5 Of The Best Reasons Why So Many People Believe in UFOs

As most credible Ufologists readily admit, proving that extraterrestrial spacecraft have visited our planet is a maddeningly difficult chore.

Captain Edward Ruppelt

“The hassle over the word 'proof' boils down to one question: What constitutes proof?” Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed the U.S Air Force’s secret investigation of UFOs in the early 1950s, once wrote. “Does a UFO have to land at the River Entrance to the Pentagon, near the Joint Chiefs of Staff offices? Or is it proof when a ground radar station detects a UFO, sends a jet to intercept it, the jet pilot sees it, and locks on with his radar, only to have the UFO streak away at a phenomenal speed? Is it proof when a jet pilot fires at a UFO and sticks to his story even under the threat of court-martial? Does this constitute proof?”

Investigative journalist Leslie Keen, author of the  “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” has noted that in roughly 90 to 95 percent of UFO sightings, observers turn out actually to have seen weather balloons, ball lightning, flares, aircraft, and other mundane phenomena. But another five to 10 percent of sightings are not so easily explainable, but that’s not the same as demonstrating that they are extraterrestrial in origin. Nevertheless, she argues, the hypothesis that UFOs are visitors from other worlds “is a rational one, and must be taken into account, given the data that we have.”

Here is some of the most compelling reasons that UFOs may be more than simple misidentifications of natural phenomena or terrestrial aircraft:

• The long, documented history of sightings. UFOs were around, in fact, long before humans themselves took to the air. The first account of a UFO sighting in America was back in 1639, when Massachusetts colony governor John Winthrop noted in his journal that one James Everell, “a sober, discreet man,” and two other witnesses watched a luminous object fly up and down the Muddy River near Charlestown for two to three hours. There are documented sightings of what were then called “airships” during the 1800s as well, such as the July 1884 sighting of a Saturn-shaped UFO (a ball surrounded by a ring) in Norwood, NY, and a fast-moving object that briefly hovered over the startled townspeople of Everest, KS in 1897.

• Numerous modern sightings by credible, well-trained professional observers. In Ruppelt’s 1955 book , “The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,” he documented numerous instances of military service members, military and civilian pilots, scientists and other credible professionals who had observed UFOs. In one instance, Ruppelt describes the experience of a pilot of an Air Force F-86 fighter jet, who was scrambled to track a UFO and got to within 1,000 yards of a saucer-shaped object that abruptly flew away from him in a burst of speed after he fired upon it. He also mentions a 1948 UFO encounter in which two airline pilots got to within 700 feet of a UFO and saw two rows of windows with bright lights.

• Consistencies in the descriptions of purported alien ships. Over the decades, witnesses who've seen UFOs have shown remarkable consistency in the shapes and other characteristics of the objects they've described. In 1949, the authors of the report for Project Sign, one of the early military investigations of UFOs, identified four main groups of objects—flying disks or saucers, cigar or torpedo-shaped craft without wings or fins, spherical or balloon-shaped objects that were capable of hovering or flying at high speed, and balls of light with no apparent physical form that were similarly maneuverable. Nearly a quarter-century later, a French government investigation headed by Claude Poher of the National Center for Space Research found similar patterns in more than 1,000 reports from France and various countries. One caveat is that in recent years, reports of wedge-shaped UFOs—which bear a similarity to the latest terrestrial military aircraft—have begun to supplant some of the traditional shapes.

• Possible physical evidence of encounters with alien spacecraft. The 1968 University of Colorado report, compiled by a team headed by James Condon, documented numerous instances of areas where soil, grass, and other vegetation had been claimed by witnesses to have been flattened, burned, broken off, or blown away by a UFO. A report by Stanford University astrophysicist Peter Sturrock, who led a scientific study of physical evidence of UFOs in the late 1990s, describes samples of plants taken from a purported UFO landing site in France in 1981. French researchers found that the leaves had undergone unusual chemical changes of the sort that could have been caused by powerful microwave radiation—which was even more difficult to explain, considering that they found no trace of radioactivity at the site.

• Physiological effects on UFO witnesses. The Sturrock report describes in detail various symptoms reported by individuals who had encountered UFOS, ranging from burns and temporary deafness to persistent nausea and memory loss. Among the most vivid examples: Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Landrum’s young grandson Colby, who reportedly happened upon a “large, diamond-shaped object” hovering over a Texas road in December 1980. All three became ill afterward; Cash, for example, developed large water blisters on her face and swelling that closed her eyes, in addition to severe nausea and diarrhea. The effects persisted for years, and she was hospitalized more than two dozen times.

