"As it was perfectly legal for me to copy witness' names when I visited the Air Force Archives, those names can be found in this report of 585 (less 13 missing) unexplained cases. And since the Privacy Act, which motivated the Air Force to censor the files in the first place, does not apply to reporters or anyone else outside the Government, they can be used as the reader pleases. "

http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/unknowns.htm

i post that link to show there were still 585 unexplained cases as of the closing of blue book

id love to know if our skeptics can let us know what these sightings were if not alien crafts

bear in mind you skeptics

they have already ruled out

Venus

commercial planes

swamp gas

so lets hear what you got

I've tried getting on that link and it won't let me. I've tried it five times, all I get is "This website cannot be seen".

Try the link again Punk17.. it worked for me.

Excellent post ETD.. This will be interesting..

What are these sightings? They are unknowns, UFOs. This means they weren't able to be identified. It doesn't mean that these UFOs absolutely had to be alien space craft, only that what was seen couldn't be identified.

I've seen something I couldn't identify as well. That doesn't mean that what I saw had to be an alien space craft, at the exclusion of any and all other possible explanations.

Short and straight to the point, another good post by Lilly.

What I think needs to be done in UFO research can be nicely summed up here. Basically, it all boils down to: you have to prove what you claim.

Within that body of work, is this short, sweet, interesting account.

To impune, or not impune, that is the question.

700 Miles and Six ECW Personel


And this- it was before my time, but it just defies simple explanation.
Like they say, only one case need be true. But, I do not need to argue anything, and won't.

Montana Film

For me it's not so much about trying to impugn any evidence, but rather to find evidence that is so irrefutable (ie, proves exactly what UFOs are, no more questions). Personally, I'd welcome any such evidence. I neither *believe* nor do I *disbelieve* in the UFO/ET hypothesis. At this point, I think these unknowns could be just about anything. It's rather frustrating to be making so little apparent headway in arriving at a definitive answer, though.

Some of the most credible UFO's that remain unidentified even after careful investigation that were not included in Project Blue Book are some of the NASA UFO's.

David Sereda's research has led to some very intriguing conclusions.

Here are two interviews of David Sereda I found interesting:
http://www.intalek.com/AV/David-Sereda-1.wma (audio interview)
http://www.intalek.com/AV/David-Sereda-2.wma (audio interview)
In them he discuss's his theories on the type of technology these UFO's possess. They are pretty long (about 30 minutes each) but are still very interesting. He was interviewed by Tim Ventura of http://americanantigravity.com/

Here is his site which is more or less simply an advertisement for his recently created documentary titled "EVIDENCE: the case for NASA UFO's" but none the less still has some pretty interesting things here and there: http://ufonasa.terra-ent.com/

A trailer for David Sereda's recent documentary can be found here: http://ufonasa.terra-ent.com/media/2_BROAD_TRAILER.wmv

The infamous Tether Incident from the STS-75 Space Shuttle Mission: http://ufonasa.terra-ent.com/2_tether.htm

David Sereda's Galaxy Clock Theory: http://ufonasa.terra-ent.com/2_galaxyClock.htm

Background information on David Sereda can be found here: http://ufonasa.terra-ent.com/2_Sereda.htm

excellent post lilly. i agree, only im a believer!!! lol but im not a knower i would love to have the ufo enigma cleared up with irrefutable proof. in fact, that would be the greatest thing to occur in my lifetime, even if it turns out that "ufos" have nothing at all to do with aliens.

and just to make note of, it is possible to believe something, and not know if your belief is real or not...just for you out there that dont understand what i mean by "im a believer, and not a knower". to me skeptics are absolutely essential in the quest for uncovering the truth to the ufo enigma. without them, all we would have is beliefs or faith . while they are great to have , they are not necessarily the truth. and i'd much rather have the truth over a belief, at least in regards to these matters. in fact, i dont think anyone KNOWS for sure whats going on, i think that can be implicitly understood by anyone that frequents this subject, even the skeptics. they are just trying to learn the truth , just like us believers. be proud of your "enemies" achievements, because it helps us too in the end

note* - i do not personally consider skeptics "enemies" , however i thought the phrase articulated what i was getting at quite well.

Yep, that's what I'd like to see happen as well!



Ok, fair enough. But as far as scientific evidence goes, faith isn't really relevent to the issue. In order for science to accept that the UFO/ET hypothesis is valid, it's going to take some strong evidence. Skeptical people really aren't being *mean* (although, some may disagree with me on this one), we just need that irrefutable evidence before we choose to 'believe in something'...see what I mean?

Good posts Lilly : )

Furthermore, skeptics are often said to have come to a conclusion before the investigation. Quite the opposite. It's usually the believer/knower that has come to the *HOPEFUL* conclusion first. The skeptic simply doesn't believe until it's proven otherwise. Either way, both parties are unsure, so the banter about who believes more and who believes less is getting old.

