Phoenix Lights - UFO witness summary (11/3/2015)

originally posted by: chunder
a reply to: fleabit

Where do you get 5 hrs from ?

There were two events, the first lasting a max of 20 mins for any one observer and the second around 5 mins !

What case you looking at? I misspoke.. it was over the span of 3 hours. Still a lot longer than 20 minutes however.

The Phoenix lights case started with the first sighting around 7:30 pm, in Nevada, and the last sighting was around 10:30 near Tuscon.

a reply to: HorusChrist

I can confirm the company referred to by draknoir2 is indeed legitimate.

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets
a reply to: ZetaRediculian

I think you might have read my post incorrectly.

Yes, it appears so.

I was referring to natural movements of the head, or even the instinctive shifts in body posture & positioning that we all make in order to help us better judge the distances to objects whose size we do not know. Parallax and all that, which is useful out to much greater distances than we get with just binocular vision alone....

Yeah, I have no idea about that. But the blindsight was pretty cool....yes?

originally posted by: JimOberg
Once again, you are assuming -- the actual distance of the lights -- something that you really haven't proven, in order to then look like you've proved it.

You're incredible Jim... and not in a good way. Many witnesses say the object was moving slowly, a few hundred feet from them. You say there's no way for them to know how far away the object would be. Astounding. If something's moving that slowly, and is only a few hundred feet from you, and you move around a little bit to check it out, you can sense its image shifting against the static background, right? This skill is how we survive in the world. Here, the background was the canopy of stars, and later the city lights and mountains near the horizon.

So no, it's not that I'm first "assuming" the altitude and then working from there. It's that I, unlike you, have the freedom to not have to disregard any particular witnesses. I don't have to pretend that people can't tell when something is a few hundred feet from them. The conclusions that may follow in this case by accepting that people actually can discern short distances, even when they don't know the object's size, aren't all that outrageous to me. Not desirable, but not outrageous, either.

So this distance thing... you seem really stuck on it.

If you live in a city which has 200 ft. buildings, then, on some night when the stars are visible, go stand a few hundred feet away from the base of the building. Line up a sharp corner near its top with some star cluster or background object. Keep looking that way, and then move around a little. How far did your eyeballs need to move before your brain registered that the 'object' you were focussing on was shifting against the background, and that it must be a few hundred feet away? Not very far, right? And it's not like you have to do math -- "well let's see, the object shifted by y degrees when I moved x inches, so therefore it must be z feet away." Thank goodness, no. Our brains do it automatically. Our lives depend on our ability to sense very fine changes in objects' relative positions, whether those objects are familiar to us or not.

No argument, and there's no way to disprove this, since any technology able to physically access our environment would presumably be completely capable of evading human detection -- which might be what an entity you posturlate WOULD do, if it were here for the reasonable motives you suggest. So I think your argument -- they OUGHT to be here therefore what we are seeing can reasonably be interpreted as their being here -- is tautological, or what we used to say more earthily in Mission Control, 'a self-eating watermelon.'

No, it's not circular. It's a matter of simply accepting something as possible, even if unlikely -- here, maybe a non-terrestrial craft of some sort -- and then looking for the most reliable, consistent and corroborated evidence. (Something that both your major paycheck suppliers -- NASA and the U.S. Air Force -- proved unable or unwilling to do with this topic.) What's nice is that I, like many others here, am not ever in a position where I feel forced to disregard some information just because there's a certain conclusion I know I must avoid. I don't ever feel compelled to make outrageous arguments like "witnesses can't tell when something's a few hundred feet from them," and boy am I glad of that.

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets......but simplicity is its advantage, and is exactly why you're most likely to find it only in a controlled, laboratory environment.

Agreed, which is why I think my Kiev 1963 report is so important to understanding how some such large craft reports originate.

Huh? My point was that the sensory-repressive laboratory type setting you were hypothesizing would not occur very often out in the real world.

So you're saying... what, that you agree it wouldn't occur often, but you're thankful for the one time it did occur, because now we can apply its results to cases where the witnesses had more complete sensory data?

Hmmmm....

