A UFO Battle over Nuremberg or an Atmospheric Phenomenon?

The city of Nuremberg was founded in Medieval times and was once a meeting place of the Imperial Diets (Reichstag) and courts during the time of the Holy Roman Empire.  It's more recently been known as the site where the Nazis held huge conventions known as the Nuremberg rallies.  After the Nazis lost World War II, the city was where Nazi war criminals were brought before an international tribunal to be judged for their crimes.

But Nuremberg is also a city that reportedly had a UFO battle over it on April 4, 1561.  The woodcut below is a report of the battle, complete with an illustration by Hans Glaser.

The "battle" was a mass sighting, reportedly lasting around an hour.  Residents reported seeing cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange, and blue-white disks and globes emerged.  Crosses and tubes were also seen.  Even today, people report seeing "cigar" shaped UFOs and flying saucers (or discs).  A cross shaped object could even be a description of what a modern airplane looks like.  The picture above also depicts a spear shaped object that could almost pass as a silhouette of a Star Destroyer from Star Wars.  So could there have really been a UFO battle over Nuremberg in 1561?

Some skeptics have suggested the event was a hoax, but that's unlikely since there were multiple witnesses.  Others have suggested it was a mass hallucination brought on by ergotism.  While that might not be impossible explanation, I think it's probably unlikely as well.  I find the mass hallucination explanation is typical of a skeptic who doesn't have a better explanation for something, so I don't put a lot of stock in it.

The website ancientaliensdebunked.com explains the "battle" away as nothing more than an atmospheric phenomena known as a "sundog" (also known as a parhelion).  Sundogs are commonly made by the refraction of light from plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds.

In the above image, you can actually see a resemblance between the phenomena and the artwork (but note that the artwork depicted is not from the illustration of the event depicted in the image near the top of the page, but of something else).

I looked over other images and videos in the debunking article linked above, and, if you accept that Glaser took some artistic licensing in depicting the event (I mean, he did draw a face on the sun, so he must have taken some artistic licensing), it could be a plausible explanation.  But what about the objects that crashed?  It was reported that the objects fell to the ground producing a lot of steam (or a big smoke).  Can atmospheric phenomena fall to the ground?  No, not really, but it might look like it's falling to the ground.  Despite the "objects" reportedly falling to the ground, there are not reports of anyone finding any crashed objects.  It's possible they observed another atmospheric phenomena known as "fall streaks."  Like sun dogs, fall streaks are also made with ice crystals.

Fall Streak

In the image above, you see a fall streak that appears to be black and somewhat triangular in shape...could it be an explanation for what the spear shaped object depicted in the top image is?

My guess is atmospheric or celestial phenomena is the most likely explanation for the event.  Although the description of the "objects" could match the description of some modern day UFO sightings, how often do people report space battles of UFOs that last for an hour?  I'm not aware of any, and if there were any today, you'd think someone would have video footage of it.  If people witnessed multiple UFOs crashing, you'd think someone would have probably found them and documented them.  So I think it's more likely the "objects" were not objects at all, but atmospheric phenomena.  The witnesses probably reported what they thought they were seeing because they weren't sure of what they were really seeing.  And Glaser, who illustrated the event, didn't actually witness the event himself; he was only going by what someone else reported to him.

If only we had video footage of the event.  Even if it wasn't a UFO battle, it sounds like it was a pretty awesome sight to see.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The First UFO Photo

A lot of the "early" UFO photos that we're familiar with come from the mid 1900's.  However, the earliest known photo of a UFO actually dates back to the 1800's.

The image below was shot at Mount Washington, New Hampshire in 1870 or 1871 (although some sources have dated it to 1880 or as late as 1896).  As you can see, there's a picture of what appears to be cloud formation...with what appears to be a cigar shaped UFO flying in front of it!

Here is a zoomed in image of the UFO.

So what is it?  Airships already existed by 1870, but they weren't common until the 1900s.  Could it be an image artifact?  Or could it be something even more mundane?  The list below is supposedly a list of pictures that includes this particular picture (it's suggested that number 17 is the picture above).

