• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Triangle shaped UFO's

Crossbow said:
Well, the light produced by jet after-burners is not coherent. Light from a Laser is coherent, but light that is the product of a combustion process (such as in a jet engine, burning paper, a candle, etc.) is not coherent.

As for using light as propulsion, then I expect that you are essentially correct; one would have to find some way to safely push out vast amounts of photons in a given direction in a very short space of time. However, I do not think that such a thing is possible.

Also, since you say that this event is occurring in Phoenix, then you may recall that several years ago there was a big UFO scare in Phoenix which turned out to be a group of military planes doing a night in-flight refueling exercise. Which is very interesting, but hardly extra-terrestrial in origin.

Accordingly, I would not be surprised if something similar is occurring now and that is why one is seeing some UFO reports in this same area.
Click to expand...

I just wiki'd coherent light. My meaning was visible within the human seeing spectrum.
I have a hard time discounting 100% of these sightings. I don't want to paint myself into a corner of never or no way. There are too many pilots, scientists, engineers who are now witnesses to discount these sightings 100% imo. It isn't far fetched to believe there is a craft using novel propulsion/cloaking systems that is out and about in our skies as we speak. I would be more surprised if there weren' t some advanced craft deep in the black budget world that have been glimpsed by the unwary public. Those UFO sightings attributed to the stealth fighter/bomber were projects that had their genesis in the 1960's and were started in the development phase in the 1970's. We are 50+ years away from these stealth aircraft ideas....nothing new since then?
 
sloinker said:
I just wiki'd coherent light. My meaning was visible within the human seeing spectrum.
I have a hard time discounting 100% of these sightings. I don't want to paint myself into a corner of never or no way. There are too many pilots, scientists, engineers who are now witnesses to discount these sightings 100% imo. It isn't far fetched to believe there is a craft using novel propulsion/cloaking systems that is out and about in our skies as we speak. I would be more surprised if there weren' t some advanced craft deep in the black budget world that have been glimpsed by the unwary public. Those UFO sightings attributed to the stealth fighter/bomber were projects that had their genesis in the 1960's and were started in the development phase in the 1970's. We are 50+ years away from these stealth aircraft ideas....nothing new since then?
Click to expand...

Well, I am an engineer who had the good fortune to be a pilot for a while and I can assure you that there are all sorts of weird flying things, therefore it is quite understandable when such things are reported as UFOs.

As for current developments, the military, and quite a few private individuals are doing all sorts of things with flying machines.
 
catsmate1 said:
Exactly. It's a psycho-cultural phenomena. In the 1892-1918 period it was strange cigar-shaped airships, because people had awareness of actual airships. Late it was phantom aeroplanes, then the flying saucers and now it's delta shapes.
Click to expand...

Prior to 1977, UFO and alien abduction reports were widely varied, both in the descriptions of the flying object, and descriptions of the aliens. Cigar shapes, saucers, triangles, and all sorts of different configurations were described. Likewise, descriptions of aliens varied from almost fully human, to the well-known "Greys", to massive brutal reptilians.

In 1977 that changed. After the release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the vast majority of UFO and abduction reports became saucer types with lots of lights; and the aliens were almost universally Greys. Outside of North America and Europe, where the movie was popular, the reports remained much more varied.

Interestingly, I was reading an article not too long ago that compared description and depictions of the "Grey" aliens, with much older reports of "Elves" abducting humans. There are very strong similarities.
 
Hokulele said:
A surprising number of triangle-shaped UFOs turn out to be ... flocks of birds.

When a flock of birds is lit from below, they can resemble points of light around the edges of a single, triangular object. Phil Plait recounts making this mistake in his book, Bad Astronomy.
Click to expand...


The most recent issue of The Skeptical Inquirer has a photo submitted by a reader that shows several brightly glowing objects floating in the air.
It was the setting sun reflecting off the chests of several airborne seagulls.
 
sloinker said:
Well the Belguim incidents look like mass hysteria and hoax except for the radar returns. Birds can't fly that fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave
Click to expand...

I looked at the Belgium thing briefly and I don't see why the sightings were anything other than mundane aircraft seen through the filter of an increasing UFO hysteria.

I posted a pdf upthread that makes good arguments for that case.

