I got an email from writer Paul McNamara about my recent comments complaining about shoddy journalism when it comes to UFO reports. Turns out he wrote a list of 10 reasons not to believe in UFOs, and while it’s a tad snarky it really hits the high notes.
To his list, I’ll add my #1 reason of all time: why don’t amateur astronomers report them in record numbers? After all, who spends more time looking at the sky? The fact that few if any amateurs report them is a pretty clear case that the vast majority, at least, of all UFO reports are misunderstood mundane objects like airplanes, satellites, reflections, meteors, and Venus. Sometimes even the Moon, amazingly.
When a flying saucer lands on the White House lawn, someone call me.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Very good point! I have to admit that I never thought of that. My reasoning as always been that in this day and age, there are so many video cameras and digital cameras out there, that we should have at least one decent picture of a UFO instead of the crappy video/pictures we have all to often seen.
However, hasn’t there been at least a couple of reports of UFO’s by astronomers? It seems to me that I have read about or at least heard about a couple. Of course, if I heard it, it was probably on one of those cheesy shows that “attempt” to show an unbiased opinion of UFO’s.
May 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
So BA you don’t think there is intelligent life out there? You don’t think we could of ever been visited? Why?
May 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Steven Speilberg, whose early directing career consisted of several “UFO” movies, once said that he no longer believed that we had been visited by aliens because these days everyone and their mother has a video camera on their cell phone: where are all the UFO videos?
May 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
And amazingly, there are comments on McNamara’s blog saying he is wrong and “doesn’t understand UFOs”.
Good thing it’s Friday…I really can’t take people anymore this week!
May 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Yep, no concrete irrefutable evidence. Of course, it may still turn out that aliens are regularly visiting Earth, and are successfully hiding themselves from humans (inculding our governments), but until we see some evidence of that, there’s no reason to accept it as so.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
Chapio,
Where did he say that? Most reasonable folks will allow for the possibility (even likelihood) that life exists elsewhere, but that doesn’t mean it’s visiting us.
Also, no one is saying such life couldn’t visit us, just that such a claim requires stronger evidence then what we’ve seen.
Finally, UFO’s DO exist. People see stuff in the sky that they can’t identify. Making the leap to extraterrestrial visitors is where skeptics and believers part ways.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Nu-uh, clearly all the amateur astronomers have already been got at by the secret cabal of the lizard people, the Duke of Edinburgh and Mossad. That’s why we never see their reports. Just ask the government, they’ll deny it!
May 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
There’s an illegal alien from outer space working at the wal mart! Maybe we should call ICE?
May 9th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Leslie Peltier – the amateur astronomer’s amateur astronomer – once reported seeing a strange line of lights approaching through the night sky that disappeared as it got close to him. It wasn’t until a few minutes later when he heard faint honking overhead that he realized he had seen geese passing over a brightly lit parking lot on the south end of the town he lived in.
He’s the only AA I know who has reported a UFO encounter, and they didn’t stay U for long.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
To me proof positive that the UFO aliens are figments of people’s imagination is that they are humanoid. If you started the earth off again as it was 4.5 billion years ago, same chemistry, same space environment, the sun in exactly the same evolutionary state that it had back then, everything exactly the same, etc., etc. – what are the odds that anything like human beings would end up evolving? About zilch (maybe one in 10^20 or some ridiculous probability like that) so that should tell you something about the odds of human-looking aliens evolving on other planets.
“There are no secrets. You say the space junk exists but it’s being kept hidden by governments including our own? Phooey. First of all, our leaders would never do such a thing (don’t make use an emoticon). Moreover and much more seriously, people who cling to this belief simply do not understand how lousy governments are at keeping secrets. Those who think the media is involved in the cover-up – like my own brother, for crying out loud – have no idea how many journalists would trade one of their own children for a scoop of this magnitude. And remember, the cover-up needs to have been ongoing flawlessly for generations now to support the theory.”
This one he’s actually wrong about. Every year the U.S. government spends about $32 billion dollars on the so-called “black budget”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget
These are weapons programs so secret that even the Congress doesn’t know what’s going on. Most of those programs have remained secret and have never been penetrated by the news media or anyone else even to this day. So yes, the government is capable of keeping secrets. It’s just that UFO aliens stored out at S4 or Area 51 are not one of them. Maybe the Aurora hypersonic aircraft is one of them.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Right…If aliens (of the extraterrestrial persuasion) are here then….Where are all the aliens? Maybe they’re actually mice working on finding the question to the ultimate answer? Hmmmm…..evolution would pretty much trash that idea though.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“You don’t think we could of ever been visited? ”
I think it’s quite possible that at some point in the past couple hundred million years the extra-terrestrial equivalent of one of our Mars/Venusian/Titan landers, has visited, and who knows, maybe the squashed remains are encased in sandstone somewhere…
May 9th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
One reason some of us amateurs don’t report lots of UFOs is that it’s not unusual for us to see lights in the sky that we can’t identify. My lack of an identification is not evidence of anything spectacular.
On the other hand, I do know a few amateurs who know everything and will tell you the age, itinerary and weight of a Snow Goose reflecting the lights of a racetrack at 2 kilometers. If I ever were certain I could identify every light in the sky, I think I’d stay inside and keep warm.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
@ Wayne
Well darn it! I still believe I came from Mars! ; )
May 9th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
“what are the odds that anything like human beings would end up evolving? About zilch (maybe one in 10^20 or some ridiculous probability like that) so that should tell you something about the odds of human-looking aliens evolving on other planets.”
Actually, the humanoid form seems decently likely to me. Take a four-legged being, which seems decently likely, since it’s the second-minimum number of stable legs that’s still symmetrical, and 3 legs adds issues. Give them hands on a pair of those legs. They’ll tend to become upright, to allow them to use the hands. There, you’ve got a humanoid. Not too tricky. Everything beyond bipedal locomotion is rubber foreheads.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
>>”… why don’t amateur astronomers report them in record numbers?”
Because UFO’s have special equipment to detect geeks in backyards with telescopes. When they do, they go into stealth mode. Everyone knows that!
On the perennial question of why we haven’t been visited by real aliens, assuming that they’re out there zipping around proving Einstein wrong, my answer is this: Why should they? If we are eventually clever enough and rich enough to support FTL interstellar travel, are we going to stop and introduce ourselves at every backwater junction we come across? Why would aliens with civilizations that support that kind of capability have any interest in us?
Or maybe all the cool kids live in another part of the galaxy.
May 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
“what are the odds that anything like human beings would end up evolving”
Well, that is an interesting question. When considering all of the life on earth, there seem to be many consistent features from insects to elephants. Eyes are generally placed on a head, because that is an advantageous place for them to be. Different types of eyes may have evolved independently, but their general appearance and function is at least comparable as much as the traditional alien eyes and ours are.
I wouldn’t dispute that vastly different arrangements could evolve into space travel, but based on the history of this planet, creatures shaped like us are the ones most likely to make it into space. That doesn’t lend any credibility to UFO encounter claims, but I’m not sure that vague similarity to humans is a strong reason to discount them either (considering there are lots of better reasons).
May 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I’m disappointed. Surely it’s obvious to even the most casual observer that all amateur astronomers are, in fact, funded by the NSA, given luxury cars and tons of money to ensure that they do NOT report the UFO’s that they see. Many’s the amateur astronomer who tried to mention what they saw who were then visited by the Men In Black, and you know how threatening Tommy Lee Jones can be.
Wake up and smell the truth!
May 9th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
I gotta ask.
How is it even remotely possible to never see a Star Trek movie?! I hate star trek and I STILL seen most of ‘em!