Nowhere on the list is a UFO mentioned though.  You would think the photographers would have noted that if they saw a UFO...even if they didn't see it until after the photo was developed.  It's also been said that the image is actually a bit of an illusion, not a distant image of a cloud but a close up image of a frost formation.  So what is it really? Who knows for sure.  There's a lot of recent UFO photographs that have debatable authenticity.  This is just the earliest photo of debatable authenticity.

Vintage UFO Sightings chart

I came across this UFO sightings chart from the 60's in the UK National Archives Flickr.

I thought it had some interesting designs and interesting that they had it and posted it!

I also saw this artwork sent to the Air Ministry depicting a UFO sighting experienced by a member of the public.

Check out more photos on The National Archives UK Flickr page.

What if time travelers from the future actually came from the past?

Time travel has long been a staple of the science fiction genre.  But the traditional view of time travel from the science fiction perspective seems rather far-fetched.  I try to be open-minded about things, but it just seems unlikely to me that someone could develop a machine that has a dial they could turn that would physically take them to another time period.  Even if someone did somehow develop a machine that could physically take them to another time period, there are so many potential time travel paradoxes out there that I still don't see how it would ever work.

Time Dilation

On the other hand, there may be another kind of time travel that actually fits in with modern physics -- time dilation.  In the theory of relativity, time dilation is an actual difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from gravitational masses.  Here's an excerpt of the Wikipedia entry on the subject:

An accurate clock at rest with respect to one observer may be measured to tick at a different rate when compared to a second observer's own equally accurate clocks. This effect arises neither from technical aspects of the clocks nor from the fact that signals need time to propagate, but from the nature of spacetime itself.

It goes on to provide a more specific example:

A case of time dilation in action is that astronauts return from missions on the International Space Station (ISS) having aged less than the mission control crew that remained on Earth. Such time dilation has been repeatedly demonstrated (see experimental confirmation below), for instance by small disparities in atomic clocks on Earth and in space, even though both clocks work perfectly (it is not a mechanical malfunction). The laws of nature are such that time itself (i.e. spacetime) will bend due to differences in either gravity or velocity—each of which affects time in different ways. 

In theory, and to make a clearer example, time dilation could affect planned meetings for astronauts with advanced technologies and greater travel speeds. The astronauts would have to set their clocks to count exactly 80 years, whereas mission control—back on Earth—might need to count 81 years. The astronauts would return to Earth, after their mission, having aged one year less than the people staying on Earth. What is more, the local experience of time passing never actually changes for anyone. In other words, the astronauts on the ship as well as the mission control crew on Earth each feel normal, despite the effects of time dilation (ie. to the traveling party, those stationary are living "faster"; whilst to those stood still, their counterparts in motion live "slower" at any given moment). 

With technology limiting the velocities of astronauts, these differences are minuscule: after 6 months on the ISS, the astronaut crew has indeed aged less than those on Earth, but only by about 0.007 seconds (nowhere near the 1 year disparity from the theoretical example). The effects would be greater if the astronauts were traveling nearer to the speed of light (approximately 300,000 km/s), instead of their actual speed—which is the speed of the orbiting ISS, about 7.7 km/s. 

Time dilation is caused by differences in either gravity or relative velocity. Both factors are at play in the case of ISS astronauts (and are actually opposing one another). 

So in other words, if astronauts left earth and traveled far enough away at a fast enough speed, when they returned, more time would have elapsed on Earth than had elapsed for them on their spacecraft...although it wouldn't seem like more time had passed to them.

Now let's move on here.

Lost Civilization

If you've read my blog for a while, you probably know that I'm interested in the topics of lost civilization and the possibility of lost advanced prehistoric civilizations.  I've written about or mentioned the topics in various posts from the past.  Here's links to some of those posts if you haven't read them before and would like to:

Forgotten Civilization: The Science of Questioning or the Questioning of Science?

Did the 'gods' forget how to be 'gods'?

Civilization Lost Documentary

So to sum up here, I like to consider the possibility that there were once advanced civilizations on Earth that have long since been gone...possibly highly scientifically advanced civilizations.

