Case no. 6; the improbable events of Rendlesham

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Trapped, Dec 21, 2013.

  1. Trapped Banned Banned

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    Now, even though my favorite sightings are torn between the 1952 and 1966 cases, there probably isn't any better a UFO phenomenon than to be found in the Rendlesham forest incident, in 1980 in which a whole platoon witnessed a serious security breach in their air base.

    The sightings are complicated to explain, because it involved a harsh set of circumstances. We not only have physical evidence in this case, but we have an interesting hypothesis which was bunked by skeptics who thought they knew better. Armed with wiki, who does make very accurate accounts of the witness claims, I will attempt to cut this down into a quick idea of what happened.

    ''Around 3 a.m. on 26 December 1980 (reported as the 27th by Halt, see below) strange lights were reported by a security patrol near the East Gate of RAF Woodbridge apparently descending into nearby Rendlesham Forest. Servicemen initially thought it was a downed aircraft but, upon entering the forest to investigate they saw, according to Halt's memo, a strange glowing object, metallic in appearance, with coloured lights. As they approached, it moved through the trees, and "the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy" (but see below). The craft left three impressions or depressions in the ground that were visible the next day. One of the servicemen, Sgt. Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a "craft of unknown origin" and to have made detailed notes of its features, touched its "warm" surface, and copied the numerous symbols on its body.[9]''


    The whole base of course, was aware of these events. One witness under hyponosis claimed they were from the future.... But I want to stress how unscientific regression is.

    ''Shortly after 4 a.m. local police were called to the scene but reported that the only lights they could see were those from the Orford Ness lighthouse, some miles away on the coast.[12]
    After daybreak on the morning of 26 December, servicemen returned to a small clearing near the eastern edge of the forest and found three small impressions in a triangular pattern, as well as burn marks and broken branches on nearby trees. Plaster casts of the imprints were taken and have been shown in television documentaries. At 10.30 a.m. the local police were called out again, this time to see the impressions on the ground, which they thought could have been made by an animal.''


    The details of the account was incredible and most of these accounts came from Halt armed with secondary military witnesses.

    ''Halt also dismissed claims that he and his men had confused a UFO with a lighthouse beam:
    "While in Rendlesham Forest, our security team observed a light that looked like a large eye, red in colour, moving through the trees. After a few minutes this object began dripping something that looked like molten metal. A short while later it broke into several smaller, white-coloured objects which flew away in all directions. Claims by sceptics that this was merely a sweeping beam from a distant lighthouse are unfounded; we could see the unknown light and the lighthouse simultaneously. The latter was 35 to 40-degrees off where all of this was happening."[23][24]''





    The light house explanation was eventually debunked. It turned out that the direction of the base was directly behind the light house, the light house does in fact have a shielding and had been there since the early 1900's. Interestingly this little bit of information had evaded investigators only until recently. With the light house explanation ruled out, there are in fact no conventional explanations left concerning the incident.

    Col. Ted Conrad dismissed the claims, however, Halt provided evidence that there was a cover up, and even claimed that Ted's son had overheard family conversations about the subject.

    ''

    In 2010 base commander Colonel Ted Conrad provided a statement about the incident to Dr David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University, UFO adviser to the UK National Archives. Conrad stated that "We saw nothing that resembled Lieutenant Colonel Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground" and that "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could." In an interview, Conrad, criticised Halt for the claims in his affidavit, saying "he should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and Britain both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better.” Conrad also disputed the testimony of Sergeant Jim Penniston, who claimed to have touched an alien spacecraft; he said that he interviewed Penniston at the time and he had not mentioned any such occurrence. Conrad also suggested that the entire incident might have been a hoax.[26][27]

    Halt's partial response to this was: "Ted Conrad is either having memory problems, has his head in the sand or continuing the cover up. Even his son has admitted to family talk substantiating the incident... Through the years Conrad has made conflicting statements about the events. First he stated he never went out to look in the sky. Then stated he never saw anything. Apparently he doesn’t remember talking to me on his radio [about seeing a UFO sending down beams of light onto the base]... Remind Conrad of his article in the OMNI Magazine dated March 1983... In the article he describes the first incident in detail and concludes 'those lads saw something, but I don’t know what it was'. Now he’s smearing those involved. It’s pretty clear there was a very intense confrontation with something in the forest. Does Conrad want to talk about how the airmen were then subjected to mind control efforts using drugs and hypnosis by British and American authorities? Yes, Burroughs and Penniston have issues that relate to the events..."''