May 9th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I wouldn’t begin to speculate on that one, Michelle. But I would like to note that I have seen all the Star Trek films, and yet I don’t find Fox Mulder’s arguments to believe all that convincing as well. And so goes it…
May 9th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Michelle, I’ve never watched a single episode of 24, or Lost, or Survivor, or Battlestar Galactica, or Grey’s Anatomy, etc., etc., And I think the last movie I paid to watch in a theater was, in fact, a Trek film.
So, avoiding any Trek film really isn’t that difficult.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
“When a flying saucer lands on the White House lawn, someone call me.”
OK – but let’s be careful what we ask for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjHziasA7s8&feature=related
May 9th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
[...] en Bad Astronomy.) | Trackback [...]
May 9th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Your post is funny to me Phil, especially the part about the astronomers not reporting things.
About 10 years ago, one of the features on the local evening newsmagazine show (shown at 5.30 before the real news at 6) had short interviews with “interesting” people. Sometimes local artists, names in the community, etc. They took viewer calls, it was done live.
But one evening they had someone reportedly from MuFON, and took calls about UFOs. There were the usual “I got abducted” and “I lost an hour of my life” nonsense, so I called in.
Now, they didn’t screen my call, or ask what my question was. So when I heard the host say I was on the air, I said “so we have all these reports of unidentified objects. Well, I’ve been an astronomer for most of my life, I know many other astronomers. We are intimately familiar with the nights sky. And not ONE of us have reported seeing anything “unidentified” that couldn’t be explained.”
And the lady from MuFON went nuts!! She started shaking, she started yelling, and the host was making the “cut” sign – you could see this on the air!! Suddenly they went to commercial. And when they came back, it was a different segment.
I still vividly remember that. I was such a laugh, and I felt great sticking to the UFO wackos. I just wish I had a tape of it.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Kevin – that is brilliant! Great story.
May 9th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Phil, what’s your number. A UFO did land at the White House, in 2000. How else could you possibly explain the past 8 years?
BTW, they are remaking “The Day The Earth Stood Still”, with Keanu Reeves. Don’t expect it to be anything like the original – no Gort. From what I have heard, it’s already being totally trashed.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Maybe one of the reasons amateur astronomers don’t report things that they see and can’t identify is because they don’t feel like being subjected to ridicule, especially by their peers.
And where are people supposed to report their sightings, anyway? Does MUFON have a clearinghouse akin to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams?
I did report something I saw that I couldn’t easily explain. I did this by posting it to my blog.
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2006/08/strangers-in-sky.html
(Star Trek fans may get the reference in the title.)
This happened just a month after I saw something else strange in the sky, something I was easily able to identify with the help of the Heavens-Above website.
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2006/07/starships-that-pass-in-night.html
This entry was linked by the website The Anomalist, and it received hundreds of hits from there over the next week or two. So I got to introduce a lot of UFO enthusiasts to Heavens-Above!
May 9th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
If: Aliens exist
If: Aliens have interplanetary spacecraft
Then: They are way smarter than us
Then: They have monitored _our_ radio transmissions
And: They would stay as far away from Earth as possible
May 9th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
“Actually, the humanoid form seems decently likely to me. Take a four-legged being, which seems decently likely, since it’s the second-minimum number of stable legs that’s still symmetrical, and 3 legs adds issues. Give them hands on a pair of those legs.”
Q: How many species in the history of Earth have evolved to be two-legged bipeds with the hands left free to manipulate the environment?
A: Just one (Homo sapiens)
If it’s so likely then why does only one species out of the ~10 million living species on Earth have this feature?
May 9th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
“but based on the history of this planet, creatures shaped like us are the ones most likely to make it into space.”
Statistics based on a sample size of one are pretty much worthless. I wouldn’t put too much stock in that claim until we find the first authenticated ET and they look just like us.
May 9th, 2008 at 4:57 pm
Q: How many species in the history of Earth have evolved to be two-legged bipeds with the hands left free to manipulate the environment?
Um, Theropods? Kangaroos? Apes / monkeys etc. while not bipedal, can use their hands to manipulate the environment while not walking. So can raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks…. on and on. The really weird thing about the humanoid form is the lack of a tail.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
“Q: How many species in the history of Earth have evolved to be two-legged bipeds with the hands left free to manipulate the environment?
A: Just one (Homo sapiens)”
Actually, I believe several species of dinosaurs evolved bipedal locomotion (T. Rex being the most obvious), and some (not T. Rex) had forearms large enough that they may have been able to manipulate the environment, or at least may have evolved the capability to if they had not died out.
There are probably other examples, but, being physics-oriented, I tend to just pat biologists on the head and say “It’s ok, at least you’re trying”.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Well, now I know why I’ve never seen an alien space ship. I’m an amateur astronomer! They’re avoiding me!
That sure explains it all, now.
JBS
May 9th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
“Statistics based on a sample size of one are pretty much worthless.”
My argument was related to a sample size of all species that have ever existed on earth, which last time I checked was greater than one.
My casual observation is that earth’s environment independently selects for creatures that are, in a broad sense, similar to humans. I would therefore not be at all surprised to discover life on other earth-like planets that was, in the same broad sense, similar to humans.
May 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
I was in Las Vegas a few weeks ago on business. I was trying to determine if I should be taking the northbound or southbound tram back to my hotel. I knew it was this way (pointing my finger), but I didn’t know if that was north or south. So I looked up in the sky to see if I could recognize even a fraction of a constellation to orient myself (unsuccessfully, I might add, since there are maybe a half-dozen stars viewable from that part of Vegas).
Then I saw what, to me, was a group of unidentifiable flying objects. Unidentifiable in that I didn’t know what it was. My mind never went to UFOs. But, they were flying all around in random patterns, white lights in the sky. Couldn’t be airplanes, since the airport is right downtown. Couldn’t be insects, since it appeared they were quite high (and illuminated – unless they’ve got some mutated atomic-test-site fireflies). Alas, they formed into a V-shape and sped off before I could positively identify them. I guess they were too high to hear the honking over the ambient noise.
David
May 9th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
What you have to account for is the fact that most of these bipedal body designs are products of an evolutionary tree rooted in bilaterally symmetrical ancestors. Different branch – different result, (ex: jellyfish)
May 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
The idea that intelligent or highly-developed life would necessarily be two-legged is incredibly homo-centric. The squid, platypus, human, and microbes which survive at 266ºF and live off sulfur and iron, are all the product of billions of years on the same plant.
Electric-eels generate an electric field around them, using the disturbances in the field to see in 3-dimensions around them, and that is on OUR planet. How can we hope to predict the senses or structure of a replicator from another world?
Yes there are many similarities on Earth (eyes, heads, feet, etc.) but these are all organisms we share ancestry with, this tells us nothing about organisms we do NOT share ancestry with. The cockroach has multiple brains, and the largest is in it’s belly. (This is why you can cut off a cockroaches head without killing it, it will eventually starve however)
The odds of a large-brained, two-eyed, two-legged, two-handed, one-mouthed, organism ALSO developing spacefaring technology and ALSO arriving at this planet among the countless others is for all intents and purposes zero.
Not to say it couldn’t happen, but it’s a bigger leap of faith than creationism, and has the same amount of verified evidence (re: none)
Also, pulling the occasional “this soldier saw a ufo” etc. is proof in the way that a crying virgin mary or ‘healing miracle’ is proof.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
“The idea that intelligent or highly-developed life would necessarily be two-legged is incredibly homo-centric.”
That’s a bit of a stretch from “would not be surprised to discover.” I also wouldn’t be at all surprised to find a vast array of creatures entirely different from anything we have seen or imagined.
