UFO sightings

[snopes]

The UFO world is alive with speculation that China is about to reveal details of startling and detailed footage of an unidentified flying object taken during the solar eclipse on July 22.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...0-minutes.html

[snopes]

A strange object photographed over a lake in Argentina has been described as either a flying saucer or a flying dinosaur.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...nian-lake.html

[hambubba]

Very similar to this.

Oh, and the man needs a better camera...

[Joostik]

Originally Posted by snopes

A strange object photographed over a lake in Argentina has been described as either a flying saucer or a flying dinosaur.

A saucer-shaped dinosaur?

[BrianB]

Originally Posted by Joostik

A saucer-shaped dinosaur?

A dinosaur piloting a saucer!

Brian "used to sing along with that theme" B

[snopes]

A giant pyramid which appears to be a UFO hovering over the Kremlin has caused frenzied speculation in Russia that it is an alien spacecraft.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...r-Kremlin.html

[Singing in the Drizzle]

Two film clips exist which appear to show the same object and footage has been repeatedly playing on Russian television news channels.


Former Armed Forces head wanted probe into UFO sighting, newly released files show The shots, one taken at night from a car and one during the day, were both filmed by amateurs.

The 'craft' was said to have hovered for hours over Red Square in the Russian capital.

It hovered for hours and the 2 videos are by amateurs. You would thing there would be many more video and pictures taken in that time by amateurs and several taken by news crews.

[Richard W]

Hovered for hours in the middle of the capital city and over the seat of government, no less...

[jimmy101_again]

Originally Posted by Richard W

Hovered for hours in the middle of the capital city and over the seat of government, no less...

Yes, so not only should there have been news video there should have been video from the gun cameras on the fighters the Russian Air force would have scrambled to intercept an unidentified object flying over Moscow.

If a UFO hovered over Washington DC it would have a swarm of fighters on it's ass within minutes.

[snopes]

From flying Toblerones to alien abductions, UFO reports just keep coming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...er-absurd-kind

[diddy]

Originally Posted by jimmy101_again

If a UFO hovered over Washington DC it would have a swarm of fighters on it's ass within minutes.

Well duh, it’s a conspiracy silly. I mean the government controls all those news sources and can clamp down on all those sources and got them to stay quiet.

Haven’t you been paying attention?!

[snopes]

For decades, they have been scanning the skies for signs of alien activity.

But having failed to establish any evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life, Britain’s UFO watchers are reaching the conclusion that the truth might not be out there after all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...after-all.html

[Gutter Monkey]

I just stumbled onto a Kickstarter project trying to raise money to research the "2012 Denver Residential UFO's". I hadn't heard about these incidents so I went and tracked down the news reports:

http://kdvr.com/2012/11/08/mile-high...y-over-denver/

Mile High mystery: UFO sightings in sky over Denver

DENVER – It’s a mile high mystery in the skies over Denver.

Strange objects caught on camera flying over the city and nobody can explain it.

We first learned about these sightings when a metro area man, who does not want to be identified brought us his home video. He captured the images on his digital camera from a hilltop in Federal Heights looking south toward downtown Denver.

He said, “The flying objects appear around noon or 1:00 p.m. at least a couple of times a week.” The strangest part is they are flying too fast to see with the naked eye, but when we slowed down the video, several UFOs appear.

We altered the color contrast to make it easier to see. You can take a look for yourself by watching the video clip.

The reporter, Heidi Hemmat, checked with the FAA and even NORAD to make sure there were no official records of anything odd in the area and aviation expert Steve Cowell was mystified by the footage. At the end of the report she remarks that people identified the objects as bugs but she stresses that this is not correct.

A few weeks later the station aired a follow up report and got entomologist Mary Ann Hamilton to confirm that the objects weren't bugs. They also showed footage of a whole bunch of people camped out in the field with their own cameras trying to capture footage of the UFOs.

Phil Plait of http://www.badastronomy.com fame investigated the story for slate.com and contacted the entomologist to ask some follow up questions:

I was curious, so I called Hamilton. She relayed to me that she was shown only a few clips of the objects and was told that they were far away from the camera. So she was going on the idea that these were distant and therefore large objects. Also, the images are very fuzzy—again, consistent with insects seen up close and out of focus—which is why she couldn’t make out any body shape, or wings, or segmentation that would allow her to positively ID them as insects. That’s what she was saying in the clip.

