Sunday, July 31, 2005

More Exeter sighting coverage:

'Odds are there’s intelligent life outside of Earth'

"David said the object was as large as two aircraft carriers. It was long and silver, with windows equally spaced around its center. After what felt like several minutes, he said the object started changing colors to an orange-ish red and similar-colored flames billowed from underneath. But there was no smoke or noise. The object eventually stretched to double its size and disappeared."
Posted by Mac at 5:55 PM

9 comments:

W.M. Bear said...

What I don't understand is why the immediate implication of stories like this is that the UFO is some kind of alien spaceship. It seems to me that the default explanation ought to be some kind of secret military airship or plane. Only if the UFO exhibits behavior that would be obviously impossible for a human-made craft, should this be ruled out. AND THEN, the back-up default explanation ought to be that it was a vision/hallucination of some kind. If this can, in turn, be ruled out, THEN we might consider the possibility of it's being a true alien vehicle of some sort. I think the best UFO investigators in fact follow a protocol something like this but journalists who write about sightings tend to be WAY over-credulous, IMHO anyway. The drawings that accompanied the story even suggested to me that it was some kind of secret military airship -- the elongation can be explained by rotation of the airship; the "flames" by the jet or MHD exhaust from the maneuvering airship.

6:57 PM
Mac said...

I don't immediately consider this proof of ET visitation. (I'm critical of the usual variant of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis anyway.) Viewed as an isolated incident, this might be chalked up to the misidentification of some weird secret blimp. But it falls into a context of similar encounters that argues against it being an "airship" -- not to mention its disappearing act. True, the military is testing various types of "invisibility," but I don't think this is what "David" saw.

Either way, I think we're pursuing a legitimate UFO sighting.

9:32 PM
W.M. Bear said...

I'm in the middle of Redfern's "Body Snatchers," and, as a result of reading him, a third possibility just occurred to me. Redfern makes an interesting observation in passing somewhere around midway that, to cover up the heinous experimentation that resulted in the Roswell incident, the military went to all kinds of lengths to cloud the air by fostering bogus sightings of "flying saucers, even including radar observations, as well as false visual sightings by military personnel, etc. When I read that the witness in this case was a retired Navy veteran, I immediately got suspicious in this direction and the wheels started turning.

It's interesting. Usually, sightings by military personnel, especially pilots (and even most commercial pilots are ex-mil) are usually given the MOST credence, since they are, in a sense, professional witnesses. But if the military resorted to such things as bogus radar and visual sightings of UFOs, it's got to make you wonder how many supposedly "legitmate" sightings by pilots, etc., are also bogus and part of this military disinformation program? It may well be that they've discovered that UFOs provide a great cover for all sorts of black ops, including secret aircraft.

2:26 PM
sauceruney said...

I wonder what the odds are of finding intelligent life ON Earth?

2:54 PM
W.M. Bear said...

Favorite T-shirt:

"Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here."

5:42 PM
Kyle said...

w.m. bear...

B-I-N-G-O!!!!!

No matter the provenance or the witness, the entire question of military/government/UFO connections is so rife with misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, innuendo, crazies, and greed, that smelting anything of value from such ore is a waste of time.

It is a subject best handled by civilians with no military involvement, IMO.

The taint is far too strong and we don't even know who we can trust...do we?

Kyle
UFOreflections.blogspot.com

4:57 PM
W.M. Bear said...

Kyle -- I'm finding Redfern's book to be quite a revelation. I can't imagine doing serious UFOlogy without reading it first.

11:11 PM
Mac said...

It takes a certain courage to ditch the "will to believe" and look at things anew, which is exactly what Redfern has done.

11:37 PM
Kyle said...

wm bear, and others -

Nick has done a great service. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and have been following his ongoing debate over the details on Updates.

I don't think I've ever been as impressed by his wit, grace under considerable fire, and adherence to a few core "leaps" which taken in toto provide at LEAST a potent counter to the ET crash Roswell idiom.

For me, Roswell has never been the "Roswell-etta Stone". Too much government involvement, and too much time and faded memories.

But Nick's book isn't really about Roswell.

It's about what's wrong with trusting a government and a military not to do heinous things, and trusting them not to hide it when they do...and not to lie to cover it up.

That touches on EVERY military or government-related case.

Kyle

12:54 AM