Why does the government hide UFO's?

I think there may be lots going on with UFOs that we don't understand. The phenomena itself is so varied and diverse it would be rash to assume it is all one entity behind it. Perhaps many are of interdimensional origin. Others show the traits of extraterrestrials. Still others show traits of living intelligent plasma forms. Or as Jung thought, they may be archetypal externalizations of our own collective unconscious. We needn't box ourselves in with only one interpretation here. At least until we learn more about them and what they want. Note you don't have to KNOW what they are to entertain an interpretation of what they might be. That's the nature of theorizing.

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Yeah..I saw that one. It looked to be plane that just caught the light of the setting sun.

 

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If UFOs are real, shouldn't they produce some real physical effects?
James McDonald, Statement on UFOs to U.S. House Committee on Science and Aeronatics, 1968 Symposium on UFOs
original source | fair use notice

"Again, the answer is that they do. There are rather well-authenticated cases spanning a wide variety of "physical effects." Car-stopping cases are one important class. UFOs have repeatedly been associated with ignition failures and light-failures of cars and trucks which came near UFOs or near which the UFOs moved. I would estimate that one could assemble a list of four or five dozen such instances from various parts of the world. Interference with radios and TV receptions have been reported many times in connection with UFO sightings. There are instances where UFOs have been reported as landing, and after departure, holes in the ground, or depressions in sod or disturbed vegetation patterns have been described. In many such instances, the evident reliability of the witnesses is high, the likelihood of hoax or artifice small. A limited number of instances of residues left behind are on record, but these are not backed up by meaningful laboratory analyses, unfortunately.

A physical effect that does not typically occur under conditions where the description of events might seem to call for it, relates to sonic booms. Although there are on record a few cases where fast-moving UFOs were accompanied by explosive sounds that might be associated with sonic booms, there are far more instances in which the reported velocity corresponded to supersonic speeds, yet no booms were reported. A small fraction of these can be rationalized by noting that the reporting witnesses were located back within the "Mach cone" of the departing UFO; but this will not suffice to explain away the difficulty. One feels that if UFOs are solid objects, capable of leaving depressions in soil or railroad ties when they land, and if they can dash out of sight in a few seconds (as has been repeatedly asserted by credible witnesses), they should produce sonic booms. This remains inexplicable; one can only lamely speculate that perhaps there are ways of eliminating sonic booms that we have not yet discovered; perhaps the answer involves some entirely different consideration.

If we include among "physical effects" those that border on the physiological, then there appear to be many odd types. Repeatedly, tingling and numbness have been described by witnesses who were close to UFOs; in many instances outright paralysis of a UFO witness has occurred. These effects might, of course, be purely psychological, engendered by fear; but in some instances the witnesses seem to have noted these effects as the first indication that anything unusual was occurring. A number of instances of skin-reddening, skin-warming, and a few instances of burns of very unusual nature are on record. These physiological effects are sufficiently diverse that caution is required in attempting generalization. Curiously, a peculiar tingling and paralysis seem to be reported more widely than any other physiological effects. A person who is almost unaware of the ramifications of the UFO evidence may think it absurd to assert that people have been paralyzed in proximity to UFOs; the skeptic might find it inconceivable that such cases would go unnoticed in press and medical literature. Far from it, I regret to have to say, on the basis of my own investigations. I have encountered cases where severe bodily damage was done, or where evident hazard of damage was involved, yet the witness and his family found ridicule mounting so much faster than sympathy that it was regarded wiser to quietly forget the whole thing. At an early stage of my investigations I would have regarded that as quite unbelievable; UFO investigators with longer experience than mine will smile at that statement, but probably they will smile with a degree of understanding. I could cite specific illustrations to make all this much clearer, but will omit them for space-limitations, except for a few remarks in the next section."===http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc616.htm

 

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I have highlighted above, where you break from basic science.

You have pre-decided that incidents are related, therefore you think the evidence says they're related.
"How are they related?" one asks.
"Because they're all UFOs of course."

You are looking for one animal that eats warthogs and sucks nectar. You think they're the same thing, but that is unfounded.

 

LOL! Faster than human speed high energy-emitting craft hovering and dashing across the sky, sometimes landing and leaving imprints on the ground and vegetation, with effects often left on eyewitnesses such as burns and paralysis, IS one phenomenon. To not infer that would be idiotic.

 

No, that is an interpretation. And a highly fanciful one that at.