The radar thing I found hard to get a solid report on. One airforce chap said the readings could be due to damaged radar devices because of the telltale shape - to find this quote would take me far too long.
My conclusion was that the radar reports were a combination of technical mistakes and over-enthusiasm on the part of those who explained how fast the UFO was moving and how quickly it climbed from low to high.

I am no expert and there were few leads I could follow, or even read as I only read English, so I have to say I could be wrong. I'll say this, I was looking to be convinced that something weird was happening and I could not find anything that grabbed me.
 
Monza said:
There were two separate incidents that comprise the 1997 Phoenix Lights. The second incident was a series of flares. The first incident, a triangular set of lights moving across the valley, was not. For those who were actually able to view the lights with the proper telescopic equipment, such as amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, it was possible to see what the source was... planes in formation. This "mystery" was solved almost immediately.
Click to expand...
Yep. Wiki has a good rundown of the whole issue.

The U.S. Air Force explained the second event as slow-falling, long-burning LUU-2B/B illumination flares dropped by a flight of four A-10 Warthog aircraft on a training exercise at the Barry Goldwater Range at Luke Air Force Base. According to this explanation, the flares would have been visible in Phoenix and appeared to hover due to rising heat from the burning flares creating a "balloon" effect on their parachutes, which slowed the descent.[20] The lights then appeared to wink out as they fell behind the Sierra Estrella, a mountain range to the southwest of Phoenix.
Click to expand...
 
sloinker said:
It isn't far fetched to believe there is a craft using novel propulsion/cloaking systems that is out and about in our skies as we speak.
Click to expand...
You are wrong, it is too far fetched that anybody has developed an aircraft which is powered by a light beam and/or has a cloaking system. These things are well beyond our capabilities (if they are possible at all) and the chances of any country having developed such advanced technology in secret is virtually nil.

Those UFO sightings attributed to the stealth fighter/bomber were projects that had their genesis in the 1960's and were started in the development phase in the 1970's.
Click to expand...
So? Conventional aircraft are also regularly misidentified as UFO's, sometimes even in broad daylight. The stealth bomber wasn't really that advanced. It was a relatively conventional jet aircraft, just with angled surfaces and a coating to reduce its radar signature. And they painted it black. :)

We are 50+ years away from these stealth aircraft ideas....nothing new since then?
Click to expand...
Nothing radical or out of this world. Still using jet engines. Still haven't haven't perfected a cloaking device, or antigravity, or...

There are too many pilots, scientists, engineers who are now witnesses to discount these sightings 100% imo.
Click to expand...
UFO means unidentified flying object. So anytime anybody sees something in the sky that they can't identify, its a UFO! That doesn't mean that it must be an exotic aircraft or alien spaceship, or even that it could be. Impossible things don't become real just because someone doesn't know what they are looking at.

Pilots, scientists and engineers can be fooled just the rest of us, perhaps even more so. A pilot may be more likely to misidentify something like a flock of geese or the planet Venus as an aircraft, because that's what he is looking out for. A scientist or engineer may misinterpret what they are seeing due to their training - they 'see' what they expect to see, not what's actually there.

I have a hard time discounting 100% of these sightings. I don't want to paint myself into a corner of never or no way.
Click to expand...
Why not? There will always be sightings that can't be explained, but that doesn't mean there is anything to them. If 99% of sightings can be explained then you can be 99% sure that the other 1% have similar causes, and would be explained if we had sufficient information about them. The fact that we don't always have enough information doesn't make silly explanations any more plausible.

UFOs are really no different from other things that we can't identify due to lack of information. For example, around 35% of murders in the US are currently unsolved. the reason they are unsolved is because the police could not find enough evidence to identify the killer. Many of these cases will never be solved. However, if ever a cold case is solved you can bet that the perp turns out to be an ordinary human - not an alien, a cyborg, or a ghost.

No UFO has ever been identified as an alien spaceship or an exotic craft of human origin. The only thing we can say about a sighting which cannot be identified is that we don't 'know' what it was, but there is no reason to think that it does not have an ordinary explanation.
 
Last edited:
Hokulele said:
A surprising number of triangle-shaped UFOs turn out to be ...


... flocks of birds.

When a flock of birds is lit from below, they can resemble points of light around the edges of a single, triangular object. Phil Plait recounts making this mistake in his book, Bad Astronomy.
Click to expand...

