UFO's...not an argument, just a discussion...

[wraithe]

Hey guy's...i dont want this thread to turn into an argument...
But i would like to hear from any one who has experienced any thing unexplained that could be an alien type craft or any thing unexplained from space...
I understand people can be sceptical, and thats fine but please, this is not a debate but a thread for discussion...
I have spent a lot of time in the country and have come across some strange things but never have i seen lights...well not ones that i'm sure where from a ufo or space craft...but i do have a few friends from farms in the wheatbelt of WA that have seen things and they are not the type of people to claim the world is being invaded...
I am hoping that as astronomers, there will be a few that have seen things and not said anything before...As most of you would probably accept or believe, that as space is so big(or endless, who knows), there is more than possible that other forms of life exist...

[ballaratdragons]

There is a U.S./Aus facility (secret, but many know about it) near Maralinga where they design, make and test UFO style craft. There is also an identical facility in Germany I am told. These craft use a polarised field which means if you fly along at 30,000kph and hang an instant left turn, everything inside the polarised field goes left. If you had a cup of coffee on your lap you wouldn't spill a drop as the coffee goes left too.

[Darkplague]

Heres an interesting link showing "the best of" ufo videos:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4234425471367323464&q=ufo

[beren]

There was a story on Today/Tonight ch7 Perth tonite about some people going around the countryside looking/observing for strange sky phenomena. I have never seen anything perculiar or strange or anything that could not be explained and apart from close encounters of the marsupial kind bounding by scaring the bejesus out of me my country ventures have been pretty uneventful .My Mum did tell me once my Dad saw some unxplained lights while working a sesmic line in western Queensland whilst driving during the evening . Hes never told me the story but knowing he has a skeptical mind for this kind of thing it makes you think , maybe :shrug: fatigue who knows :P

[EzyStyles]

Hi wraithe, would you care to share your friends experience?

cheers

[Adrian-H]

there are afew american secret goverment facilities in australia (area 51 style), apprently they are shoot on sight security, and the largest one is located around the alice springs region and its as large as a small town. it may have something to do with these facilities, i have actually seen quite alot of jets around these past few months. between from the east and the west of nsw however.

i tend to keep away from the media, hmm i guess that means i keep away from skeptics too.

[ving]

while i think there'd be life out there I wouldnt have a clue why they'd come here and anal probe us... why would they bother? I don't think they even come here. I try to keep an open mind to all posibilities tho :)

6.6.06 has come and gone and we are still here... bring on the conspiracies :)

[janoskiss]

It usually means they found Venus. :P

[jjjnettie]

I don't know what to think. One day I want to believe, the next I don't.

[wraithe]

a friend of mine grew up on a property at Gabbin, its about 40 klm's north of Koorda...300 klm's northeast of Perth...They where wheat and sheep farmers...Now his Dad was stilll somewhat of a sceptic but he wouldn't deny what he saw, the day they had something land in there paddock...Chris was about 12 or 13 at the time and he was playing on the dam wall when some thing landed in the paddock next to the dam...His Dad said they where all to scared to even get chris to come back, chris's Dad and Mum just stood and watched...Chris was a little more adventurist and walked around the dam and had a look at the thing...it stayed about 30 minutes or so then took off...this was just on dusk...Chris said it was fairly bright and the lights weren't constant...He wouldn't go into anymore detail, but his Mum said he walked over to the craft and Her husband and her where calling out for Chris to come back...
That patch in the paddock has never had anything grow on it since and considering Chris's family had been farming that ground for 30 years before that day and for another 18 years after that, they should have known what did grow there and what didnt afterwards...His Dad said the ground had died there and he couldnt get it to grow oats or wheat, or anything after that...He told me that there was an area of 20 to 25 feet that was effected...and he said that the day after he went and had a good look in the day time, there was three imprints in the ground like a tripod....
Thats about all i was told..i'm not really sceptical but some sightings i have questioned and i think it would be healthy to question some but i wont dismiss them...i think we have a lot to learn as a race and are so self destructive that, anybody out there would see that and be very cautious at meeting us....another thing is our governments are too secretive and that festers problems it self...

[Volans]

Over the last twenty years that I have been observing, there have been only two things which I have seen that I could not account for immediately. After doing some basic research, I found out what both things were.

