jones, a scientific advisor to the British government during the Second World War, reported (among many similar cases) how in 1940 or 1941 an antiaircraft artillery battery reported sighting a new German aircraft flying at extremely high altitude, which later proved to be Venus.
- Throughout WW2, allied aircrew consistently reported sightings of and even combats with German and Japanese aircraft types which never existed.These included Spitfires in German markings, Messerschmitt Bf-109s in Japanese markings, the Heinkel He-113, Fw-198 (which in some recognition manuals looked like it had flown out of a Flash Gordon serial) and Aichi Ai-104. We know that the Axis air forces never used these types in combat.
- KAL007, a Boeing 747 with 269 people on board, was shot down in 1983 by a Soviet military pilot who misidentified it as a military aircraft. All of the 747’s passengers and crew perished.
- In 1988, the crew of the USS Vincennes misidentified an Airbus A300 airliner as an F-14 fighter. Again the results were horrific.
Astronauts and pilots are not supermen and are as prone to error as anyone else. Even when accurately reported, their opinions are not evidence of extraterrestrial encounters.
Paul has sent me a link to a massive document listing UFO sightings by astronomers which I am going to discuss in a later post. He also notes how a poll which included 1800 members of amateur astronomer associations by the Center for UFO Studies in 1980 indicated that 24% of respondents had òÀÜobserved an object which resisted [their] most exhaustive efforts at identification.òÀÝ Personally I find this astonishing, certainly does not match my experience.Paul reports a similar survey by astronomer Peter Sturrock of members of the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1974.Of the 1175 members who responded 5% said they had experienced UFO sightings. Sturrock made a larger survey of the American Astronomical Society membership. Again, around 5% admitted having unexplainable sightings.This smaller number seems more in tune with my perception. Note this does not mean that 5% of astronomers have seen alien spaceships, this residual 5% will include errors and events where there was not enough time to identify the phenomena.This is not evidence of alien visitation.
Paul asks me my opinions on a series of videos alleging encounters between military aircraft and UFOs.This was right up my street as I have been a propellerhead as long as I have been a spacebuff.
(Paul’s first video showed MiG-21 fighters taking off followed by footage from inside an aircraft of something appear to pass it at high speed, the narration claims this movie is classified secret but has been leaked.ˆà Unfortunately this specific video is also no longer available.)
This is an utter hoax.The movie was not made from a single-seat MiG-21, the visibility is much too good for a start (the MiG has a heavily-framed cockpit canopy), but the biggest giveaway is the ejector seat which is unmistakably a US-made ACES II.This footage was shot from the back seat of an American F-15B or D. I presume the conveniently blurred UFO was added later. This is definitely not a previously secret video release by the Russian military. Who ever created and broadcast this ought to be ashamed.
(Paul’s next video covered a UFO event involving the Belgian Air Force, unfortunately this specific video is also no longer available.)
The events which occurred over Belgium on 30-31 March 1990 are famed among ufologists. Allegedly, this is a dramatic and compelling case where a mysterious craft was simultaneously observed by eyewitnesses on the ground, tracked by radar stations and pursued by supersonic jet fighters, surely this is evidence of an extraterrestrial spacecraft in our atmosphere. But is that really what happened?
For some months, there had been a series of reports of night time overflights of Belgium (but not, it seems neighbouring countries) by triangular objects with star-like or flashing lights at their tips.On the night in question, witnesses on the ground reported such an object and this was apparently confirmed by military radar stations. A pair of F-16 aircraft was scrambled to intercept the apparent intruder and vectored towards the location of the radar sighting. The pilots then spent a frustrating 40 minutes being directed towards radar images which appeared and seconds later disappeared and at one point dived to ground level (yet no UFO landing was reported). The F-16s repeatedly flew over, under and right through the radar image of the UFO, without the pilots once seeing anything (many pro-UFO videos show footage of triangles of lights against the darkness and imply that these are gun camera shots from the F-16s, but no one in the air or on the ground photographed or filmed anything that night). Witnesses on the ground continued to observe the UFO apparently hovering in the south west (while the aircraft crew did not) but did not see it manoeuver as the radar images suggested. Eventually the UFO vanished and the fighters returned to base.The eyewitness reports and radar images disagree profoundly and the aircrew saw nothing. This does not seem very convincing evidence of an alien spacecraft.
What really happened? I can only speculate. The ground witnesses were looking towards the stars Sirius, Procyon, Rigel, and Betelgeuse as well as the planet Jupiter. Any combination of bright stars could be mis-perceived as the reported triangle.Turbulent atmospheric conditions can produce false radio echoes (and make stars scintillate and flash colours), perhaps this is what really happened.
