This is part of the problem regarding UFOs, we don't really know how many people may have seen them because some will be afraid of the reaction to their claim.
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This is part of the problem regarding UFOs, we don't really know how many people may have seen them because some will be afraid of the reaction to their claim.
Not afraid exactly.
More bored.
When I saw what I saw, initially I was really excited, and naively displayed my enthusiasm.
I didn't expect the indifferent scepticism, cynical responses and eyerolling - because it really happened! To me! I've made drawings! Why would I lie about something like that! I don't need to give myself tckets!
I looked for people who could share my enthusiasm, but soon realised that most of these people are a glass and a half-crazy (there was one bloke who initially seemed on my wavelength but as I heard his story - well let's just say it involved alcohol, flying saucers and little green men...)
So really rather than be a totally amazing experience that I wanted to share (I really did) it soon became one of the worst, socailly at least.
Internally I've just largely kept it to myself since I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone, and just quietly glad. It was a personal experience that happened to me, and is part of me.
In a way it was my own personal UFO because I've yet to se anyone describe anything like it.
And of course sometimes I even doubt it, but then I remember the details, conscious and unconscious, the way its greasy metallic surface reflected electric blue from the orange streetlamp, all those weird markings, the 'window' that suddenly appeared, what I saw inside... ...
I've speculated on what they were doing there and have basicly come to the conclusion that it was probably just repairs, because they were so preoccupied it took them a while to see me.
All machines and electronics break down, no matter how sophisticated.
So why were they performing repairs on our planet and not in outerspace? Perhaps they've long realised it's better to be stranded on a planet than in space? I didn't have time to ask them.
And like the song 'I saw a UFO and no-one believed me - I was a long way from home and on my own...'
I briefly thought of knocking on someone's door to say, hey come and look! but almost immediately dismissed the idea because curiously the nearby houses all had their lights out, and only the distant ones could be considered.
So how would you feel if someone came knocking, getting you out of bed and crying Space Aliens! Space Aliens! Come quickly!
Precisely
I figure they possessed some fairly advanced electronics, perhaps understand human nature, and what they did was perform a localised blackout, waited for a few residents to come out and see if it was just their house, repair the fuse if so, before seeing it had happened to other houses, and then going back inside.
And then they landed. As silently as they took off.
Can I just get this right?Quote:
Originally Posted by MystyrMystyry
The thing was huge, above a populated area and nobody else saw it?
Huge is a word. Gigantic is another. Semi-visible.
Above (before it landed) and 'in' a residential area, yes.
I know. it sounds ridiculous.
I've written it all down, and it even reads ridiculous to me.
And if I'd made it up I'd show no-one - I'd say I can do better than that.
You realy had to be there - and I wish you had been (but I get the feeling that you'd have said to me 'Of this we must never speak').
Other speculations. They have sophisticated technology allowing them to traverse only they know how far across the galaxy/universe. We have stealth bombers. Perhaps their technology can stealth from the electro-magnetic impulses of both radar and the human-eye.
I know, it all sounds like bad sci fi, but maybe because truth is 'stranger than fiction'? You should know that better than anyone.
I'm not blaming you - I'm blaming them. It's just the more breath that I blow, well it doesn't make it better for me...
Nor do I know why they had to be humanoid - Pumpkin sized heads, humanesque faces with big black eyes, two spidery arms and legs, oddly proportioned pear bodies. Maybe it's the preferred evolutionary form for the 'brainy' ones (stereo vision, opposable thumbs, able to breath out of water etc etc).
I hope we don't evolve further to look lke them - it didn't look healthy.
And I realise the whole thing poses too many questions, but by all means keep asking...
Have to agree. Nobody else seeing it is peculiar. What time was it?Quote:
Originally Posted by MystyrMystyry
This is the part which really makes me wonder. Alien technology would need to be advanced far beyond that of humans, so it's not like they'd have anything to fear from us. They're obviously happy enough for people to see them, since people see them, so it seems unlikely they'd come here without saying a general "Hello, earth!" kind of thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by MystyrMystyry
Doesn't that seem odd to you?
