I have had an encounter with a UFO as a child. It was a bright light apparently absolutely motionless in the sky, during the evening but the sun was still up. I didn't think it could be a plane's fog lamp because it did not appear to be changing in size. For about half an hour it was very spooky. Eventually it flew overhead, it was just a plane with it's fog lamp on.
What I don't get about this thread is the implicit idea that a UFO is an alien spacecraft.
If you see something in the sky that you cannot explain, then you have seen something in the sky that you cannot explain. Given that there a large number of more likely explanations that alien spacecraft, I would not consider that as a possible explanation unless a window opened and alien popped it's head out and waved at me. Even at that point it would be more likely I was hallucinating, so would need to find third party corroboration.
Aliens and ghosts seem to be applied in a similar way. It's as though people walk around with a default explanation of aliens/ghosts in their head, and if they ever see something they can't explain (as if they are an automatic expert in all related disciplines), this default explanation is applied.
To quote Carl Sagan, who was involved with the SETI project:
I would be very happy if flying saucer advocates and alien abduction propenents were right and real evidence of extraterrestrial life were here for us to examine. They do not ask us, though, to believe on faith. They ask us to believe on the strength of their evidence. Surely it is our duty to scrutinize the purported evidence at least as closely and skeptically as radio astronomers do who are searching for alien radio signals. No anecdotal claim - no matter how sincere, no matter how deeply felt, no matter how exemplary the lives of the attesting citizens - carries much weight on so important a question. As in older UFO cases, anecdotal accounts are subject to irreducible error. This is not a personal criticism of those who say they've been abducted or those who interrogate them. It is not tantamount to contempt for purported witnesses (they cannot be called, simply, witnesses - because whether they have witnesses anything (or at least, anything in the outside world) is often the very point at issue). It is not - or should not be - arrogant dismissal of sincere and affecting testimony. It is merely a reluctant response to human fallibility. ... So in the world of UFOs and alien abductions, it is fair to ask: Where is the evidence - the real, unambiguous physical evidence, the data that would convince a jury that hasn't already made up it's mind? ... Keeping an open mind is a virtue - but, as the space engineer James Oberg once said, not so open your brains fall out. Of course we must be willing to change our minds when warranted by new evidence. But the evidence must be strong. Not all claims to knowledge have equal merit. The standard of evidence in most of the [flying saucer sightings] is roughly what is found in cases of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in medieval Spain. ... Of those who accept such testimony at face value, [Carl Gustav Jung] remarked "These people are lacking not only in criticism but in the most elementary knowledge of psychology. At bottom they do not want to be taught any better, but merely to go on believing - surely the naivest of presumptions in view of our human failings." |