A quick search turned up http://www.simonyi.ox.ac.uk/dawkins/WorldOfDawkins-archive/Dawkins/Work/Articles/1995-06-16peepers.shtml which states that eyes have evolved independently at least 40 times. It may be possible life forms from structures other than something like DNA, but going there is wilder speculation than what we might expect to come from the self-replicating molecules we do know about.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
The human form is not very practical or desirable – we’re precariously balanced with our heaviest part furthest from the ground, constantly off-balance when we do move, so dependent upon balance and automatic adjustment that an inner ear infection can effectively immobilize us. There must be some great advantage to a big brain to justify the high-wire act and extended learning curve required to move it about, and the multiple risks that come from simply stumbling.
Honestly, I would be shocked completely to ever see another organism with anything like a humanoid form.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Chapioon wrote:
> So BA you don’t think there is intelligent life out there?
> You don’t think we could of ever been visited? Why?
That’s not what he said. Read it again.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Pictures and videos are so easily faked these days and matter little. What matters is multiple witnesses, the probability of a hoax or misinterpretation diminishing rapidly with each new witness, especially if from different vantage points. BA makes a great point about amateur astronomers, but in any case the number of occurrences of “real” sightings of an extraterrestrial craft would be expected to be extremely low anyway, if not zero. Perhaps it’s a just question of being in the right place at the right time. I suspect jetliner and military pilots, in continuous duty, observe the relevant portions of the skies more frequently than amateur astronomers, and over the years there have a been a few interesting and unexplained sightings from them. And more recently, how do you explain O’Hare and Stephenville?
May 9th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
You’ve heard of I.D. (Right?)
Now we’ve got R.S.D.
Real Stupid Design
This RS Designer makes stars too big to support their own weight, galaxies that get in each others way, planets too close to their primaries to do anything with, plus bipedal inhabitants of a certain planet with too-heavy heads, cantalevered backs, knees that are tied together with string, and half of them owning prostate glands.
He/She/It occasionally gets tired of all these mistakes and drops big rocks, or freezes things over, or on a cosmic scale blows s*** up, or better yet makes everything get farther apart so nobody will find out about all messes that get made — failing that, the RSD sends out agents to see if anybody’s found out anything.
Department denies all knowledge of putative RSDs, BEMs or UFOs.
May 10th, 2008 at 5:43 am
Does anyone have anything to say about time, distance, and economics?
May 10th, 2008 at 6:56 am
@dave: Put 300 people who know nothing of astronomy in the same room and show them a video of a shooting star or an airplane moving across the night sky, and I would bet that many will think it’s aliens, with many others going along with it.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Reading the comments to the article was interesting, to a point, but reminded me too much of the UFO newsgroups I used to spend time on. The overall impression I got from them was that belief in extra-terrestrial visitation could be compared directly to belief in supernatural beings, i.e., religion. The “evidence” of either was compelling only when you were already convinced in the first place. Finding someone who had started skeptical and later been convinced by the evidence was extremely difficult – finding one of those people who actually had an inkling of evaluating evidence never occurred, not once.
What was more interesting was evaluating the actions and reactions of believers, and at times I’d wished I was doing a psych thesis, because I had some really interesting subjects to work with. I don’t say that in a nasty or derogatory way. But what became apparent in many cases was that the subject, the poster, treated their stance on the ET issue as something special – their knowledge of ET visitation set them apart from others. Or, to be more blunt about it, “I know the Truth, you don’t, I’m better than you.” The X-Files tagline, “The truth is out there,” says more about anyone who might use it than it being a useful statement by itself.
And when I thought about it, I felt bad (a little) about taking some of the purported evidence and demonstrating just how flimsy it was, because it occurred to me that I was trashing something special in someone’s life. I’m very much a fan of dealing with reality, for countless reasons (check out some of the recent stories on Pharyngula for convincing examples), but belief in ET visits rarely ever results in anything negative, and never seemed too important to eradicate. Now, insisting that everyone should be convinced of ETs is another matter – I enjoy trashing that kind of standpoint!
May 10th, 2008 at 7:39 am
MKR No bet. Not when its a sure thing!
No! Surely not asingle person alive with any knowledge at all of who OJ Simpson is can possibly think him innocent! He actually wrote a book confessing it! (well okay coming so close to confessing it he couldn’t come any closer.)
The BA noted :
Oh I don’t think that’ll be necessary …
Everyone would know if that happens I’d think. TV crews, journalists, politicians, everybody ..well except for maybe George II he’s so thick he probably wouldn’t even notice & just think they were from Mexico ..
Mind you shouldn’t that be ‘if ‘ & not ‘when’ there?
Sir Eccles said :
What … ??? The Lizard men & Mossad let the Duke of Edinbrugh in on it! No way!
Well their boned. The secret is bound to get out now – fancy trusting that dunce!
May 10th, 2008 at 8:45 am
“Actually, I believe several species of dinosaurs evolved bipedal locomotion (T. Rex being the most obvious), and some (not T. Rex) had forearms large enough that they may have been able to manipulate the environment”
How many of them actually had an opposable thumb which allows for a precision grip? How many of them had a brain large enough relative to body size so that the precision grip matters? The answer is not many. It’s the combination of these features that makes the human evolutionary lineage pretty much unique.
1.) bipedal
2.) large brain to total mass ratio
3.) opposable thumb or some other type of precision grip
Also, which group of beings looks closer to human beings, aliens as depicted by abductees or our closest living relative the chimpanzee? I’d say the aliens look more like human beings than chimps do. Assuming they are real I’d say that’s pretty startling given the fact that they evolved on a totally different planet.
May 10th, 2008 at 10:42 am
RightO!! And if you have the time, then read this
This is how people spot UFOs
May 10th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Cosmos by Carl Sagan, page 282
“Were the Earth to be started over again with all its physical features identical, it is extremely unlikely that anything closely resembling a human being would ever again emerge. There is a powerful random character to the evolutionary process. A cosmic ray striking a different gene, producing a different mutation, can have small consequences early but profound consequences late. Happenstance may play a powerful role in biology, as it does in history. The farther back the critical events occur, the more powerfully can they influence the present.”
May 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
What’s UFO to me is automatically assumed to be IFO to the more knowledgeable.
I’m with Carl Sagan on the probabilities of intelligent life somewhere in the universe (as well as the probability of past visitation). What’s funny is how “intelligent life” is assumed to be super-intelligent. Who’s to say that in the past billion years, our planet hasn’t advanced the fastest. The majority of life-bearing planets out there may still be soupstage. Yay earthlings!
May 10th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
“what are the odds that anything like human beings would end up evolving?”
Inverse hit on part of it. It’s called convergent evolution: given similar underutilized ecological niches in geographically separate locations and enough time, it is not unusual to see substantial similarities in the species that evolve in those two locations. There are many examples – one of the most interesting is the thylacine, or “marsupial dog”. Check out “The Ancestor’s Tale” by Richard Dawkins for more info. Note that this was one area where Dawkins et al. are somewhat at odds with the late Stephen Gould and his followers, but my money’s on Dawkins.
May 10th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Sagan used to say, “I see UFO’s all the time. I don’t jump to the conclusion they are spaceships flown by aliens.”
May 10th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
While I don’t really believe in UFOs… (The alien from outer space type) although who knows really… I highly doubt the Moon is a culprit here. I think you guys are exaggerating a bit to push your opinion here. ;- )
May 10th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
I’ve never understood the whole idea of aliens having “spaceships”. One would think that a life intelligent enough to send anything to another world would have advanced to or beyond the ability to send nano-sized “aliens” to other worlds to do their research for them. For all I know I just inhaled a whole slew of aliens.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
The UFOs are here and have been here for thousands of years. They’re able to switch between dimensions, so you don’t always know they’re here. The government knows all about this. As we approach the year 2012, all this will become clearer and clearer.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Further to this, ETs are also here. They can be standing in front of you and you wouldn’t know it as they can be in a different dimension. We’re regularly visited by spirits that wonder around, and we don’t see them, because they’re at a much higher vibration. That being said, the veil between the 3rd, 4th and 5th dimension will be thinning out as we approach 2012. There’s tons of information about this on the Net.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I think everyone should keep in mind how technologically advanced beings that traveled here from a distant location would be. I have never seen or been made aware of any shred of evidence that would force me to me believe that extra-terrestrials have visited earth, although I’ve heard some tremendous stories. However, if ET’s were here, we can all agree that we wouldn’t know of their presence unless they wanted us to.