“I did the best I could with what was shown to me,” she told me. And in my opinion, she didn’t have nearly enough information to go on, and some of the info she was given simply wasn’t correct. So in this case, contacting an entomologist did nothing to eliminate the possibility these are insects.

The objects are clearly bugs. Like, amazingly obviously bugs. The fact that a TV journalist was confused enough by these videos to string out the story for a few weeks and convince a bunch of people to sit in a field for days with their own cameras is both hilarious and worrying.

[ganzfeld]

Sure, any entomologist can tell by looking at a video whether something's an insect or not. It's covered in week 9 of Advanced Entomology 302: Bigfoot, a Ghost, a UFO, or a fly?

[fitz1980]

Originally Posted by Gutter Monkey

The objects are clearly bugs. Like, amazingly obviously bugs. The fact that a TV journalist was confused enough by these videos to string out the story for a few weeks and convince a bunch of people to sit in a field for days with their own cameras is both hilarious and worrying.

I don't think that the journalist was confused. More like the TV station knew better and deliberately only showed the entomologist a few bits of footage that would be harder to identify as bugs to make a "more interesting" story.

I was curious, so I called Hamilton. She relayed to me that she was shown only a few clips of the objects and was told that they were far away from the camera. So she was going on the idea that these were distant and therefore large objects.

Like when Fox did the famous "alien autopsy" special & included makeup efx guru Stan Winston of "Terminator," "Aliens," "Predator" fame. He and his staff watched the video and thought that it was fake; but the producers edited their responses to make it look like the opposite. The producers used the bits where the makeup artists talk about how difficult it is to setup the kind of stuff you see in the video & than end it on a joke Winston make "well either my hat's off to the person who staged this or to that poor alien on the table" without making it clear that he thought the video was staged and meant it as a compliment to the fellow makeup artists who staged it.

Originally Posted by ganzfeld

Sure, any entomologist can tell by looking at a video whether something's an insect or not. It's covered in week 9 of Advanced Entomology 302: Bigfoot, a Ghost, a UFO, or a fly?

More importantly entomologists are good at studying insects; but they are not necessarily experts in photography and videography. Stuff that even an amateur camera person might notice could totally slip passed an entomologist because photography isn't a thing they ever spent time learning about.

Also, the images are very fuzzy—again, consistent with insects seen up close and out of focus—which is why she couldn’t make out any body shape, or wings, or segmentation that would allow her to positively ID them as insects. That’s what she was saying in the clip.

I'm pretty sure that's how conspiracy theories propagate. You find an expert in one field who's confused about something that's not their field, but easily explainable to someone in another field. Than you find an expert in something else who's mistaken about something totally different regarding the same incident, but also explainable to somebody in another field. Than you trot out both of them as evidence that it's a conspiracy, extraterrestrial, divine, ect and demand that folks teach the controversy.

[Gutter Monkey]

Originally Posted by fitz1980

I'm pretty sure that's how conspiracy theories propagate. You find an expert in one field who's confused about something that's not their field, but easily explainable to someone in another field. Than you find an expert in something else who's mistaken about something totally different regarding the same incident, but also explainable to somebody in another field. Than you trot out both of them as evidence that it's a conspiracy, extraterrestrial, divine, ect and demand that folks teach the controversy.

Yep, it's exactly like those cases where a psychic has baffled highly trained scientists but James Randi can unravel their tricks in a few seconds. In this UFO case the TV channel got confirmation from the FAA and NORAD that the objects weren't planes and confirmation from a military expert that they weren't unmanned drones, then called in an entomologist and told her that the objects had been a mile away from the camera.

I love how the crazy guy who handed the original videos to the station had somehow figured out the approximate street address where the UFO had been taking off from, that's awesome.

[Brad from Georgia]

I'm no entomologist, but I saw one clip and said, "It's a bug." Because, well, it was, you know.

[Gutter Monkey]

Spacecraft caused car crash, say pair

TWO men who walked away from a car crash near Brisbane's Wivenhoe Dam claimed to be chasing an alien spacecraft when found by police.

Police and the driver's insurance company received several sketchy phone calls from the men, who appeared to be convinced paranormal activity caused the crash.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/sp...121-2d389.html

Make sure you read the entire article, it's hilarious.

Queensland is pretty much a cross between Texas and Florida.