Believe in UFOs? This editorial's for you!

After much intensive study and analysis I find myself forced to the conclusion that there is absolutely no intelligent life anywhere in the universe.

How many hundreds, maybe thousands, of convicts have been found to be innocent of the crime they are incarcerated for after spending years or decades in prison. All these miscarriages of justice occurred after a jury found them to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. These findings were usually based on eyewitness testimony and indisputable forensic evidence.Several years ago there was a UFO sighting by people working late at night in a large office area that had an expanse of windows on one side. One of the office workers stepped up to the window to look at the city lights below and immediately saw several saucer shaped glowing white objects darting at high speed in the sky above. He called his coworkers to the window to see what was going on. Several of his coworkers also saw the saucers darting about and switching directions incurring phenomenal accelerations. But some other people didn’t see this phenomenon at all. It took a while for someone to notice that the people able to see the saucers all wore glasses, while those not seeing it didn’t. What they were actually seeing was the ceiling globe lights being reflected in their glasses! A case of identified aerial phenomenon.

But it is religions that throughout history have used fear of demonic manifestations to subjugate the populace (and to torture and murder any who disagreed with them).

Uhh, thank you Faith - you have just proven my statement. Religions create demons, devils, Molechs, etc., etc. to frighten people into subjugation. Even parents do this to control their young children with visions of The Bogeyman. (Why are there no female or transgender Bogeys?) Apparently, two edits of your post aren’t sufficient to make them logical. Maybe try six or seven.

One of the most boring jobs in the world is being an airline pilot. Planes fly themselves. Even when not on autopilot an airplane will maintain a steady heading and altitude. Yes, pilots do have to get involved during takeoffs and landings and rough air will create some excitement, but 99% of the time the pilot just sits there and stares out the window. During night flights and flying over the ocean, this can get very hypnotic. (Perhaps airlines should require their pilots on long flights to do a barrel roll or loop every 15 minutes to break up the monotony.) These conditions are ripe for visual misjudgments and optical illusions. And the human mind has evolved a very strong ‘fill in the blanks’ tendency, very helpful when you hear a rustling in the bushes and can’t tell if its the wind or a lion.As a previous poster noted, when while piloting an airplane at night and seeing a small circular light, he couldn’t tell if it was large and far away or small and close. But he still concludes it was the size of a car and 150 feet away. Added to this visual inaccuracy, there are real visual effects that have been highly distorted by physical phenomenon, what I’ll call optical delusions. A well documented example of these is the fata morgana. And we’ve all seen what look like water on a road, but was just the sun glancing off the asphalt at a low angle.But what about those radar detections that confirm the visual sightings and see the same thing? It’s important to remember that you never actually see any thing, never see any stuff, and never see any process. What your eye detects are photons reflected or emitted by that thing, stuff, or process. And those photons reach your eye after traveling through some medium that can bend, reflect, or otherwise distort those photons creating what I have called optical delusions. Photons are a form of electromagnetic radiation. Radar is also based on electromagnetic rays, and these rays, although of a much longer wavelength than light, are also subject to the same bending and distortion as photons. What the radar operator sees is not some detailed picture of the UFO with strange aliens peering through portholes. What he sees is a small blip on a green on gray radar display. In fact, the ground based radar is subject to more distortions of the radar signal due to the denser atmosphere near the ground and problems with ‘ground clutter’ - reflections from all the natural and manmade structures near ground level. This is why aircraft can avoid detection by flying ‘under the radar’. Probably the distortion of such radio signals that the average person is most familiar with is when their GPS display tells them that they are driving off in a field somewhere or through the center of a building.Of course, none of this proves that no UFO sightings are due to exotic high performance aircraft, aliens, or, as propose by our resident crackpot, supernatural demons. It does indicate the level of skepticism and analysis that needs to be applied to UFO sightings, even if the sightings are by knowledgeable individuals and confirmed by radar. It also leaves open the question as to why the military found it necessary to classify the sightings. From my own experience working in the aerospace industry and holding several classification clearances, I’m guessing it’s because the military has a strong tendency to classify everything. It’s much easier to classify something and later declassify it than the other way around. And nobody ever got their ass in a wringer for overclassifying something.