May 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
In addition to frequent observation by amateurs, there are now several dozen automated search telescopes scanning wide areas of the sky every clear night at very high resolution. Surely these would have picked up something by now; their detection programs highlight anything unusual in the frames. Most of the time those unusual things are comets or asteroids. Haven’t seen any UFOs either, but there have been many airplane trails.
One could argue the true UFO spaceships only come out on cloudy nights, but that’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
May 10th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
My problem has always been this:
I there are aliens visiting us, then they have mastered intergalactic flight have radar-evading technologies and have gone to great lengths to not be seen…
…yet they’re not smart enough to turn off their navigation lights.
“That dog won’t hunt, monsignor!” -Fry
May 10th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
Phil
What about the reports from people who are trained – for example, last summer it was widely reported that multiple pilots at Ohare saw a UFO.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2007-01-01-ohare-ufo_x.htm
Personally, I don’t get why ‘aliens’ would spend time traveling here – that’s a long way to go for what?
Great website by the way – been an avid reader for a long time!
Ben
May 10th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
“The human form is not very practical or desirable – we’re precariously balanced with our heaviest part furthest from the ground, constantly off-balance when we do move, so dependent upon balance and automatic adjustment that an inner ear infection can effectively immobilize us.”
As a predator, I resemble that remark and am offended by it. My species can catch plenty of muskrats and construct spacecraft with this impractical design. Remember, biology is HIGHLY restricted by the square-cube law, which means very few designs are functional (see a horse and how its heart works). If I had 2 extra appendages, I’d have to gimp my size so my heart could manage to keep up the blood pressure to use them…except now that I’m smaller, my heart is smaller and I’d have to weaken all my limbs, now I have to use the 2 extra appendages to move my body…crap.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
U.F.O. = Unidentified Flying Object.
Yes, UFOs exist.
Can they be misidentified natural phenomenon? Yes.
Are they sometimes misidentified standard technologies? Yes.
Are they sometimes the target of government coverups? Sure looks like it.
Are they unrecognized technologies? Some probably are.
Does that mean they are made by extraterrestrial intelligences? Not at all.
UFOs exist, but are very unlikely to be aliens.
If nothing else, don’t you think a species that could cross interstellar space would either want to contact us, in which case it couldn’t be covered up, or would engage in a covert study. In which case, you would have no idea they were there. If you think covert study is a silly concept, you haven’t talked to a field biologist. They hide from their subjects because they don’t want their presence to alter the behavior of their subjects.
All these stories of aliens, abductions, sightings, and other things are a sign of something happening. Mass hypnosis is a silly red-herring, but peoples interpretations of what they experienced means very little. Witnesses are not reliable, no matter what the person may think. Many studies have been done, and they haven’t found a reliable witness yet.
Now for a little extra fun. Yes, I believe there are many alien lifeforms out there, some of which may have greater scientific development than we do. I just don’t think they’re in our solar system. Also, I don’t think SETI is likely to find anything. It makes too many assumptions about them continuing to use radio. Not that many generations ago on earth, they had a variety of long range communications, none of which used radio. (Postal Mail, Heliograph, Signal Tower, Signal Flag, Signal Fire, Smoke Signals, Telegraph, and probably others I can’t remember or don’t know about yet.)
If aliens want to contact us, there is no way to avoid or hide it.
If aliens don’t want us to know, we won’t.
So in short, UFOs need to be solved, but don’t look for the Alien excuse.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
The prevalence of mobiles with cameras mean nothing. I have seen UFOs (once, many years ago) and if I had a modern mobile with me at the time, what would I have got?
A few minutes of blackness as I moved the camera around faced towards the sky.
What I saw were tiny points of light (moving in arcs and turning on very acute angles, and moving at whatever speed they seemed to wish).
Ever try shooting stars (sorry) with a point-and-click?
It won’t work. You need a still camera with an open shutter. Here’s a photo I took with a Canon Powershot mounted on a tripod with a few seconds of exposure:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lollerkeet/447796501/
See the great detail of the planet? It’s a few pixels. And it had the decency to stay relatively still for the camera.
How do you think a UFO would have came out?
May 10th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I have a 30 min video as an amateur astronomer with three different telescopes spaced over 10 miles between each other of a bright object that was 5 miles wide and glowed.
Year 2002
May 10th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I’m an avid amateur astronomer who has seen dozens of “ufo’s” They are just part of the night sky to me. I have seen:
1: Multiple anomalous objects traversing the moon in trajectories that are not earth orbits, and I assure you, they are not airplanes (I’ve seen hundreds of them…and they are easily spotted.) It’s always a nice little treat when I see them.
2: Several huge triangular objects that I first became aware of because of their occultation of stars. I estimate their length along a side at 500 meters.
3: A multiple part craft, also huge, easily visible as having structure through a 10 incehMeade. I came to call it the “sky train” as it had multiple sections and was alternately noisy and silent.
4: FIVE lunar anomalies, lights, gas venting…who knows, once again through the ten inch Meade that I know so well.
5: Many, many others.
Why do I not report them? What would the purpose be? They seem, at worst, benign and even I only see them in an utterly unpredictable fashion. Why jump on the phone and report them to some entity that cares not at all what I see through my scope? Why open myself to ridicule from a scientific community that is more and more atttached to a desire for information that is filtered to adhere to their world view? I would rather spend my time communiing with a sky that is full of wonder, both natural and artificial. I know my scopes…I know the sky, and I know that there are many things to be seen that are not easily explained. Simply stare at the the sky long enough, and you will see them.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hmmmm lets see an advanced technological society with the ability to cross “wast” distances of space, wouldn’t be clever enough to have some kind of “cloaking” technology…and for some reason you think that we are interesting enough to provoke the journey and resources required to undertake such a trip in the first place…
if they exsist somewhere (and logicially they probably do, speaking statisically anyway)…chances are they have a lot more interesting destinations then are our little blue marble in mind…
but being the “self important” creatures that we are, lets assume “we” were some kind of biological seeding experiment that they conducted…then wouldn’t they be also advanced enough to monitor us from afar?!?!
I can hear it now across some table at dinner time on some far distant planet…”Honey, Tomorrow I am gonna go buzz by earth to check on the ape kids okay!?!?”
“Didn’t you just go last millenia Henry?!? And weren’t they beating each other with sticks??? Honestly, how much more interesting could they have possibly gotten by now?!?!”
“Yeah, you’re probably right honey, I’ll just stay home and watch the intergalactic bowl…”
May 10th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Maybe they visited once, didn’t like it, and never came back.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Welp, my money’s riding on Gordon Cooper, an astronaut and a member of the Apollo program.
Remember, these astronauts were chosen because they have above-average visual and mental acuity.
Similarly, recordings exist of several pilots who’ve spotted UFO’s. Again, pilots are chosen for their above-average eyesight, spatial navigation, etc…
If these credible sources are reporting seeing unidentified objects – and they are more than likely to know if a flashing light is venus or a pocket of swamp gas – then I cannot say with 100% that earth has not been visited by an alien species.
May 10th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
The reason is quite simple. Astronomers look at the sky through telescopes. Ever tried filming something far away, while zooming, and through the camera’s viewfinder? It is very hard to even know if you are in the right direction or not – you have to take a look first and position the camera as a best guess before trying to adjust the angle through the viewfinder. This is also the reason many consumer cameras have LCD screens so people can more easily locate and record what they want.