The first thing was a small faint cloud following the Space Shuttle as I watched it go over one evening. I later found out this cloud was a liquid dump whereby the waste liquid is dumped to space, it freezes and I was seeing sunlight reflected off the small ice cloud.

Second were two satellites, both reasonably bright (mag ~2) with one sat. trailing the other in the same orbit. The trajectory was north-south. I knew they were satellites as they were travelling at "satellite speed" (if you know what I mean) and as they went through Crux, the lead sat. faded off and the second one did the same at the same spot. It turns out I had just seen my first NOSS pair. Basically they are spy sats. launched by the US.

So these things were unexplained initially, but were soon resolved.

Peter.

[ving]

hey thats pretty special! wish i had seen that! :)

[OneOfOne]

One of the problems with the "explanations" is that some times they are even more "unbelievable" than the alternative. I remember once there was a report of a "blip" on a radar screen, which was explained as being from Venus....I find it hard to believe that normal airport radar would be this sensitive!, and why wouldn't it be there all the time, couldn't be atmospheric as 99.99% of the distance is in space!

[Lester]

Hi,

I don't beleive in them But, back in the 1970's I was driving our self propelled header, reaping wheat and came across a crop circle. It was about 2 metres in diameter, the outside area of crop was layed down in an anti-clockwise direction and inside that the crop was strewn in every direction. Reported it to UFO society in Adelaide, who got me to take soil samples, but never heard back from them. Channel 7 were going to fly their helicopter from Adelaide to my farm (about 200kms) but by that time I had dug up the sight so much it wasn't recogniseable any more. So I talked them out of it. The Circle was about 500 metres from a dirt road, with no tracks of any kind leading to it.

[ving]

created by an inverted helicopter no doubt lester :P

[ballaratdragons]

Only 2 metres in Diameter, and yet it had the outside area of crop layed down and the inside crop strewn in every direction. Must be a trans-dimensional 2 metres :whistle:

[Lester]

:ship2:

[Lester]

It was most likely just a copy of the Tardis from Dr. Who . Poor aliens got nothing better to do than watch the ABC.

[Kieken]

I guess Europa is boring since I've never seen any UFO or something that comes close. Though I know someone who is very interested in these things I don't hear much about sightings and such in Holland, Belgium or France.

Anyway, I don't believe in extraterrestrial life as in intelligent life that is flying around here. Life is out there somewhere. It's possible that I'm wrong but I believe that if they really exist they won't be flying around to remain undiscovered.

Oh, about the German secret military thing. It's possible that there is something like that here in Western Europe. Never heard from it though. But then again, I'm not really interested in those facilities :).

[Robert_T]

much that is unexplained can be explained... it just becomes a matter of whether you buy the explanation or not and that will depend a lot on your (or my) pre-disposition, upbringing etc.

What amazes me is WHY people think that there should be easy explanations for things that are observed in such a hideously complex world and infinitely more complex universe. Why should a lifeform on one little rock in one little arm of one galaxy among millions or billions expect to be equipped to fully understand or neatly explain all phenomena in the wider universe?

now before anyone get's me wrong, I'm primarily talking about simple, pat, explanations and this particularly includes explaining things seen as UFO's of the aliens from another planet type... really such "explanations" are just one possibility among countless others most of which will be beyond our capacity to even imagine. For much of the phenomena in the universe - quasars, blackholes etc, that we now "feel" we are coming to understand, it has really only been in the last few years that the necessary background of knowledge became amassed, and amassed in sufficiently accessible and shareable form, that it became possible to even formulate our currently popular or accepted theories. We should be mindful of this and accept that we may not "know" or even have the "foggiest clue" now or perhaps ever, why such and such happens or what something we observe actually is....

of course this doesn't apply to people who point at venus and say UFO - it is (unidentified, that is) to them, just not to the rest of us:D

[asimov]

1972 april 12th Lester?? I seem to remember being up your way with a star dropper & a piece of rope at about that time :whistle:

[wraithe]

well said Robert_T...We are very small in this universe, and probably insignificant in the whole of space...We have lots of theories, but they are not facts and most get dropped by the way side as crap...but while they are accepted as plausable, they are rammed down our throats as fact...if its a theory, then that is what it is, not even close to fact...so to dismiss theories as crap because it dont fit in with anothers theory, well thats just plain ignorant...Does any body really know why gravity works..NO, because we only have theories...the theory of relativity, is just that...
The theory that aliens are in space is just as plausible, as the theory of relativity, in fact probably more so, the mathematics of e.t's being out there is easier to accept...and understand...