If we agree that this perfectly sensory-repressive setting you'd mentioned rarely actually occurs, then how useful are those Kiev results, truly? They're interesting, sure, and I agree that there's a lesson in there, but... I think that in your zeal to solve all these UFO cases, you misapply it. Here, it's even led you down the unenviable path of having to argue that people can't tell when an unfamiliar object is just a few hundred feet from them.

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets
...
So this distance thing... you seem really stuck on it.



If you live in a city which has 200 ft. buildings, then, on some night when the stars are visible, go stand a few hundred feet away from the base of the building. Line up a sharp corner near its top with some star cluster or background object. Keep looking that way, and then move around a little. How far did your eyeballs need to move before your brain registered that the 'object' you were focussing on was shifting against the background, and that it must be a few hundred feet away? Not very far, right? And it's not like you have to do math -- "well let's see, the object shifted by y degrees when I moved x inches, so therefore it must be z feet away." Thank goodness, no. Our brains do it automatically. Our lives depend on our ability to sense very fine changes in objects' relative positions, whether those objects are familiar to us or not.....

In my cities, buildings don't move. Sorry about your city.

Another consideration is whether to experience it, or interrupt the experience to go find a camera in the hopes it'll still be there when you return.

a reply to: draknoir2

Just wanted to add that my own daylight sighting (in summer of '97 also in AZ) of a white, wingless cylinder hanging motionless in front of an approaching t-storm had me watching it with a group of strangers in a parking lot, relative to a phone pole, so that I could be sure it didn't move for 10 full minutes even though the winds were 30 mph at ground level... and when I realized it was possibly unexplained, and broke off to drive for my camera at my nearby house to document it for others, it was gone when I returned and was told by the strangers that it had "vanished."

I so wish I had seen that part, too... but I still haven't heard a good explanation for that one (actually disappearing or not) and I tried to find one with some diligence. So I get the "sorry, no photos" thing.

eta: and Jim, the above comment was funny.

a reply to: TeaAndStrumpets

This is well out and totially right. As humans we can judge distance.

However I still do believe it was the TR-6 TELOS and very unlikely nothing ET. Certainly not A-10's dropping flares or formation flying because that aircraft does not have a need to operate in that way whether pilots in training or operational.

originally posted by: TeaAndStrumpets
" It sounds like you think it's "insane" that a vehicle built by a non-human intelligence might be traveling through our skies?

Sorry, but it's starting to sound to me like you might be coming at it from the angle of "I know UFOs can't be real, so there's got to be something else going on. Must be... selective reporting and mass hysteria."

Not at all - I'm open to this being possible and as I said earlier in this thread there is definitely a phenomenon worthy of scientific enquiry at play, personally I veer towards Jacques Vallees thinking.

I'm not predisposed either way, just take every case on its merits and for me the 97 Phoenix case is explainable - previously I had always thought there was more to it until I looked in more detail at the witness reports.

Its fine if others come to a different conclusion - as long as they have also looked in detail.

originally posted by: JimOberg



Once again, you are assuming -- the actual distance of the lights -- something that you really haven't proven, in order to then look like you've proved it.

There are some decent hints as to distance to the object in that particular suburban cluster of sightings.
There is a documentary made by National Geographic where they take the witnesses who actually saw the triangle approaching the suburb from a distance. It passed directly between 2 mountain peaks before it flew over the suburb.
From that the team doing analysis, measurements, and such, determined that "thing" was 1200 feet long.

Also after passing the peaks I think it flew lower as it approached the suburb, but at any rate it gave an approximate height limit to how high it was flying because it did not ascend as it was coming toward the suburbanites standing on their front lawns watching it approach.
The height between the peaks was the highest it flew, which wasn't that high, but I don't remember what the numbers were.
But it was low. And way too risky for planes. The witnesses all indicated it passed through the pass coming very close to hitting both wings on the mountains.

I get that looking directly up at an object poses a problem as to guessing the height with 100% accuracy. The problem is you have nothing to compare it too. But looking at an object in the distance passing between twin peaks is a different type of observation because you have something to contrast it to.

a reply to: JimOberg
a reply to: _BoneZ_

I think it would be interesting to get some perspective from another case besides kiev that is kinda similar.