UFOs are, by nature, appearing at unexpected places. Astronomers are looking at specific things / portions of the sky.
Just my two cents.
Vincent
May 10th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Maybe because they can cloak? Maybe because telescopes look as such a tiny part of the sky when your looking at a planet, moon or another galaxy billions of miles away? Maybe because Astronomers are looking for items outside our atmosphere? As other people have said if your trying to be taken seriously at what you do, saying you saw a “ufo” would discredit almost anything you do after and before that sighting, like this blog is already doing. How many Amateur Astronomers have a camera hooked up to their telescope? If seeing a UFO is so rare then whats the chances of a Amateur Astronomer actually seeing one? There are thousands of tornadoes each season in the US, but I’ve never seen one and I stand outside and look for them. I live in tornado alley btw too. Great job thinking your assumption blog through.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Why have we never seen one? Obviously a civilization advanced enough to send a ship to another star system would also be advanced enough to realize it would be much better to see without being seen.
Isn’t that common sense?
When we send a probe to another star system, do you think it will be big and obvious or small and hidden?
May 10th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
I thought the aliens installed chips in the brains of all amateur astronomers that filter out any UFOs that might come into their field of view. It also emits a field that erases any data that might be recorded by CCD cameras. I mean how else could they plausibly deny that we are being visited by aliens.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
the problem with that rebuttal, however, is the assumption that amatuer astronomers DONT report them or see them. That’s also a pretty broad and sweeping statement, with absolutely NO proof offered, nor any independent scientific study that systematically details the observations, in all countries, of amateur astronomers reporting.
Here is COUNTER proof to that claim
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68J1kzZx65s
Sheesh, I can’t wait til the real skeptics starting discussing anomalies. Skeptics are always skeptical about everyone else’s statements or assertions but their own!
May 10th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Do I believe that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? Absolutely.
Do I believe that earth has been visited by aliens?
Nope.
To quote Sagan- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Uncle Cletus’ claims of seeing a UFO while hunting rabbits doesn’t quite cut the mustard.
May 10th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Sightings by Astronomers
http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseView.asp?section=Astronomer
May 10th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
You are missing the main reasons not to belive that Aliens have visited the earth. This was first articulated by Carl Sagan and I will paraphrase here.
There are two options for a race of intellegent Aliens to visit the earth.
A) Generation ships. These ships would take a many years to cover the interstellar void and so would be HUGE. Not only that, from our point of view it would be an object that would move like nothing natural as it would be under acceleration (either negitive or positive). We would see them comming from a LONG way away and there would be no way to hide it, no mater how good the conspiracy.
B) “Other” means. By this I mean faster-than-light travel either by directly breaking the light barrier or finding some shortcut around it. Any race advanced enough to do such a thing would compaire to us as we do to ants. It is unlikly that they would have any intrest in “Contacting” such a primitive species as ourselves and if they did we would be incapible of understanding them.
So either we would know for years they were comming, or they are so advanced we can only hope and pray we escape their notice (How much guilt do YOU feel after stepping on an ant hill?).
May 10th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Greg: Gordo flew in Mecury and Gemini, but not Apollo. He did have excellent (but not exceptional) visual accuity as in Mercury he spotted two border patrol closed-top jeeps running along the Texas-Mexico border. This led to the Gemini visual acuity experiment in which Lovell was the prime guinea pig and showed that it is contrast, not size, than made things visible. I happened to work on that experiment.
Gordo lived across the street from me and when asked about seeing UFOs in orbit, he’d admit that he had seen something but did not assume it was an alien space ship. Other astronauts saw stuff and didn’t think ALIENS!
May 10th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Who says amateur astronomers don’t see UFO’s but just don’t report them? Who will they report them too? Perhaps they think they see satellite flairs and dismiss it? Astronomers only look at a very small degree of the sky through their telescope, so they can miss a lot. Pilots are in the sky a lot, and they report seeing UFOs. Fishermen also spend a lot of time looking at the sky. But even just saying you saw something isn’t hard proof. You need photos. And yes everyone has a camera in the cell phone and video cameras are widespread, but they are practically useless trying to capture a moving object more than a mile away. Even cell cameras have a hard time taking a decent picture up close, esp at night.
May 10th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
[...] on why amateur astronomers, despite their huge amount of time staring at the skies, tend to not report sightings of UFOs. The post links to another nice article from NetworkWorld – “10 Reasons You Shouldn’t [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 12:49 am
There are UFO’s, because we have quite a few secret black military projects
producing unusual experimental aircraft, space vehicles, satellites, atmospheric laser experiments etc. For all we know, they even have moon bases. The military has certainly planned moonbases in the past ( project Orion, Project Manned Space Lab).
Assuming that UFO’s are alien spacecraft is silly, when the above explanation is there.
One might also notice that a very large number of the observations of
such UFO’s are near the experimental airforce bases–such as
Groom lake–that we do know about.
As to contactees and abductees, for all we know the military does this sort of thing in the name of disinformation, confusion and coverup–not to mention having malicious fun.
Other cases of the above, have standard psychological explainations–such as hypnogogia, delusion etc.
As to “backengineering alien spacecraft”: if we could backengineer the
technology, we would be close to inventing it ourselves. Consider the
example of a 1930’s engineer who would be given a modern digital
watch–good luck at backengineering it with 1930’s technology. The idea
is just ridiculous.
Ufo abductee– So how does your ship work?
Bug eyed alien–Warp drive
Ufo Abductee–Oh, like Alcubierre, I would have expected a stable wormhole, with Casimir energy. Can you show me the equations?
May 11th, 2008 at 12:57 am
I am saddened that they are ruining the remake of ” The Day the Earth Stood Still”.
” I would have thought you would have solved it by now.”
” No, that is why I sent for you.”
” Just expand in a power series, all terms beyond the second are negligible, and apply reduction of order.”
” How do you know that all terms beyond the second are negligible.”
” It works well enough to get me from one planet to another.”
–from the original movie.
I don’t think that I will be able to stand to watch the new version.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:20 am
” I’m not saying that every last skeptic needs to be converted – after all, some believe the Earth is flat and that O.J. was innocent.
No! Surely not asingle person alive with any knowledge at all of who OJ Simpson is can possibly think him innocent! He actually wrote a book confessing it! (well okay coming so close to confessing it he couldn’t come any closer.) ”
I personally know someone who swears he’s innocent because “the gloves did not fit!”
May 11th, 2008 at 1:32 am
I’ve seen on more than one occasion, highly anomolous objects “flying” overhead, often under ideal viewing conditions. I do not do drugs, and only occasionally enjoy an alcoholic beverage. I have 20-20 vision (corrected), and I am not a true believer in et’s, ufos, aliens, etc…nor for that matter necessarily – the dogma espoused by the scientific orthodoxy…I’m not given to day-dreaming, or flights of fancy, and have been described as an unusually practical person…I simply call ‘em like I see ‘em…and as I’ve said, I’ve seen some weird stuff up there. The last time was three summers ago on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon. I was helping a neighbor repair his fence when I suddenly saw an extremely bright flash just above where the western horizon would be THROUGH HEAVY FOLIAGE. Instinctively I looked directly overhead and a few seconds later was stunned to witness a huge shiny sphere move swiftly from one end of a broken jet contrail to another! In other words, whatever this thing was, it was traveling inside the jets’s contrail almost as though it was using it to hide its flight path! If I had any preconceptions, it was that I would see a silver jet fly overhead – I certainly did not expect to witness a sphere that was an estimated minimum of 100 feet in diameter, and that from all convention should defy aerodynamic flight (unless, of course, it was shot out of a very large cannon). It wasn’t geese, it wasn’t a jet plane, it wasn’t Mars, it wasn’t the moon, it wasn’t anything I’d ever even heard of before. AND I SAW IT WHILE I WAS STONE-COLD SOBER UNDER IDEAL WEATHER CONDITIONS! So there …
May 11th, 2008 at 1:38 am
A question I have is: Is technology biologically inevitable? There are a few other pretty intelligent animals here like dolphins, dogs, squid and apes, but none of them are even vaguely technological. And our own technologies, at least those relevant to space travel, have pretty much all come into being in the last 50 years or so.