Obama, First President To Acknowledge Area 51 in Public

President Barack Obama on Sunday likely became the first actual president to publicly acknowledge Area 51, the top-secret government testing ground that has become a focal point for generations of extraterrestrial enthusiasts.

Author Shirley MacLaine, who has claimed to have seen many UFOs, received the performing arts lifetime achievement award in a ceremony Sunday. The president couldn't resist the opportunity to joke about the decades of conspiracy theories surrounding mysterious lights and aliens at the Nevada installation.

“Now, when you first become President, one of the questions that people ask you is, what’s really going on in Area 51,” Obama quipped at a reception honoring the awardees. “When I wanted to know, I’d call Shirley MacLaine. I think I just became the first president to ever publicly mention Area 51. How’s that, Shirley?”

The official use for the Nevada Test and Training Range and Groom Lake — the formal name for the facility commonly known as Area 51 — are far less otherworldly. It’s been the testing ground for government programs including the U-2 spyplane and various stealth aircraft.

The other 2013 performing arts honorees were Opera singer Martina Arroyo, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, rocker Billy Joel and guitarist Carlos Santana.

Large Bright Red UFO Filmed Over California

Filmers comments:
I walked out of my house and witnessed a large glowing red/orange object above me that traveled south to south west with no erratic movements.

Source Mufon

The Curious Alien Abduction Case Of Carl Higdon

This very interesting case took place in Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming. On October 25, 1974, one Carl Higdon was elk hunting in the northern section of the park.

As he shot his rifle at an elk nearby, a most bizarre thing happened. The bullet traveled in slow motion, as if he had entered another dimension.

It fell some 50 feet away, dropping into the snow covered landscape. He was able to recover the bullet. He felt a strange sensation over his body.

To his utter shock and amazement, he saw a humanoid entity standing nearby. The humanoid was quite tall, at over six feet in height. He was clad in a black jump suit with a wide belt.

The belt was decorated with a six-pointed star and emblem of yellow. With straight hair standing out from his head, he had no eyebrows. He stood bow-legged, with long arms ending with rod-like appendages instead of hands.

The humanoid spoke to Higdon, asking him if he was hungry. The entity threw some pills to him, telling him if he took one, he would not have to eat for 4 days. Higdon normally did not take any type of pills, yet he swallowed one of the offerings immediately.

It was surmised that the entity was smart enough to realize that Higdon may have been hungry, or else he would not have been hunting elk.

Soon, the alien pointed toward Higdon, and the next thing he knew, he was enclosed within a transparent apparatus, with a helmet on. Also present were two more humanoids, and the five elk he was previously stalking.

The elk were in a frozen state.

He was told that the aliens were traveling to their home planet, located some 163,000 light years away. In a flash, they arrived at the distant location.

Higdon described the surrounding landscape as being occupied with buildings like the Seattle space needle, all lit up by a sun of intense power. The brightness of the atmosphere caused Higdon's eyes to water, along with the aliens'. Higdon's next remembrance was being back in Medicine Bow Park.

He says that approximately 2 1/2 hours had elapsed since his encounter with the humanoid had begun.

He was in a hysterical state, cold, and disoriented. For a time, he could not locate his truck, finally finding it some three miles from where he had left it. It had been stuck in a mud hole, and Higdon was unable to free it from the bog by himself. Using his CB radio, he summoned help from the local sheriff, who arrived at midnight.

Additional help arrived to free the stuck truck.

Hidgon was found in a state of panic and nervous exhaustion. He was shouting, "They took my elk!" He was taken for medical care to a local hospital. His blood work showed he had a highly elevated level of vitamins, probably from the pill he had taken.

The most fascinating aspect of his tests was that tuberculosis scars on his lungs were now gone!

Further investigation into the details surrounding the bizarre encounter revealed that Higdon's wife, along with two other people, had seen a red-green-white flashing light moving in the area of the sighting.

The case was investigated by Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Professor of Psychology, University of Wyoming. Also included were Rick Kenyon, and Robert Nantkes, MUFON field investigators, and Frank Bourke, National Star Investigator.

Dr. Sprinkle from his first (and preliminary) report: 

“Although the sighting of a single UFO witness often is difficult to evaluate, the indirect evidence supports the tentative conclusion that Carl Higdon is reporting sincerely the events which he experienced. Hopefully further statements from other persons can be obtained to support the basic statement.”

Source

Scientist Tell Congress, We Have The Technology To Find Alien Life

For thousands of years, humans have been wondering whether there's life elsewhere in the universe. Now, the technology finally exists to search for it.