Thank you for the correction. These sightings were over the water and so radar signals would not be bothered by ground clutter. But there is also sea surface clutter. Have you ever stood on a beach at night when the moon was above the far horizon and seen a path of silvery moon reflection shimmering on the water? Also, stars actually do not twinkle. The twinkling is due to multiple refractions of the star light as it passes through the upper atmosphere. One of the things that UFO skeptics (i. e., not skeptical that some phenomenon has been seen, but skeptical that the phenomenon is caused by technologically advanced foreign forces, aliens, or even demonic spirits) find most amusing is the way that the motions of the UFOs are interpreted. In almost all these sightings, the UFOs are described as moving in seemingly random, erratic ways involving speeds and accelerations beyond any known current technology. The UFO aficionados never stop to ask Why?. One thing that is clear is that if the UFOs are powered by intelligent beings, they are not very interested in making contact with us. The never stop to greet us with a Howdee do or give a speech to the UN or have an interview on The View. If their quest is to surveil the Earth and/or us Earthlings, and it is hard to think of any other purpose they might have, then it is hard to justify all those frantic motions. If you were a police detective charged with surveilling some place of business that might be involved in suspicious activity, I’m guessing you would conduct that surveillance from the shadows or other clandestine position. You wouldn’t do it in plain sight jumping around like an idiot and wearing a hat with bright flashing lights on it. (Or maybe you would if your the type of person that sees demonic possession in every unexplained occurrence.)exhibiting motions well beyond any known technology I’ll let you in on a super, classified, codeword, SCIF level secret and show you how you can create an object that exhibits motion ‘beyond any known technology’, but it will require a major investment: $1.00 for a laser pointer and $1.00 for a small handheld mirror. On some dark and stormy night (the storm is actually optional) shine the laser light from the pointer onto the mirror and reflected onto a distant wall. Rapidly flick the mirror back and forth and the laser spot on the wall will move at thousands of miles per hour and accelerate at hundreds of g’s. To get to something closer to what is probably causing many of those UFO sightings, shine the laser light through a triangular prism so it is refracted onto the wall. But now we’re go even further and defy the laws of physics. This will require a further investment into two medium size telescopes. Use one telescope to project the laser light onto one edge of the moon. Then flick the mirror about 1/4th degree in about 10 milliseconds so the laser spot flicks to the opposite edge of the moon. Use the second telescope to observe the spot. That spot will have travelled 2,000 miles in 1/100 of a second, i. e., it will have travelled at 200,000 miles per second. The speed of light is ~186,000 miles per second, so you have created something that travels faster than the speed of light! (An extra credit question for the adroit student: Why does this not actually violate relativity and the known laws of physics? Hint: We’ve been a bit cavalier with the definition of ‘object’.)But what about those sightings of UFOs that seem to move purposely and intelligently? Enter the Foo Fighters(not the band). These were objects seen by WWII pilots flying over German territory at night that appeared suddenly, looked like glowing (usually red) oblong spheres that followed the planes very precisely for a while as though intelligently guided and just as suddenly disappeared. Certainly, the only possible explanation for these sightings is that these were true advanced technology, maybe alien, vehicles. Have you ever driven on a road through a forested area and noticed that the trees next to the road zip by while the trees further into the forest seem to move precisely along with your car? Children on such trips often ask Why are those trees following us?. There are 2 possible explanations for this phenomenon:Explanation 1: The distant trees have been demonically possessed and the demons have ripped the trees out of the ground and are making them run along the forrest floor;
Explanation 2: This is an optical illusion simply due to the geometric sensation called parallax.These sightings occurred at night and during war when almost all the lights on the ground would have been black out, conditions where it is very hard to judge distances and any light sources that did exist, such as fires, search lights, or even lights on other aircraft could well appear to be following the planes. Yes! Exactly! Thank you, Faith! People experienced in optical and radar limitations and artifacts never insist that these phenomenon are beyond physical explanation. This is why they are now referring to them as UAO - unidentified aerial objects - to get away from all the nonsensical and sensationalistic explanations. They particularly do not refer to them as UDOs - unidentified demonic objects. Do you believe that crop circles are demonic (or even just physically unexplainable) creations? Please check the videos of how they are created by two guys with a two foot plank and a piece of rope and note how that phenomenon has faded from public attention now that the hoax has been explained.Note: Due to the highly sensitive nature of some of the matters discussed above you are ordered herewith to burn this post after reading.

The most amazing power that UFO's (or UAPs) demonstrate - totally beyond any known human capability, is the power to reduce the resolution and contrast of any imaging system within site of said UFO to render any images taken - optical or radar or whatever - to an indistinct, fuzzy blob.Actually, Japanese porn videographers seem to have developed the same capability when it comes to displaying genitalia, or so I've been told.