How many think the Hudson Valley sightings were simply the result of a couple pilots perpetrating a hoax?

a reply to: Baddogma

In 1997, cellphones didn't have cameras at all. The technology wasn't even invented. Phones didn't even have colour screens until about 2001/2002 lol.

I swear some people think camera phones have been around for ever!

Lol lol lolz

a reply to: JimOberg

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: Baddogma

In 1997, cellphones didn't have cameras at all. The technology wasn't even invented. Phones didn't even have colour screens until about 2001/2002 lol.

I swear some people think camera phones have been around for ever!

Lol lol lolz

a reply to: JimOberg

Right, I don't know the exact years since I wasn't interested in cell phones back then, but: They were definitely rare, and primitive, in '97. Everybody was mostly using landline phones, and I think digital cameras were still rare as well. It wasn't like today and there was no equivalent to today's abundance of cell phones with cameras.

In '97 I think most people had no camera with them, and if a rare person did have a camera, it would have been a Polaroid or film camera that wouldn't take good UFO pics anyway.

So the reason for the lack of photos & videos of the Phoenix lights, is that cameras and cell phones were much more rare and primitive back then.

Also, I imagine that most witness were probably rather frozen psychologically, standing there and watching the giant spacecraft flying right over their heads. I don't think most witnesses would have thought of taking a break to run into their house to grab a camera.

Also: Wasn't there at least one legit video of the Phoenix Lights UFO, i.e. NOT the flares but the actual UFO?

a reply to: peacefulpete

I know because I used to fix phones. Watch the Matrix and bare in mind that the phone Neo uses is cutting edge at the time. No camera on that bro.

originally posted by: Wide-Eyes
a reply to: peacefulpete

I know because I used to fix phones. Watch the Matrix and bare in mind that the phone Neo uses is cutting edge at the time. No camera on that bro.

Right, I was agreeing that cell phones were rare and primitive back in '97. And digital cameras were rare too iirc.

a reply to: peacefulpete

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't really directing my point at you. Was for the others saying millions of camera phones. I was elaborating my point. Came out wrong lol. Thank you for your understanding.

From a confidential source: the Phoenix Lights was a craft from an interstellar civilization with whom we will, in the not too distant future, make open contact with. They are acclimating us to this. I is said there will soon be another mass sighting of the same craft.

And, btw, don't be too U.S.-centric when discussing mass sightings of UFO's. That's been happening for a number of years now, especially in Mexico.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: network dude

You've been here long enough to remember when this site was about denying ignorance.

Then let's start with yours. Thanks.

originally posted by: JimOberg

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: network dude

Could be a blimp, or something else, but what we know for certain is it's big.

By some reports, "horizon to horizon", big.



The first sighting was during daylight, too. There isn't a hangar big enough anywhere. Others would see that somewhere, taking off or even moored, being filled with what, Helium? .

Daytime? In a city with a million cellphone cameras?

It can't just disappear… unless you believe in cloaking. Or its out of this world.

Come on, we're wa-a-a-ay past the point of playing 'false dilemma' games. There are several additional possibile explanations.

Do you consider it even marginally possible that some people seeing a grouping of bright lights crossing the night sky will interpret them automatically like previously-seen objects such as a large craft with lights mounted on it? Do you think intelligent, sober, rational witnesses could EVER do that?

"In a city with a million cell phone cameras?" I thought this guy was supposed to be a NASA scientist?

There were ZERO cell phone cameras in 1997, I hate to break it to you.
Next Jim Olberg will ask why Betty and Barney Hill didn't livestream their abduction on Facebook.

Ah, well, any flimsy excuse will do, right?
Tell us again how a rocket in 1963 is why people can't tell if a mile-wide triangle craft is slowly going over their city.

Someday, a long, long time from now, God willing, we will all miss Jim Oberg very much.
But I solemnly promise that I will always show his legacy the same kind of respect that he has always shown for Col. Gordon Cooper.
I promise.

a reply to: billydebunker

Then let's start with yours. Thanks.

OK , ready when you are.