In March 2004 the crew of a Mexican Air Force C-26 Metroliner recorded infrared images they were unable to identify. They appeared to show eleven very hot high speed objects.Nothing was seen visually or on radar by the aircraftòÀÙs crew (or indeed anyone else). This was a complete non-event.It has been conclusively shown that the recording shows the eleven burning gas flares on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The flares were stationary, the apparent motion provided by the aircraft. The only mystery is how the presumably professional aviators were fooled.
Finally, Paul reminds me that it takes only one UFO encounter to be proven a genuine alien spacecraft for ufologists to be taken seriously.He is quite right.But that would require evidence rather than opinion or anecdote. In more than 65 years since Kenneth Arnold sighted òÀÜflying saucersòÀÝ, no such evidence has appeared.
(Article by Colin Johnston, Science Communicator)
hi colin i have been following the posts about the ufos..i myself have seen lights ,objects in our armagh skies .I can honestly rule out them being chinese laterns ,satellites,planes or even NASAS usual excuse of weather ballons or swamp gas…Even our own Patrick Moore even stated in one off his interviews that this universe is so vast that we can not be its only life form.Also such reports of sightings and abductions by Betty & Barney Hill have proven to be real even under hypnosis.So i have to agree with Paul …We are most certainly not alone …thank you.
That you for your comment. I’m sorry but I cannot see how you can say lights in the sky = alien spaceships. Patrick Moore may indeed believe life is common on other worlds (it’s certainly a possibility) but my point is there is no proof it is visiting our world. You may also want to read the Truth about Betty Hill’s UFO Star Map.
hello colin, i read your comments with amusement ! all i would like to point out to you if i may is that its quite an easy task to pour redicule upon witness,s statements of what they say they seen, truth is you or i or whoever else for that matter was not there to view/witness what they may or may not have seen ! i for one have followed the subject of [ufo,s] intently for quite a number of years and what i have learned is that one should keep a very open mind because purely and very simply we dont know all the answers how could we as we are only but the equivilent of a grain of sand in the vastness of space and if there are those who do have answers/knowledge of this subject [ie the so called goverments of our world] well they sure as hell dont want to be share,n this information with the ordinary man on the street. open up your mind colin somewhat further than you have before you may just see that evidence in a clearer light ?. try tell,n the many many witness,s such as trained police officers,pilots with many thousands of hours flying experience,s that what they seen was not what they really seen ! go to the web site http://www.prufos.co.uk [run by detective constable gary heseltine, a current serving police officer ]and read up the many hundreds of police on and off duty witness statements of ufo sightings.these officers and pilots stand a lot to loose least of all there jobs/reputation,s. so i cant think of any reason why one would take them sort of risks if what they are saying wasnt true.thankyou, john.
Hi John, thanks for your comments. I hope that it’s clear that I do not ever mock people who report UFOs. Pointing out errors or hoaxes in reports provided by people who regard them as significant is not ridiculing them. That MiG video for example is a fabrication, not evidence for alien spaceships. Anyone sincerely interested in the truth (as opposed those who just want to believe) ought to be delighted when a hoax is exposed or a mysterious light is shown to be an astronomical object.
Do remember that eyewitness reports (even from police officers) are not scientific evidence. The existence of the Higgs Boson or exoplanets were proven with megabytes of data not because scientists said they’d just seen them.
okay john i do take your point but you also should remember that a lot of so called scientific evidence ! was once seen as science fiction ! and yes there always will be the hoaxer nutters who are only but responsible for the reasons the subject has not been taken serious enough but i do think that has changed consideribly over the last number of years. the whole point for me colin is that we can apply what we see is a rational explanation for ufo sightings [and yes a lot of sightings are misidentified ie,astronomical etc etc theres no doubt of that !] but as proven there is that 3,4,or even 5,percent of sightings/experience,s that cannot be explained away easily, it is one of our great mysteries if not thee greatest but wether it will be solved or not one way or another that remains to be seen ! thankyou ,john
hi,i also agree that we are just a tiny part of the universe,space is beyond our understanding of huge.agree we cannot prove there are ufos…..but then we cant prove that they dont exsist.i like to think they do,and they more that likely have the tecnoligy that we cant always see them.just my opinion ,thanks
Hi Colin. I think what gets people going is the tone of many scientists (and most of the media) when something odd gets reported. Rational people can’t understand why, if there are reports from, say, a Japanese 747 over Alaska of an object following them for nearly an hour, and no-one knows what it is, everyone just smiles and makes a joke about little green men. There is sufficient “anecdotal” evidence to make the case for something odd happening. This is often submerged beneath the tide of UFO junk on the internet, but sufficient people have witnessed odd flying objects which behave strangely to make it worth taking seriously. In which a response from the scientific community of “we don’t know what it was” would be more honest than the constant attempts to debunk everything. I heard an astronomer debunk the famous rendlesham forest case as a misidentification of a lighthouse seen through trees. This is despite two of the witnesses saying they were close enough to touch the object. Remember that psychology is a science based entirely on hearsay and observation. I ain’t a believer, but i ain’t a disbeliever, either. A proper scientific attitude won’t require something alien to land on the whitehouse lawn, it will only require a mystery in need of investigation. My reason for posting is that my brother was driving through Lisburn late one night in the late nineties and saw a very large triangular object moving slowly through the sky. No lights and silent. He reckons it was moving too slowly to be a US Stealth bomber or fighter. He has no reason to lie, never told anyone except me. So personally, I’d be interested to know what it was he saw. Keep up the good work, btw.
