Unidentified flying object
From SkepticWiki
Strictly defined, Unidentified flying objects are exactly what they say they are: objects in the sky whose identity is unknown. In popular culture however they are often thought of as extra terrestrial craft visiting earth.
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[edit] First UFO?
One could debate what the first UFO was. Some point to the Bible, and the "Wheel" Ezekiel saw (Ezekiel 1:15-21). Another example from religious writing is the Vedas, where flying chariots are described.
As a 20th century phenomenon, the first UFO sighting of note was made in the United States by American businessman Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947 while flying his light plane near Mount Rainier, Washington. He reported seeing nine very bright objects flying across the face of Mount Rainier towards nearby Mount Adams at "an incredible speed" (which he calculated as at least 1200 miles per hour). His sighting subsequently received significant media and public attention. Arnold has said that they "flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water", that they were "flat like a pie pan", "shaped like saucers" and "half-moon shaped, oval in front and convex in the rear. ...they looked like a big flat disk". One of them he described as being almost crescent-shaped. It was Arnold's descriptions that gave rise to the terms 'flying saucer' and 'flying disk'.
[edit] 'Ufology'
Interest in 'flying saucers' led to a wide diversity of people studying the subject, from those generally acknowledged as cranks to scientists of some standing. Most researchers are interested in a hard core of sightings - or establishing one - which they believe defies explanation.
Apart from the extraterrestrial hypothesis, other exotic explanations for some UFOs include the 'interdimensional hypothesis' (visitations from other universes), the advanced human aircraft hypothesis and others of varying strangeness. For example, Wilhelm Reich and Jerome Eden had the idea that UFOs or their occupants are hostile. They claim that the waste product of the UFO engines is what they call "Deadly Orgone" (DOR) which ruins the atmosphere, dries it out, and this is one of the major reasons there are deserts on planet earth.
Others have suggested that conspiracy theories are at work, involving governments, the military, etc. The suggestion is that hard evidence, in the form of testimony, film footage and even UFO occupants and vehicular parts, is being suppressed.
J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallee both developed UFO classification systems; Hynek including three sub-categories he dubbed 'close encounters', hence the title of Steven Spielberg’s movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
[edit] Skeptical Analysis
Many people claim that UFOs, because we aren't able to identify them, are something other than ordinary. Not being able to explain a UFO does not mean it is unexplainable - it may simply be that data that could provide an ordinary explanation is not available. A lot of UFO accounts are anecdotal and so are inherently compromised. Generally they turn out to be planes, stars, satellites, aurora borealis (Northern Lights), cloud formations, weather balloons.... This is why, despite spending an unusually large amount of time looking upwards, neither meteorologists nor astronomers often report seeing UFOs. They know a lot about the sky, and so can rapidly figure out what they're actually looking at, so they only see the aforementioned natural objects. Over the years many things have been mistaken for extra terrestrial craft, including streetlights, the planet Venus and even the moon.
The above explanations fit in well with what has been called the 'psychosocial hypothesis' which largely addresses issues raised by skeptics; it states that there is not a single, all-encompassing explanation of the UFO phenomenon. It seeks to explain different cases in different ways, all centering in some way on the known foibles of human psychology and behavior, like wishful thinking, hallucinations, hoaxes and misidentification of mundane objects. Some UFO sightings are thought to be fantasies that are caused by the same mechanism as various occult, supernatural or religious experiences (like alleged sightings of the Blessed Virgin Mary).
Folklorist Thomas E. Bullard has written that UFOs have constituted a widespread international cultural phenomenon of the last half-century or so:
- "UFOs have invaded modern consciousness in overwhelming force, and endless streams of books, magazine articles, tabloid covers, movies, TV shows, cartoons, advertisements, greeting cards, toys, T-shirts, even alien-head salt and pepper shakers, attest to the popularity of this phenomenon."[ref. needed]
As with the paranormal in general, vested interests in particularly popular ideas, like the ET hypothesis, are significant. Psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who wrote a book about UFOs, observed:
- "In 1954 I gave an interview to the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, in which I expressed myself in a sceptical way... In 1958 this interview was suddenly discovered by the world press and the "news" spread like wildfire... I was quoted as a saucer-believer. I issued a statement to the United press and gave a true version of my opinion, but this time the wire went dead: nobody, as far as I know, took any notice of it, except one German newspaper." (Preface, Flying Saucers, 1959)
He went on to conclude that there seemed to be a tendency all over the world to want UFOs to be 'real' and that this was "unconsciously helped along by the press."
Though skeptics have been able to show that much pro-paranormal material is unreliable, misleading or inaccurate, its producers continue to market it in spite of such serious shortcomings. Skeptics have therefore claimed that the market is deliberately biased, leading to the creation and/or perpetuation of non-existent mystery - and a plethora of material that, though profitable, leaves the public poorly informed. Skeptical publications about UFO cases and the phenomenon itself are available but appear to be very much in the minority.
[edit] Just after dark...
One explanation for UFOs that are spotted shortly after local sunset is that high-altitude objects will still be in direct sunlight, and will appear luminous. Planes, clouds, weather balloons, birds flying in formation and satellites can all be brightly visible if they pass over at the appropriate time in a clear sky. The greater the altitude of the object, the longer after local sunset it will be visible. Of course, the exact same thing happens in the early morning - high altitude objects emerge out of Earth's shadow first, and light up before sunrise.
A good example of this phenomenon is the International Space Station - it is in a low earth orbit and is big enough to be clearly visible (as a very bright moving star) if it passes overhead even an hour or so after sunset. Even more impressive is that it will fade and vanish in the space of a few seconds - passing from sunlight into shadow, 360km above your head. This page allows you to find times when the space station is visible from the ground where you are.
[edit] And Finally...
...one can never be certain that the story isn't being exaggerated or in the worst case, a complete lie.
