UFO hypotheses

[picnic]

When UFO sightings cannot be explained as misidentifications, top secret technology, hoaxes, hallucinations, ... what hypotheses can you imagine? I read a lot of UFO books, and I have noticed that UFO sightings often don't fit any hypotheses that I can imagine. I'm talking about the well-documented UFO sightings such as Blue Book collected - not the silly stuff that often appears in throw-away UFO books.

 

[Valjean]

Swamp gas

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

When UFO sightings cannot be explained as misidentifications, top secret technology, hoaxes, hallucinations, ... what hypotheses can you imagine?

Scientific ones and baseless ones.

I read a lot of UFO books, ...

What a silly waste of time.

 

[picnic]

Swamp gas

Sorry, that would be a subcategory of misidentifications.

 

[picnic]

Scientific ones and baseless ones.

What a silly waste of time.

Move along then.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Move along then.

No thank you.

 

[Terese]

That they are actual alien ships! Many is not what we see in this world. Lots of crazy stuff can happen!

 

[Rick O'Shez]

It's possible that they are probes rather than crewed craft, a more advanced version of the probes we have been sending out, maybe some sort of AI? That's a speculation based on the very long journey times for interstellar travel, assuming that light speed is the absolute limit.

I'm an amateur astronomer and I have seen some weird **** going on up there.

 

[Augustus]

It's possible that they are probes rather than crewed craft,

What's with aliens and their obsession with probes, eh?

 

[picnic]

It's possible that they are probes rather than crewed craft, a more advanced version of the probes we have been sending out, maybe some sort of AI? That's a speculation based on the very long journey times for interstellar travel, assuming that light speed is the absolute limit.

I'm an amateur astronomer and I have seen some weird **** going on up there.

One problem I see with explaining the unexplained UFO reports is that there is so much diversity. Occam's razor encourages us to look for a single explanation for all the diverse reports, but that is hard to do.

The AI probe theory sounds good, but what are they doing? Some UFOs seem to deliberately attract the attention of observers. One common UFO sighting is stars that zip around randomly and seem to react to the observers.

I wonder if these are sociology experiments? One or more ET cultures is sending probes to see how individual humans and human culture in general reacts to various experiences. Unlike human anthropologists who strive to minimize their impact on the primitive tribes they study, these ETs use humans as guinea pigs instead of only observing us. (I think these ET probes could easily be unseen if they really wanted to be unseen.)

That's one hypothesis FWIW.

EDIT: A possible reason for the sociology experiments could be that the ETs want to monitor and perhaps direct the development of human culture in preparation for making their presence public?

 

[picnic]

Another theory I've heard is that UFOs are created by our minds. An extreme case is a mentally disturbed person who has a hallucination, but this doesn't explain multiple witnesses, radar-visual sightings, and so forth.

Tibetan Buddhists believe in "tulpas" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulpa ) which are objective things created by a person's imagination. If a person imagines something with enough concentration, then supposedly that thing can exist in objective reality briefly.

 

[picnic]

A third theory is that people are observing something real but totally incomprehensible. As a result their minds invent something more comprehensible like grey aliens, spaceships, etc.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

One common UFO sighting is stars that zip around randomly and seem to react to the observers.

Something I've seen several times is bright objects that travel at speed and then suddenly make drastic changes in trajectory, in a way that would be impossible for any man-made craft like planes or helicopters. Definitely not satellites which move fast, but in a predictable orbit. No idea what they are.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

A third theory is that people are observing something real but totally incomprehensible. As a result their minds invent something more comprehensible like grey aliens, spaceships, etc.

That's an interesting one. I wonder if there is some kind of archetype going on here, possibly extending back into ancient times?
This kind of thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chariots_of_the_Gods?

Another theory I've heard is that it's a secret government project experimenting with advanced technology, possibly taken from crashed UFOs. Though I suspect most governments would want to show off stuff like this if they really had it.

