UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

[James R]

What I actually said:

"It's a matter of trusting the eyewitness's firsthand experience over the vague and adhoc possibility of some generic optical illusion or misperception."

A completely batty approach.

The question of whether wegs' car actually turned into a turnip is not one to be decided on the basis of how much you trust Freddy, who filed the report about the putative incredible turnip transformation.

Your feelings about what a great guy Fred is are largely irrelevant to deciding whether Freddy is barking mad about the turnip thing or whether the Ghosts of Turnips past finally got their vengence on wegs' car.

 

[James R]

I think that's reasonable if we interpret "trust" not as total credulity, but as assuming some significant possibility that the eyewitness account is reasonably accurate.

Why do you want to put your thumb on the scales before you start?

It sounds like you wouldn't be comfortable with the opposite: assuming some significant possibility that the eyewitness statement is reasonably inaccurate.

Why not?

 

[James R]

wegs:

While these may not be space aliens, I’m starting to feel that there are a little too many unsolved UFO “mysteries” that could be security threats for the US, or any other country dealing with sightings like this.

Don't worry about it.

Remember that there's been 70 years of such reports and "unsolved mysteries" since flying saucers were invented back in the 1950s. So far, no alien invasions, or at least none that have had any perceptible effects on the US (not counting the subtle replacement of recent Presidents by disguised lizard men, of course).

I’m not afraid, but there seem to be unsolved cases springing up more often, and it’s unnerving.

I'm guessing that a lot of other (non-UFO) "unsolved cases" don't unnerve you, so why is this such a concern? There's no good evidence that UFOs are anything unusual, let alone that any of them are any sort of threat.

Generally good life advice, I think, is to try not to worry too much about remote possibilities, unless and until they actually come to pass.

 

[James R]

Metallic-looking orb captured on video over city of Mosul Iraq by a U.S. Spy plane in April 2016.

... which isn't to say that the "captured object" itself was anything that was "over" the city.

An image of the video was declassified and released to the Daily Mail by Jeremy Corbell. Hey! Maybe it's the planet Venus!

Can you see the sky in that photo? No? Brain on, then. Think.

"The briefing video describes it as a 'short clip of an unidentified flying orb that appears to have a metallic shine on its surface', and shows the strange object flying over the city of Mosul in northern Iraq with the background of the shot showing the streets below.

1. It has not been confirmed to be any kind of "orb".
2. The appearance of "metallic shine" does not imply metal, or an orb, or anything in particular, other than some light entering the camera lens in a particular way.
3. No "object" has been confirmed to be "flying over" anything.
4. It has not been confirmed that the street is in the "background".

"...In a four-second video titled 'Mosul Orb' included in the briefing, the UFO appears for one second as it flies alongside the MC-12 spy plane.

5. The object has not been confirmed as "flying" anywhere.

Intriguingly, the object appears to have no apparent flight surfaces like wings, or discernible propulsion.

6. Neither do party balloons, water droplets, puddles, reflections from car roofs/windscreens/mirrors etc. Intriguing!

An intelligence source with operational knowledge of the footage said it was filmed using 'FMV [full motion video] by DGS-1' – implying that the plane sensors captured infra-red and other data when it filmed the UFO.

7. No additional data has been presented, so this is unhelpful. All we have is one photograph.

DailyMail.com understands that officials who assembled the briefing video believe the 'orb' was under intelligent control...."

What if they also believe wegs' car turned into a turnip?

What's your next (first?) step in this investigation?

 

[Magical Realist]

Here is some infrared footage of a flying sphere recorded by the U.S.S. Omaha off the coast of California on July 15, 2019. The object is tracked for some time before it appears to enter the water. The object at that point disappeared from radar and sonar as well. These spheres are definitely NOT balloons!

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, I guess we've reached the end of UAP reports in this thread and are cycling back through old stuff now...

... before it appears to enter the water.