Amazing how Hollywood got it right.Quote:
Originally Posted by MystyrMystyry
9:30 pm, give or take a few minutes, was the time. I was walking from a mate's house I'd left at 9:15 in order to meet my girlfriend at 10:00 pm. I had no mechanised transport nor watch, but I'd made the same walk more than a hundred times. To get from his flat to where I was takes about 15 minutes depending on pace and I took no shortcuts nor deviations from the most direct normal route.
Think about aliens landing for a minute. As few people who thought of them as celebrities (which is not what Niel Armstrong wanted after he returned to Earth, so why would they?) would largely be the Trekkie/nutjob crowd. Others who'd take an unhealthy interest would be all the paranoid militaries in the world. Paranoids in general.
You'd have a general panic just amongst the already unbalanced members of society. Some would say 'Shoot 'em! String 'em up! They eat children! Cut 'em open to see what they're made of!'
The media would have a field day with camera flashes.
Great welcome for our alien visitors.
So who would they want/need to talk to? The President? And say what? 'We have noticed you are a very violent species and therefore we will not be sharing any of our superior tech with you, not just because you have nothing we need to trade. Also you are inferior to us in every way and you don't even taste nice. That was a joke.'
Perhaps there's an intestellar code of conduct when it comes to dealing with primitive civilisations. Don't interfere with them until they can prove they've bred/evolved out all forms of irrational violence.
Come to think of it, of all the 'real' stories I've heard they've never featured rayguns.
And why would they want to cause even accidental trouble? Maybe they had their own violent ancestors - survival of the fittest may not be so unique to our planet as to all planets.
'Hollywood got it right'
Dr Who got it right - after they realised the audience just didn't identify with faceless formless monsters as readily as monsters that were a similar size and shape and facial placement relative to us.
If Hollywood got it right, they got it right by shorthand after experimenting with giant ants, spiders and lizard effects, Frankenstein, Dracula and the wolfman.
Okay they didn't look like the insectoids of Close Encounters - for one they were clothed in red/brown. The eyes were not as big, round not almond shaped, and when I say they were black they could have been very dark green or ultramarine, dull not shiny. And the big head was a bit like a pyramid that had been very rounded down - no sharp edges or corners. Get freecad or a piece of plasticene for that.
The neck was long and thin. The shoulders broadish but without muscle. They appeared to be eight feet tall, but that could have been my sudden intense encounter - maybe they were even taller.
I was about ten feet from the spacecraft most of the time. I thought of touching it but I just suspected an electric shock or worse (how NASA irradiate everything that returns from the stratosphere and above).
As for the size and shape it was about three stories like a flat block, almost a cylinder but a rounded elongated squaroid.
As for the material - imagine an alloy made of glass and silver.
It's hard, i know, like trying to imagine a colour you've never seen before - but it is a primary colour, not a brown-grey mess.
I've tried photoshop and stuff, but it makes it look even more ridiculous.
Skin colour? Neutral grey? But the lighting wasn't a bright fluorescent lamp like Startrek. It was like a bright ultraviolet tinge to an otherwise subdued almost nightlight. And the walls were covered in faint though coloured LED like lights, in both sparse and clustered patches
The only external light was a crescent moon (over the horizon) and the distant streetlamp - hundred and fifty feet away, two hundred - never checked.
The craft was situated from the edge of the footpath - the curb - over to a small park - about thirty feet deep - at the rear of the local library.
And another detail - you know how some dark people shave their heads and the hairline is perfectly straight across the brow? Like that. And no eyebrows, no blinking but I seem to recall a flick like a snake eye, but then...
I'm aware you're imagining it differently to how it was. If I were to write it as a story (my specialty) I could probably convey a better sense of unity to it, but you're welcome to have a go. It's really quite tiring for some reason.
Before you challenge me about the house/flat dichtomy - his flat was connected to the landlord's house by a single door to grant access to the shared kitchen and bathroom, not the best arrangement he will be sure to agree, but it was two bedrooms all to himself, access to a bathtub and fridge, cheap, and guaranteed privacy from the landlord, and he had a vegetable patch in his own backyard - it was a virtual house.
I'd say the alien thought processes probably give off some radiation-like emissions which have affected you.Quote:
Originally Posted by MystyrMystyry
lol!