 

[picnic]

Something I've seen several times is bright objects that travel at speed and then suddenly make drastic changes in trajectory, in a way that would be impossible for any man-made craft like planes or helicopters. Definitely not satellites which move fast, but in a predictable orbit. No idea what they are.

I think there is a case in Blue Book where a group of astronomers was outside in a backyard for a party and they all observed a star that moved erratically and then it followed an arc perfectly along the edge of the moon. The creepy thing is that the analysts calculated that the arc only lined up with the edge of the moon within a small distance of the backyard where the astronomers were located. (That claim seems a bit fishy to me, but I don't know the specifics.) Anyway, it was as if the light was performing specifically for the group of astronomers that were observing it. That seems to be fairly common with UFOs. The human observes the UFO, but the UFO is very aware of the human observer and often reacts. Sometimes beams of light shine to the ground. Sometimes the UFO zooms closer.

I observed a disc in the afternoon several years ago, and it seemed to be aware of me. I observed it for several minutes and even left briefly to find my camera and returned without losing sight of it. Then as soon as I bent over to pick up the camera, the disc was gone. It might have been coincidence, but I had a creepy feeling that the UFO had been watching me all the time. It made me angry, because I only planned to get a closer look through the zoom lens. My camera was not capable of taking a good picture of something so small, but my eyes could have seen it better with magnification. I really wanted to see it in more detail to know what it was for certain. I have wondered if it was a helicopter reflecting light that suddenly changed orientation so that it no longer reflected light. IDK

EDIT: Another odd thing about my sighting was that I had been obsessed with UFOs and rereading all the classic cases for a week before it happened. I was really depressed and wanted to know the answer on UFOs, and then as if on cue a UFO appears. A single observer who is obsessed with seeing a UFO (i.e. me ) is not reliable evidence unfortunately.

 

[rocala]

Something I've seen several times is bright objects that travel at speed and then suddenly make drastic changes in trajectory, in a way that would be impossible for any man-made craft like planes or helicopters. Definitely not satellites which move fast, but in a predictable orbit. No idea what they are.

Had the same experience in London 1973. I was visiting friends on the 23rd floor, so had a good view. We watched a bright disk go across the sky and enter cloud. Several times we saw the disk moving in and out of the cloud in the manner described by Spiny Norman. Then two discs shot upwards from the cloud. This was witnessed by five people.

 

[picnic]

Had the same experience in London 1973. I was visiting friends on the 23rd floor, so had a good view. We watched a bright disk go across the sky and enter cloud. Several times we saw the disk moving in and out of the cloud in the manner described by Spiny Norman. Then two discs shot upwards from the cloud. This was witnessed by five people.

One of my coworkers also saw something like this while camping and looking at star (4 witnesses). This seems to be a very common type of UFO sighting, but it rarely is discussed.

Another problem is the small percentage of cases that are reported. Most people see a UFO and then forget about it until it comes up years later in conversation. They can't remember the exact date or the exact details by that time. MUFON has an easy way to report sightings online. I reported my sighting and somebody from MUFON called me the next day for a phone interview. I wanted to report what I saw in case somebody else had seen the same thing in better detail - that way my report would support the stronger report. If anybody else saw it, they didn't report it.

 

[picnic]

Had the same experience in London 1973. I was visiting friends on the 23rd floor, so had a good view. We watched a bright disk go across the sky and enter cloud. Several times we saw the disk moving in and out of the cloud in the manner described by Spiny Norman. Then two discs shot upwards from the cloud. This was witnessed by five people.

@rocala, was this a nighttime or daytime sighting? Your description of a cloud makes me think that it was daytime. Also it doesn't sound like your UFO was moving all that much. I understood @Spiny Norman to have seen a star or stars moving rapidly and stopping and changing direction several times. That might be a different type of sighting.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I understood @Spiny Norman to have seen a star or stars moving rapidly and stopping and changing direction several times. That might be a different type of sighting.

My sightings were at night, with clear skies.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

What do you think of all those alien abduction stories?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_abduction

On the one hand it seems strange that so many people would make stuff up, on the other hand it isn't clear why aliens would want to keep doing it. Puzzling.