I believe that life absolutely abounds in the universe. I believe that “higher” life forms are quite prevalent. I believe intelligent life is common. But I would not be surprised to learn that technological life is quite rare. The need for technology MAY be uniquely human. If we hadn’t evolved, I think the rest of the animal kingdom would still be blissfully unaware of and un-inquisitive about the universe.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:48 am
And on alien physiology,
I’ve always thought that the mantis or the mythical centaur had good bodies. Four legs for stability and speed, and two arms for manipulation. I don’t think the humanoid form is very favorable at all and frankly it’s amazing we ever survived. We’re not fast, we’re not strong, we can’t fly, we have no natural weapons or defenses. We should have been Saber-tooth Chow ™.
May 11th, 2008 at 2:57 am
Dear
I bleave on Einstein remarks, that a group of men hide from mankind, start research and develop on new sciences and some time they came out from their hidden place to check humans machines.
And to create confusion Russia or NASA sometime using holographic technique or developing a UFO looked machine they misguide the real UFO existence which travel faster then light and do not harm the humans.
I request you to streamline your thought only on logical ways. you can conclude truth from all the news spread on earth.
thanks
May 11th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Imagine we live in a black & white 2 dimension photo and someone from the world as we know it visits us and tries to explain height, depth, colour. not to mention the smell of a rose or taste of an apple etc. How could we comprehend it?
I think the discussion of UFOs is totally on the wrong plane. It has nothing to do with evolution or the development of some superior race at some distant place. They’re probably from a dimension, 5th, 6th, 11th our senses don’t compute. Dare I say spiritual? Another virtual reality.
The way they are reported to move is not physically possible.
Related to light, and what is that?
It’s beyond my finite brain.
May 11th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Call me when they discover a significant amount of intelligent lifeforms here on earth…
May 11th, 2008 at 3:10 am
Umm…that’s because alien cloaking devices work better in space than in our atmosphere…duh
May 11th, 2008 at 6:12 am
[...] since it’s Denver and The Bad Astronomer lives there – eh, he could help, I guess. “When a flying saucer lands on the White House lawn, someone call me” after [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 7:50 am
1. An astronomers view of the sky is often narrowed to one small area at a time.
2. Increased or decreased time spent looking at the sky does not necessarily relate to increased or decreased UFO sightings.
3. UFO’s could actually be submersible objects, and may never even leave the Earth, therefore not really coming into the view of astronomers who are looking out into space.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:00 am
[...] Hehe [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Hmmm, where to start, where to start?
1. For those we speculate that aliens would (and do) have some manner of hiding their presence from us: well, what’s your point? It’s just as easy to speculate that tiny pink ballerinas that live in the backs of computer monitors are observing us while remaining unseen. If we can’t detect them through normal means, what brings us to even speculate on their existence? (This is an identical argument with religion, by the way). If they occasionally do slip up and forget to turn on the cloaking device, then we have a means of detecting them, and discussing evidence is fair game. As is the concept of finding physical after effects (parts, tracks, oil leaks, etc). And the evidence still sucks.
2. As for amateur astronomers, you’re talking about a body of people that look into the sky far more often than not, and not just through high-powered scopes – don’t forget, a routine part of observation is simply checking out conditions. Ever been to a star party? Everyone there is all glued to telescopes, right? Wrong. Most are peering into the sky waiting their turn or picking their next subject to observe. I’m a nature photographer, and I look into the sky roughly three times more than the average person, day or night, as I look for interesting subjects – most bird watchers do, and react far more to objects seen peripherally than “average” people. It still remains, the people who spend time watching the skies are not producing the increased number of reports that you would expect.
3. Airline pilots, air traffic controllers, and all those who are “trained observers?” Please explain, or document, the sections of their training that deal with observation. Pilots are only told to “watch for other traffic,” and not much more than that. ATCs never use visual, because it’s not only worthless, it’s dangerously misleading – most ATCs don’t even have windows for the room they’re in. Ground Traffic Controllers are the ones in the towers, and they coordinate taxiing, gate directions, and runway assignments – they don’t watch air traffic. If fact, they are so far out of the loop that the pilots themselves maintain final decisions on takeoffs and landings.
Size, distance, bearing, speed, anomalous effects, lighting effects? Point out who (anywhere) receives training for this.
4. Size and distance, oh my. These are absolutely crucial to treating a sighting as any kind of useful info, and it’s been well-documented that human vision, with eyes spaced mere centimeters apart, absolutely bites at depth perception. Current measurements as to accuracy of depth perception place it as worthless outside of 20 meters – most seem to agree on 5. That’s right, outside twenty meters, your ability to estimate size or distance by eyesight is totally gone.
I can see countless people jumping on this, but think carefully before you type (boy, is THAT going to be a wasted warning): Are you talking about objects of a known size and nature, and/or in conditions against which you know the measurements? Sure, you can get an edge with objects on the ground, because your height means objects at certain distances require a certain downward angle of view. We can estimate cars easily, because we know cars, and they’re all almost exactly the same size. Taken out of context, with an object of an unknown size and not in direct relation to a known object (i.e., not held by someone or supported on a pole), try to tell the size and distance within a generous 25%. Have someone behind a treeline put a balloon or kite into the air and you (or anyone else) determine the distance and size. Or tell how far away the storm is, if you like.
The basic facts are, size, distance, and speed are all completely meaningless from a human observer. Most can’t even tell planes apart. And it’s even worse with something made up of only points of light. But feel free to tell me how far away that one headlight car is.
I’ve seen a few comments, I think mostly to the article and not here, that reacted to the constant dismissals of UFOs as “swamp gas and mass hallucinations,” but I feel this kind of rhetoric makes the same mistake as it attempts to demonstrate – I have never, ever heard anyone dismiss any UFO report as swamp gas. I suppose it happened, somewhere, but swamp gas is a ground phenomenon. It certainly is not prevalent (the swamp gas nor the explanation/derision). Same with mass hallucination. The concept of mass delusion has some bearing, but only if you actually know what it means. It has nothing to do with a group of people independently identifying a UFO incorrectly. It hinges entirely on a group of people seeing something, and one source offering an explanation that plants the suggestion in their minds, which is actually very easy to do.
As for misidentified planets (Venus/Jupiter) which sounds on the face of it to be arrogant, it relies on the position and description of the object in the sky, and if near where a known celestial object is supposed to be highly visible, did the observer relate it to the highly visible known object? If the observer saw a very bright object on a clear night right where Jupiter was supposed to be and did not see Jupiter too, what conclusion are you going to come to? And yes, “It was moving!” Fine. In relation to what? Clouds? Other stars? Or did the observer fix the point against a nonmoving object like a building, stay put, and measure the relation to that? That’s the only useful way of establishing movement, and pay attention to how many people have actually done it.
This site details a UFO sighting that was carefully evaluated by one of the more prominent UFO “investigators” of the time, which turned out to be a total hoax. The investigator produced lots of meticulous measurements demonstrating size and distance – and turned out to be completely and utterly wrong. His defense was that he was lied to about the observation conditions.