It appears to do nothing of the sort.

It blinks once then disappears. All of it. All at once.
Like a spotlight might do being turned off/on/off. In fact, it actually fades in like a spotlight (frames #3-5).



You don't bother with any analysis. You don't appear to have an ounce of shame around not being interested in exploring these reports.


(The fact that the report includes a subsequent clip about an incident that has already been confirmed as debunked gives me hearty-hearts about the credibility of this whole report.)

 

[Magical Realist]

So basically you are saying I post the evidence and leave the debunking to the debunkers. lol Imagine that!

You also seem to be saying that the object is a "spotlight"? How does a spotlight hover in midair and show up on infrared camera and on radar?

 

[wegs]

Something is real if it exists, regardless of whether we can prove it exists or not. Science, for the most part, is rarely capable of proving anything. Science is about describing observed phenomena and making conceptual models which enable us to make useful predictions about how things are likely to behave when observed in future.

There are gradations of "real" when it comes to UFO reports. An eyewitness statement is "real" insofar as the eyewitness really is reporting something. The extent to which the contents of that report comport with an objective reality can vary a lot from eyewitness to eyewitness and from case to case. That kind of thing can only be tested by looking at evidence other than the eyewitness statement itself.

The processes for deciding whether something is "real" ought not be very different for UFOs, compared to deciding whether anything else in the world is "real". How do you know your car is real? Is it because science has proved it is real? Would it be a problem at all if you were the only person who believed your car is real? What if 3 people say they saw your car, yet there is no radar record of it? What if there is a radar record of it, but nobody saw it? What if somebody reported that they saw your car spontaneously turn into a turnip? Would that be real? How would you go about investigating that report?

I’d say you’re comparing apples to…well, turnips? Experienced navy pilots spotting what has been described as an extraordinarily fast moving, acrobatic “tic tac” for one example, which seems credible in terms of believing these pilots witnessed something unusual that can’t be debunked so far, is nothing like comparing a car turning into a turnip, which is physically impossible. lol

I get your point, but think you’re conflating what would be considered impossible with unsolved mysteries.

But, the carriage that carried Cinderella to the Ball did magically change back to a pumpkin shortly after midnight. Hmm…

 

[DaveC426913]

So basically you are saying I post the evidence and leave the debunking to the debunkers. lol Imagine that!

OK, so no analysis, no attempts to resolve.

You also seem to be saying that the object is a "spotlight".

No. I am saying it disappears in a way that is very unlike "entering the water". We might expect to look something like this:

(Though by no means is that certain.)





What is does look very like is a spotlight turning off and on:

I am by no means suggesting it is a spotlight. The point is simply that - other than the fact that it appears to be below the horizon from the observer's point of view - it sure doesn't act like it entered the water. (You may not be aware of it, but science has come a long way toward understanding how 'far things' can be behind 'near things'.)

 

[DaveC426913]

I get your point, but think you’re conflating what would be considered impossible with unsolved mysteries.

Just because someone said a car turned into a turnip doesn't mean it did.

Besides, even experienced pilots often describe seeing things that are impossible. Note the number of times they've described objects floating in the air with no visible means of levitation, propulsion, wings or control surfaces.

 

[wegs]

Just because someone said a car turned into a turnip doesn't mean it did.

Besides, even experienced pilots often describe seeing things that are impossible. Note the number of times they've described objects floating in the air with no visible means of levitation, propulsion, wings or control surfaces.

Well, I’m good with it being labeled an “unsolved mystery,” as opposed to mislabeling it as a weather balloon or bird. The case shouldn’t be closed yet, is my point.

We run the risk in my opinion, of debunking too soon, when we misidentify these cases as something ordinary, and commonplace when in reality, we just don’t know enough to debunk.

 

[Magical Realist]

OK, so no analysis, no attempts to resolve.