Where do you draw the line at what is under the umbrella of alien interference?
Why not include Spontanteous Human Combustion?
Ball lightning?
Why not the Loch Ness monster?
Why not Jesus turning water into wine?
Heck, why not ghosts?

 

No it isn't. It's a physical event with a typical structure that occurs repeatedly all over the world over many decades. Nobody is interpreting shit.

LOL! I haven't interpreted any of these events as necessarily alien interference. See my post #5.

 

Exactly. Why not?

You're certainly willing to include an arbitrarily large set of unexplained phenomena under one umbrella. And since they are unexplained, there is no cause for concluding they are due to the same (unknown) cause.

I know it seems obvious to you that they're grouped, because you have already decided what the explanations are. That is begging the question.

 

A craft that speeds across the sky, lands, and has occupants that leave it, isn't an arbitrary unexplained phenomena. It's pretty clear there is an intelligence behind it, that it involves technology beyond what we are capable of, and that the craft uses a lot of energy that has physical effects on the ground, on automobiles and on eyewitnesses. We just don't know where this intelligence comes from. That's an interpretation that I prefer to wait to make with further study.

UFO humanoid encounters:

http://www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/

 

And you're about to show us photos of this are you?

 

I've provided hundreds of photos of ufo craft already. I also just posted a website full of hundreds of eyewitness encounters of humanoid beings exiting such craft. You have all the evidence you need to connect the dots.

 

You gave a specific description. Now you're committing the same fallacy - you're generalizing.

 

You've provided photos of things that were unidentified, nothing to indicate that they were alien spaceships.

That's just wishful thinking and gullibility on your part.

 

They're craft flying in the air that can be picked up on radar. What do you think they are? Swamp gas? lol!

"The Belgian UFO wave peaked with the events of the night of 30–31 March 1990. On that night, unknown objects were tracked on radar, chased by two Belgian Air Force F-16s, photographed, and were sighted by an estimated 13,500 people on the ground – 2,600 of whom filed written statements describing in detail what they had seen.[2] Following the incident, the Belgian air force released a report detailing the events of that night.

At around 23:00 on 30 March, the supervisor for the Control Reporting Center (CRC) at Glons received reports that three unusual lights were seen moving towards Thorembais-Gembloux, which lies to the southeast of Brussels. The lights were reported to be brighter than stars, changing color between red, green and yellow, and appeared to be fixed at the vertices of an equilateral triangle. At this point, Glons CRC requested the Wavre gendarmerie send a patrol to confirm the sighting.

Approximately 10 minutes later, a second set of lights was sighted moving towards the first triangle. By around 23:30, the Wavre gendarmerie had confirmed the initial sightings and Glons CRC had been able to observe the phenomenon on radar. During this time, the second set of lights, after some erratic manoeuvres, had also formed themselves into a smaller triangle. After tracking the targets and after receiving a second radar confirmation from the Traffic Center Control at Semmerzake, Glons CRC gave the order to scramble two F-16 fighters from Beauvechain Air Base shortly before midnight. Throughout this time, the phenomenon was still clearly visible from the ground, with witnesses describing the whole formation as maintaining their relative positions while moving slowly across the sky. Witnesses also reported two dimmer lights towards the municipality ofEghezee displaying similar erratic movements to the second set of lights.

Over the next hour, the two scrambled F-16s attempted nine separate interceptions of the targets. On three occasions, they managed to obtain a radar lock for a few seconds but each time the targets changed position and speed so rapidly that the lock was broken. During the first radar lock, the target accelerated from 240 km/h to over 1,770 km/h while changing altitude from 2,700 m to 1,500 m, then up to 3,350 m before descending to almost ground level – the first descent of more than 900 m taking less than two seconds. Similar manoeuvres were observed during both subsequent radar locks. On no occasion were the F-16 pilots able to make visual contact with the targets and at no point, despite the speeds involved, was there any indication of a sonic boom. Moreover, narrator Robert Stack added in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, the sudden changes in acceleration and deceleration would have been fatal to one or more human pilots.

During this time, ground witnesses broadly corroborate the information obtained by radar. They described seeing the smaller triangle completely disappear from sight at one point, while the larger triangle moved upwards very rapidly as the F-16s flew past. After 00:30, radar contact became much more sporadic and the final confirmed lock took place at 00:40. This final lock was once again broken by an acceleration from around 160 km/h to 1,120 km/h, after which the radar of the F-16s and those at Glons and Semmerzake all lost contact. Following several further unconfirmed contacts, the F-16s eventually returned to base shortly after 01:00.