To find extraterrestrial life, be it microbes or intelligent life, scientists need telescopes capable of detecting Earth-like planets in Earth's neighborhood and ways to detect biological signatures of life or signs of alien technology. While some of these tools already exist, astrobiologists asked the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to invest in the next chapter of the search for life beyond Earth.

"This is the first time in human history we have the technological reach to find life on other planets," Sara Seager, a planetary scientist at MIT, said at a House Committee on Science, Space and Technology hearing today. "People will look back at us as the (generation) who found Earth-like worlds."

Are we alone?Astrobiology — the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe — has taken a leap forward over the past few years. Members of the science committee expressed enthusiasm for the field's progress.

"Astrobiology has become a crosscutting theme of all NASA space science endeavors," and continued funding is important, said Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas).

The Kepler mission has identified more than 3,500 potential planets outside Earth's solar system, including 10 that are Earth-size and lie within their star's habitable zone. And the space-based Hubble and Spitzer telescopes recently imaged the atmospheres of an exoplanet directly.

Meanwhile, the Mars rover Curiosity has found evidence that past conditions on the Red Planet could have supported life. Here on Earth, scientists have found examples of microbes living in the most extreme environments imaginable, from volcanic lakes to glaciers. Finding life in such unlikely places suggests it could exist in harsh environments on other planets,

After 50 years, humanity is now in an era when it can provide data for whether life exists elsewhere in the universe, Mary Voytek, NASA's head of astrobiology, told members of Congress.

The search ramps upA key part of these efforts will be to look for biological signatures in the atmospheres of other planets. For example, oxygen doesn't last long by itself, so the presence of oxygen would indicate living organisms were producing it. Another necessity for life on Earth is water, and scientists just announced they have found signatures of water in the atmospheres of five planets (although they are superhot, Jupiter-size planets).

NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) telescope, set to launch in 2017, will search for exoplanets using the transiting method the Kepler mission used to detect planets crossing in front of their host star. The James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, will be able to peer more closely at some of the planets detected by TESS.

Ultimately, scientists want to image planets directly, but this requires blocking out light from a star so that a planet would be visible. Using a telescope attachment called an internal coronagraph is one way to do this; another way is to build a star shade, a large object shaped like a flower that could be moved independently in space. Scientists need to try both methods to find one that works, Seager said.

The most optimistic estimate for finding life would be within a decade, using the James Webb telescope, Seager said. But she said that a more realistic approach is needed, including a next-generation telescope to succeed the James Webb telescope.

Then there's the prospect of intelligent life. Space historian Stephen Dick, currently an astrobiology scholar at the Library of Congress, called for renewing efforts to look for intelligent life via the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).

"No bio-signatures would be more important than a radio signal — especially if they have something to say," Dick said.

And if scientists find life out there, then what?

"The plan is to confirm it first, then tell everybody," Dick said.

Source

1946 UFO Witness Says The Craft Was Taking Images of Him

by Cheryl Costa - Friday, December 6th, 2013, syracusenewtimes

It was a bright, warm, lazy summer’s day in 1946, about midday in rural Lincoln, in Wayne County, New York.

Joshua was playing in his family’s yard when suddenly there was a loud roar coming from the sky.

The 10-year-old looked up to see flashing lights on either side of what he at first thought was an airplane. The eight or so flashing lights were of various shapes and seemed to hang in the sky as the flying object began to lower itself. As it neared the ground, Joshua realized that it was shaped like a rocket of some sort, the kind of stuff he’d seen in the comic books. As the “rocket” came very close to the ground, Joshua had the good sense to lay down flat.

As he lay there, looking up at the hovering object, he noted that the “rocket” was gun-metal gray. Around its middle there was some sort of wide metal band with holes in it. The band seemed to turn, and every time it did it went “click.” Joshua had the impression that the very stationary “rocket” was perhaps taking picture of him. Then, as quickly as it came, it left with a whoosh and in a matter of seconds was gone over a nearby hill.

Joshua just laid there for some time doing his best to figure out what just happened. Finally he ran in the house and told his mother about the strange space ship or airplane without wings. Joshua’s mother was busy canning tomatoes. She told him she heard the loud noise but she was too busy to leave her canning. Then she told her son to go back outside and play.

It would be many years before Joshua would hear about UFO sightings and realize what he had seen. Joshua says that the whole thing scared him then and thinking about it still scares him, some 67 years later. To this day he believes “they” have pictures of him. He says that the experience is as vivid in his recollection as when it happened.  Lastly he relates that he’d really like to know “if they were visitors from another solar system.”