Newly released UFO files from the UK government

http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

by jjp9999 • 14 years ago

57 81 14 years ago

ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk

revscat• 14 years ago

I think at this point that there are (somewhat simplistically) two opposing camps in this debate. The first believes that UFOs are entirely the result of terrestrial phenomena, and take the Sagan/de Grasse Tyson view. The other viewpoint is that there is sufficient evidence to point to some sort of extraordinary phenomena which belies common explanation.

Now, this is obviously a simplistic breakdown. Broadly speaking, however, this is usually what we see in such debates. (With typically much ridicule being thrown about by both sides.) Files like these, though, give even the most hardened skeptics room for wonder. While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate.

These files are, unfortunately, just more in the circumstantial category. Although they have the "official" seal of approval they are still, at root, not hard evidence. It is frustrating to those of us who are curious about this that nothing beyond eyewitness reports ever seems to surface, no matter the source. I think most people at least pay attention to these news items, but do not know what to make of them beyond raising more questions.

nazgulnarsil2• 14 years ago

if humans are all cognitively similar we shouldn't expect a large number of similar reports about things to be surprising.

Kelliot• 14 years ago

Should we also expect to follow pop culture? the classic description of a grey turning up following science fiction and newspaper publishing.

samstave2• 14 years ago

Also, we will never know if accounts that would be considered hard evidence were not simply destroyed and not included in any surviving record.

While I am personally on the fence about believing the accounts any gov has - clearly we know basically nothing of the universe relative to its size and existence.... so I will withhold judgement in any form - but lets look at the examples through history:

The earth is flat. The Sun revolves around the earth. Germs dont exist. What is this radiation malarky? There are no other planets in the universe. There are no other solar systems like ours in the universe. Lets kill eachother over imaginary rulers and their rules. etc etc etc

People are STUPID.

So, are there UFOs? No idea - but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are. I'd prefer to just keep seeking, keep experiencing life and the wonders of all that is.

The fact that Humans exist proves there is some intelligence in the Universe, lets just hope we are not the pinnacle as that would be rather sad.

andrewfelix2• 14 years ago

"...but I have sen weird stuff and I will never let another human tell me what the limits to the universe are"

I would suggest rather than depend on personal observation and anecdotal evidence you listen to groups of others who are actively seeking out information.

We no longer believe the earth is flat because of a consistent and large amount of data has told as otherwise.

rimantas• 14 years ago

  > So, are there UFOs?

No doubt, if you talk about unrecognized flying objects which can be anything—from weather baloons to weird clouds. Were ther aliens? I don't think so. Yes, there may be another intelligent life in the universe, but even so I think it is too far away even for the signal from it to reach another one within the lifetime of their exsistance. Physical visit is even many many orders of magnitude less likely.

dinkumthinkum9• 14 years ago

The fact that humans exist proves no such thing and don't ever let anyone tell you THAT. The government can't stop 9/11, how are they going to prevent people from knowing about hyper intelligent (well at least magically powerful) aliens?

Let's say you're proto-L. Ron Hubbard from the Marcab planet. You're a racecar driver, things are going great. Bang. You get recruited into Super Crush All Known Physics Astronaut Troope. You're commander, Xenu (ok I'm playing loose with Scientology fiction), decides "Hey, we rock and can travel at (speed of light)^1000000000 in our massless spaceships (not DC-10s, for those playing at home), so why don't we travel Earth (can't spell the Tegeeak word), and camoflauge as either several little balls of light, or 1950s inspired discs and just fly around at Subsonic speeds in Earth's atmosphere and just invite wide speculation as to what we are and maybe let the little creature's weird "government system" scurry around to hide all the evidence that we exist to the other the little creatures."

Does this even make sense? If you were proto-L. Ron Hubbard, wouldn't you say "Hey Xenu, we're the freaking masters of the universe, we can fold all of space time into our cool PDAs and play mega awesome Minecraft like games with, why would we do something stupid like that?"

Permit• 14 years ago

>While I do not doubt the logical validity of the skeptics positions, there is nevertheless a large body of evidence (circumstantial though it may be) which becomes difficult to deny when taken in the aggregate.