No I think it's because I was too intensely straining for every detail
In my reality I've long treated it as a personal joke, but you're someone new to blather on to, so I guess I was being a bit too serious about it (not one of my strong points)
Anyway if you to skies tonight, you never know...
You see that's the problem. There are many serious sightings from serious people. In almost any other field it would be proof enough, but somehow it isn't here. If we believe them, then we look for a more conventional explanation of what they saw. If we can't think of one, then we still assume there is one. I include myself in this. I know a couple of people who have had similar experiences to MistyrMistyry, but still remain sceptical.
Which probably goes to show how easily humans are fooled by tricks of light. You must have seen any number of mind-boggling optical illusions in your time - I think almost all UFO "sightings" result from this, with a smaller percentage due to freak weather conditions and a an even smaller percentage due to an internal error in the brain of the sighter.Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
A [hopefully] smaller number still are plain old hoaxes.
That's because Occam's Razor still works. Would there really be aliens capable of overcoming the almost-infinite difficulty in crossing deep space only to come to earth to buzz a few people?Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
I find it intensely amusing that the number of UFO sightings in NZ recently has gone through the roof.
From what I've been able to track down, people are seeing a bright light cruising across the sky to the north-east between an hour and 2 hours after sunset.
In a bizarre coincidence, that just happens to be when the International Space Station is visible from NZ. In the north-eastern quadrant of the sky.
I just cannot figure how all that technology in the ISS is missing the damn UFOs!
When it comes to UFOs, I take the attitude of "I'll believe it when I see it." My dad is convinced he saw a UFO--now, he doesn't claim it was an alien space-craft, just something he can't explain. I believe him, as he's also a skeptical person, but it still isn't enough to convince me.
It is fun to speculate on, though.
That is more or less my attitude MM, I'll believe it when I see it. But I am a little uneasy discounting all those genuinely given eyewitness accounts.
As for the Occum's Razor scenerio I don't set much store by it. As Donald Rumsfeld once said ;-
The message is that there are known "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know.
I have seen the odd strange lighting effect overhead. I usually think of an explanation.
Seeing the unexplainable isn't all that surprising. Things like ball lightning - if it actually exists itself - aurorae, sunlight, birds, satellites and clouds are all capable of being misinterpreted by the brain.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mutatis-Mutandi
Possibly not the best analogy: Rummy was talking crap. (as he often did) It doesn't fit UFOs, because we do allegedly know something. If people see them, they exist, but are just unidentified, which is an important difference from "unknown".Quote:
Originally Posted by prendrelemick
Occy's Razor does honestly work though; it's simply a tool of logic. It only doesn't work on questions where there is no input - Rummy's unknown unknowns. Having no input just gives GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. Much the same as asking what colour antribokundas are.
In fact, even better than Occam is Douglas Adams. He used to eat this stuff.
This is definitely germane to this thread. It is pretty much inconceivable that the witnesses speaking at the press conference, professionals from around the world, are wrong in what they saw.
http://video.uk.msn.com/watch/video/...mepage_related
Why is it inconceivable?Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Bean
Do professionals never make mistakes?
How about I give you the example of a Nobel-winning professor of chemistry who was an AIDS denier?
Or maybe you're unaware of the number of actual scientists who dispute the fact of global warming?
There are professors of physics who believe the 9/11 WTC collapse was due to controlled demolition rather than the planes we all saw.
Please don't be fooled into thinking anyone is exempt from mistakes. The only bloke who ever claimed that ended up nailed to a tree!
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As an amateur astronomer, I'd probably be the person who would most like to believe alien life is capable of visiting earth, Something along the lines of The Day the Earth Stood Still (original film) would be the best result for humanity I could imagine.
Trouble is, no amount of logic can make it possible. The distances are vast; much vaster than almost all people are able to imagine. The return trip would be thousands of years, even at speeds approaching light speed.
Maybe there are alien races whose life span or technology makes this possible, but it will still require an immense investment of time, material and labour to travel inter-galactically. I think the chances of an alien life form visiting the planet only to allow themselves to be seen by a few individuals is nil.