Wednesday
Sunday
UFOs? ‘There’s plenty of evidence’
By Emma D. Sapong
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Philip Haseley has never had any encounters with UFOs or extraterrestrials, but he knows dozens of people who say they have.
“It happens to millions of people [around the world],” he said. “It’s about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It’s important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated.”
Haseley is doing his part. He is as serious about unidentified flying objects as anyone in the region. The Niagara County Community College anthropology professor has brought several speakers on the subject to the college in recent years and is head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network, a group interested in UFO research.
Like the national organization, the Western New York group researches reported UFO sightings.
Generally, about 30 to 50 claims of UFOs are reported monthly across the state, Haseley said, including two or three in this region.
The investigation is done in a scientific manner, he says. Some members receive training, including in field investigation, astronomy and meteorology. They also are taught to use radar and other types of instruments and technology.
“To say we are UFO believers basically implies we are taking this on faith, and that’s not the case,” he said. “There’s plenty of evidence.”
The Western New York group has about 25 members, including about 15 who meet regularly to discuss books and local cases, and to socialize. They are a diverse group, ranging in age from late teens to the 70s. They are typical citizens, including students, teachers, engineers and businesspeople.
“We have a slew of people from different ages and educational backgrounds,” he said. “And the only thing that brings them together is an interest in UFOs and the desire to find out what they are all about.”
Some in the group say they have had some kind of encounter. One member, along with his son, saw a huge triangular shape in the sky on a recent morning in their backyard in the Town of Tonawanda. Another member claims to have been regularly abducted since age 5, taken aboard a craft, subjected to medical examinations and given tours.
Haseley and other UFO network members are well aware that there are skeptics.
“We have to deal with skeptics like any
other UFO organization, and we are perfectly willing to be critiqued,” he said. “We know people who think this is a nonsense subject. And we’ll refer you to voluminous literature and facts about UFOs.”
What does one mainstream scientist think?
Neil deGrasse Tyson — an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and host of “NOVA scienceNOW” on PBS—spoke late last month as part of the University at Buffalo’s Distinguished Speakers Series.
After spending several minutes talking about how vast the universe is — it contains billions and billions of galaxies, and is expanding — Tyson pointed out that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute has sent radio waves into space for more than a decade and, to this point at least, has failed to receive feedback suggesting that humans have similar company beyond Planet Earth.
For those who doubt extraterrestrial life, however, he said humans have barely scratched the surface when it comes to exploring the possibility of intelligent life in space.
Tyson used an example cited in his television show: What scientists have done so far to test for other life forms is the equivalent of scooping a few hundred glasses of water from all the oceans in the world — and concluding that those waters have no fish.
As some continue to search, others believe that there already is ample evidence suggesting that we are not alone in the universe.
Haseley has brought some of them to NCCC.
Peter Robbins, an eminent UFO researcher and author, held a packed school lecture hall in rapt attention March 25 as he detailed the famous UFO sightings in a Bentwaters, England, forest near a U. S. Air Force base.
There were three successive nights in late December 1980 when the Military Police heard disturbances in the forest and, upon investigation, encountered a luminous, mysterious triangular flying craft, he said.
“It’s one of the most important cases in the annals of UFO research,” said Robbins, author of the “Left at East Gate,” an international best seller about the Bentwaters case, considered “England’s Roswell.”
Interviews, physical and scientific evidence and radar confirmed the occurrences, Robbins said, but the government never substantiated them.
A major part of the government’s denial is rooted in the study of UFOs being viewed as pseudoscience, Robbins said.
Despite that perception, his evening presentation drew a crowd of more than 200 people, many of whom had done their own research, mixed in with others who said they, too, had either seen or were just curious about UFOs.
Haseley sees Robbins and similar speakers as providing an opportunity to raise important questions.
“He’s an international expert, and that’s a case students have heard about, and it has the chance of long-term investigation,” the NCCC professor said. “There’s something more to this UFO phenomenon than lunatic fringe kind of talk.”
esapong@buffnews.com
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Philip Haseley has never had any encounters with UFOs or extraterrestrials, but he knows dozens of people who say they have.