No. I am saying it disappears in a way that is very unlike "entering the water". We might expect to look something like this:
View attachment 5244
(Though by no means is that certain)





What is does look very like is a spotlight turning off and on:
View attachment 5245
I am by no means suggesting it is a spotlight. The point is simply that - other than the fact that it appears to be below the horizon from the observer's point of view - it sure doesn't act like it entered the water. (You may not be aware of it, but science has come a long way toward understanding how 'far things' can be behind 'near things'.)

Might be an artifact of the thermal camera itself---the image on the screen fading when its target moves away quickly or goes behind something else.

 

[Yazata]

But I have to say that I'm increasingly put off by how science is moving away from being a tentative self-critical quest for understanding, towards being enshrined as another Biblical-style source of revealed authority, towards being doctrines that must unquestioningly be believed, on pain of being condemned as being "anti-science" or a "denier". That's one of the places where 'science' crosses the line and turns into 'scientism' in my opinion.

This is not a description of anything "science" is doing.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=science+denial&oq=

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=anti-science&btnG=

https://www.google.com/search?q=science+denial

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, I’m good with it being labeled an “unsolved mystery,” as opposed to mislabeling it as a weather balloon or bird.

Of course not. It'd be labeled as ""possibly - even likely - a weather balloon or bird".

The case shouldn’t be closed yet, is my point.

Why not? Not that I completely disagree, but let's examine what can be gained. Surely the best plan is to concentrate on the incidents that defy any mundane explanation and on the incidents where further evidence might actually bear the fruit of exotic origin. If something is indistinct enough that "bird" or "weather balloon" is within the realm of possibility, what can we hope will come out of it by continuing to examine it - as opposed to incidents that really lend themselves to analysis?

 

[DaveC426913]

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=science denial&oq=

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=anti-science&btnG=

https://www.google.com/search?q=science denial

Science denial is not science in the same way God denial is not God.

A Venn diagram of two opposites would have no overlap.

 

[DaveC426913]

Might be an artifact of the thermal camera itself---the image on the screen fading when its target moves away quickly or goes behind something else.

That is certainly way more explanatory of what is seen in the video than anything "entering the water".

 

[DaveC426913]

By the way, a transmitting radar would look to a radar receiver like a sort of radar spotlight.

A distant craft - were it sufficiently small, distant and/or stealthed, might not show up in light/IR or radar traces, but would possibly show up if it turned on its transmitter pointing at the observers.

I am not suggesting that this is what happened, just pointing out that nothing in that video defies known military technology and physics.


...and also pointing out that nobody in these silly videos ever seems interested in exploring very simple, boring explanations... it's almost like it's in their interest to preserve the mystery. It's almost like it's in their interest to not be objective...

 

[Yazata]

By the way, a transmitting radar would look to a radar receiver like a sort of radar spotlight.

That's true. But that wouldn't seem to be applicable here. The video is said to have come from a IR/thermal camera at night.

A distant craft - were it sufficiently small, distant and/or stealthed, might not show up in light/IR or radar traces, but would possibly show up if it turned on its transmitter pointing at the observers.

True again. But this video doesn't appear to have come from a radar warning receiver.

I am not suggesting that this is what happened, just pointing out that nothing in that video defies known military technology and physics.

There's no need to hypothesize anything that "defies known military technology and physics". It's just an unknown contact of some sort.

 

[Magical Realist]

I am not suggesting that this is what happened, just pointing out that nothing in that video defies known military technology and physics.

It is a 6 ft in diameter sphere that flies and hovers and has no wings or control surfaces and no propulsion that would definitely show up in thermal. That is absolutely beyond any known technology or our level of physics. There were 14 of these spheres detected by the squadron of ships over a 3 day period. Neither we nor any other government on earth have anything remotely close to that.

 

[DaveC426913]

That's true. But that wouldn't seem to be applicable here. The video is said to have come from a IR/thermal camera at night.

In post 8145, MR says it "disappeared from radar and sonar".