Personally, I hope aliens exist. I don't know, so I can't believe for sure that they're out there. But I am also VERY skeptical about it. I would sooner dismiss a claim than take it in as fact, unless there was proof.

On the flipside, I don't think we will ever be able to disprove the existence of aliens if you think about it.

Let's be clear. You have a long hard road ahead if you will only consider having hard scientific data! If so, you will always remain in the dark.

We all are in the dark, and I predict, always will be. No thinking person says-
"If only they would give us a full spectrum radar signal, spectral analysis of hull exterior,
and blueprints, to boot.

It is not going to happen. This is ultimately a military level decision, not one made by
diplomats, politicians, or any naysayers. What are the odds we park an F-22 on a hostile runway for a week, while unattended?

This is ultimately a philosophical topic for a planet with limited resources.
Always has been, always will be. Perhaps this world will change dramatically over the next fifty to a hundred years, and the statistics will give way to unknown power generation.
Perhaps you will get your wish. The ability to potentially pose a challenge to other
possible life forms within this galaxy. But, I would not count on it.

Instrumented ufo research has already been attempted, at various levels on the civilian level. I know engineers who built laser communication devices when lasers were in early commercial availability. They had a mobile ability, and traveled from place to place. They were even invited to White Sands, not officially, but by employees. They have collected a small amount of data. But, it is not easy.

Today, it would require a billion dollar effort, because the odds are much less, due to the sheer lack of targets. Years ago, that is reported to not have been the case. So, if you want data, write your congressman, and see how far that gets. The choice days are behind us, I predict.

Top post magnetar,
I couldn't have put it better myself.

this should have made the book be called "Project BlueBalls" it'd be way more interesting.

As always,great post Rapid7.


Anyway.By the time Project Blue Book ended in 1969, it had collected 12,618 UFO reports, and concluded that most them were misidentifications of natural phenomena (clouds, stars, et cetera) or conventional aircraft. A few were considered hoaxes. 701 of the reports—about six percent—were classified as unknown. The reports were archived and are available under the Freedom of Information Act, names and other personal information of all witnesses have been redacted.


http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/foia.html

those are the reports i want to know about

the 701 or so even the members of Blue Book couldnt explain away

Hazzard,

You know zero about me, my background, nothing.
You are a total greenhorn. That is ok.

One in one million have PhD's in astrophysics.

In my estimation, the same number know directly about ufos.

Have you served in the military? Dealt with NSA? I thought not.

Good post hazzard
just one minor problem, I believe ET's daddy started the thread with that information..

Rapid7-

I appreciate the feedback. I try to take an objective stance. Naturally, the guiding currents of "stolid" objectivity can not empathize with what they do not know, firsthand.
Lilly, et al, are worth their weight in intellectual gold, as far as honest, straightforward thinking goes.

It is just when they exhibit an agenda that is not entirely correct, that I part ways, at least in spirit. For example, there is a university physics professor at a nearby college that has openly declared war on ufos, and lumps them, in toto, in with pseudo-science and occultism.

Obviously, the hottest topic on this planet in twenty to fifty years will be oil. After that, natural gas. Then, around 2100, coal and uranium deposits. And for those who preach thorium independence- too little, too late.

Our founding fathers did not expect this nation to survive two hundred years. I wish it would improve another two centuries, ad infinitum. But, those who disdain open public discussion of such sensitive topics, and all possible alternatives, are intellectually naive.

I hope you do not think I'm included in the group that lumps UFOs, "in toto, with pseudo-science and occultism". To do so would be highly inaccurate. First, that would make me a "disbeliever", one who has jumped to a conclusion without all the evidence, and without sufficient study. Second, I've seen a UFO myself, to catagorize the phenomena as such would be, to say the least, a bit ridiculous.



Now, you just switched topics here...where's the tie in with UFOs? Perhaps I'm obtuse, but could you be more specific. I'll guess (please do not be mad at me if I guess incorrectly). Are you trying to say that UFOs could be the key to some form of alternate energy source? If so, what do you suspect that might be? Cold fusion, zero point energy, something entirely yet unknown?

You understand, right, that sometimes there is simply not enough information to come to a conclusion?

A large hole appears in the middle of a busy street. Where did it come from?

If that is all the information you have, all you will be able to do is speculate. For all you know, the cause could be a sinkhole, or alien hole rays.

Sometimes there is simply not enough information to get an answer. That doesn't mean that the answer automatically defaults to extraterrestrial visitation (it could have been ghosts). It simply means that we don't have enough information to come to aconclusion.

I, too, have noticed (repeatedly) that some people will say, "Ah ha! Here's a UFO that noone can explain, this means that the UFO just has to have been an alien space ship!". No, it simply doesn't work that way, there needs to be some actual evidence that the UFO was indeed an alien space ship...at the exclusion of all other possible explanations.