“It happens to millions of people [around the world],” he said. “It’s about time we looked into this as a worthy area of study. It’s important that the whole subject be brought out in the open and investigated.”
Haseley is doing his part. He is as serious about unidentified flying objects as anyone in the region. The Niagara County Community College anthropology professor has brought several speakers on the subject to the college in recent years and is head of the Western New York Mutual UFO Network, a group interested in UFO research.
Like the national organization, the Western New York group researches reported UFO sightings.
Generally, about 30 to 50 claims of UFOs are reported monthly across the state, Haseley said, including two or three in this region.
The investigation is done in a scientific manner, he says. Some members receive training, including in field investigation, astronomy and meteorology. They also are taught to use radar and other types of instruments and technology.
“To say we are UFO believers basically implies we are taking this on faith, and that’s not the case,” he said. “There’s plenty of evidence.”
The Western New York group has about 25 members, including about 15 who meet regularly to discuss books and local cases, and to socialize. They are a diverse group, ranging in age from late teens to the 70s. They are typical citizens, including students, teachers, engineers and businesspeople.
“We have a slew of people from different ages and educational backgrounds,” he said. “And the only thing that brings them together is an interest in UFOs and the desire to find out what they are all about.”
Some in the group say they have had some kind of encounter. One member, along with his son, saw a huge triangular shape in the sky on a recent morning in their backyard in the Town of Tonawanda. Another member claims to have been regularly abducted since age 5, taken aboard a craft, subjected to medical examinations and given tours.
Haseley and other UFO network members are well aware that there are skeptics.
“We have to deal with skeptics like any
other UFO organization, and we are perfectly willing to be critiqued,” he said. “We know people who think this is a nonsense subject. And we’ll refer you to voluminous literature and facts about UFOs.”
What does one mainstream scientist think?
Neil deGrasse Tyson — an astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and host of “NOVA scienceNOW” on PBS—spoke late last month as part of the University at Buffalo’s Distinguished Speakers Series.
After spending several minutes talking about how vast the universe is — it contains billions and billions of galaxies, and is expanding — Tyson pointed out that the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute has sent radio waves into space for more than a decade and, to this point at least, has failed to receive feedback suggesting that humans have similar company beyond Planet Earth.
For those who doubt extraterrestrial life, however, he said humans have barely scratched the surface when it comes to exploring the possibility of intelligent life in space.
Tyson used an example cited in his television show: What scientists have done so far to test for other life forms is the equivalent of scooping a few hundred glasses of water from all the oceans in the world — and concluding that those waters have no fish.
As some continue to search, others believe that there already is ample evidence suggesting that we are not alone in the universe.
Haseley has brought some of them to NCCC.
Peter Robbins, an eminent UFO researcher and author, held a packed school lecture hall in rapt attention March 25 as he detailed the famous UFO sightings in a Bentwaters, England, forest near a U. S. Air Force base.
There were three successive nights in late December 1980 when the Military Police heard disturbances in the forest and, upon investigation, encountered a luminous, mysterious triangular flying craft, he said.
“It’s one of the most important cases in the annals of UFO research,” said Robbins, author of the “Left at East Gate,” an international best seller about the Bentwaters case, considered “England’s Roswell.”
Interviews, physical and scientific evidence and radar confirmed the occurrences, Robbins said, but the government never substantiated them.
A major part of the government’s denial is rooted in the study of UFOs being viewed as pseudoscience, Robbins said.
Despite that perception, his evening presentation drew a crowd of more than 200 people, many of whom had done their own research, mixed in with others who said they, too, had either seen or were just curious about UFOs.
Haseley sees Robbins and similar speakers as providing an opportunity to raise important questions.