    This event is considered by some, as the most important event ever in British history concerning UFO encounters.
     
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  3. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Some years ago I spent over an hour and the phone with Halt. At that time, when I pressed him to guess at an explanation for what he saw, he suggested that it might have been some form of unrecognized terrestrial life. He felt confident that there was an intelligence behind what he saw but he saw no direct evidence of ET.

    This does speak to a recurring theme in even some of the more dramatic cases of something "unexplained" but not necessarily extraterrestrial.
     
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  5. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    I think it's safe to say that whatever they witnessed it had nothing to do with aliens visiting Earth. Unidentified does not justify "ALIENS!"

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    Grumpy

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  7. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Your first statement does not necessarily follow from the second. "What you think" is not a logical argument.
     
  8. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    Ivan Seeking

    Nor was it meant to be. It is, however, the logical conclusion when the argument is over. We already have one thread on this subject, why argue in both?

    Grumpy

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  9. river

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    True , Unidentified , doesn't justify " aliens " , but some could justify aliens
     
  10. Trapped Banned Banned

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    Whether he really believed this, I cannot confirm. What I do know is that Col. Halt often attends UFO conventions. It does seem that Halt takes the extraterrestrial hypothesis seriously in his case, or he is preaching to the wrong crowd.
     
  11. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    river

    There is actually a better chance that a BH will eat Earth in the next 100 years than that aliens have visited Earth. Sorry, aliens exist, but they don't visit(heck, none of them have ever written or called either). Just because more and more reports surface of strange sightings does not mean that ANY of them are true, it just means people have seen things they could not identify, misidentified things they should have recognized or(given human nature)they just wanted people's attention and they are lying. The probability that ANYONE EVER has seen an actual alien craft is near nil. In fact, it is almost exactly as likely that we will ever cause a single proton(heck, electron)to exceed lightspeed, they are closely related, after all. Both are very unlikely for the same reasons, the Universe does not allow it. Without multiple lightspeed velocities over real spacetime(warp speed), visits don't take place, trips are one way, and they take thousands of years just to reach the nearest stars(not true of the core areas, but the radiation there doesn't seem survivable by any life we know). The only possible reason to destroy your culture(if not your solar system's planets)and send a manned craft out of the solar system to another would be to save the lifeforms of that solar system from extinction from a solar system wide catastrophe(like a pending supernova). Trade is not profitable(except over transmissible communication systems and very long intervals of time), war is ridiculously expensive, the mad would be over long before the attack could take place and the generation that started the whole, impossible thing would be centuries dead before the first bomb fell, and if they come to visit, they will be coming to stay and steal our system from us. Robots do science much better than people, they don't get bored, don't biologically degrade over time, need no heavy life support, can survive more extreme conditions and can sleep for centuries without damage. It is SLIGHTLY more probable that a robot probe has visited Earth, but only slightly.

    Grumpy

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  12. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    In that event, your argument reduces to "because I said so". That isn't a logical argument either. That is a faith statement.
     
  13. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    957
    So is it near nil or nil. And how precisely did you make that calculation? Please show us the equations.
     
  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    While he's preparing that, how about you show the equations for calculating the possibility of spotting a unicorn, eh?

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  15. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    At the time he was speaking only to what he saw. My questions were specific to his direct experiences and observations. His feelings about the entire event, including the claims of the other people involved, is another matter.
     
  16. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    957
    That is a different argument. There is no reason to believe that unicorns exist. If we end up with a few million unicorn reports, including reams of highly credible reports of highly exotic horses in flight that exhibit characteristics beyond the ability of any known horse , then we might need to reconsider that position.
     