[janoskiss]

What would you want besides "theories" that would make you happy that we do understand?

[Robert_T]

wraithe, OK, but I think with this last comment you've missed or disagree with the thrust of what I'm saying... just because something is easier to understand in NO WAY makes it more plausible. The world and universe is a very complex place....

[EzyStyles]

Religion plays a major part in what we humans believe. Personally, I do believe there are intelligent lifeforms elsewhere can't be too ignorant sometimes but also follow my christian values.

[Lester]

Ah Asi,

So that was your star dropper that went through the header causing $5,000 damage;)

[asimov]

well....would you believe I was up that way doing some fencing....& I had to hogtie a steer??...........What time did you say you were coming to my place again?? :driving: :hi:

[Phil]

Hi there
Years ago i was out in my backyard with my telescope just looking around as we all do and a strange round light came over my head it was about 100 to 200m high the strange thing about the light there was no sound at all and it was moving in funny direction . I could not believe what i was seeing so i ran inside and got my *EX* wife who came out to see what the hell i was going on about . When she saw what i had seen she to could not believe what we where looking at .To this day i still don't no what that light was.
Phil

[EzyStyles]

interesting Phil. Did you watch it till the end?

[Robert_T]

Hi Again Wraithe, on reflection there's something else that I'm uncomfortable with in your use of the term theory. Just want to get some thoughts down here. There is a common misconception about scientific theory, that it equates to "speculation" or opinion. It certainly can't be regarded as "fact" (though few things in life could be regarded and agreed by all as such), but nor can it be really regarded as simply speculation. There seems to have been a conflation in many peoples minds of the meaning of scientific theory and the term "theory" as used in everyday speech (e.g. I've got a theory why the weekend days always seem shorter than workdays). In common usage the word "theory" has come to mean opinion or speculation (or just plain running off at the mouth), often of a single individual, and is often used to describe something that has been said (or believed) in a way that casts doubt on it's validity or basis.

Scientific theory does differ in some important ways from this common usage meaning. First, and most fundamentally, scientific theory is phrased so as to be testable, perhaps not always with the current technology available, but there must at least be the potential for testing and the criteria for testing and confirmation or refutation should be made explicit. Scientific theory should also be based on and be consistent with repeatable observations, generally from a range of different individuals. In short, scientific theories are based on stated evidence from observations and they invite challenge by others, and from fresh observations, that seek to test the theory, also from testable and repeatable observations and the evidence they generate. Again, they're not fact, but should a theory stand the test of time and the multiple challenges thrown at it, it should be regarded with considerable more respect than that embodied in common usage of the term "theory".

What scientific theories such as relativety and gravity etc do is they predict successfully and accurately the way certain aspects of the universe behave and in this way they enhance our understanding of, and ability to move through, our universe (e.g. we couldn't get probes to the outer reaches of the solar system without an accurate theory of gravity). These theories might not provide all the answers as to how something works but they do clearly aid our understanding. A belief in the plausability of alien life or even the possibility of alien visitation really doesn't function in the same way - regardless of whether it is true or not, it doesn't really aid our understanding of the way the universe works (at least not when phrased in such a generalistic way) on the way that testable and tested theories can.

cheers,

[Phil]

Yes we did watch it travel south until we could not see it we got some images on a video but of couse the wife got everything and i got to keep my telescope.

[Kieken]

Could you describe the light? Was it very well defined or was it more of a glow? And how fast was it?

Perhaps it was some kind of ball lighting? I ones saw a documentary on NGC about these things so perhaps ....?

[Phil]

No it was a light very bright it was moving very slow the stange thing was there was no sound even when it was above my head .
Phil

[EzyStyles]

Report it in Phil. If you can get your hands on your "EX"s video, will be good to have a look. Moving funny as in?