Dear Richard, thanks for your comments. I never disparage people who report strange things, so I hope I’m not one of your “many scientists”. I know very little about the Japanese Airlines case so I can’t comment on on it, other than if there was evidence of large physically real objects stalking aircraft in American airspace I imagine there would be a very comprehensive (and publicly visible investigation) by the Federal Aviation Administration and NORAD. I would have thought the airline would demand such an investigation.
Regarding Rendelsham, I have been aware of this story since it was first reported and seen how it has grown more elaborate over the years. I continue to be amazed at how UFOlogists disparage anyone who points out all the bunk in this story yet make excuses for the witnesses who have repeatedly made major changes to their story over the decades. This to me is the core of the problem with UFOlogy, it is all repeating and embellishing the same old stories (Roswell, Hill abduction, Rendelsham and so on), there is zero interest in accumulating evidence. Astronomers can readily observe and record one-off and unexpected phenomena (bright meteors for example), so why aren’t UFOlogists say setting up cameras with wide angle lenses to scan the skies from dawn to dusk? If UFOs are as common as claimed, this approach would quickly gather enough data to attract scientific attention.
I cannot comment on your brother’s sighting at all, other than to wish I had seen it too.
Hi Colin, just wanted to say thanks for putting on some non-biased information about UFO sightings! I found your site after searching for info on the ‘black night’ satellite and read the article you posted about that, I decided to hang around and see what else you had to say.
As I have a mild interest in ufo’s and conspiracies I often find myself filtering through the absolute dross and fabricated stories that are prevalent on the internet. The way that the facts are often hidden away and quotes, pictures or videos are setup completely out of context, drives me insane.
It’s also great how you engage with your site visitors, always polite and courteous.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
Another example of a dogmatic uber-skeptic saying “DON’T BOTHER ME WITH THE FACTS – MY MIND”S MADE UP!” Lol.
By the way – “UFOLOGIST” by proper definition is “One who studies and / or investigates the history, nature, and physical / psychological / sociological / scientific implications of events directly or indirectly relating to unknown aerial phenomena and their interactions with human perception and experience.
Note that UFO stands for UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT – which implies any animal, vegetable, mineral, or physical entity of indeterminate nature that is airborne and not as of yet defined. It does not mean “Space Brothers from the Federation Of Light, Greys from Zeta Reticuli, Little Green Men from Mars, Reptilians from Nibiru, or Peter Pan”!
Any Ufologist who would assume that ALL genuine unknowns (i.e. “Bingos”), definitely represents alien spacecraft – is a lousy Ufologist, and ought to switch avocations to something like writing comic books.
Some may very well be extraterrestrial craft – some may very well be little Grey dudes from Zeta Reticuli – heck, some might be Mickey Mouse riding a magic broom stick for crying out loud – WE JUST DON’T KNOW YET. Some may represent new forms of weather and electrostatic phenomena, some may be the byproducts of physical or quantum interactions that we do not yet understand, some that seem to be of a more organic nature may even represent a new type of undiscovered organism of some type – we are looking for answers. THAT IS WHY WE STUDY, INVESTIGATE, AND DO OUR HOMEWORK.
Remember kind sir – that for every Carl Sagan, there’s a Stanton Friedman. For every Edward Condon – there’s a J. Allen Hynek. For every Phillip Klass – There’s a Jacques Vallee. For every credentialed intellectual on your side of the ball park – we have’em over here to my friend!
Albert Einstein said “Imagination is more important than knowledge” for a reason.
You see – Knowledge is a construct of limitations that erects walls that must constantly be torn down almost as soon as they are raised – because knowledge is an exercize in adaptation. Imagination is what prompts those walls to be torn down – because it’s always seeking to move beyond them – and is the driving force of discovery, and growth.
You know honestly I don’t really believe in UFO’s. I DO believe there’s intelligent life out there, the universe is too big not to believe. But as for actual life anywhere in relation to us? I honestly can’t say and I lean more toward being skeptical.
That said there’s so much bias in this article and in others I’ve read through on this site. You cite things like where Frank Borman called out how that show quite clearly had an agenda. But then you turn around using language that makes it quite clear YOU have an agenda as well.