What was most telling about it all wasn’t the failure of the investigator – it was the reaction of most of the usenet posters. A highly touted individual demonstrated that his methodology was meaningless, and all of his measurements relied entirely on accuracy of the eyewitness account (rather than standing independent of it to produce meaningful corroboration). By a large degree, the careful, “look at the evidence!” proponents did not react in shock or dismay that the investigator was using terrible methods or, bluntly, talking out of his nether orifice. No no. They spent most of their time vilifying the guy who outed this crummy investigator by perpetrating a hoax and being mean and tricky.
That’s not the reaction of people who carefully consider evidence. That’s the reaction of people who had their cherished belief system taken away, if only for a short while. It doesn’t take much of dealing with that before you dismiss such people as irrational. And (let me be blunt) rightly so.
If alien visitation proponents really want to be taken seriously and not dismissed out of hand, they have to demonstrate that they ARE serious, and not petulant and/or credulous.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:09 am
Nuts, blew the hyperlink above. How about this site or even just http://ufohoax.tripod.com/?
May 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am
Hey, Phil! I do love your site and read it often but I felt that regardless of the truth or falsity of your conclusion, your argument is lacking.
First and foremost, amateur astronomers *do* report UFOs: a few seconds with Google verifies this. I’d be surprised if this were not the case; there is no verification process for the role of “amateur astronomer” and people who are spending a lot of their time watching the skies for UFOs might well self-classify themselves this way.
But the main point (and I’m sorry if I’m repeating someone’s argument but I don’t see it above) is that astronomers for the most part are concentrating their observations on an extremely small portion of the sky at one time, as you know.
I’d expect that professionals might quite likely spend an evening in an area of the sky that’s 10″ in angular diameter (for non-techies, that’s 10″ or ten seconds, or 1/60 of 1′, one minute, that’s 1/60 of 1º, one degree, that’s 1/360 of a full circle.)
Amateurs tend to have a much wider scope of investigation, which is why they sometimes find things that professionals don’t, but they’re still only looking in one place at one time with a radius of perhaps a degree (perhaps meteor counting would be the widest field?)
So if two people are looking up at the sky, the astronomer is much less likely to see any anomalous phenomena. Now, I’m sure most people don’t spend very much time looking at the sky, but on the other hand there are very few amateur astronomers and very few UFO sightings.
The sorts of people who you’d expect to report anomalies would be people who professionally had to spend a lot of time looking at wide angular ranges in the air – pilots. And in fact pilots do report a lot of anomalies.
As for my personal, informal opinion, I’d be surprised if beings from other planets were flying around in technological artifacts in our skies. At the same time, I’d say that there are numerous reports of anomalous phenomena in the sky by reputable witnesses that don’t yet have a good explanation by science.
Actually, Phil, since you’re in the role of “debunker of bad science”, I strongly suggest that you acquire a copy of William Corliss’ “Science Frontiers” – not because I think it’s bad science but because it really is right on the edge of science.
Corliss has spent decades collecting articles from reputable science magazines and journals, about half news magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American and half from peer reviewed journals and indexing them.
They’re organized by category (http://www.science-frontiers.com/cat-astr.htm are the categories for astronomy) and rated on two subjective scales, a numeric scale based on the perceived accuracy of the observation and an alphabetic scale based on how far this observation departs from “accepted science”. As he notes in the introduction, there are no “A1″ entries yet
.
Since Corliss formulates no hypotheses but only relays the reports of other scientists, I think of him as an honest man.
It is interesting to note that in the decades since he started, several entries in his book have moved from fringe to core science, for example, “USO”s, underwater submarine objects, a major manifestation of which were “rotating bars of light underwater” (now known to be a phenomenon involving bioluminescence and autosynchronization).
May 11th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
[...] read more | digg story [...]
May 11th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
My personal theory: While there is certainly life life on other worlds (if you get right down to it, life is just a series of fancy chemical reactions), “intelligent” life is far more rare. And any race that does eventually become technologically advanced ends up sewing the seeds of its own destruction, either through war or environmental degradation. Additionally, the distances involved in interstellar travel rule out contact between worlds.
Of course, with my luck, later tonight I’ll get abducted by aliens heavily armed with anal probes.
May 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I’m consider myself a very amateur astronomer (amateur – from the French – to love). Theres only been one occasion where I can honestly say that I didn’t have a clue at what I was seeing. Most of the time (like the article says), I see satellites, Venus, the occasional meteor. One time though I had no explanation for the triangular shaped object I saw hovering on the western horizon, which appeared to change from a single object to a triple triangular shaped object. I do have no doubts that other civilisations exist, given the number of galaxies which exist in the universe. Its just that they’re probably not that interested in our childish, primitive ways. Lets face it, who could blame them!
May 11th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Could it be possible that earth is the only planet to ever sustain intelligent life? The universe is a very big place, it would seem reasonable that life could have sparked at a few locations and somewhere within those 13.5 billion years. Could that life have existed long enough to develop intelligence?
If alien intelligence are visiting our planet, it will have developed technologies well beyond human comprehension. Crossing time and space (and they will manipulate time), only to zip precariously through the sky and flash the headlights at a few ignorant humans? The whole plot would seem a bit naive.
Would we recognize or even perceive alien technology? Would they care to reveal themselves and to what purpose would it serve?
Even if there were something unique on earth of interest to them, perhaps a valuable resource or some astronomically unique fluke of nature, would they not have already dealt with it, in the time of their choice? Why would that time be now and why return repeatedly?
Astronomers possess no greater potential of seeing a UFO than an average person (in other words, don’t hold your breath).
May 12th, 2008 at 7:32 am
We’re not fast, we’re not strong, we can’t fly, we have no natural weapons or defenses.
And that is exactly why we’re smart. Creatures with such advantages are perfectly capable of successfully reproducing without ever making the vast metabolic investment needed to develop and sustain a large brain, or the equally vast developmental investment needed to learn how to use it.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:17 am
“When a flying saucer lands on the White House lawn, someone call me.”
Will happen on December 12, 2008, visible in your local theatre when Klaatu returns! And this prophecy will prove to be true!
(unless producers and directors yet start fighting over character, caliber and salability and this project is mercily aborted)
May 12th, 2008 at 10:20 am
“It has nothing to do with evolution or the development of some superior race at some distant place. They’re probably from a dimension, 5th, 6th, 11th our senses don’t compute.”
Except that in several instances UFO buffs have reported that the UFO beings have specifically told the contactee where the UFO beings are from. In the early days of ufology this origin point for the UFO beings was commonly a planet in our solar system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski
“On November 20, 1952 Adamski and several friends were in the Colorado Desert near the town of Desert Center, California when they are said to have seen a large submarine-shaped object hovering in the sky. Believing that the ship was looking for him, Adamski is said to have left his friends and to have headed away from the main road. Shortly afterwards, according to Adamski’s accounts, a scout ship made of a type of translucent metal landed close to him, and its pilot, a Venusian called Orthon, disembarked and sought him out.
Adamski described Orthon as being of medium height humanoid, having long-blond hair, a tanned skin , and as wearing reddish-brown shoes with a trouser: “his trousers were not like mine”. Adamski said Orthon communicated with him via telepathy and through hand signals. During their conversation, Orthon is said to have warned of the dangers of nuclear war and to have arranged for Adamski to be taken on a trip to see the solar system including the planet Venus, the location where Mrs. Adamski had been reincarnated. Adamski said that Orthon had refused to allow himself to be photographed, and instead asked Adamski to provide him with a blank photographic plate, which Adamski says that he gave him. When Orthon left, Adamski said that he and George Hunt Williamson were able to take plaster casts of Orthons footprints, and that the prints contained mysterious symbols.”