I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

andrewfelix2• 14 years ago

Exactly. You could argue that God exists based on witness accounts.

calebmpeterson• 14 years ago

> I think it's incredibly important to remember that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Honestly, where is the barrier between the two? I'm not suggesting it doesn't exist, just genuinely asking where it is, or at least where it's near?

c3d4• 14 years ago

Why would radar recordings or radioactive soil samples not count as data (in the same sense that fossils are data)?

sage_joch• 14 years ago

Interesting; I had always taken Sagan's opinion as gospel, but I suppose there is room for questions. A bit of googling shows both Jimmy Carter and Dennis Kucinich have seen a UFO, and they're honest people. That certainly doesn't make me a believer, but it's nice to see there's at least a small possibility.

ladzoppelin2• 14 years ago

Keep in mind that UFO just means that it is unidentified and not necessarily from another galaxy. In my opinion Sagan and Hawking are right and that actual visitation from an alien species would be really unlikely given the size of the universe.

derekp7• 14 years ago

Let's say I flipped a coin a million times. Now lets assume multiple witnesses saw me flip the coin so that heads came up twice in a row. There may be hundreds of such reports. Maybe even thousands. Would you conclude from that group of reports that I can, on demand, always flip the coin so that it comes up heads twice in a row? Or even that every time I flip the coin it comes up heads? Before taking a group of reports as evidence, keep in mind that this is selection bias.

chmike• 14 years ago

Eyewitness reports contains facts that can be checked objectively. I.e witness reports powerlines oscillating in opposite phase in presence of UFO. There are also photographs showing strange things like a fuzzy dark mass beneath the UFO or multiple dark rings around the UFO. This can be explained as light polarisation in presence of intense magnetic field. It is even possible to estimate the strength of the magnetic field. This is something eyewitness can't make up. There are also reports of rotating compass. This can be explained and can only happen if precise conditions are met i.e oscillating intense magnetic field. By knowing the properties of the compass it is possible to determine the frequency of the magnetic field.

If there is some reality in this phenomenon, it is possible to find evidences in the testimonies that can be indirectly objectively checked. This is science process.

dinkumthinkum9• 14 years ago

I don't think there is anything difficult to deny for skeptics. There are fundamental, and very serious problems with the whole ET visitation thing that make the whole thing just untenable. Where are they? I mean this would be a "big freakin' deal". The idea that the government could cover this up is ridiculous. World governments can barely keep secrets from eachother. You'd have to believe in basically MIB and neurolyzers. The physics of this ... is basically an appeal to magic in the guise of "advanced technology" (and don't give me the whole "any sufficiently advanced technology ... line). Now, it seems to be a big coincidence that there are many, many definitive hoaxes, I mean admitted by the perpetrators, but yet that the phenomena is still exists ("Sure we have faked this thing a million times, but it just so happens that it's real, I promise").

So we have to believe 1) ET doesn't want us to know about him and 2) ET is mega advanced but is so stupid that a bunch of rednecks and believers in woo/psi have discovered him (not that every "believer" is like that but clearly Joe Bob has discovered, so ET is evidently a mega physicist but sucks at basic hide and seek even with dimension traveling technology?). It's just too much nonsense.

c3d4• 14 years ago

I don't think tenants of the ET hypothesis all assume a MIB-style government cover-up. We don't have to believe your 1) or 2) either. Here are a few more likely explanations:

1) ET doesn't know how to communicate with us. We don't know how to communicate with most animals on the planet, yet they share most of our DNA. How would you communicate with a being that has no notion of sound, has a sense of smell based on silicon biology, can't touch you without dying or killing you, and has a vision only in deep infrared?

2) Interstellar travel, while possible, is very expensive, so scientific expeditions behave like our own expensive scientific expeditions say, to the moon: touch, collect samples, and go.

3) There's a sort of prime directive or at least an attempt at letting us evolve in our own way.

