UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[Seattle]

Fun fact - reports of UFO sightings increased significantly in 2020 because of the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, causing more people to be at home looking up at the sky. I guess when we’re busy and on the move, we simply don’t have time to smell the roses and look for UFO’s.

I'm thinking maybe Covid was brought to Earth by aliens...

 

[wegs]

I'm thinking maybe Covid was brought to Earth by aliens...

Be right back…

I’m looking for my tin foil hat.

 

[Magical Realist]

 

[James R]

What damages their credibility for you?

Nothing specific, yet. But I know nothing at all about these people, other than that have reported seeing something they say they can't explain.

What makes you so confident they are (a) accurate observers; (b) honest; and (c) accurate interpreters of what they saw?

Do you know more about them than I do? I notice that you carefully avoided addressing the question of what - if anything - you know about this case, other than what's in the video. I'm going to assume that you know nothing more than what's in the video, unless you can point me towards some other source of additional information about the case (that you have investigated).

Why would they be lying?

There could be lots of reasons. Maybe they wanted the publicity. Maybe they are attention seekers. Maybe they are all members of the local UFO club and wanted to get their message out there. Maybe they hoped to be paid for their stories.

What do you know about them? Anything beyond what's we see in the video? I'm expecting you know nothing.

The accounts corroborate each other and were all reported to the police station on the same day.

Did they talk to each other before filing reports?

How do you know when they reported to the police? Where are the records of those reports? Do you have them?

There is absolutely zero evidence they made anything up.

Has an investigation been done to confirm that? Has any effort been made by anyone to check their stories?

What evidence do you have of it being a helicopter?

The witnesses reported a very loud noise. Do you have any details of what kind of noise it was - what it sounded like? Did it sound like a helicopter, or not? Was this possibility put to them? How did they respond?

Also, helicopters are known to hover and make loud noises. Some have lights that can face down towards water. Some can even suck up water with hoses.

What have you done to rule out the helicopter possibility?

How is it possible that all the eyewitnesses mistook a helicopter for a silver sphere with lights underneath it?

For lights underneath, see above. For silver sphere, I'm not sure. Maybe some or all of them didn't get a good look at it, what with all those bright lights underneath and stuff. Maybe they all got together before reporting it to the police to compare notes, and the "silver sphere" story was what they settled on. Did that happen? Did it not happen? Are you able to confirm, either way?

A helicopter makes quite a distinctive and unmistakeable noise. Why did they not recognize it as a helicopter?

I don't know. Who asked them whether they thought it could have been a helicopter? Did anybody ask that? Seems like an obvious question. Did you ask them?

If nobody put that question to them, tell me how you ruled out the helicopter possibility.

Was there a bush fire happening near there on that day?

You tell me. Was there? Or don't you know, either way? You don't seem to know very much at all about this case.

None of them claimed to have seen a flying saucer.

Well, that's interesting, if true, because I've seen some UFO sites report them as describing a saucer-shaped object with a silver sphere underneath and lights etc. Did the UFO reporters get it wrong then? What steps have you taken to check which story is correct?

There is no way they could all make up the same thing and then report seeing it to the police station on the same day.

Stupid, or a troll? It's so hard to tell.

You should ask Mick West first. He seems to be the authoritative expert for all the armchair skeptics around here .

Do you have any data about the case that can be analysed? (Of course you don't.)

Weather balloons don't fly around with lights on them and suck up water from rivers. But then you knew that didn't you?

Maybe it was a helicopter.

I'm posting in the UFO subforum under a thread about UFO's on the topic of UFO's. There is no reason for me not to post here. Why are you posting here?

To help keep the bastards honest.

 

[Magical Realist]

Some can even suck up water with hoses.

I've never heard of helicopters sucking up water with hoses. They actually carry water for bush fires by dangling what's called bambi buckets into water and filling them up that way. Then they fly over the fire and release the water from the bucket. Here's a few photos of what that looks like. What it does NOT look like is a hovering silver sphere with 5 shafts of light shining down and sucking up churning water into itself.

https://www.google.com/search?q=helicopter carrying water&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwi_gPzvp4n5AhUUIzQIHdujA28Q2-cCegQIABAA&oq=helicopter &gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQARgAMgQIIxAnMgQIIxAnMgUIABCABDIICAAQgAQQsQMyCAgAEIAEELEDMgUIABCABDIICAAQgAQQsQMyCAgAEIAEELEDMgsIABCABBCxAxCDATIICAAQgAQQsQNQwwdYsBVgnChoAHAAeACAAXuIAcwKkgEDOC42mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=dOzYYr_2B5TG0PEP28eO-AY&rlz=1C1CHZL_enUS699US699

 

[Sarkus]

I've never heard of helicopters sucking up water with hoses.