  17. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    957
    When we talk about odds, we are referring to something where we have a statistically determined outcome. However, when it comes to questions like, "Is it possible to make a practical warp drive?". Ultimately the answer is either yes, or no. The outcome is not determined statistically. We don't have a 50/50 chance of the cat being dead or alive. If it is fundamentally possible to transcend the distances required for interstellar travel but we just don't know that yet, then it may be common for highly advanced civilizations to eventually discover the required physics and travel the cosmos. In that event, at least one ET visitation could be a near certainty over some interval of time. On the other hand, we may mostly have the complete picture of physics and the chances of a visitation could be zero. But it is not a matter of odds. The odds that interstellar travel is fundamentally possible are either 0:1 or 1:1. The uncertainty is strictly a statement of the limits of our knowledge.
     
  18. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    So, logic suggests to me that when we talk about the odds of this or that with regards to exotic areas of research, what we really mean is, "How much confidence do we have in our models?" To my knowledge there is no rigorous way to make this determination when it comes to absolute limits. We can only speak to our confidence in areas where experimentation and duplication are possible. I don't know of any meter by which we can determine the odds that something like M-Theory is correct or hopelessly flawed.

    When I think of confidence with regard to the possibilities, I tend to look at our track record. In one sense or another, Newton's Laws, Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity all violated our expectations. And what is our track record of late in anticipating the surprises that the universe may have in store for us?

    http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/

    So in our most recent example, we found that we had completely missed about 95% of the universe. But we were pretty sure that we had the whole story before that too. How much confidence should we have that there are no more big surprises in store for us? Based on the history, I'll give it 5%.
     
  19. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    Ivan Seeking

    Our "picture" is not complete, but the lightspeed limit is universal for everything in this Universe according to what we do know. Unless physics morphs into magic it seems that is what we are stuck with. Everything we know so far makes it highly unlikely we will ever exceed lightspeed in any way, shape or form and that makes it likely that ALL UFO sightings ARE NOT aliens in spacecraft. Get back to me when something changes and anything with mass is seen to be faster than light, in any circumstance.

    Interstellar travel is entirely possible. It will just be slow(relatively), long(generations at least) and difficult(the resources necessary would bankrupt a much more developed, solar system wide civilization than we are now). These factors dictate that the ONLY logical reason to do it would be leaving as an alternative to threatened extinction. No interstellar wars, no trade and no gadding about the galaxy on day trips, visiting random planets.

    But a unicorn would be a very small step beyond what is known compared to assuming aliens have visited Earth. Unicorns are much more likely, which was the point.

    Equations? Are you having trouble following my ARGUMENT, my LOGIC? The argument must be solid before any calculations are valid. But when our current understanding tells us that there is ZERO chance that we will break lightspeed(or that everything we think we know is not only mistaken or a little off, but completely false)you are starting your equation multiplying by zero, null, nil. I rest my case, there is almost zero chance anyone from outside our own solar system will set foot in it. And there is nearly zero chance anyone from this solar system will ever set foot in any other.

    It's physics you have a beef with, not my opinion. Physics says you have no chance from the beginning. The lightspeed limit is fact, proven beyond any reasonable doubt, unless we know nothing(and that is not the case). I suppose the sun could start rising in the West tomorrow, but it is equally unlikely.That one factor means everything I am saying is based on solid logic. UFOs have nearly a nil chance of being alien spacecraft, whatever anyone claims to have seen. The Universe does not allow that to be a real possibility(other than the aforementioned lifeboat option). And spending money on trying to break the lightspeed limit is as logical as spending money on a Unicorn hunt, there are other, better things to spend that money on. Like developing the solar system we have now.

    Grumpy

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  20. Trapped Banned Banned

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    A completely circular statement. If we don't have a full understanding of physics, then it is likely to lead to new technology which not only comes close to the speed of light, but some can even artificially move faster than light by means of an Alcubierre drive.

    The whole ''lightspeed is universal'' is a highly abused and misused fact. Whether or not everything is bound by lightspeed is not an adequate argument against the ET hypothesis as there are plentiful theoretical ways of life managing around this.
     
  21. Trapped Banned Banned

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    There are several methods that take a while, some not really that long and others even faster than light.
     
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