I keep noticing the same question arise; why hasn't mainstream science got any hard evidence? Sure, when/if hard evidence turns up; of course the first people you’d want looking at it are scientists.
Without evidence one can only conclude the unidentified cases of project blue book are ‘unknowns’
If someone had direct access to the evidence, that would turn them into a ‘knower’
If someone had direct access to the evidence and had their scientific equipment with them, then they’d be the ultimate; The ‘skeptical scientific knower of intelligent alien contact’ tm
If you not either one, you can only really use intelligent speculation.

I’m sure it’s been discussed before, but I found this the other day while surfing;
He seems pretty sure he has some hard evidence;
http://ufoevidence.conforums.com/index.cgi

Is it a hoax?

how do you hoax a piece of alumunum with sharp chads on the outside..aluminum dont form like that..cant make it do that..

I never said I did.



Name calling,wow,thats original.



Another number picked from nowere.



Your estimation means nothing.



And again you thought wrong,I served in the airforce and after that I worked as a CFI in Los Angeles,CA for many years.(Certified flight instuctor).You figure the rest out

i may come off that way

but its not how i am

my biggest problem with blue book, and i may be wrong on this, is that i believe the project was set up specifically to solve the ufo mess

i think thier main function was to answer as many ufo sightings as possible, even if it meant to squeeze them into nice 'politically correct' catagories

now if they poured over all these sighting reports, which i believe they did, and there were still 700 or so they couldnt fit into a catagory i think it bears a closer look

im not saying AH HA we found 700 clear UFO sightings

no not at all

im just saying gov appointed 'experts' that i believe were set up to explain such things away, found some even they couldnt explain away

hope that makes sense lol

To put things a little more into perspective...

"Experts" are people too, just the same as you and I. A higher education, higher IQ, and level of knowledge has no bearing whatsoever on trying to figure out something that hasn't been seen before, something that human hands haven't touched (but we don't know that part for sure, just using this as an example).

For example: Albert Einstein, and a Caveman are standing next to each other. Suddenly a spaceship appears overhead. Then just as it appears, it is gone. NEITHER of them will be able to tell you where it came from. The caveman would draw his interpretation of it, and Einstein would expain it the best way he could, and probably spend the rest of his life trying to figure out what the hell he saw. The fact of the matter is, they both saw it. The caveman has no scientific knowledge, Einstein, well, you know. However, since neither of them has seen it before, or touched it, they cannot explain it's origin, makeup, or even come to a 100% factual conclusion as to what it really was that they saw. Even though Einstein KNOWS it's a spaceship, he doesn't have proof. Therefore, it gets stuck in the "Don't Know" category.


On a side note, Hazzard, what did you do in the AF? I'm a SSgt (E-5). Been in the AF for almost 9 years so far. My first wife used to work at the NSA (and she's in the military *GASP*). I find that question about "being in the military and working with the NSA" to be funny. People should get their government agencies right if they're going to lump them in with everything else.

Sorry for not being clear enough,my CFI licence is RCH only and that is what I did in the Airforce aswell,helicopter pilot.

And another thing about the,"being in the military and working with the NSA,NTSB or whatever government agency". Funny thing,the government that the conspiracy buffs find so hard to trust is all of a sudden the only credible source.

You're quite correct that neither Dr. Einstein, nor the Caveman will be able to come to an absolute conclusion about what they just saw...the evidence just flew away! The difference between the good doctor and our prehistoric friend becomes apparent when the two individuals develop some possible hypotheses for the experience. The Caveman is likely to hypothesize that this strange flying thing was some sort of "god", or some other magical, supernatural occurrence. Whereas, Dr. Einstein will realize that it is some type of technology; either some clandestine, earthly, military prototype, or something alien from another intelligent species out in the Galaxy, or from another dimension perhaps?

Neither will have any "proof", but the manner in which each one thinks about the event will be quite different. To be honest here, I think that a higher IQ and level of knowledge actually is helpful. Granted, it's not enough for this scenario to render proof. But, the ability to utilize sound scientific reasoning is far more likely (at some point in time when there is more evidence available) to eventually lead Dr. Einstein to a solid answer, rather than that of the Caveman's invocation of the supernatural.

Good Post Lilly : )

I enjoyed your analogy as well. Your example really serves to show the difficulty involved when one is trying to figure out something where the evidence simply flies away! It's quite frustrating, one can only hope that eventually something will give, either some natural phenomena will be discovered, or whomever, or whatever is behind the unknowns will go public!

Let's face it, Project Blue book was a front. A half-hearted attempt to investigate these ufo sightings. When all along in the background, the government was secretly doing its own top secret investigation into the ufo phenomena. And If you remember Dr. Hynek, who publicly downplayed the ufo phenomena as not real, was conducting his own secret research into the subject. Blue book was just to pacify the public.