Now let's put these two topics together.

Time Dilation plus Lost Civilization

There's a theory in the UFO research community that has been tossed around before that suggests that (some) UFOs may not be aliens from another planet, but time travelers from the future.  But what if they were actually "time travelers" from the past?  Lets say for a moment that there was once a highly advanced scientific civilization that existed in the distant prehistoric past of the Earth.  Let's say they developed space travel and the ability to fly near, maybe even exceed, the speed of light.  Taking time dilation into consideration, if prehistoric astronauts left Earth sometime in the distant past and traveled far enough away at a certain speed, is it possible that they would return to Earth at a much later time than they left?  I'm not a physicist and math is not my best subject, but lets say some prehistoric astronauts left Earth to embark on a mission that would take them away for several years.  Is there a distance they can travel and speed (theoretical or not) that they could travel at that would have them returning to Earth several hundred or even several thousand or several 10s of thousands of years later on Earth?  I don't know what that speed or distance would have to be, but if the theory of relativity is accurate, then I would assume it must at least be theoretically possible.

So if prehistoric astronauts left Earth for a few years and when they returned a few thousand years had passed on Earth, they might find the civilization they left was gone and new civilization had developed that may have seemed both foreign and primitive to them.  The question then would be did they know they would be returning to Earth thousands of years after they left?  Did they understand time dilation?  For that matter, do we really even understand time dilation?  If they did understand time dilation and our understanding of it is accurate, then why would they leave knowing they wouldn't return for thousands of years?   Since I'm only speculating here, I can think of a few possibilities.

-They knew they wouldn't return for thousands of years and knew they would be leaving their old lives behind, but chose to do so anyway either because they wanted the adventure or they wanted to learn more about the universe.

-They were expecting some catastrophic event and wanted to avoid it by leaving Earth and returning after the event had long been over.

-They didn't actually plan to be gone that long, but ran into a problem that delayed their return.

Maybe you can think of some other possibilities.

So what would the world they returned to be like?  That all depends on what year it is when they returned.  Maybe there were multiple teams of astronauts leaving on multiple missions that would have them returning at different times.  If so, then various UFO sightings throughout history may have been prehistoric astronauts returning to Earth.  If they are human, then it would be easy enough for them to blend in with the populace.  Except the world they returned to would probably seem foreign to them and they wouldn't understand the language.  So even though they may be able to fit in by their appearance, they might not understand the customs or know how to communicate effectively.  Because of that, they may avoid making direct contact.  On the other hand, maybe they would contact the people and set themselves up as 'gods'.  It could be that prehistoric astronauts returning at different time periods may handle their situation differently.  Even if two teams left around the same time, if their missions were different lengths, one team may end up returning many years after the other team returned.  So with no way to contact others from their time period anymore, they may have no choice but to do whatever they see fit.  Perhaps some would choose to avoid contact, perhaps others would choose to rule over the more primitive people they returned to find.  Maybe others would just say screw this and leave again.

Concluding Thoughts

While time dilation may not be quite as cool as driving a Delorian at 88 miles to travel through time, it is something that is based in actual science and not science-fiction.  The idea that some UFOs may be time travelers from the past is, of course, based on the possibility that advanced scientific civilizations may have existed in the distant prehistoric past, which is a debatable topic.  Mainstream academia doesn't typically consider such a possibility, and even though I do feel that advanced prehistoric civilizations probably once existed, even I doubt they had advanced space travel.  But I do like to consider possibilities.  So what if time travelers actually came from the past instead of the future?

Antarctic UFO Crash? Or something more mundane?

I came across the video below today that shows pictures of what it alleges may be a UFO crash guarded by four tanks.  I'm not sure what it is showing, but I doubt it's a crashed UFO and I doubt those are tanks...but I'm not sure what they really are.  Interestingly though, the supposed "UFO" does appear to have a trail of some sort behind it and it does appear to start in the middle of nowhere, so maybe something did land or crash there?  It's hard to tell what the object really is, so could it be some kind of meteorite that came in at an angle and is now covered in snow?  And what are the four other objects?  Could they just be some kind of buildings for a research station?  Whatever they are, they do look manmade to me. I'm not really sure how many buildings are actually in Antarctica and I'm not sure exactly where they are all located either, but I do know McMurdo Station is nearby.

