"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!?

reply to post by Druscilla


Yes I've seen a lot of your debunking efforts lately.

Lights in the sky are not the ones I concentrate on. Ideally I look for sightings of massive craft with multiple witnesses.

Although I do like the older photographic evidence and military reports.

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot
reply to post by JimOberg

 

In your view, in forty years, is there a single case -- let's make it harder, three cases -- in which my research was correct and the ufo community was in error? Can you name any?

If I read that right, you want me to find any evidence that you were correct in any of your analyse over 40 years?

Personally I concentrate on the extremely large UFO events, so with that in mind where should I look for your research?

OR I have an extensive library of old UFO books upto 1980's. What major cases have you done research on?

In your earlier post, I got the impression you were making a quality judgment about my investigative results -- now you're saying you know too little about them to cite any useful reports? Maybe it's your own opinions that we need to doubt -- and the gimmick of personalizing a debate that should be over the facts and interpretations of a particular famous case.

Deflect, detour, finger-point -- these are recognizable tactics of people whose goals are not clarification, understanding, and progress of knowledge. But the opposite.

Please, back to the subject under discussion.

My home page section on 'space age myths' has some pretty sensational cases explained, that even you may have heard of. Check it out if you're serious.

reply to post by JimOberg


I'm not here to get into an argument with you Jim.
And I do respect the work you did with NASA.

But the amount of times I've seen you push the meteor/space debris point gets a little tedious. I know it's your specialist subject and I do respect that.

So looking through your site I would like to discuss the Kecksburg incident, as that holds the most interest to me.

Originally posted by Blue Shift
A UFO mothership and a completely unrelated satellite re-entry appearing by chance in the same patch of sky?

You can blow it off if you want, I guess.

You don't even know WHAT re-entered, so how can you know what can or cannot be blown off? I can see why you'd think it was a satellite re-entering, even though it wasn't; it's because some terms were used carelessly by those trying to fit an explanation to some sightings. (In fairness to Jim, he did in other spots specify what this was.) But given that you, Blue Shift, think this was a satellite re-entry, and it wasn't, ask what else you might be overlooking. Please read that original analysis carefully. Important things might've slipped by.

The "known path of the decaying rocket [was] 200 to 400 km to the north [of the witnesses], depending on the observer's location."
+
"I estimate that during this [sighting] period the object was no more than about 90 km above the geoid on average."
+
"Breakup and terminal descent probably occurred soon after the Yukon sightings, somewhat farther to the east." [No breakup by the time of the sightings... so we have a mostly intact 10 meter rocket booster, with a trail as it re-enters... vs. the angular sizes (in all directions) from the witness descriptions?]
+
"The approximate mean and median [witness-reported duration of observation] values of 4.7 min and 4 min, respectively, are 2 to 5 times longer than the decay was actually observed"...
+
Elevation angle inconsistencies, uncertainties, adjustments and methodology... given that he did not have the software needed "to accurately propagate the final minutes of the descent"... which is kinda the point to all of this, isn't it?
+
Why was something bright enough to light up the ground and cast shadows from 200-400 km away not reported by anyone else from any other direction? There should be an 800 km diameter (minimum) of similar sightings from that night, shouldn't there?
+
Why don't more routine launches lead to booster re-entries that can cast shadows from hundreds of kilometers and lead to 'UFO mothership' sightings (and yet are only witnessed basically from one of the four cardinal directions)"
---------------------------
= significant doubt.

You call such concerns "blowing off" an explanation? I call it irresponsible to accept the sum of THEIR equation without asking some tough questions, especially given the history / assumptions / apparent motivations of some of the personalities involved.

I have no doubt that someone who already "knows" UFOs can't be real would be entirely convinced by this analysis after reading just the first section or two. (If not a UFO, then it's gotta be natural... and here you go. Solved.) On the other hand, someone who already knows that SOME UFOs can be real, based on personal experience in the company of others -- and whose assumptions are therefore springing directly from a superior evidentiary position than that of the blanket deniers -- is going to have some significant doubts about this.

I could be convinced. Really. Those issues above need to be addressed, however, if they want this sighting to legitimately appear on their list of explained cases.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets

Why don't more routine launches lead to booster re-entries that can cast shadows from hundreds of kilometers and lead to 'UFO mothership' sightings (and yet are only witnessed basically from one of the four cardinal directions)"
---------------------------
= significant doubt.

But they do -- just because you've never heard of them, doesn't mean they don't exist.

That's the advantage of time passing, so that repeated occurrences and subsequent reporting can be seen to fit a pattern that, you are quite correct, IS difficult to believe -- if it were a one-off.

I linked to several such cases earlier -- the Zond-IV booster entry, the Nov 5, 1990 Proton entry across northern France, the Tampa, Florida entry [date escapes me at the moment]... Add in a spectacular booster entry across Turkey about ten years ago that several professional aircrews saw as a fleet of UFOs [not one big one, according to the newspaper stories], you begin to see a pattern.

It seems that short-lived booster reentries are particularly spectacular, compared to end of life payload reentries, probably because the booster object is pretty darned heavy, is structurally spread out [tanks, engines, etc] so breaks into more equally-sized fragments, and has volatile fuel residues that also flare and explode..