The Google-fu is weak in this one! (*)

But hey, tell you what, why not post something that is not an example of what others are claiming and then tell them how what you're posting is clearly not an example of what they're claiming!



(*) Note, I am not claiming that what the people saw was a helicopter sucking up water with a hose, only that such helicopters demonstrably exist etc.

 

[DaveC426913]

I've never heard of helicopters sucking up water with hoses. They actually...

We'll add that to the list of facts you don't know. Along with
- people lie
- perception is flawed
- memory, cognition and recall are flawed
- people interpret and draw conclusion about what they've seen
- people communicate
All things you've denied here, for the record, in this thread.

 

[Seattle]

We'll add that to the list of facts you don't know. Along with
- people lie
- perception is flawed
- memory, cognition and recall are flawed
- people interpret and draw conclusion about what they've seen
- people communicate
All things you've denied here, for the record, in this thread.

View attachment 5022

That's a pretty good photo of an alien space ship. Where did you get that?

 

[sideshowbob]

Weather balloons don't fly around with lights on them and suck up water from rivers. But then you knew that didn't you?

I can always count on you to mis the point. Whether or no you deliberately avoid the point, I don't know.

My point was that many people DID give the same description of the weather balloon, which you said is impossible. It was clearly a weather balloon but many of them erroneously called it an "unidentified" object. That DOES happen. It happens often. Which is why eyewitness reports have limited value.

 

[wegs]

I wouldn’t imagine that’s it’s common for people to mistake a helicopter for a UFO (non-alien related, just something unidentifiable)

I see helicopters regularly and the sounds emitted are distinct; they are simply too commonplace to be mistaken for something completely unidentifiable, imo.

But this doesn’t mean, as we have posted a gazillion times, that UFO’s have anything to do with space aliens.

 

[DaveC426913]

I wouldn’t imagine that’s it’s common for people to mistake a helicopter for a UFO (non-alien related, just something unidentifiable)

It is not nearly as hard as you might think.

Look, you and I and MR all come into this with 'helicopter' already in our heads. Our minds eye of what a hypothetical helicopter looks like is pretty clear and pretty detailed.

But it's not what these witnesses may have seen or heard in their real world scenario.


Here's a hypothetical helicopter - it's likely to appear little more than a shiny ball if you're a mile or two away:



Here's a hypothetical helicopter hovering over a lake.


Are you still certain a bystander who is not already thinking about helicopters will say "that's a helicopter"?
Are you still certain a bystander is going to hear any helicopter sounds?

Are you certain enough to rule out a helicopter in a case of a mistaken ID?

 

[wegs]

It is not nearly as hard as you might think.

Look, you and I and MR all come into this with 'helicopter' already in our heads. Our minds eye of what a hypothetical helicopter looks like is pretty clear and pretty detailed.

But it's not what these witnesses may have seen or heard in their real world scenario.


Here's a hypothetical helicopter - it's likely to appear little more than a shiny ball if you're a mile or two away:

View attachment 5029

Here's a hypothetical helicopter hovering over a lake.
View attachment 5031

Are you still certain a bystander who is not already thinking about helicopters will say "that's a helicopter"?
Are you still certain a bystander is going to hear any helicopter sounds?

Are you certain enough to rule out a helicopter in a case of a mistaken ID?

You’re actually right. But I didn’t realize the helicopter or whatever it may have been, was too far to clearly see.

When in doubt, use your phone, take a few pics and zoom in. This is just me, but I wouldn’t leap to thinking that what I’ve seen was unidentifiable simply because I wasn’t close enough to easily identify it or if I was too lazy to take a few pics to see if the object was in fact, identifiable or not.

I’m surprised so many people do this - their first reaction in seeing something far away in the sky is to assume it’s a UFO because they can’t clearly see it? I hadn’t even thought about distance being a common factor to dismissing some of the eye witness claims, to be honest. I wouldn’t even think anything of it if the flying object was too far away for me to decipher what it is.

I’m feeling had.

 

[DaveC426913]

You’re actually right. But I didn’t realize the helicopter or whatever it may have been, was too far to clearly see.

To be clear, I made this up to make the point that what we think from our armchairs is generally very different from what happens in-the-wild.

