Remember the UFO abduction case of Betty and Barney Hill? They claim to have been abducted and medically examined by aliens back in the 1960s. It was made into a movie (that scared the crap out of me when I was a kid) and has been a staple story of UFOniks for decades.
Betty Hill was interviewed by students back in 1995, and my good friend Richard Saunders has the interview online as part of his skeptical Tank vodcast. It’s worth a listen!
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. | |
 | Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. |
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December 4th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Phil, don’t you know you’re supposed to call them “UFOlogists”? If you call them UFOniks, it makes them sound nutty
December 4th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Does the video involve Hill being chased around in high speed by nurses who can’t keep their uniforms on?
December 4th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Maybe the UFOs are made of Dark Matter,,,which is a fun lead in to the following quote:
“These so-called dark stars, named for the song Dark Star by the Grateful Dead,,,, ”
From this link about the first/earliest stars made of dark matter:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2007-12-03-first-stars_N.htm?csp=Tech
Snicker,,,we ARE everywhere,,,
There used to be a tag with that logo stuck to the ceiling in the lobby of the Merriot hotel in Paris, France(Saw it there while on European tour with the band in 1990). Never did figure out how someone got the thing 30 feet above the floor,,,maybe , when no one was looking,,,they levitated,,,
,,,or just stuck it upside down, on top of a helium filled baloon?
Anyway, Dark Stars made of dark matter annihilating quarks and anti-quarks. Wow, what a convoluted idea,,,
GAry 7
December 4th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
I always thought that this link debunked the Hill’s story very nicely (and somewhat gently): http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html
In short, misinterpretation and exhaustion.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Has betty changed her story. I thought she and barney didn’t rember anything about being abducted untill they were hypnotized months later? Any way she sounds like she made a good living out of telling fairy tales.
December 4th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Really good hypnagogic hallucinations are wowsers. Think of it as going into REM sleep when you’re awake and have your eyes open. You know how dreams will take sensory input from the real world and weave it into the dream? Hypnagogic hallucinations can do that with visual input. Long-legged roadside signs will pick up their poles and stalk across the road in front of you.
So that’s what it’s called.
Back in my military days, we had a training exercise where they kept us up for almost 3 days. After about 48 hours with no sleep, I started seeing stuff like walking fence posts and talking trees. I remember having a conversation with a pine tree that wandered up to my trench for a chat before toddling back to its usual spot. At the time, I thought nothing unusual was happening. I remember looking at my watch thinking “geez, I’ve been up for over 40 hours”, then yawning and blinking, and looking at my watch and thinking “wow, I just lost 90 minutes.” I remember the boulder dance, where the boulders in the field a hundred yards from my trench would roll around and skip and jump, but always return to their spots. The memories are VIVID, not like a dream where you can’t really remember…
No aliens though, but the vividness with which abductees seem to describe their experiences makes the explanation of hallucination due to sleep deprivation seem quite plausible to me.
As an aside, looking back on it, there’s got to be a certain level of insanity involved in arming 100 people and deliberately keeping them up so they can learn what happens. I got talking trees and dancing rocks, but I could just as easily got “alien invasion”, and I had a rifle and bayonet.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
[…] wrote an interesting post today on Betty Hill interview on The TankHere’s a quick […]
December 5th, 2007 at 2:15 am
The Betty & Barny Hill story was thoroughly debunked here,
http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html
December 5th, 2007 at 5:23 am
Laura G said:
“I always thought that this link debunked the Hill’s story very nicely (and somewhat gently): http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html
In short, misinterpretation and exhaustion.”
Bryson said:
“The Betty & Barny Hill story was thoroughly debunked here,
http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html”
Is there some kind of strange echo in here?
December 5th, 2007 at 5:25 am
Christian X Burnham said:
“Does the video involve Hill being chased around in high speed by nurses who can’t keep their uniforms on?”
Accompanied by “Yakkety Sax”, presumably?
No, that was Benny Hill. Still, the two are easily confused.
December 5th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Sheesh, a 40 minute video!
I’ll have to watch this one while dinner is cooking.
December 5th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
“Yakkety Sax” has been scientifically proven to make nearly any form of visual input funny. It’s is to television comedy what Louisiana Hot Sauce is to making random vaguely edible chunks of CHON palatable.
Still, if there’s no hot nurses in comically discardable uniforms, then I think I’ll have to pass.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Great show! I really liked the interview at the end too, a really nice discussion about psychology and belief by a pair of educated skeptical women, rather than a UFO fan. More! More!
December 5th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I think aliens are perverts. They’re always probing people’s anuses.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Tara, thanks for your kind words. Hope you like all the other TANK shows in the series,… more in 2008!
Richard Saunders
Producer TANK Vodcast