JREF Swift Blog

A UFO Explanation

As I've said before, UFO's are real! Yes, there are Unidentified Flying Objects. They may be extraterrestrial, but before we draw that conclusion, maybe we should look at some terrestrial explanations?

Consider this link. 19 articles refer to the UFO in the video at the right. What could it be? News articles appeared in India, Croatia, the UK, the US, and many other places. Seems like a big deal! Could this be the smoking gun that UFO buffs have sought for years? Do we finally have proof positive that we're being visited by otherworldly creatures?

Consider this bit from the Telegraph UK article:

... the unidentified black metal object stands out clearly against the blue sky, where it can be seen darting up and down for more than 10 minutes.

So they know its 1) black, 2) metal and, 3) darting.

Let's take these one by one.

1) Black. Well, it appears to be black, but from a video clip backlit by the sun, it could be any number of colors. A minor point, to be sure.

2) Metal. So, how do they know it's metal? Was it attracted to magnets? Did someone hit it with a photospectrometer? I can't see any way to determine the objects composition from this video.

3) Darting. Someone could have possibly described this behavior, but from the video they linked to, it's impossible to tell if the object is moving or if the camera is moving. The zoom is set to such an extreme level, the slightest shaking of the camera would make the object seem to move quickly.

Now consider this next video. Think that might explain it? I think it might.

I often ask ghost hunters how they know they're seeing ghosts and not aliens. I've heard things like "it feels like a ghost" and "someone died here, so ghosts make more sense" and even "it doesn't look like an alien." But honestly, we don't know what these things are, or what they look like. If something strange is happening in your basement, and you can't explain it, I posit that aliens are as likely an explanation as ghosts or gnomes, trolls, unicorns, or even snuffleupagus.

We love to have answers, and when answers aren't readily available, we tend to make them up. Undefined terms like "alien" and "ghost" are convenient scapegoats for explaining strange things. And yet assigning such labels should give us no comfort; the add no information, no predictablilty, and no course of action.

As an alternative, I suggest people learn to be comfortable with the phrase "I don't know." In fact, I think I might make some T-shirts that say that, just to get people aware of the idea.