The final details of the sighting were provided by the members of the Wavre gendarmerie who had been sent to confirm the original report. They describe four lights now being arranged in a square formation, all making short jerky movements, before gradually losing their luminosity and disappearing in four separate directions at around 01:30.[3]"====https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave

 

LOL! Right...the "fallacy" of generalizing from numerous specific and similar instances.

 

Correct. Warthogs and nectar.

 

I don't know: do you have any links to actual radar records or direct testimony from the pilots/operators so we can look at the details of what was observed?

For only being 25 years old, the lack of any direct evidence speaks pretty poorly about it. It makes the incident look like folklore. Thousands of people are said to have witnessed it, yet only one photo exists, which is probably a hoax? Even for 1990, pre- cell phone, that's pretty pathetic.

 

True. And we never will understand what's happening if fundamentalist true-believing debunkers keep trying to silence any discussion of the ufo phenomenon.

Question to JamesR: Why even have a 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' forums on Sciforums, if discussion of those subjects is unwelcome?

I'm not convinced that 'entities' are typically involved, if 'entity' is taken to mean something objective rather than subjective. To the extent that objective 'entities' are involved, I expect most of them will turn out to be rather mundane. That was true in the case of two ufos that I saw, one an unpainted aluminum airplane turning and catching the sun, the other a rigid cigar-shaped airship passing behind a cloud. (I keep binoculars by my window for precisely those kind of events.) But taking JamesR's expression of skepticism to heart ('don't claim to know things you don't really know'), no matter how often the rest of Sciforums ignores it, I'll say that I certainly can't entirely exclude the possibility that more extraordinary 'entities' are behind some subset of the sightings.

That's awfully speculative. I'm inclined to be skeptical about all of that, but again, I can't totally exclude the possibility and even speculated about time travelers in an earlier post.

I've always considered Jung a fascinating crank. But sure, I'm definitely inclined to favor some kind of social-psychological explanation for most of them. As I've written before, I see ufos as being closely akin to religious miracles, and suspect (but can't prove) that belief in them has the same kind of psychological origin. I suspect that many people want to believe in these kind of things, so tend to have a very low threshold of credulity regarding them.

A point that I want to emphasize is that acknowledging that doesn't make the ufo phenomenon go away. Just as saying that religious miracles might not have had a divine origin doesn't mean that miracle reports and widespread belief in their religious interpretation aren't themselves phenomena worthy of further investigation. It just suggests that they may be more the province of social-psychology than metaphysics.

I agree. The ufo phenomenon is a fact, that's just indisputable. Thousands of people have reported all manner of unidentified things in the sky. The angry and hostile disagreements arise when attempts are made to interpret and explain what those things were. Nobody truly knows what all of them are, so true skepticism (as opposed to crude debunkery) would suggest that we don't jump to conclusions.

I think that concluding that they are extraterrestrial spacecraft is an unjustified leap at this point. The debunkers are right about that. It's certainly an interesting idea though, and well worth speculating about, as long as we remember that we are speculating and not stating hard and fast facts. I don't find the idea impossible or absurd. I like my own time-travel speculation. We could speculated that they are visitors from some alternate earth in a many-world multiverse, that they are space animals of some unknown kind, or any number of unexpected things.

I like your drawings of various ufo morphologies. I would suggest that if they haven't already done so, that ufologists try to quantify these, and determine how frequently each type is reported. Then they should assign dates to them and see if some forms are reported more often in particular places and how they undergo waves of popularity. My guess is that the different forms are often cultural-historical, in the sense that they display popular ideas of cutting-edge aerospace technology in particular times and places. Big chugging mystery 'steampunk' airships were commonly reported in the skies during the 1800's, rockets in the 1950's and so on. The Adamski type was associated with the 'contactee' George Adamski and can probably be traced as an indicator of his influence on the myth in the early 50's. I seem to remember hearing a lot about 'cloud cigars' in the 1970's, perhaps from reading Jacques Vallee. So was that a French thing, popular around that time?

Perhaps the ufologists could try applying ideas from biological taxonomy to these things. Classify them into a hierarchy of taxonomic categories such as disks, cigars and airplane like things, then classify variants within each class and variants within the variants. Would any interesting patterns and relationships emerge if somebody did that?

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I'l field that one.

Discussion is welcome. That is not a blank slate for poorly-conceived or poorly-defended arguments, any more here than in any other forum. UGMf doesn't get a pass on burden of proof.