That, and the way some people interpret a collection of 'formation-flying' lights to be mounted on a larger dark structure, isn't something that would be 'obvious' until enough examples of it had accumulated. Another example: many of the 'flying triangle' reports correlate with overflights of a triple-satellite formation of US Navy ocean surveillance satellites [the 'NOSS' system], where people saw three white dots moving in close proximity and [quite reasonably] interpreted them as running lights on a triangle-shaped structure.

It's because so MANY examples of this perceptual behavior have accumulated over the years that it becomes plausible to argue for it as an explanation for specific cases in which the spacecraft flyover DID exist and could be verified. But it is admittedly a bizarre phenomenon that going-in is very hard to credit -- until you see ALL the times it has happened, again and again and again.

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets
You don't even know WHAT re-entered, so how can you know what can or cannot be blown off? I can see why you'd think it was a satellite re-entering, even though it wasn't; it's because some terms were used carelessly by those trying to fit an explanation to some sightings. (In fairness to Jim, he did in other spots specify what this was.) But given that you, Blue Shift, think this was a satellite re-entry, and it wasn't, ask what else you might be overlooking. Please read that original analysis carefully. Important things might've slipped by.

The ultimate outcome of all this is still going to be that NOTHING is advanced. It doesn't get us any closer to understanding anything about the real, strange UFOs.

And once again -- as with the Stephenville, Texas, and Illinois UFO cases -- we're confronted with the notion that we should accept eyewitness reports as accurate, even though they all describe different things. So are they dead on accurate, or is there some accommodation for differences in perception? And if that's the case, how far should we bend? How far can we say, "Well the witnesses weren't exactly accurate," before we can admit that maybe the witnesses weren't all that accurate, and maybe they mistook some falling space junk for a UFO mothership?

Even then, after all is said and done, what have we learned? That aliens or time travelers are visiting us? No, we can't conclude that. We can't conclude anything. Just that some people saw something odd in the sky. What a revelation!

Latest calculations by satellite observation experts:



The 1996 Cosmos 2335 RB Decay
satobs.org...

Ted Molczan's impressive and fascinating analysis of the
Cosmos 2335 RB ('#24671) on Dec 12, 1996 stimulated me
to investigate the case with my special perturbation decay
program.,..

The visibility conditions for 3 reported observation locations
are also in good agreement with Ted's results. The differences
in time and altitudes are only in the order of a few seconds and
a few degrees.

I lol'd at the "Report/Reality" section of Sheaffer's article.

As long as Sheaffer keeps choosing what reality is, well, I don't think he will ever be wrong about something in his life.

Real investigators continue genuine research, and report interesting results.

Many intelligent debating points have been raised here -- some I still owe answers to.

Latest Molczan results:

RE: Old Unknown Identified as a Re-entry
From: Ted Molczan ([email protected])
Date: Wed May 02 2012 - 05:39:23 UTC
satobs.org...

reply to post by JimOberg
You probably owe an answer to this one which was raised on a redundant thread but has not been answered yet..

Maybe the booster re-entry did happen along with the UFO sightings.

Has anyone stopped to consider both events might have happened simultaneously???

Accounts for both sides of the story are quite strong and it is unfair to throw one out and consider the other without taking into account that both occurrences might have happened that night.

I was hoping somebody else would pick up on it.

This theory, that the events are just coincidences, seems to me to be what is called 'special pleading' -- calling on extraordinary events that nobody ever knew could happen.

Consider probably the easiest refutation of this theory: nobody seems to ever see BOTH apparitions and report them BOTH. It's one or the other.

One VERY special pleading response is to speculate that the UFOs have actually arrived to OBSERVE the reentry itself [or in some cases, rocket LAUNCHINGS misperceived as UFOs -- often by pilots], or somehow exploit the ion trail it creates.

Aside from the fact that it conjures up a series of miracles to explain what really doesn't need a miraculous explanation, it also fails for the same reason listed above -- if that were the case, human observers would also see both. But according to all the reports i've read, they don't.

It's one -- or the other. From that I conclude it's the same stimulus, perceived and interpreted in different ways.

Originally posted by Jaellma
reply to post by JimOberg

 

You probably owe an answer to this one which was raised on a redundant thread but has not been answered yet..

Maybe the booster re-entry did happen along with the UFO sightings.

Has anyone stopped to consider both events might have happened simultaneously???

Accounts for both sides of the story are quite strong and it is unfair to throw one out and consider the other without taking into account that both occurrences might have happened that night.

What is it with these grasping at straws explanations?

Anything will do because it obviously won't ever be aliens, not in a million years, right? Never ever, ever. Not possible at all.

Just base all current scientific bias towards the subject on the results of the - not in anyway completely manipulated by the US Air Force- report on UFOs, the Condon Report, that no good had come from studying UFOs in the past 21 years. Nothing except for the TR-3B?

reply to post by JimOberg


Reading about Kecksburg on your site. Isn't that the exact scenario you describe?