“He’s an international expert, and that’s a case students have heard about, and it has the chance of long-term investigation,” the NCCC professor said. “There’s something more to this UFO phenomenon than lunatic fringe kind of talk.”
esapong@buffnews.com
Saturday
Unexplained Phenomenon Google Doodle
What's the unexplained phenomenon?For a few hours now Google Australia displays the „unexplained phenomenon“ Google Doodle but no one really knows what it means. If you click it, you get the unexplained phenomenon search results page. Germany also has it’s version of the Doodle called, Rätselhaftes Phänomen which pretty much translates to unexplained phenomenon.
What is it about?
Surely the US will soon get the unexplained phenomenon Doodle and more and more people are about to get crazy about it’s meaning. Is it a gag? An experiment? A self-reference? Is there someone at Google laughing at us?
Surely the US will soon get the unexplained phenomenon Doodle and more and more people are about to get crazy about it’s meaning. Is it a gag? An experiment? A self-reference? Is there someone at Google laughing at us?
Enlighten us!!! Spooky, isn’t it?
Feel free to post a comment if you can clarify the unexplained phenomenon.
Thursday
Ministry of Defence explains two UFOs over Wales
Mar 24 2009 by Ben Glaze, Western Mail
THE truth is indeed out there – and it’s less exciting than Mulder and Scully would have you believe.
Newly-released Ministry of Defence files claim there were rational explanations for two UFO sightings over Wales in the early 1990s.
Conspiracy theorists have focused on the nation over the past nine months since a South Wales Police helicopter crew reported a UFO over RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan and unexplained damage to a wind turbine just over the English border earlier this year.
The declassified documents, available on the National Archives website, detail investigations into two incidents over Wales.
The first happened on the border on December 9, 1991 at 4.50pm when “dozens of people” reported “burning white lights, flames and rumbling sounds”.
“The object seen was a bright, white light at high altitude with flames (or an illuminated vapour trail) in its wake,” says the file.
“Many witnesses believed they were witnessing an aircraft accident and some reports indicated the object broke up.
“A few seconds after the sighting, a low rumbling sound was heard and some windows were seen to be shaking.”
It adds: “For the time being we are treating this as a UFO incident.”
A senior RAF officer replies to the report saying: “I am afraid I am unable to shed light on the incident.
“It does, however, sound very much like an aircraft engine going in and out of reheat.”
Debunking the existence of extra-terrestrial life, the MoD claims the incident was “traced to a USAF pilot who jettisoned fuel that was ignited by the aircraft’s afterburner”.
In a second UFO sighting during the early hours of March 31, 1993, a policeman in Merthyr Tydfil was among “hundreds, probably thousands of people” in South Wales, the West Country and South-West Ireland who spotted “two brilliant objects emitting bright vapour trails flying north to south, quickly and silently, across the night sky”.
Investigators found “significant UFO activity over a very wide area”.
In a report from RAF West Drayton to the MoD, the unnamed policeman, one of 20 who reported the objects, described seeing “two very bright” white UFOs, “circular with tails” over Gelligaer Common.
He said they were flying “very slowly” north at about 400ft.
One witness said: “I thought they were a couple of meteorites, but instead of vanishing quickly, they kept on coming.
“They were travelling parallel to each other, travelling very precisely.
“They were like very big stars, They were as bright as Sirius (the brightest star in the night sky) and about four times as large.”
The witness added: “The lights were white like stars and the trails were white like fog.
“The trails came from directly behind the objects and were a single thick trail, not like those given off by large airliners which are split in two.
“My first thought was, ‘My God, what’s that?’ They were obviously some kind of controlled craft, but not like anything I’d seen before.”
Another witness said: “There were two bright, shining orange lights moving at great speed.
“They had flown over the rooftop and were heading in the direction of the sea.
“There was complete silence and the speed was greater than any plane, shooting star or other object I’ve ever seen.”
Two policemen saw the craft flying from South Wales over the Bristol Channel.
“Stopping their patrol car, they watched as the lights drew nearer to them,” says the report.
“The lights or object(s) passed to the west, going in a south-east direction.”
A pilot flying over Wales also reported the UFO.
Introducing the released files, the MoD says the sightings were “later traced to the re-entry of a Russian Cosmos rocket body which burned up, decaying over the North Atlantic.”
