Diploid said:

I recently read about some lights in the sky in New Mexico where virtually an entire town latched onto the most implausible of all available explanations. They saw lights in the sky that "couldn't" be from Earth because there were no airports or military bases nearby, and the lights made abrupt right-angle turns.

Turns out the lights were just a town about 60 miles away on the other side of a mountain range. You see, the lights from the distant town were being refracted off a standing thermocline in the atmosphere, like a mirror. The effective angle of the mirror varied as the temperature gradient in the atmosphere moved with the wind flowing over the mountains. This gave the illusion of the abrupt right-angle turns.

Not knowing what a light in the sky is does not mean alien visitation. It means that you don't know what it is, nothing more.

---

This is absolutely true and not to be confused with real alien phenomena

Not everyone just see's lights on the horizon my friend.  You are condescending other people.  You believe you are the only person capable of telling the difference between a blimp and an alien craft above your head?

Think about it.  Presume for one second that I am correct and we are being *stalked* by aliens.  People would still be mistaking the odd eratic weather balloon or flare for a possible long distance UFO sighting, even if the public was aware of our alien stalkers.  This is a seperate phenomena.  Humans can mistake things for what they believe it to be!

Why do people believe flares to be alien craft?


Movies?  Why did the movie makers believe it. (Fire in the sky - based on a true story)


Sci-fi?  Its not all sci-fi.  Also the same craft have been seen long before TV.


People will see what they most commonly expect to see.  A face being the pattern most easily recognised by the brain.  I wonder why an alien ship is the most expected pattern for a light in the sky?

Hmmm, this arguement seems to weaken even more when you think how many witnesses are highly trained in telling the differences!  Military, scientists, astronomers, lawers - the list goes on.  Surely a military person would be expecting a flare.  That is what the majority will believe but one or too will always stand out or secretly realise that there must be more to it.

I remember reading about how a astronomer who discovered one of the planets had seen a UFO and was convinced it was alien visitation.  I must find a link for this, its another good piece of the puzzle...

nightkrawler said:

with all those planets out there, all those stars with all those planets around them, you don't think there's even one of them that has advanced intelligent life on it that is advanced enough to come to our planet, and has been here?

---

Quote:

Each passing year has seen our estimates of the probability of life in space increase, along with our capabilities of detecting it. More and more scientists feel that contact with other civilizations is no longer something beyond our dreams, but a natural event in the history of mankind that will perhaps occur within the lifetime of many of us ... In the long run this may be one of science's most important and most profound contributions to mankind and to our civilization.

---

Quote:

Any creatures so advanced would scarcely be interested in us, and even allowing that they were interested in us, it would be unlikely that so advanced a species would conceivably fuck up so badly as to crash on Earth or accidentally expose themselves to us and be seen so often.

And if they don't mind being seen, then why don't they just land in Hawaii and say 'hello'.

---

Terrible!

Quote:

Do you not see the myriad logical contradictions in believing we are being visited by aliens?

---

What you say is not a contradiction.

Its not black and white like they must either say 'hello' or not be seen at all!!!   Dualistic thinking can only ever give two perspectives.  Keep an open mind or stay closed in false belief.

I will let you into a secret... there are infinate perspectives.

danoEoboy said:

For five years, from December 1903 to September 1908, two young bicycle mechanics from Ohio repeatedly claimed to have built a heavier than air flying machine and to have flown it successfully. But despite scores of public demonstrations, affidavits from local dignitaries, and photographs of themselves flying, the claims of Wilbur and Orville Wright were derided and dismissed as a hoax by Scientific American, the New York Herald, the US Army and most American scientists. Experts were so convinced, on purely scientific grounds, that heavier than air flight was impossible that they rejected the Wright brothers' claims without troubling to examine the evidence. It was not until President Theodore Roosevelt ordered public trials at Fort Myers in 1908 that the Wrights were able to prove conclusively their claim and the Army and scientific press were compelled to accept that their flying machine was a reality.

One way of explaining this odd reluctance to come to terms with the new, even when there is plenty of concrete evidence available, is to appeal to the natural human tendency not to believe things that sound impossible unless we see them with our own eyes -- a healthy skepticism. But there is a good deal more to this phenomenon than healthy skepticism. In Alternative Science you can read about dozens of cases of inventors who were ignored or even publicly ridiculed by their contemporaries, but whose inventions are today central to the modern world. You might imagine that such scientific intolerance was historical only and that in today's enlightened, educated world no scientist would behave in such an intolerant way.

http://www.alternativescience.com/skeptics.htm

---