The coordinates listed in the video and in the description appear to be wrong.  But going by coordinates left by a commenter on the video, I was able to find it on Google by putting in the coordinates -77.83,166.84.  To me, the images in the video actually look slightly different than the image currently (as of Dec 22, 2012) on Google Maps satellite imagery, but it's obviously the same location.  The minor differences may just be because of weather conditions.

There also appears to be some kind of road or trail coming from McMurdo to the south of the site and some other kind of building or anomaly just a little southwest of the site as well.

Check out the video and see what you think.  If you know what it is or think you might know what it is, leave a comment!

Mysterious UFO speeding over Denver

This appears to be a very good UFO sighting in Denver, Colorado.  Someone sent the Fox Affiliate in Denver footage of a UFO that appeared to be taking off and landing somewhere around the city.  What's cool about this UFO is that it is apparently consistent...appearing between noon and 1PM at least a couple of times a week according to the man who tipped off the news affiliate (who chose to remain unidentified himself).  The news affiliate decided to try to get their own footage of the UFO between 12 and 1PM, and, lo and behold, they did get their own footage!  The UFO is so fast, the video footage has to be slowed down for it to be visible.  The man who tipped them off even thinks he has pinpointed the approximate location the UFOs are taking off and landing at -- a residential intersection.  The news affiliate has not been able to identify the object.  Given the speed it travels at, it makes even a model aircraft appear to be an unlikely explanation (although some of those can be pretty fast...see this one).  See the news clip below.




So what could it be? I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of it being some kind of model aircraft considering it seems to appear from a residential area around lunch time, but the speeds it travels at would seemingly rule out that possibility.  Hopefully they investigate this one further though; it looks like they have some solid information about it.

More Footage below.




Link

Is it a bird? A plane? A flying humanoid?

Nope.  It's RcSuperhero.

UFO lecture at National Atomic Museum

I saw this article posted on the Huffington Post and thought about including it in my next "Interesting News Links" post, but since it concerns a lecture occurring this Saturday, I figured I would go ahead and post it now.


UFO Secrets To Be Revealed At National Atomic Testing Museum

What are those lights in the sky? UFOs? Or just quadcopters?

When trying to identify what a UFO may be, airplanes and helicopters are a couple of the considerations.  Other things such as balloons, Chinese lanterns, and flares are some other common considerations.  Model aircraft could be culprits too.  The quadcopters flying in formation in the video below may also be able to fool someone into thinking they are seeing some kind of unknown aircraft.



I'm not sure, but I'm guessing these were programmed to fly in the formation they were in.  These also made me think of some of the "triangle" UFO sightings people see where three lights seem to form a triangle.  I'm not necessarily saying these could explain away every triangle UFO sighting, but I could see how these could fool someone into thinking they are seeing a UFO.

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If you want to see a video where it isn't dark, the video below shows some nano quadcopters flying in programmed formations.

Cloaked UFO or Double Exposure?

Image via Huffington Post

This photo was included in a Huffington Post article titled British Civil Aviation Authority Highly Interested In Pilots' UFO Sightings.  The article begins by saying that even though the UK Ministry of Defense officially stopped doing UFO investigations in 2009, the British Civil Aviation Authority still collects reports that involve UFO sightings with possible flight safety issues.

Further down in the article though, an example of a pilot reporting a UFO sighting from 1985 was described and included that picture.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

UK pilots have reported a number of chilling near-misses with UFOs.

One incident involved David Hastings, a British pilot pictured below, who, along with his co-pilot, David Paterson, was flying a Cessna Skymaster plane over the Mojave Desert in America on Sept. 9, 1985. 

"We were sitting there enjoying the sunshine when we both suddenly saw this speck out on the horizon at our 12 o'clock position," Hastings told HuffPost.

