"Gov't Confirms UFOs" - Maybe it irks me more than it should...

@Limewater WTF does that even mean?
“Could be” a million things - that’s what “unidentified” means!

@DennisG2014 “Alien” means “belonging to a foreign country or nation.”

For someone trying to start an argument by being pedantic, I’d have expected you to comment on this.

In the context you mention, there’s a decent chance that observed flying objection could have been “belonging to a foreign country or nation,” or they were observed in airspace over foreign countries or nations where the US military would have been the “aliens.”

/giphy anna nicole smith illegal aliens

@Limewater Ok, well first, I was trying to distinguish between being pedantic about people using “UFO” interchangeably with “Alien Spacecraft” and people who make the leap from “gov’t admits there are flying objects that they can’t identify” to “gov’t admits alien spacecraft are real”.
I think one is pedantry and the other is just reading comprehension and logic.

Second, why should it be any more likely that it is a terrestrial, man-made aircraft at all, rather than, say, a natural phenomenon or an illusion?

Unidentified. Flying. Object.
The only thing that that phrase implies that is known is that whatever was observed appeared to be flying through the air.
Nothing else is known.

@DennisG2014 Well, if it’s an illusion it wouldn’t really be flying, now would it? I’m not sure it would even be an object.

If it is flying and an object, and was observed over foreign soil, I’d say there’s a fair chance that it is of foreign origin.

@Limewater No, it could be an actual flying object and still be an illusion.
Just saw one of those goofy TV shows about this stuff last night where a flying object appears to intentionally fly straight into a volcano.
It was, of course, an illusion due to perspective.
It was a man-made aircraft that was following a flight path around the volcano, to the airport on the opposite side of it from the viewpoint, causing it to appear as if it were flying down into it.
But, even after it was clearly demonstrated with a scale model how this illusion could occur, there were still people who insisted, “I don’t know… I still think it could have been an alien craft descending into a volcano.”

And even if it’s just some natural phenomenon or trick of the light, it still appears to us as an “object” within our field of vision.

UFO is just easier to say than “some unknown thing or phenomena that appeared to be flying through the air”.

@DennisG2014 @Limewater It can’t be an illusion if it’s picked up by radar or FLIR. There has to be something there. Illusions don’t have heat signatures or anything to bounce back radio waves.

@DennisG2014 @warpedrotors Believe it or not, you actually can get “illusions” in radar systems based purely on the hardware inside the system. Things like poorly-synced power supply clocks or bad capacitors can cause things that look like reflections from physical targets.
These tend to present as detected targets that maintain a constant range. If using range-doppler imaging, they can appear as appear as objects that simultaneously maintain a constant range but also have a doppler, which a constant-range object should not have.
These are well-understood by people who design and build radar systems, but I’m not sure if operators and people using radar-based instrumentation know much about them.

I don’t know anything about FLIR, though.

@Limewater @warpedrotors
I don’t know enough about those systems to make an argument.
If the “object” in question was only seen on the radar or FLIR screen and not with the naked eye, I’d be inclined to believe it could be some technical artifact.
If it were seen with the naked eye and on those kinds of detectors I’d assume it was some natural phenomenon before I’d leap to extra-terrestrial craft.

Regardless, the argument remains the same; “unidentified” or “unexplained” does not mean “extra-terrestrial”.

@DennisG2014 @warpedrotors I’m not necessarily making an argument. I just happen to have some relevant knowledge about radar system.
As an engineer, I would usually assume something has gone wrong with the sensor if it starts reporting highly unusual things that are not confirmed by other means.
And, of course, I it wasn’t clear before, I agree with you. “UFO” is a perfectly valid descriptor for things that are not extra-terrestrial. I’m just playing word games.

@DennisG2014 @Limewater I believe these and others were seen by pilots with the naked eye and on radar or FLIR systems. My point was that some could be illusions or artifacts or reflections, but there are some that can’t be explained away that easily. Some are actual objects moving at speeds that should be unattainable, changing direction instantaneously, without any observable means of propulsion or wings. Maybe there’s some normal explanation for all of this that just hasn’t been figured out yet. Maybe there are super-advanced extraterrestrial or interdimensional travelers visiting us. I don’t know. Either way, meh should offer more things that I actually want to buy.

@Limewater @warpedrotors
I agree with you on that last part.

@DennisG2014 @Limewater @warpedrotors
This is reddiculos. It is well known all such events are consequences of the human mind processing images it is not prepared for resulting in a core dump. Or related to The Doctor interviening. I bet you’d also be confused if you saw a police phone box or tin can with eye stalk flash by.

@rockblossom Yes. Thank you.
I have also seen several objects flying through the air that I could not identify.
I have never seen anything that I believed, by any stretch of the imagination, to be an extra-terrestrial spacecraft.

edit to add: and, the most mysterious UFO I ever saw was while I was pretty well stoned but it wasn’t a hallucination because the person I was with saw exactly what I saw and, even if I had been tripping on acid, I wouldn’t have assumed it was “aliens”.

@dvermilion Even more accurate, addresses Limewater’s point about whether an illusion can be said to be a “flying object”.
People will still interpret it as meaning “alien spacecraft” though.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@Kidsandliz Do you wanna build a snowman?

@Kidsandliz perfect time to start defrosting and eating the unknown freezer meat

@unksol LOL that’s not in my freezer. But as kids we used to joke that mom’s freezer was full of 10 year old UFO’s.

@macromeh OMG the Loch Ness monster has evolved into a land creature!

When I worked in the UK we were kayaking and were on Loss Ness. The students (ages 14-16) decided they wanted to have a Loch Ness monster watch that night in order not to miss it if came out then. They organized the entire thing. Nope no monster that night. About half that group believed in Nessie.

@Kidsandliz I assume they failed? Not for believing in Nessie but for the stastictics on seeing her in one night. Even if she wasn’t imaginary

@unksol Yup failed. But they had a good time. And the lot of them were cranky the next day due to not enough sleep.