Is Every UFO video Fake or Mistaken?

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Like the question about whether he was formerly a "UFO buff" before his encounter perhaps, and he said "no"? I could see him passing and failing that question on two different tests, partly because one of the examiners said they thought he was using techniques to try to deceive the test like holding his breath.

Travis Walton is a very intelligent man and that in itself could be used ‘in evidence’ that he was smart enough to contrive a hoax. He may well have said ‘no,’ in response to a ‘UFO buff’ question, for several reasons. One of those reasons could be that he didn’t regard himself as a ‘UFO buff.’ Another might be that he was intelligent enough to recognise the implications of being characterised as one; it’s generally held to be a pejorative term that diminishes social status and credibility.

Personally, I neither believe nor disbelieve the account although that audio I mentioned left an impression. Your own analyses make sense enough for you to be highly dubious and, to be fair, who wouldn’t be? It’s a wild tale and any reasoning person should entertain doubts. One doesn’t have to be a statistician to realise that being taken by Folk from Elsewhere is unlikely at best.

I don't know if there are any alien visitors, but I don't think these two videos have been debunked.
The first is film (the poster added and ad at the beginning--sorry), and the second is a sighting account by a very well respected U.S. astronaut who is no longer with us.

originally posted by: xpoq47
I don't know if there are any alien visitors, but I don't think these two videos have been debunked.
The first is film (the poster added and ad at the beginning--sorry), and the second is a sighting account by a very well respected U.S. astronaut who is no longer with us.

Deke Slayton says in his autobiography that he doesn't presume it was alien:

Deke Slayton

I don't automatically presume it came from Alpha Centauri, just because I can't identify it. It's still an open question to me.

Which is indeed the most logical way most UFO sightings should be viewed. If you don't know what it is, then you don't know what it is....that doesn't mean it's alien and I'm glad Slayton is logical about it.

The first video however is the perfect reason why 99% of the "dot in the sky" videos on youtube are totally useless, because you can't tell what a "dot in the sky" really is at such poor resolution. That video was debunked around 1980, using one of the "primitive" computers from that era to perform frame stacking analysis of the video, which was able to identify the object as an ordinary airplane. This was broadcast on the Arthur C Clarke's "Mysterious World" TV show and Clarke used it as an example of why UFO reports didn't interest him that much, because most of them turn out to be manmade objects or natural phenomena.

That "Mysterious World" episode was on youtube and I posted a link to it in another thread years ago, but it was eventually removed. I just looked to see if someone re-upped it and didn't see it in a quick scan of 75 Arthur Clarke videos, and there are a lot of episodes there but I didn't see the UFO episode...maybe you can find it somewhere if you're interested starting with a more thorough search of youtube than I did; I think this is the right IMDB link:
UFO episode of Mysterious World (1980)

a reply to: Arbitrageur
Yeah, the video is gone for some reason. Here's a screen grab I posted a year or so ago on this "UFO" taken from that episode:

a reply to: Ectoplasm8
Thanks for posting the screengrab...that's the video I was referring to, so I'm glad you saved that. I'm going to save that now in case it comes up again.

It was interesting to see the state of computer technology in 1980 shown there. It seemed to take a long time to do the image comparison (minutes), something that would probably take microseconds today.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur....


Deke Slayton says in his autobiography that he doesn't presume it was alien:

Here's the rest at that link:

From Deke! An Autobiography

Then they told me: Just for your information, the day you saw this object a local company was flying high-altitude research balloons. They had a light airplane tracking it, and a station wagon on the ground. Both observers were watching this balloon and had seen this object come up beside the balloon. The object appeared to hover, then took off like hell.

The guys on the ground tracked it with a theodolite, and they'd computed the speed at four thousand miles an hour.
I guess they were trying to tell me I wasn't exactly crazy: somebody else had seen something unusual, too. But I never heard another thing about it.

My position is, I don't know what it was: it was unidentified. Maybe what I saw was the company's weather balloon-maybe the object going four thousand miles an hour to these guys on the ground was me. Maybe there was something about the environment and the setup that confused me. I don't know. Or it could have been something unknown. (I don't automatically presume that it came from Alpha Centauri, just because I can't identify it.).

It's still an open question to me.

a reply to: FinalCountdown

Telescopic Video would put an end to it all with better shooting stability technology.

originally posted by: windword
a reply to: FinalCountdown

Have the Phoenix Lights been debunked?

Nope, not to the satisfaction of many anyway. People who think its flares makes me laugh.

originally posted by: Bloodydagger
Nope, not to the satisfaction of many anyway. People who think its flares makes me laugh.

I don't know what more proof you could possibly ask for. We even have video of one of the pilots who dropped the flares saying they are the ones who dropped them, and they disappear behind the mountain ridge in a slow descent by flare parachute just as flares would do.

The Phoenix Lights Explained


So the lights are definitely solved. The earlier sighting, before the flares, is not explained, but the video of that event is extremely poor and doesn't exactly match what people described.