"This speck suddenly grew extremely quickly until we saw this huge shadow go over the top of us," he recounted. "But the most amazing thing about it was there was no noise and absolutely no movement or turbulence at all. We looked at each other, saying, 'What the hell was that?'"

At that point, both pilots felt that something was in the air off the port (left) side of their plane, but they couldn't see anything there. They agreed that they were able to sense something moving outside.

Hastings walked to the back of the plane, grabbed his camera and returned to the cockpit where he snapped two pictures out the window. All he was able to see in the camera viewfinder was the left wing of the plane and the ground below.

It was only after they returned to San Francisco and got the pictures developed that they knew they'd encountered something extraordinary.

"One picture showed what we expected to see -- the aircraft wing and the ground," said Hastings. "But in the second one, there was this [cigar-shaped] thing. We were both convinced that it was not a manmade object."

It seems a little odd that a pilot would snap a picture of something he couldn't see, but they did say they could "sense something moving outside."  But he also took more than one picture, so is it possible this is some kind of double exposure?  While it does look like there could be some sort of partially cloaked cigar shaped aircraft out there, it also looks to me that at each end of the alleged craft there is a band of slightly lighter colorization than the areas around it coming towards the plane.  It almost looks like a transparent outline of a wing.

Now I'm not necessarily suggesting the pilots didn't see what they said they saw, but I'm questioning whether or not this is a picture of what they said they saw.  Why does it look like the outline of a wing?  What else could that be?  Even if it was some sort of cloaked sci-fi tractor beam, you'd think the pilots would have noticed at least a little bit of turbulence.

With that said, I guess it could be a cloaked cigar shaped UFO.  But I kind of doubt it.

UFOs on Mars?

An article in the Daily Mail Online posts pictures and video of what appears to be lights in the sky of Mars.  One explanation for one of the images that appear to have hovering lights is just 'dead pixels'.  However, in the case of the video of moving lights, I find that harder to believe.  The lights appear to be moving in a fluid motion, indicating something physically going by.  Whether or not its evidence of an alien presence is debatable.  A meteor is probably a more likely explanation.  And considering Mars has less atmosphere for meteors to burn up in, I would think seeing meteors may be more common on Mars than here, yes? no?

Read the article and see more pictures and videos here.

A UFO crash at Roswell...or two?

A report on the Huffington Post says a retired Air Force Lt. Col claims there was not just one UFO crash in Roswell, NM in 1947, but two.  So after all these years of people investigating whether or not a UFO crash was covered up by the government, someone has decided to throw a second crash into the mix!

The retired officer says he was told about the crash by another officer.  So it doesn't sound like he was directly involved with investigation himself.  So I would take the story with a grain of salt.  But you can read the report here.

The Baltic Sea Mystery: UFO or Lost civilization?

Artist interpretation. Image by Vaghauk

A mystery object that was spotted on sonar in 2011 at the bottom of the Baltic sea has been in the news recently after divers investigated the anomaly up close.  The anomaly has been referred to as a UFO, even by the mainstream media, due to it being somewhat disc shaped and bearing a resemblance to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.

Millenium Falcon

However, now that divers have seen it up close, they have found it doesn't look spaceship, but it is still mysterious.  It appears to be made of stone, which wouldn't be what we would expect a spaceship to be made out of.  Maybe we shouldn't assume a spaceship could't be made of stone, but I would think something less porous would be more suitable.  But that doesn't mean the formation isn't unusual.  Here are some things that have been noticed about it:

• The central part of the object has an egg shaped opening that leads inside of it.
• There's no silt on the rock.
• It's covered in soot.  Stone doesn't normally burn.
• A 300-400 meter trail or "runway" leads away from it, giving it the appearance of having skid marks.
• An 8 meter pillar as well as stone circle formations described as looking like small fireplaces have been found.
• It has rounded sides, as well as what appears to be construction lines and boxes drawn on it.  It also has rugged edges and straight edges.

So that does sound pretty mysterious.  But does it really sound like a UFO?  Or could it be evidence of a lost civilization that has been submerged?  Some type of temple or public building perhaps?  Lets consider some of the oddities that have been noted about it.  