Being skeptical is fine, unless conclusively proven otherwise nobody can be sure of anything and honestly there is more proof against it than for. However, when you gleefully use extended verbiage to cover for a lack of counter data (generalizing UFOlogist claims, simply putting it as “people make mistakes” instead of trying to find examples of how those mistakes were made, etc) it sort of makes your article hard to take seriously.
Additionally you quote the government explanations over-and-over. While I might doubt the existence of UFO’s one thing history has proven we can doubt even more than that is the “official story”. How often have things been doubted only to be released as truth much later when the political impact was no longer a concern, or in a heavily edited format? Heck, you list the KAL007 as an example of operator error and yet that was one of the biggest attempts at a cover story of all time because of the impact it would have had on the Cold War political sphere at the time. I’m not saying LGM are running around probing our cows and the government is denying it, I’m just saying that relying on the official statement for anything of questionable veracity is a bit hard to swallow when they’ve proven so unreliable on other points of lesser impact.
You might be right, you probably ARE right, but when the whole article comes off as tinged with negative language and double-standards (“You can’t selectively quote and generalize but we can”) I start to wonder if you aren’t just as unscrupulous as those you’re speaking against.
Dear Nick, I am sorry you find this post “tinged with negative language and double-standards”. I do use negative language to describe those who willfully create false stories or distort real stories and then distribute them. I hope you agree that this is not behaviour to be proud of.
I dispute that I have double standards, can you give an example of where you see this?
I can’t say where they come from or to whom they belong but I know they are real. There’s nothing more to say once you see one for yourself in the daytime closeup. So knowing that the people who try to rationalize these sightings out of existence are wrong is interesting. It’s like knowing the outcome of a horse race before it’s ran and watching people place losing bets, they are just throwing their time and money away.
I encourage anyone interested in this topic of UFO’s to read in detail what Dr. Steven Greer has been detailing for YEARS now.
The Disclosure Project is a research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 500 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.
http://www.disclosureproject.org/index.shtml
http://new.cseti.org/position-papers.html
This issue is real and the time has come to encourage a response from our governments. You ask for PROOF/EVIDENCE…Here is a list of 24 countries that have released their classified UFO documents:
http://www.educatinghumanity.com/2011/01/list-of-countries-that-have-disclosed.html
Thank you. Keep looking up friends!
Your list of 24 countries should be 23 as the “Ireland” entry is from Northern Ireland (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/ulsters-xfiles-dossier-of-ufo-sightings-released-13463985.html) which is part of the United Kingdom (also the link is broken).
How many of these documents stated that they were proof of alien visitations?
I understand your position in that we have not had DOCUMENTED PROOF that extraterrestrial life does exist nor does our government acknowledge their existence.
The main purpose of my post is to inform others on the subject of Extraterrestrials and let them be the judge. I myself will ask you what constitutes proof in your eyes? Tangible evidence? Confirmation from current leadership that they exist? The UFO files released by governments around the world are an assortment of various reports called in to local law enforcement or UFO hotlines that took people’s statements. A number of them are quite interesting if you dig deep enough.
From my personal eye witness accounts it is very clear that we are not alone in the universe. You are searching for proof and as scientist I respect your will to understand the capacity at which this may or may not be true. However, I think it is pointless struggle to continue to deny the inevitable.
We are not alone and our governments have done a very good job with misinformation and hiding the truth.
I will leave you with this fact in which to ponder: “The iron in our blood was formed in stars, billions of years ago, trillions of miles away”.
As a scientist, I am skeptical of any strange report of flying craft.
But, I must listen also to the testimony of witnesses who handled debris
Not common to defense projects that fly or float. If one rancher reported a flying saucer
Crash on his ranch, then needed someone from the air corps to come check it out to find it’s just a balloon..then there would be no questions or conspiracy theories..
But that is not what happened according to those who were there. Military intelligence major gathers samples and shows them to base commander. Base commander shows
His press officer Lt. a space ship in the base hanger with victims the size of children
Under a body tarp. The list goes on of witnesses who saw what was brought into town from the desert on a lowboy flat bed tractor trailer under a tarp; from the paper boy
To the pilot who had a nervous breakdown, and needed replacement for the flight to deliver the crates to wright- Patterson AFB foreign technology division.
Some scientists won’t entertain the thought they were wrong about stellar superiors that have discovered us long before we had ears to listen. Just as many stars are older and their planets.my late uncle would not touch a UFO book I left on his coffee table, even though, the author was a retired army officer too.( He was so convinced we are alone the only humanoid sentient being that explores space, captures animals, tags, samples,and experiments on them.then clones them for future preservation.)No one else would ever jump the gun and do it to US. Right? “Oh, noo, mr. Bill.”
I am afraid you have swallowed the entire Roswell mythology hook, line and sinker.
Asking questions are in fact good thing if you are not understanding anything
totally, but this post gives fastidious understanding yet.