UFOs In the News 449
Several readers have let us know about a report on MSNBC that France's space agency has announced plans to publish its archive of UFO sightings in a month or so. The archive includes some 6,000 reports relating to around 1,600 incidents over 30 years. In a separate development, many readers have sent in word of the reported UFO that at least six United Airlines workers saw over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport last November. National Public Radio picked up the story with an interview with the Chicago Trib reporter who wrote about it yesterday. United is, strangely, denying that any such incident was ever brought up. The FAA admits there was an incident but is not investigating it.
UFO vs. alien spacecraft (Score:5, Insightful)
That left an impression on me. People tend to use "UFO" as a shorthand for alien spacecraft... but when you get down to it, "Unidentified Flying Object" refers to anything unidentified that you see in the sky. A segment of a sun halo, a satellite, an odd cloud, a distant airplane with the sun glinting off of it... The same would apply to the "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" term used in the O'Hare article.
Conversely, if alien spacecraft are ever verified, they wouldn't really be UFOs, would they?
What about employee safety? (Score:4, Insightful)
Local Engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
It Left a Hole in the Clouds (Score:5, Insightful)
Smells like a hoax... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good going, France! (Score:1, Insightful)
OH NOES! TEH SWARHTY BROWN HORDEZES!
Sorry, but the riots were about institutionalized racism in France, they were not some kind of a covert religious war. Most of the youths you identify as "muslim youths" consider themselves as not very religious. What they do have is a lot of free-floating anger at a society that invited their parents in to clean swimming pools and tend gardens, only to discover that there are French citizens, and then there are "French citizens."
With little opportunities for honest work, constant belittlement by societal elites, and repressive police tactics that give cops a pass on bad things happening to brown people, you tend to get street gangs and race riots. In France, they tend to be reasonably polite race riots, where damage is almost entirely to property rather than people. Weird, but whatever.
But you go on and worry about the Coming Islamic Invasion. Somebody needs to buy the Free Republic Secret Decoder Rings.
Correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Any photos? (Score:2, Insightful)
The FAA is probably sitting on them.
EP
Re:Good going, France! (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of what goes by the name of "national security" is also distracting crap; "invading mobs of Muslim youths" and airplanes crashing into skyscrapers simply are not high on the list of things likely to kill you. The things people ought to worry about and that kill them and others, they like to forget about and are all too happy to be distracted from: nutrition, traffic accidents, poverty, civilian killings during war, global warming, etc.
Re:So What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It Left a Hole in the Clouds (Score:5, Insightful)
What the hell is a secret military aircraft doing in the middle of the busiest airport in America?
First, if it's supposed to be a secret, it certainly shouldn't be hovering over an airport. It should be out in a more deserted environment. Second, even if it was some kind of weird test, the fact that it distracted people who were doing things like driving airplanes, repairing airplanes, etc. implies a threat to public safety and I don't think the military would go for that. Finally, the risk that something could go wrong--collision, malfunction, etc.--and end up spilling the beans and potentially injuring people would be really stupid. Even the military isn't that stupid.
Alien != Little green men from space necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence . (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, a dozen people sounds great, but... O'Hare is the busiest airport in the US now, I believe - and no one else noticed this thing? Also, the 12 people worked for the same airline, so it's possible they would all be relatively close to each other while working. What about people in other parts of the airport?
Airline pilots and air traffic controllers tend to be observant and cautious for obvious reasons... and none of them noticed anything?
I like the lights-on-clouds explanation - it would explain why 12 people near each other might see something very odd, but no one else would - it's some sort of reflection from a light source in or near the airport. Then whatever it was that was generating the light for the reflection moves, and *poof* the UFO disappears up into the clouds at a dizzying speed.
Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost. Remember that it has to be flying as well, which is a pretty descriptive attribute that takes away alot of possibilities.
A segment of a sun halo
That either not an object or it's not flying. I dunno. Pick one.
a satellite
There is no lift being generated by an satellite in orbit, and therefore it isn't flight. If it's not in orbit, then I'm pretty sure it's referred to as "falling", not "flying".
an odd cloud
Clouds float, they don't fly.
a distant airplane with the sun glinting off of it
If you can't read the numbers or hear the call sign, it's unidentified. If it's still got wings and an engine and it's up in the air, it's probably flying, and if it can be referred to as "it", it's probably an object. Bingo! We have a winner!
"Unidentified Aerial Phenomena"
Damn. Now I gotta start over.
Conversely, if alien spacecraft are ever verified, they wouldn't really be UFOs, would they?
No call sign, no authorization, no pilot's license -- screw that, them's a UFO! Of course, their propulsion system probably wouldn't rely on flight... I guess that's another matter.
Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Read Accelerando [accelerando.org] (free eBook available), and consider that nothing in that book is particularly physically implausible.
It is exceedingly unlikely that aliens that are just like we are now, only with spaceships, would come by and buzz us. At this point it seems far more likely that if any aliens ever do make "contact", it'll be in the form of a fully-automated colony ship that stops somewhere, maybe in the rings of Saturn or the asteroid belt, and proceeds turning our entire Solar System into computronium [wikipedia.org]. All we could do is hope and pray the probe is programmed to do something nice for us, because we sure as hell couldn't stop it.
Any civilization that has the resources to cross the stars is extremely unlikely to use those resources to build a tin can capable of holding meat-bodies in it, with mass that could instead be made into enough computronium to perform mind-blowing amounts of computation, and blow unspeakable numbers of human-lifetimes worth of energy moving that across the stars, just to buzz humans for no apparently reason. (Yes; in a world of computronium, one standardized human life can be used as measurement of energy.)
The putative aliens of the UFOs are a product of a very peculiar sort of shortsightedness about the ultimate limits of technology that dates from a relatively narrow understanding of science, and are as out-of-date as the idea that the world only needs five computers. Interestingly, both ideas are out-of-date for the same basic reason...
Re:how about a little money? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. No, it can't.
Re:Good going, France! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, looks like you never quite figured it out. See, 9-11 "tanked the economy" and "raised unemployment rate" because people had the shit scared out of them. Why did they? Because politicians like Bush wanted to spread fear to distract from their incompetence and institutionalized corruption.
Re:UFO vs. alien spacecraft (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to think outside the box.
When Carl Sagan stated that it was scientifically impossible for aliens to visit Earth due to how long it would take to cross the vast gulfs of interstellare space, I wish I'd been there to say "So there can't possibly be aliens with a lifespan measured in thousands of years?"
Don't Anthropomorphise Aliens!!!!!
Re:Aliens, ghosts, and gods never leave evidence . (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people seem to think that if a "god" was "good" and in control of everything, life would be some kind of easy utopia where no one has any hardships and nothing "bad" happens. IMO, this is a severe misunderstanding of what life is about. Life is about learning, growing, and experiencing; about facing hardships and overcoming them, or at least learning from them. This necessarily requires plenty of "bad" things to happen. Different people leading different lives have different trials to face and different lessons to learn. Without challenges and difficulties, there is no drive for any kind of improvement or advancement. If our existence is somehow the result of some kind of divine entity, I believe said divine entity has generally good intentions, but does not mean for us to be coddled pets, dependent on our god for some kind of perpetual state of easy contentment.
The above is just my view, which I'm not interested in trying to impose on anyone else; the main point is that it is not illogical to believe there is a "good" god in a world full of evils.