An egg shaped opening doesn't really indicate much besides the fact that it's an opening.  It's hardly any conclusive evidence of it being the opening to a spacecraft.  Small fireplaces would explain why there is soot on it, and if it was a structure built by men long ago, then fireplaces wouldn't be unusual (especially in such a cold environment) and it would make sense that they are there (and why would a spaceship have fireplaces on the exterior anyway?).  The "runway" may just be some type of road or path constructed for people to get to the building or monument.  

It's also reported that it looks like the kind of stone seen by divers in keys and harbors -- one that seems to originate from before the ice age.  I've written about the possibility of finding submerged lost civilizations along where the coastlines would have been during the last ice age in my post Forgotten Civilization: The Science of Questioning or the Questioning of Science?.  The exact coordinates of the object have not been released (at least not as of this writing), but it is said to be at the bottom of the Botnia Gulf.  So could this be evidence of a forgotten civilization along where an ice age coastline may have been?  Could it be man-made, or possibly a natural formation that men carved into a structure and settlement of their own?  If it's not a completely natural formation, then it would seem more likely to me that it is probably a man-made structure and not a crashed UFO.

Although, even if it was proven to be a man-made structure, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an episode of Ancient Aliens where Giorgio Tsoukalos questions whether or not ancient people were building a structure similar to something they had seen in the sky.  :)

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What is it with Phoenix and mysterious lights?

First, there was the mysterious Phoenix lights that lit up the night sky on the evening of March 13, 1997.



And now this flashing light too?
Link

Ancient Aliens and The Mysterious Origins of Man

I've had mixed feelings about the History channel show Ancient Aliens over the course of its run.  When the original special aired a couple of years ago, I thought it was interesting and presented the information well.  I'm not a believer of the ancient astronaut hypothesis it presented, but I'm open to the possibility (at least certain aspects of it).  So when they decided to turn it into a series, I figured I would give it a shot.  After watching a couple of episodes though, I lost interest.  I thought they were just getting silly about it, seemingly assuming aliens had something to do with almost any ancient mystery.  Although inspired by writers like Zecharia Sitchin and Erich von Daniken, ultimately, all they are doing is inserting science fiction concepts that have been developed primarily over the last 60-70 years into history.

But I did catch some second season episodes that sounded like they might be interesting when I didn't see anything better on.  My impression of the show didn't change much, but I did realize that the information they were presenting was interesting, even if their analysis of it could be a bit silly at times.  So I've decided to watch the third season just to see what they bring up.  I figure whatever they bring up will be interesting, even if I don't agree with their theories.

On the other hand, I was surfing around on Youtube today and came across a video called The Mysterious Origins of Man.  It was obviously pretty old since Charlton Heston was the presenter (from 1996, according to Wikpedia), so there isn't any new information in it, but I thought the information was presented well.  It covers topics such as out of place artifacts, Tiahuanaco, and ancient Egypt.  If you're interested check it out below.



Here is a shortened version of that video: http://youtu.be/nne_-j08yMo

Chariots of Light?

Back in August of 2009, I wrote a post about a UFO sighting of my own titled Chariots of Fire.   I described the UFOs as looking like two fireballs zipping around the sky and used the Biblical story of Elijah and Elisha being separated by a chariot of fire as the inspiration for the title of that post (though, for the record, I didn't actually see horses or an actual chariot, they really just looked like two glowing fireballs from my vantage point).

I've been reading about UFOs for years and have seen many videos of UFO sightings.  Despite that, I've never really come across video footage of a sighting that I thought was similar to what I saw....up until now.  Video footage of a UFO sighting over Geelong, Australia posted on the Geelong, Advertiser is similar to what I saw.

What's similar is the patterns of movement.  These objects are able to move in a way that publicly known conventional aircraft cannot.  The video footage is around seven minutes long, and in this case, the zoomed out shots are actually the best shots because the footage is to shaky when the cameraman zooms in.  The best footage comes from around the two minute mark on, where the footage is mostly zoomed out and you can really get a good view of how these objects move around.  There are two UFOs visible in this video, and two is how many I saw also, although I don't know if that is even a significant.  A notable difference though, between my sighting and the sighting filmed in this footage, is the color of the UFOs.  The objects I saw were a glowing reddish-orange color, but the UFOs in this video look like balls of white light.



