Believe in UFOs? This editorial's for you!

Today's Washington Post has run an editorial saying that UFOs deserve serious investigation: The military keeps encountering UFOs. Why doesn’t the Pentagon care?As a child of the 60's UFO reports just roll off me (same for alien abductions), but the author claims corroborating reports by pilots and radar operators of aircraft far beyond the abilities of our own aircraft, such as having no visible means of propulsion and being far faster and more maneuverable.To establish my skeptic bonafides, once on an incoming night flight to Logan I observed out the window below our plane an amazing formation of huge UFOs with rotating patterns of lights. It was a marvelous sight for a while until it became clear I was seeing neighborhood lights below circular breaks in the clouds. Changing perspective as the plane flew past the breaks in a broad arc caused the apparent light show. Never at any time did I believe I was seeing real UFOs, though it was an astonishing display just the same.Before there was such a thing as planes people saw angels. After planes were a thing then reports of angels declined and reports of UFOs increased, finally booming with the beginning of the space race. People will always see strange inexplicable things that they interpret in terms of something familiar. I can't explain visual sightings confirmed by radar, but of this I'm sure: there are no alien spacecraft, and no country on Earth has achieved a major breakthrough in flight technology of this nature.Anyone care to predict who might pipe up in this thread supporting UFOs?--Percy

Me! Me! Pick me!!!!!I really, really, really believe there are things we have not identified.

I don't believe there are extraterrestrial beings from outer space that fly spaceships around the universe, but I think they may be a "spiritual" phenomenon on the order of fallen angels or demons that can manifest such things for the purpose of deceiving humanity.I got this basic idea from the UFO expert Jacques Vallee who has suggested something similar. Here's an article about him, Heretic Among Heretics: Jacques Vallee InterviewMy take on it is biblically based, where angels or demons are presented as realities tht are normally invisible but that can appear in physical form, while Vallee's comes from some other angle, but referring to "beings" as the cause of the phenomena is what makes his views similar. I read a book of his in the early 90s in which he likens the UFO phenomena to all kinds of folklore or fairytale-like phenomena down the ages, suggesting that all these things have the same source in these "beings," who merely choose to manifest such things according to the level of human consciousness or cultural expectations of the time. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Of course.

Definitely mental!

On two separate occasions, I have seen two moons.The first time it became clear on further observation that one of them was a weather balloon, the only one I have ever seen. It was later confirmed on the news that it was a weather balloon but it had also been reported by several people as a UFO.The second time I was in a bus shelter and I knew that one of the moons was a reflection. I used my powers of deduction to conclude that the one in the west must have been the reflection because the sun was behind it.I think it's almost certain that there is life on other planets and it's fairly likely that some of those life-forms are intelligent. It's even likely that some of them have technology far beyond ours. But it seems pretty unlikely that they have the technology to visit us - and even if they did, they'd have a lot of other places to go that would be more interesting.

During the 60's when I was in high school my friends and I formed a rocketry club. We had several night launches that were loaded with chemicals that exploded with bright flashes. We also perpetrated several UFO hoaxes involving surplus weather balloons and road hazard flares. Memories from a misspent youth.

Dry- cleaner bags, balsa wood, and small candles on a foggy night = widespread panic in 1960’s Fayetteville, Arkansas. No demons involved.

Sounds pretty demonic to me!

And lots of other places as well. One I heard about (ahem) had a small firecracker attached to the balsa wood. Timing the flash to the sound allowed a rough estimate of elevation. Way over 1,000 feet!

While i have no doubt there is other intelligent life out there given the shear size and scope of the universe. I have serius doubts that any would come to see us, we are a species barely out of its dipers still believing in magic men in the sky, we still our own kind for idiotic reasons, and given how we screwed up the planet we probably wont make it as a space faring species, so its doubtful we are interesting enough for any advanced species that could make it here to actually warrent the trip.

From how far away do you think our "screwedupness" can be detected?

New Set of Aerodynamic Configurations make Hypersonic Airplanes a RealityIt wouldn't surprise me to find that some well funded departments have known this for decades.

Some of us may be old enough to remember things like the Gaither Report and the "Missile Gap" and the Bay of Tonkin and other things used to increase defense spending that in the end turned out to be somewhat different than what was sold.Edited by jar, : appalin spallin