As for the faking argument, it's like saying that because there's been a few Titanic movies, the Titanic didn't exist... It's the opposite: there's interest in faking it only because there is something. Otherwise, we'd also routinely see fake witches, fake angels and daemons, fake faeries, fake invisible people and fake ghosts.

_wp3r• 14 years ago

Found a great paragraph..

"I am afraid we have a slight political problem. This ufologist is of course the Earl of Clancart, with whom HMG exchanged views in the Lords Debate. I feel our political masters would think it improper if the RAF News should be too rude about him. I suggest the problem could be resolved without altering any of the text from "Brinsley ...." to ".....interior of the earth" but toning down the faintly derisory setting and letting the idiocy of the Earl's ideas speak for themselves."

blueprint• 14 years ago

Could you link or cite the PDF? Curious to know what that was about the interior of the Earth.

jay_kyburz• 14 years ago

Having seen a UFO myself I can safely say that there _are_ aircraft with capabilities far above that what I would expect from our own air force in our skies.

A friend and I witnessed formations of lights sweeping across the horizon making 90 degree turns in the blink of an eye.

There you go.

dfischer• 14 years ago

My father says the same thing. I've heard others describe similar formations and "sweeps across the horizon."

I don't doubt it at this point. I really just have two thoughts, maybe three.

1) I really want to see it for myself.

2) Is it of present-tine Earth origin?

3) Please come to me and take me somewhere magical!

pbhjpbhj• 14 years ago

lights =/= aircraft

There are a myriad of natural phenomena, optical illusions and - dare I say - mental aberrations that could account for one seeing lights in the sky.

I've seen several objects in the sky that I've not been able to immediately explain. Having been 'tricked' in this way and later realising the 'natural' explanations the idea of UFOs being explained as extra-terrestrial is not at all surprising to me.

spitfire• 14 years ago

I've seen a UFO once, it was probably either a Beechcraft or a Cessna.

It was unidentified, flying an most definitely and object.

ary• 14 years ago

On the very, very slight chance that this isn't a troll it should be voted down to oblivion for being the purest form of anecdote.

DannyBee2• 14 years ago

No self respecting troll would troll a discussion involving UFO's. It's like trolling youtube comments, or children's birthday parties.

DannyBee2• 14 years ago

How do you know this has anything do with UFO's? The idea that these lights are aircraft is just crazy.

It could just be aliens playing with their equivalent of pocket laser lights that people use to annoy others at movie theaters, watch dogs chase, etc.

The aliens shine them, and watch you guys on the ground go nuts, and laugh their asses off.

re_todd• 14 years ago

I once saw what I at first thought was light from a helicopter one night, then it turned a tight angle and shot off toward space. I thought for a second that maybe UFOs were real, then I realized I was close to a military base. There is probably technology in the armed forces so advanced that most people do not know about it.

gfodor5• 14 years ago

If you're a scientifically minded skeptic, I'd encourage you to read this book on the UFO phenomenon:

http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-Generals-Pilots-Government-Offici...

It's a very good read. Also, in all UFO threads there should be a disclaimer that you are not making a point by pointing out that UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object not Alien Spaceship; most people when referring to the truly unexplainable cases use them interchangeably since extraterrestrial origin is one of the few hypotheses that are consistent with the evidence, though it's never obviously conclusive.

mbenjaminsmith2• 14 years ago

Another well researched book is:

http://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronolog...

It covers the intersection of military/governmental organizations and the phenomenon, mostly in the latter half of the 20th century. The short version would be to search YouTube for Richard Dolan. He's a great speaker and presents the information in a way that should be palatable for even the hardest skeptic.

quesst8• 14 years ago

Yes, I have read that book and several others on the subject and have been blown away. As both an open-minded and scientifically minded skeptic, it would be intellectually dishonest - even foolish - to deny that something extraordinary is going on that is worthy of investigation by science. While most cases can be explained away, about 5% of the cases deserve further study. For example, there are well documented cases of objects spotted moving at speeds of 20 or 30,000 miles per hour and making right angle turns and other impossible maneuvers, backed by both air and ground radar readings, and dozens of eyewitnesses. Or of massive objects the size of a football field gliding at low speeds, with no sound at all, over an entire city, and observed by hundreds of people. Something strange is going on in our skies, and sadly mainstream science and media are dismissing it, even ridiculing it.