 I think the UFOs I saw moved around a little more than these did, but the speed and type of movements these objects were capable of doing is similar to what I saw. I haven't figured out what those fireballs were I saw, and I'm not sure what these are either. But as you can see, they don't move like any publicly known conventional aircraft.

This is one time that I don't feel the need to question whether the sighting and footage is authentic or not -- I know that something exists which is capable of moving around like these objects seen in the above video.  I'm just not sure what they are.

H/T

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P.S.  I've heard the objects in the video may be remote controlled airplanes.  However, I'm fairly sure what I saw myself were larger than remote controlled airplanes, as I remember seeing one go behind a cloud on the horizon.  Regardless of what the lights are in this footage, the movements still remind me of the UFOs I saw.

Unidentified Flying Pyramids?

I was looking at Colin Andrews website today and came across a post about two tetrahedron/diamond shaped UFOs that were filmed over XI'an, China in January.  The footage is actually pretty clear.  At first glance, I thought they looked like kites, but after watching the video clip, they appear to be too big to be kites.





I did a quick search on Google to see if I could find out more about it, but I didn't come across anything I thought was significant.

There was a similar sighting over the Kremlin in Russia recently too.  That sighting even got mentioned in some British media sources (see a Telegraph article here and a Daily Mail article here).  The Daily Mail article says hundreds of people saw it, but if it's real, I'm surprised thousands of people didn't see it considering how big it was.



Some have questioned where the international media was and why the Russians wouldn't have scrambled jets.  Well, those are good questions -- where were the media and jets?  If it's fake, the media wouldn't have seen anything to report and the military wouldn't have needed to scramble jets to intercept it on that day.  But whether it's real or not, why has most of the mainstream media ignored it?  If it is a hoax, the mainstream media ought to investigate the hoax and report who was involved or how it was staged.  At the very least, the mainstream media could just go on the record saying they didn't see anything unusual in the sky that day.  This isn't just your average run-of-the-mill UFO video, it's actually pretty clear.  You'd think it would deserve at least a brief mention. So why will the mainstream media report stuff like what Paris Hilton or Tiger Woods did and repeat it 50 times a day but they won't mention something like this?

I also found a video of a pyramid-like UFO over Colombia (this one actually looks kind of fake to me).

All of this reminded me of an episode of UFO Hunters entitled "Alien Fallout" though, where the team investigated a sighting of a diamond shaped UFO in Texas on December 29, 1980.

So what are these pyramid-like UFOs?  Balloons?  Kites?  CGI?  Holographic projections in the sky?  Or are they real UFOs?  I'm not sure what they are, but I can't help but notice the resemblance to Ra's mothership from Stargate. J

A couple of former Area 51 workers speak out

Apparently, some Area 51 secrets from the 60s and 70s have been declassified, and a Seattle Times journalist interviewed a couple of former Area 51 workers who did contract work for the CIA at Area 51 during that time.

James Noce, one of the former workers interviewed, didn't have any stories about aliens or alien spacecraft though.  However, if you've heard stories about UFO crashes, Noce did tell a story that sounds familiar:

Noce remembers when "Article 123," as one of the A-12s was called, crashed on May 24, 1963, after the plane stalled near Wendover, Utah. The pilot ejected and survived.

Noce says he was among those who flew to the crash site in a giant cargo plane loaded with several trucks. They loaded everything from the crash into the trucks.

He remembers that a local deputy had either witnessed the crash or had quickly arrived at the scene. There also was a family on a vacation car trip who had taken photos.

"We confiscated the camera, took the film out," says Noce. "We just said we worked for the government."

He says the deputy and the family were told not to talk to anybody about the crash, especially the press.

"We told them there would be dire consequences," Noce says. "You scared them."

As an added incentive, he says, the CIA arrived with a briefcase full of cash.

"I think it was like 25 grand apiece, for the sheriff and the family," says Noce.