The job of analysts is to try to rule out this possibility. And it's a possibility until it's ruled out.

This is just me, but I wouldn’t leap to thinking that what I’ve seen was unidentifiable simply because I wasn’t close enough to easily identify it or if I was too lazy to take a few pics to see if the object was in fact, identifiable or not.

I’m surprised so many people do this - their first reaction in seeing something far away in the sky is to assume it’s a UFO because they can’t clearly see it?

I have seen shiny spheres in the sky. I have followed them as long as I can and they remain utterly unidentified and looking exactly like shiny spheres. And then something changes - it turns or something and suddenly wings are faintly visible. But for the entire duration up to that point, it doesn't look indistinct - it looks just like a shiny sphere. Enough for me (a skeptic) to wonder what it is I'm looking at.

One of the factors, in addition to distance - is brightness/contrast. It is quite common for a round silver fuselage to reflect a LOT more light to your eye than, say, wings. The wings, being relatively flat, can easily reflect back the blue sky, whereas the round fuselage will have a specular reflection (of the sun). This makes for a huge range of visibility between the two that often fools our eyes.

 

[Dywyddyr]

I have seen shiny spheres in the sky. I have followed them as long as I can and they remain utterly unidentified and looking exactly like shiny spheres. ... snip ...It is quite common for a round silver fuselage

I've seen it numerous times with seagulls, let alone "silver fuselage" aircraft.

 

[wegs]

To be clear, I made this up to make the point that what we think from our armchairs is generally very different from what happens in-the-wild.

The job of analysts is to try to rule out this possibility. And it's a possibility until it's ruled out.




I have seen shiny spheres in the sky. I have followed them as long as I can and they remain utterly unidentified and looking exactly like shiny spheres. And then something changes - it turns or something and suddenly wings are faintly visible. But for the entire duration up to that point, it doesn't look indistinct - it looks just like a shiny sphere. Enough for me (a skeptic) to wonder what it is I'm looking at.

One of the factors, in addition to distance - is brightness/contrast. It is quite common for a round silver fuselage to reflect a LOT more light to your eye than, say, wings. The wings, being relatively flat, can easily reflect back the blue sky, whereas the round fuselage will have a specular reflection (of the sun). This makes for a huge range of visibility between the two that often fools our eyes.

I don’t believe I’ve seen or heard anything that was truly unidentifiable in the sky, daytime or night - I’d just assumed it was a commercial or military aircraft of some kind, if the object looked to be flying or hovering.

I believe there could be merit in some of the UFO sightings (simply being unidentified and nothing more) but for many of them, it seems too implausible that there’d be that many all over the world, but none of us here have any stories to share. Hmm. There’s something contradicting about saying you’ve seen something “extraordinary” that couldn’t be identified, but scads of other people have, as well.

The tic tac video however is the most convincing (to me) for now for reasons we’ve been over.

 

[Michael 345]

but none of us here have any stories to share

Well this is a boring story to share

On a night flight to China I had 3 seats to myself. I'd had a nip but was now sitting at the window seat looking out

Then a bright light passed from left to right underneath the aircraft

That's it. No features or anything. Pitch black outside, didn't see any city (ground) lights

Bright light left to right underneath the aircraft

My UFO claim to fame

 

[wegs]

Well this is a boring story to share

On a night flight to China I had 3 seats to myself. I'd had a nip but was now sitting at the window seat looking out

Then a bright light passed from left to right underneath the aircraft

That's it. No features or anything. Pitch black outside, didn't see any city (ground) lights

Bright light left to right underneath the aircraft

My UFO claim to fame

We believe you.

Did you ask anyone around you if they saw the lights, too?

 

[Seattle]

I found a shirt in my closet the other day. I can't identify it and I don't remember buying it. Could aliens be living in my house?

 

[wegs]

I found a shirt in my closet the other day. I can't identify it and I don't remember buying it. Could aliens be living in my house?

There have been reports over the past few years of strangers sneaking into people’s homes undetected, and taking up residence in their attics, basements etc…

So, you might want to rule out human “squatters” first. lol

 

[Seattle]

There have been reports over the past few years of strangers sneaking into people’s homes undetected, and taking up residence in their attics, basements etc…

So, you might want to rule out human “squatters” first. lol

No, aliens are more likely. I'd recognize human squatters but I might not recognize aliens. Anyway, there are a lot of other people reporting aliens in their houses too so I'm more open to that. It just makes more sense, don't you agree?

You "sceptics" just aren't being open minded IMO.