But subsequent analysis of the Kosmos-96 orbit confirmed the authenticity of the AF tracking data, and confirmed that its path could not possibly be made to coincide with the path of the meteor observed in southern Ontario. In the end, the same-day fall of the super-secret Soviet Venus capsule, and the bright meteor, must have been coincidences. That happens, too.
The Kecksburg local industry in its ‘UFO crash’ continues to thrive, although many key personnel from that area insist, as they have always insisted, that the tales of trucks and troops and mystery spaceships are all imaginary – THEY were there, in responsible emergency services jobs, and they say they saw nothing. For UFO believers, this is easy to explain – they have had their brains wiped by a memory ray, further evidence the crash was real.

Rocket booster? What a lame attempt to try hiding the truth! Why not simply say it was the ol' "swamp gas" illusion? If I was one of those who witnessed this craft, I'd be mighty teed off about now!

reply to post by JimOberg

It's one -- or the other. From that I conclude it's the same stimulus, perceived and interpreted in different ways.

If that's the case, and I don't dispute that one bit. As a matter of fact it makes perfect sense for it to be one distinct phenomena. As such, one must weigh the multitude of eyewitness reports versus explanations from experts and decide which makes more sense from a logical standpoint.

Based on what I have read on both sides of the fence I would have to lean away from the rocket booster theories and side with the eyewitness accounts, varied as they appear to many.

Originally posted by JimOberg
It's one -- or the other. From that I conclude it's the same stimulus, perceived and interpreted in different ways.

I don't think the inferential leaps you're taking here are at all reasonable.

The issue is not simply whether two events occurred simultaneously; it is whether the booster re-entry could have produced the visual scene described by the witnesses.

If information came out that a flight of 5 Air Force fighters were 10nm to the north that night with afterburners lit, most likely within 15 minutes of the sighting times, we would not simply jump to that 'it's got to be one or the other' mode of thought. And there's no reason to do so here, either. Many things happened in the Yukon at 8:30 that night. A certain threshold of apparent explanatory power must be met, however, before we elevate something to the either-or, implied (though far from actual) 0.50 probability status. And there are several issues that need to be addressed regarding the booster re-entry hypothesis.

I said above, "I want to be clear: I don't doubt the trajectory data." And it looks as if the booster's trajectory has been further confirmed. Great. I still can't see that the issues as to methodology and error margins in calculating height were addressed, but regardless....

The real issue front and center is visual stimulus: does and could the booster rocket re-entry (hundreds of km to the north, and apparently before its breakup) explain the scene that witnesses outlined? It's more than a minor point, after all, that some witnesses described an object with a surface basically passing over them. Unless one simply assumes UFOs can't be real -- in which case, what are we here discussing? -- dismissing such a detail as witness error without actual regard for its existence seems absurd.

Don't you have the burden of proof backwards? It's not up to a skeptic to PROVE that an explanation MUST account for all eyewitness reports.

It's up for a proponent to PROVE that a proposed prosaic stimulus could NOT have led to the eyewitness reports, beyond a reasonable doubt.

At least, that's always been the rule of scientific advancement in the past. And criminal trials.

You don't ASSUME the new claim is correct. You assume the existing model ['iinocence'] is correct until overwhelming and undeniable evidence is mustered against it.

Is ths particular case such evidence?

Until last month, it was assumed so. It was treated so.

What's changed since then?

Originally posted by JimOberg
It's up for a proponent to PROVE that a proposed prosaic stimulus could NOT have led to the eyewitness reports, beyond a reasonable doubt.

That has been done here repeated times - or in the other original thread. No point posting every post twice, is there? Especially since the same points have been brought forward proving that the "rocket" explanation does not match the observations - and in every case, you just simply ignore the post.

Originally posted by JimOberg
Don't you have the burden of proof backwards? It's not up to a skeptic to PROVE that an explanation MUST account for all eyewitness reports.

It's up for a proponent to PROVE that a proposed prosaic stimulus could NOT have led to the eyewitness reports, beyond a reasonable doubt.

Only if the proposed prosaic stimulus meets a certain level of reasonableness. You don't get to just offer any ol' thing up, label it your "proposed prosaic stimulus", and then pronounce that Occam's Razor demands that we accept IT, since it is a known, over any unknown alternative.

The booster theory may or may not ultimately meet that initial burden of reasonableness, where the presumption would shift back to those claiming the object remains unidentified. But it hasn't met it yet. Because you've not addressed several very important issues. Re-confirmations of trajectory data I said I agreed with many posts ago does not cover these issues.

Here's just one: Had the booster broken up yet at the time of the sightings? The original report says it had not. The angular size of a 10 meter rocket when 200km away from a witness is less than 3/100 of 1 degree.... Tiny. Several witnesses describing a "surface" is therefore more than a little problematic for the booster re-entry theory. Descriptions of lights around the perimeter and the large angular size (not just laterally, but also vertically) must be accounted for. The witnesses describe much, much more than a "surreal comet", as it was described by the author of the report.

These are certainly not insurmountable problems, but you can't simply pretend they don't exist.

Fair enough, we need to obtain more witness reports from sightings that did turn out to be reentries, to compare with these. I'm off on travel again but will nose around while I'm away/