Robarge says of cash payments to cover things up, "It was common practice."

Another former Area 51 worker named T.D. Barnes said that he believes the Air Force and the "Agency" didn't mind the stories about alien spacecraft -- it helped cover up the secret planes they were testing.  He did tell a somewhat humorous story though:

On one occasion, he remembers, when the first jets were being tested at what Muroc Army Air Field, later renamed Edwards Air Force Base, a test pilot put on a gorilla mask and flew upside down beside a private pilot.

"Well, when this guy went back, telling reporters, 'I saw a plane that didn't have a propeller and being flown by a monkey,' well, they laughed at this guy — and it got where the guys would see [test pilots] and they didn't dare report it because everybody'd laugh at them," says Barnes.

Read the whole article here.

H/T

Alien Teachers Too?

In a post I wrote titled 'Elusive Aliens: Are They Watchers?', I compared a modern theory suggesting that ET aliens remain elusive because they are merely here to observe us with the story of the Watchers from the Book of Enoch.  The Watchers were angelic beings who were apparently supposed to just 'watch' us.  Eventually, some of the Watchers betrayed their duty and began intermingling with humans.  As I mentioned before, the Book of Enoch says the fallen Watchers taught men things such as cosmetics, building weapons, astrology, and writing.  When I wrote about that in my previous post though, it didn't occur to me at the time to mention that the fallen Watchers teaching men new things bears a resemblance to another modern theory about aliens -- a theory that suggests the rapid advancements in technology over the last century are the result of aliens from an advanced technological society secretly working with governments and people in power to teach them how to develop new technologies (or, alternatively, the government is secretly reverse engineering crashed alien spacecraft).  This also bears resemblance to the ancient Greek story of Prometheus, who defied Zeus and taught men to make fire.

So it seems that the modern theory suggesting aliens are assisting men in developing new technologies is not really all that modern afterall.  Modernized perhaps, but not really a modern concept.

View my original post on this subject here.

A little bit of irony

I read a two part article written by a skeptic who investigated the mysterious Phoenix Lights from 1997, and although I thought the article was well written and researched, I thought the author's analysis led to a rather ironic conclusion.  He explains why he doesn't think the lights were a single UFO and then speculates that the event was part of a psychological warfare experiment.  Here's an excerpt of his theory:

We know that military breakthroughs in technology usually occur a decade or more before civilian applications begin to appear. That’s one of the advantages the military has with generous taxpayer funding of its secret ‘black ops’ projects.

During the first decade of the 21st century, we began to see some of these advances in holographic research receive attention in science journals. An edition of Science Daily (June 15, 2005) carried an article summarizing science papers that had appeared in Optics Express and other specialized journals showing how a laser-based holographic system works in practice. One example given in the article of how this technology can be applied was the holographic image of circling fighter jets projected to a point in space.

Over the years I had heard rumors from civilian and military types that the technology necessary to project three-dimensional images to a point in space had been tested at Fort Huachuca and elsewhere during the 1990s. But until the Arizona Lights event in 1997, there had been no clear evidence that these electrical optical and laser devices had been used to target a civilian population to test their reactions to unusual phenomena.

Read part one of the whole article here.  Read part two here.

I didn't think much about it until I noticed that the author, Randall Fitzgerald, was labeled as a 'Scepticism Examiner'.  What I thought was ironic was that he was attempting to debunk the claim that the Phoenix Lights were a single UFO but presented a theory that it was a government psychological experiment instead.  Isn't  a secret government psychological experiment with classified technology usually the kind of thing a skeptic would try to debunk?  Yet here we have a skeptic presenting it as an alternative theory to a UFO sighting.  That's just a little bit ironic to me.

In his defense though, Fitzgerald's bio describes him as a "skeptic, not a cynic."  Maybe that's his way of distancing himself from the Michael Shermer's of the world.

I'm not suggesting his theory is wrong, but I'm not suggesting it is right either.  I'm not suggesting the the lights were planes or a single object either.  I don't know what they were, but the video footage I've seen appear to show lights that weren't moving across the sky.



Those lights in the video look stationary to me.

H/T's here and here.