Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
A national tabloid newspaper recently conducted a 'survey' as to whether Brits believed in UFO's.They claim that over or at least half the population think or believe that they exist.
I do not, but would be interested to read about conflicting views.The nearest star is about 20,000 light years away(I am sure someone will correct this guessestimitate).So how do they travel here and why do they not make themselves known to us?.
I did like this letter in the newspaper which read
''Aliens exist.In Birmingham they sit on the bus with wires coming out of their ears,grunt and cover their faces with hoods.They seem very sensitive to light and work''.
I am very keen to hear about other forumites opinions.
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 660- Registered: 14 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,205
Marek I believe I have seen a ufo when I lived in Sandwich,do you remember a programme in the 60's called Project UFO,well the opening shots were of Wright Patterson Airbase in Dayton,I have friends there and was given a tour of the Base.This is were all UFO debris is taken,I asked a friend if they have ever found anything,and all he would reply as they are sworn to Secrecy is 'Why do you think that they double man the gates at times'
If you knew what I know,we would both be in trouble!
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
John
Interesting ..but it could have been a governmental experiment that had gone wrong...?
Has anyone seen an UFO in Dover? or was it just the sight of Howards wallet as he reached and pulled it from his pocket.. promising to buy a round.It's not been seen since.
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 660- Registered: 14 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,205
Surely if someone had spotted a Space ship,it wouldn't be an unidentified object,because we would know what it was a spaceship
If you knew what I know,we would both be in trouble!
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
marek
last time i opened my wallet, our esteemed monarch blinked and screamed, NO- NOT NATURAL LIGHT!!
Guest 675- Registered: 30 Jun 2008
- Posts: 1,610
Could I just point out that the nearest star is only 4.5 light years away, which is a bit of a difference to 20,000 ( a Rolling Stones song I believe). Our modern civilization is the result of only 6 to 8 thousand years of development and yet man has been around for something like 50 thousand years on this planet. The sun is a fairly young star in comparison to many others in the universe. Are we sure we are alone or are we just supremely arrogent?
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Chris
The nearest star technically speaking is the Sun some 8 minutes light years away ie it takes 8 minutes for light from the Sun to reach earth.You are quite correct that the nearest star is about 4.2 light years away.If Using modern technology, how long would a trip to the nearest star take?
Our technology, off the shelf, is still primitive. With a gravity assist from Jupiter, they were able to get the Galileo spacecraft to travel about 100,000 kilometers/hour. If we could achieve this speed, then the nearest star would be a dismal 44,500 year journey!!Hence my dismissal of visitors from space and UFO's but I do agree it's pretty arrogant but generally speaking Man is arrogant.
Don't buy your tickets yet!
Technical stuff:
Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or: 186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers).
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 657- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,037
I get asked a lot if I believe in UFO's. I believe in ghosts, but until I have seen a UFO for myself I don't. I'd love to though!
Guest 644- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 1,214
Here's my take on it, whatever it's worth:
Ever since pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted his saucers that skipped on water in 1947 at Mt Rainer, Washington, UFOs have caught the public imagination. Since then hundreds of thousands of people all over the world have allegedly seen aerial phenomena that they cannot explain - how they rationalise their observations depends entirely on their cultural and religious background, their education, their mental state, credulity and so on. And yet after over 60 years of global sightings, independent research and military investigations, not a single shred of convincing evidence has ever been unearthed (or 'released' to those of a conspiratorial nature) to prove the existence of alien visitations. The recently released National Archives demonstrate this nicely - sightings were serious enough to warrant investigations, yet in almost every case the explanations were rational with a few left unexplained. However, unexplained does not equate to alien visitation.
The face of the UFOs and aliens has been very much subject to fads and changes throughout the years. Contrast the flying saucers in the 50s flown by kindly golden haired Nordic Venusians dispensing cryptic intergalactic wisdom, to the black triangles in the eighties flown by unpleasant small grey entities having flown halfway across the cosmos in order to eviscerate a cow or abduct people at 4am and give them probing interior medical once-over. The point is, there is little consistency over time and across cultural divides, it makes trying to find a single explanation akin to a Rorschach Test, or trying to define shapes in the clouds, entirely dependant on the subjectivity of the observer.
UFOs have spawned a lucrative industry, via films, books, TV series, lecture tours and tourism. Where would Roswell be without the multi-million dollar tourist industry built up around a bungled news story in an obscure New Mexico paper in 1947? Yet scarcely a month goes by without a new book or magazine popping up in the local newsagents on UFOs written by a limited pool of persons who endlessly recycle classic case reports, shortly to pop on a TV documentary spouting the same. Despite all the detailed scrutiny and intense examination of reports, sightings, photographs and occasionally 'hard' evidence by these 'researchers', never is the case closed, not once has that final 'smoking gun' been discovered for all to gasp at and force us reappraise our place in the universe.
Ultimately a UFO is only what it says on the tin, an 'Unidentified Flying Object' i.e. an object that cannot be identified. As the years go by one increasingly sees the UFO world as a lucrative industry fed by half truths, mistakes and on occasion outright deception. Yet never say never. Within the unknown lies a grey area out of which something may yet emerge. I just hope it does in my lifetime.