VMG5• 14 years ago

How would you summarize the argument for UFOs being non-terrestrial for a skeptic who doesn't want to buy and read this book?

mkaltenecker2• 14 years ago

You mean, extraterrestrial origin is by far the most absurd explanation and shouldn't even be accepted as a hypothesis, right?

gfodor5• 14 years ago

Absurdity of it is subjective, but it being consistent with the evidence is not. It's highly unlikely, but it's certainly more likely than explanations that have zero likelihood. In the past the government has put forth explanations of events that are patently false (read: lied) and never re-examined, so the extraterrestrial hypothesis is more likely than their explanations in those cases.

Edit: To be honest, I'm surprised the extraterrestrial hypothesis is considered so absurd by scientifically minded people. Clearly it's absurd to assume that we're the only 'advanced' civilization in the universe, the place where it's a grey area is if a much more advanced civilization would have the means or the interest to visit our planet, and if they did, if the phenomenon of UFOs jives with what we'd expect to see if they did. This is up for debate, obviously, but I am not sure why logic doesn't dictate that the odds are reasonable that such a scenario could exist. Fermi's paradox makes you wonder.

quesst8• 14 years ago

While it does sound absurd, it should not be ruled out. Absurdity is a frame of reference and relative to our own knowledge and advancement. So a jumbo jet or even an LCD TV would seem absurd to someone living as recently as 200 years ago. So what could a species that is millions of years ahead of us, do is hard to fathom, let alone put limits on. The funny thing is most scientists on the one hand do accept that the universe must be teeming with life. What they just cannot accept is that it maybe be visiting planet earth. Why not? The standard argument is that the speed of light places limits on how far one can travel, the nearest star being 4 light years, it would take thousands or millions of years to travel the distance (the FTL argument). And yet the very same scientists, advance theories of wormholes, 10-dimemsional space-time, alternate universes that may exist right next to us. All of which may be harnessed by a species millions of years ahead of us to permit them to jump across space-time or even dimensions.

ladzoppelin2• 14 years ago

Wow to accept that anytime someone says UFO they actually mean alien spacecraft is ridiculous. Do you think that military testing, misinformation, hallucinations, psychological projections and t.v entertainment do not exist?

gfodor5• 14 years ago

No, you misunderstand my point. My point is simply that in modern day slang and often in discussion forums (outside of military/aviation documents) UFO means "I think I saw an alien spaceship or something equally unexplainable, here's why there isn't a good explanation." In UFO related threads someone will inevitably post a non-reply that is 'argument by acronym' where a person makes a claim as to why they think the UFO they saw is unexplainable (however unlikely that may be) and the 'counter-argument' is a reading of the definition of UFO. This proves nothing and reveals just how much the replying person looks down upon the person making the claim, as if they were too stupid to understand the definition and history of the acronym and as if knowing that changes what they saw.

Hari_Seldon• 14 years ago

The Obama administration has some believers

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-obama-administration-s-s...

Locke1689• 14 years ago

Doesn't Bayesian statistics solve this pretty easily? I have a lot of priors for weird aeronautical and weather phenomenon (e.g., St. Elmo's fire/ball lightning), meteoroids, missiles, balloons, and secret prototype aircraft.

I have no priors for technologically advanced alien life.

leke• 14 years ago

Hold on a sec, I thought the UK outed all their UFO cases a number of years ago.

mootothemax• 14 years ago

I love the idea that governments, so incompetent in oh-so-many ways, are capable of a multiple-decade coverup involving one of the most fantastic discoveries possible, somehow managing to prevent leaks of any meaningful data, including any mention whatsoever in data dumps such as, e.g. WikiLeaks.

And yet still people choose to focus their energies on UFO conspiracies, despite releases like these showing the true meaning behind the term UFO: stuff that looks weird in the sky and can't be identified by the viewer.

Newly released UFO files from the UK government

Related Stories