UFO expert Dr David Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, yesterday said the files proved the MoD was “not in the slightest bit interested in aliens”.
He added: “They’re only interested in the defence implications. The question is, ‘What are the Russians testing and could any of these sightings be something of that kind?’ As soon as they have eliminated that, they’re not interested.”
Former MoD official turned UFO specialist Nick Pope said: “There are some UFO sightings here which had us genuinely puzzled. The UFO phenomenon provoked discussion, debate and disagreement, even within the MoD.”
THE truth is indeed out there – and it’s less exciting than Mulder and Scully would have you believe.
Newly-released Ministry of Defence files claim there were rational explanations for two UFO sightings over Wales in the early 1990s.
Conspiracy theorists have focused on the nation over the past nine months since a South Wales Police helicopter crew reported a UFO over RAF St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan and unexplained damage to a wind turbine just over the English border earlier this year.
The declassified documents, available on the National Archives website, detail investigations into two incidents over Wales.
The first happened on the border on December 9, 1991 at 4.50pm when “dozens of people” reported “burning white lights, flames and rumbling sounds”.
“The object seen was a bright, white light at high altitude with flames (or an illuminated vapour trail) in its wake,” says the file.
“Many witnesses believed they were witnessing an aircraft accident and some reports indicated the object broke up.
“A few seconds after the sighting, a low rumbling sound was heard and some windows were seen to be shaking.”
It adds: “For the time being we are treating this as a UFO incident.”
A senior RAF officer replies to the report saying: “I am afraid I am unable to shed light on the incident.
“It does, however, sound very much like an aircraft engine going in and out of reheat.”
Debunking the existence of extra-terrestrial life, the MoD claims the incident was “traced to a USAF pilot who jettisoned fuel that was ignited by the aircraft’s afterburner”.
In a second UFO sighting during the early hours of March 31, 1993, a policeman in Merthyr Tydfil was among “hundreds, probably thousands of people” in South Wales, the West Country and South-West Ireland who spotted “two brilliant objects emitting bright vapour trails flying north to south, quickly and silently, across the night sky”.
Investigators found “significant UFO activity over a very wide area”.
In a report from RAF West Drayton to the MoD, the unnamed policeman, one of 20 who reported the objects, described seeing “two very bright” white UFOs, “circular with tails” over Gelligaer Common.
He said they were flying “very slowly” north at about 400ft.
One witness said: “I thought they were a couple of meteorites, but instead of vanishing quickly, they kept on coming.
“They were travelling parallel to each other, travelling very precisely.
“They were like very big stars, They were as bright as Sirius (the brightest star in the night sky) and about four times as large.”
The witness added: “The lights were white like stars and the trails were white like fog.
“The trails came from directly behind the objects and were a single thick trail, not like those given off by large airliners which are split in two.
“My first thought was, ‘My God, what’s that?’ They were obviously some kind of controlled craft, but not like anything I’d seen before.”
Another witness said: “There were two bright, shining orange lights moving at great speed.
“They had flown over the rooftop and were heading in the direction of the sea.
“There was complete silence and the speed was greater than any plane, shooting star or other object I’ve ever seen.”
Two policemen saw the craft flying from South Wales over the Bristol Channel.
“Stopping their patrol car, they watched as the lights drew nearer to them,” says the report.
“The lights or object(s) passed to the west, going in a south-east direction.”
A pilot flying over Wales also reported the UFO.
Introducing the released files, the MoD says the sightings were “later traced to the re-entry of a Russian Cosmos rocket body which burned up, decaying over the North Atlantic.”
UFO expert Dr David Clarke, a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University, yesterday said the files proved the MoD was “not in the slightest bit interested in aliens”.
He added: “They’re only interested in the defence implications. The question is, ‘What are the Russians testing and could any of these sightings be something of that kind?’ As soon as they have eliminated that, they’re not interested.”
Former MoD official turned UFO specialist Nick Pope said: “There are some UFO sightings here which had us genuinely puzzled. The UFO phenomenon provoked discussion, debate and disagreement, even within the MoD.”
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