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Excellent Phil..thanks for views.Will get back to you on this but the bloody phone is ringing..blast
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Many UFO researchers argue that UFOs have appeared throughout history from sailing ships to airships depending upon which century you lived in. There are many myths, legends, and stories that tell of strange things seen in the sky or beings who came from the sky to help humans develop civilization. Because modern scholars cannot directly check the facts of these stories, it is impossible to determine if these are accurate reports of true events. Most ufologists, therefore, concentrate on studying UFO reports beginning in this century.
In the 1890s, people across North America watched strange dirigible-shaped airships with very bright searchlights flying above their farms and towns. Some people claimed they had met the airship pilots. Researchers disagree about the authenticity of these accounts. Many investigators think the airship reports were hoaxes spread by local "liars' clubs" or sensational stories written by creative journalists hoping to sell papers. A few ufologists, however, are convinced these airship sightings represent the first reliable UFO reports in history.
During World War II pilots saw strange, glowing balls of light flying beside their airplanes. They called these lights "foo fighters," a term based on an expression ("where there's foo, there's fire") from Smokey Stover, a popular comic strip at the time. At first the Allied command believed the foo-fighters were secret German weapons or surveillance devices. Only after the war did they discover that German pilots had also seen the glowing lights, which were thought to be American or British secret devices!
During the summer and fall of 1946, a number of unusual aerial objects were sighted over Sweden and Norway. They were given the name of "ghost rockets" and it was believed that they were secret Russian weapons developed from the German wartime rocket program. The Swedish defence ministry stated that 80% of the 1,000 ghost rockets could be explained by natural phenomena, but about 200 cases could not be explained as either a natural phenomenon, Swedish or Russian aircraft, or misperceptions.
Although the airship and foo-fighter reports are more detailed and credible than ancient stories of strange "prodigies" seen in the sky, many ufologists question whether these sightings can be accepted as true UFO reports. As a result, many researchers say the modern UFO era started on June 24, 1947, with the sighting by businessman and pilot Kenneth Arnold. While flying his small plane along the Cascade Mountains in Washington state, Arnold saw nine crescent-shaped objects flying along the contours of the mountains. Although he saw them for only a three and a half minutes, Arnold knew they were not regular airplanes. He radioed in his report, and when he landed at the airport, reporters were waiting to ask questions. He described the motions of the objects as "like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water." This is where the term "flying saucer" came from.
Like Jeanne until I see one with my own eyes I'm a non believer.Why after all these reported landings and sightings,about 10 million at the last count,do we not have any scientific evidence.Why do 'they' conduct clumsy medicals on abductees?.I am not sure how man would react if He found out that there were other beings (probably superior to ourselves) out there but there are some smashing clips on Youtube.
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
I believe in UFOs. But then again I also believe that Burlington House will be pulled down sometime this century, so what do I know...
Guest 645- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 4,463
Marek
I think therefore I am (not a Tory supporter)
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
sometimes us humans are so arrogant, as has been posted already on this thread.
scientists base their beliefs on stuff that they know.
it may be that there are civilizations knocking about that look at us with wry amusement at our strange ways.
when darwin returned from his little trip from the galapagos with his theory of evolution, he was vilified by creationist christians.
darwin's christian beliefs never faltered, he just reread the adam and eve bit as an allegory.
even today, with all the knowledge we have off the world being around for millions of years, and life existing on it,
the major religions still believe in the world being about 6000 years old.
such a pity, i would never knock the important beliefs of each religion.
Guest 659- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 331
If you look on the MoD website you can get into records of UFO "sightings" and should be able to see if any were reported in Dover. I think the records go back to about 2000 (the published ones on the site). You'd be amazed how many people do report sightings and descriptions. Can't say I believe in it, there must be far more exciting places fopr aliens to fly over than Earth.
Guest 658- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 660
I became a total sceptic after a much reported sighting in the early 1980s, i was down on Salisbury plain not far from fox covert DZ with almost a full brigade deployed on a training exercise, from our position we were very close to the village of Tilshead, at least 50% of the brigade were awake at any one time of the night. No one saw or reported anything out of the ordinary that night however a local copper was all over the Sunday papers that weekend after seeing UFOs all over the skies.
beer the food of the gods
Guest 658- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 660
On reporting on another occasion strange lights were seen to blink on at the dead of night in the same general area come together in formation and then switch off. Many theories were put forward at the i can reveal it was an 8 man team from the special forces on a night halo jump, who had exited the aircraft at a very high altitude several miles away and the small lights come on at 1000ft to enable them to close up before deploying the parachutes. While the press were getting exited the mod kept quiet. There was also the case of a birdwatcher on one of the north sea oil rigs. Who kept reporting a strange aircraft unlike any that he knew of that wasn't showing on radar, yes you've guessed it it was the stealth fighter overflying the UK heading East at dusk. Only when he produced a photo did anyone believe him.
beer the food of the gods
Guest 660- Registered: 14 Mar 2008
- Posts: 3,205
Having seen a Stealth Fighter in Dayton I believe that quzzler,I was watching a soccer (football) match when I saw something out of the corner of my eye,it seemed to hover then went without a sound,turned out the pilot was on a training run and stopped to watch his son playing football,amazing planes
If you knew what I know,we would both be in trouble!