They were secretly investigating? How do you know about it if it was a secret?

This "secret government conspiracy" crap is getting old.

You really summed it up here, how come loads of people in various parts of the world, most of them in the US know about a top secret conspiracy to hide the truth about aliens from humanity.

Could somebody please explain that, we really want to know how you know all of this.

What would it take to convince you?

there are a few instances of UFO's (and i mean in the strict definition, maybe not alien) that seem to lend to cover-ups

Roswell

Rendlesham

Shag Harbour

and im sure a few more i cant think of now

wow you heard about the conspiracy also? they have loads of debunking agents thats how they do it.

I second that! I could not have said it better myself!

Well, I know what would convince me. I'd like to see about a half dozen of these alien space ships fly in low over the Southeast Expressway leading into Boston at rush hour. One space ship could then land on the State House Commons, and Channel 5 News could cover the event. Yep, that would certainly do it for me.

Convince me about what, that some aliens are here? Simple, evidence that can stand up to scientific scrutiny.



And you know this how? If it is top secret then how come so many know about it, they dont seem to be doing a very good job keeping it secret now do they.

Well, I have never said that UFOs dont exist, quite the contrary I know UFOs exist and by UFOs I mean just that Unidentified Flying Objects.

Why is it so hard to believe that the government took the idea of extraterrestrials seriously enough to investigate it (in terms of national security)?

They looked into it and didn't find anything worth worrying about. No cover-up, no conspiracy, simply nothing there worth all the brouhahah.

Something you don't realize about the Air Force, or the military in general. The people upstairs likes to keep it's people employed. We are also under, and always have been under, budget constraints. In other words, Blue Book would NOT have been in place to cover up the "real deal" everyone wants to believe. They had a specific amount of slots for personnel to fill those positions. It costs money to put people in those slots to do these jobs.

The military and government in general, isn't as liberal with spending as people like to think. One of the jobs I've held during my time in the Air Force is a purchasing agent, and I can tell you it's a FACT that the military watches every dime spent, and where it goes. And if it goes somewhere it's not supposed to, you get castrated (metaphorically speaking, of course). Any of you read the article on CNN about the soldier who was wounded in Iraq and then charged $700 to replace his flak jacket which was cut off of him to save his life? The government is VERY anal when it comes to spending.

With that said, it is Very NOT probably that the military funded a coverup investigatory team, or Blue Book. Blue Book was the ACTUAL project investigating UFO sightings.



Good point.

Because people want to believe in conspiracy more than the boring truth. It's less fun if there's nothing to speculate. If we found out aliens existed today, such as a coverage on CNN of an alien craft landing on the white house lawn, then tomorrow, the conspiracy theorists would be scrounging for something else to theorize, and I'm sure many of them would make up something else to believe in.

As I've said many times, I want to believe in the possibility to alien life... But until I see them for myself, I'm still going to be skeptical about it. There's WAY too much dissinformation out there from morons like Glenn Campbell, Bob Lazar, John Lear, and even more idiotic people that believe them such as Art Bell, who like to perpetuate the lies they've told. It gets posted on the internet, people read it... some believe it as fact, others twist it and repost it, and so on and so forth. It's nothing but a giant snowball effect, like the "information" that continues to "surface" about roswell after so many years.

IF the governments of the world are covering anything up, I DO trust them. As far as reverse engineering spacecraft for military use, I personally see nothing wrong with keeping such a thing a secret. After all, would you want your military strength to be weak? Not to mention, if there are aliens, and they are hostile, and the government knows this, and they cover up the existence to keep this country safe, then what is wrong with that?

The problem is that people are continuously demanding information that for one, might not even exist! Second, they demand information that if it does exist, they wouldn't understand, or better yet, wouldn't have wanted to find out. For example, if someone of deep seeded religious faith were to find out about aliens, and aliens proved that God didn't exist, then what do you think that would do to the planet? There are literally billions of people that wouldn't be able to handle that. It would cause a LOT of problems, and probably lead to some serious disaster.

Instead of getting your nuts in a twist and your panties in a bunch about the big, bad government conspiracy, stop and think about the implications if said information actually existed.

I know that many of you might not care about the Bible, but I'd like to say something that might put things into some perspective. If you take the story of Adam and Eve, they weren't supposed to eat the fruit of the tree... they would gain knowledge of good and evil, and it would be their end. There's a simple, powerful lesson in that.

Knowledge is power, but at the same time, it can, and more than likely, will destroy us.


And one more thing... someone out there is probably going to think I'm a disinformation agent sent by the government because I'm in the Air Force. Yeah, right. Sorry, but I'm not in the INTEL career field : )