As American and Soviet space probes travelled farther and farther and visited the planets in our solar system, the origin point for the UFO beings shifted from within our solar system to other star systems such as Zeta Reticuli. My, oh my, what a coincidence. Just as real space probes arrive at Venus and find that the environment is hostile to life, all of a sudden the UFO folks aren’t from there anymore.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Oh! I notice “The Day The Earth Stood Still” has already been mentioned… Well, the link is of course obvious.
On a serious note, the variety of comments here and on networkworld.com is amazing. It just shows the need to be precise and specific in thought and speech. Many good, in se valid arguments run past each other and miss the point.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
so, i guess the thinking would be that they fly over here, fly around a little, then fly home. can’t find a parking spot?
except for the ones who crash, of course.
either they don’t want to be observed by humans, and are too incompetent to manage that, or they do want to contact humans, and are incompetent to do that. either way, it’s a hell of a waste of fuel for them.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
oh, a plug for my favorite site:
http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm
expose the conspiracy! let the truth out!
May 12th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
“So if two people are looking up at the sky, the astronomer is much less likely to see any anomalous phenomena. ”
and yet:
amateur astronomers make discoveries of new objects all the time. perhaps the only field where nowadays, the amateur’s productivity is close to that of the professional.
May 12th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
@Doug: “[If] there are aliens visiting us, then they have mastered intergalactic flight have radar-evading technologies and have gone to great lengths to not be seen…”
Ah, but you assume that the alien-made UFOs *have* “radar-evading technologies”. Maybe they just came across a material which has those properties by chance, and not by design. Look at our own real-world example, the Stealth bomber/fighter, which was designed to have a very small radar footprint, but whose surface does not hold up well in the rain
And why do so many assume that aliens who can traverse space must of necessity have cloaking devices on their transportation? We, a fairly advanced civilization, have sent numerous probes that are reaching for the limits of space, and to the best of my (imperfect) knowledge, none of them (Voyager, Pioneer, et al.) have cloaking devices, do they?
And for those who believe that aliens are real, and that they are here already….well, it is *possible*, but it’s not *probable*. Then again, of the maybe trillions of microbes on earth, at least some of them are of extra-terrestrial origin. Who knows, maybe HIV is not the product of a government experiment to wipe out black people
but is an ET intelligence that didn’t figure on being absorbed by the bodies of these pesky humans that they found here on earth.
OK, OK, I will take off my tinfoil hat and put down my copy of “The X-Files” box set, and let the rest of you ponder this. I am proud to be a human though — we are probably the only creatures in known existence who have the capability to envisage and articulate the possibility of un-earthly intelligences, going so far as to produce arguments and counter-arguments about their existence, how they evolved, how they could come here, why would they come here, etc.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
My understanding is that most astronomers are using computer aided techniques and radio astronomy to look at the sky so they may not be peering into telescopes. Besides it would be more easy to spot an unidentified flying object during the day rather at night. Not to mention the fact that pilots (who do survey the sky) do report UFOs from time to time – which isn’t to say that those objects are alien spacecraft, they’re just “unidentified”.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:48 am
[...] bite of his clever “Measure the Speed of Light Using Your Microwave” demo.Bad Astronomy debunked UFOsthis past week, and Charles Lintott summed up his anxiety about the future of spaceflight using [...]
May 16th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Phil,
I’m a (granted, very, very amateur astronomer) and I did report TWO incidents to you in an email. You seemed not to take my email seriously or perhaps you didn’t even read it.
Anyway, I can see a couple of logical flaws in your #1 reason. First, most astronomers are looking at very small areas and usually have their eyes fixed on what they are looking at, not scanning the sky for moving objects. Also, they are most likely to be looking at the sky only after dark so that’s half of the day gone.
And aren’t them also most likely to dismiss any unusual thing as “mundane objects like airplanes, satellites, reflections, meteors, and Venus.” I’m guessing only a small number actually double check if there was anything normal above them at the time, they’ll just assume it is something normal. This is similar to an explanation Randy gave as to why/how some scientists were fooled when they first started testing subjects for “paranormal” powers. Simply, they didn’t know what to look for.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
The main reason I don’t believe in extraterrestrials visiting earth is the fact that each culture around the world have different versions of these aliens. North America has the ‘greys’, Asia has different looking aliens and Russia has different ones as well. Why would different aliens only visit certain parts of the world and not other ones? There is obviously a cultural influence on these ’sightings’.
Also, I was watching a video of unexplained lights on some UFO show, and my wife walked past and said, ‘that’s looking down on a sailboat with a bunch of lights on it’. She was right! As soon as she said this, it was obvious. I still see this video on UFO shows as dramatic proof of alien visitors.
May 19th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
This is actually quite simple if you think about it. Amateur astronomers probably do not report seeing them because they can barely see anything in space as it is. There is so much darkness,dust, glare and space. That it is hard enough to confirm the things we CAN see.
Not to mention that while in space, they are probably moving too fast for our current level of optics to even try and detect… Who knows how fast an extraterrestrial craft could actually travel in space. Plus amateurs do not even have close to the best level of optics in their what? $1,000 telescopes?
Give me a break. The best, and only way we could hope to detect or see a space craft of alien origin is once it enters our atmosphere.
Hince: You get sightings ON Earth. Not in space.
May 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
You poor sheeple: Always bahing the same o’tune……
Start here, if you want to know what everyone who researches such things knows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IZD_RfFFHY
I cannot wait until the rest of society wakes the hell up………..
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Albert Einstein
May 28th, 2008 at 9:33 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctimRp7VKU4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_Incident
There is no need to believe that an UFO will ever land on the White House Lawn. Also, do not expect that they will ever find any evidence for extraterrestrial life (aside from bacterias and microorganisms). That is because there are no extraterrestrials visiting the earth! Whatever “they” are: They are NOT from another planet in our galaxy! Instead, allmost all of the evidence that we have points to the so-called “interdimensional hypothesis”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdimensional_hypothesis
And Stephen Hawking, brilliant as he is in other areas, doesn’t seem to have done ANY research into exopolitical matters and ufology in general. Maybe if he had known about Varginha or Rendlesham and had seen this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk
…he wouldn’t have said the stupid things he said.
For example: Are Buzz Aldrin, Gordon Cooper and the incredible amount of high ranking government officials that have spoken out openly about UFO’s recently �cranks & weirdos� (as Hawking put it)? Remember: Gordon Cooper filmed a UFO during the time when he studied at the USAF Experimental Flight Test School at Edwards AFB. It landed right before his eyes on a dry lake bed. Too bad he gave the film to some guy from the government. The film simply disappeared… .
Furthermore, the “acclimatization campaign” is under way (and now more obvious than ever), as you can read here:
http://newsblaze.com/story/20080516152544reye.nb/newsblaze/OPINIONS/Opinions.html
As the late J. Allen Hynek said: “There is an embarrassing body of evidence” that we are being visited.
In a few years we will see a significant increase in suicides among hardcore ufo-skeptics as groups within the NATO are pushing disclosure right now and the UN seems to be even more upfront about this.
June 8th, 2008 at 5:04 am
[...] Bad Astronomy Blog » UFOh noes! [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Why doesn’t Google Image Search index photos of “Crop Circles of Extra Terrestrial Origin” in rice paddy fields in Japan and other parts of Asia?
May be Google is fine tuned by aliens!!!
August 25th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Taken by an Italian astronomer … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmqR1jNQM2I
If a non-astronomer tells somebody about ’strange things’ the first he gets is lots of jokes.
That’s why a serious astronomer must not tell nobody about strange things … if he wants to keep beeing astronomer.
August 25th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
The comments on the video you linked to seem plausible to me (i.e., a bug on the lens). Perhaps Phil or any other astronomers could share their experiences and if they’ve seen anything similar?
August 25th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
Annnnd….cue Michael Horn in three…two…one…
August 25th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Nah…he’s already tied up in one thread. He won’t come here.