Another source of triangle or V shaped UFOs, particularly ones seen in the vicinity of Groom Lake and elsewhere around Arizona - New Mexico - Neveda, may have been sightings of these when they were still under development and top secret....

B2.jpg


The B2 Bomber

Before that, there were these gong back to the late 1940's

XB35.jpg
YB49.jpg

Nortrop's XB35 on the left, and YB49 on the right


In Europe, there were over 100 of these flying around between the mid 1950s and mid 1980's

Avro Vulcan.jpg

The Avro Vulcan
 
Last edited:
Roger Ramjets said:
You are wrong, it is too far fetched that anybody has developed an aircraft which is powered by a light beam and/or has a cloaking system. These things are well beyond our capabilities (if they are possible at all) and the chances of any country having developed such advanced technology in secret is virtually nil.

So? Conventional aircraft are also regularly misidentified as UFO's, sometimes even in broad daylight. The stealth bomber wasn't really that advanced. It was a relatively conventional jet aircraft, just with angled surfaces and a coating to reduce its radar signature. And they painted it black. :)

Nothing radical or out of this world. Still using jet engines. Still haven't haven't perfected a cloaking device, or antigravity, or...

UFO means unidentified flying object. So anytime anybody sees something in the sky that they can't identify, its a UFO! That doesn't mean that it must be an exotic aircraft or alien spaceship, or even that it could be. Impossible things don't become real just because someone doesn't know what they are looking at.

Pilots, scientists and engineers can be fooled just the rest of us, perhaps even more so. A pilot may be more likely to misidentify something like a flock of geese or the planet Venus as an aircraft, because that's what he is looking out for. A scientist or engineer may misinterpret what they are seeing due to their training - they 'see' what they expect to see, not what's actually there.

Why not? There will always be sightings that can't be explained, but that doesn't mean there is anything to them. If 99% of sightings can be explained then you can be 99% sure that the other 1% have similar causes, and would be explained if we had sufficient information about them. The fact that we don't always have enough information doesn't make silly explanations any more plausible.

UFOs are really no different from other things that we can't identify due to lack of information. For example, around 35% of murders in the US are currently unsolved. the reason they are unsolved is because the police could not find enough evidence to identify the killer. Many of these cases will never be solved. However, if ever a cold case is solved you can bet that the perp turns out to be an ordinary human - not an alien, a cyborg, or a ghost.

No UFO has ever been identified as an alien spaceship or an exotic craft of human origin. The only thing we can say about a sighting which cannot be identified is that we don't 'know' what it was, but there is no reason to think that it does not have an ordinary explanation.
Click to expand...

You make compelling arguments. I will state that I am wrong as of now.
I will also expect a retraction from you if a previously secret program becomes public and the and the vessels involved used cloaking or novel propulsion.
 
It's hard to tell from the photo, but it is really pyramidal shaped, full sized Cheops. Anyone seen Giza lately?
 
sloinker said:
Well the Belguim incidents look like mass hysteria and hoax except for the radar returns. Birds can't fly that fast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave
Click to expand...

I suggest you examine my web site on this case:

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/Belg.htm

The ground radar did not really indicate any rapid motion. It was only the F-16 radar that showed changes in speed and direction. A later study by Salmon and Gilmard (never published or mentioned by UFOlogists) revealed that one of the targets that was tracked was the other F-16. The remainder appear to be ground reflections and anomalous signals. The pilots saw no UFOs and only tracked them on radar. Meanwhile, the ground witnesses saw all sorts of UFOs and watched the F-16s fly by them. This gives one good reason to suspect that these were simply stars.
 
Monza said:
There were two separate incidents that comprise the 1997 Phoenix Lights. The second incident was a series of flares. The first incident, a triangular set of lights moving across the valley, was not. For those who were actually able to view the lights with the proper telescopic equipment, such as amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, it was possible to see what the source was... planes in formation. This "mystery" was solved almost immediately.
Click to expand...

You are using Mitch's testimony which is antecdotal, the same thing you won't allow the Woos to do. What's up with that?

Anybody
 
Crossbow said:
People used to say that UFOs were witches riding on flying broomsticks.
Later, people used to say that UFOs were giant airships built by some mystery rich guy.
Later, people used to describe UFOs as 'saucer shaped' objects.

And now, people say that UFOs are triangle shaped objects.
Click to expand...

This is not a valid argument.

Assuming a vast enough universe with a vast number of alien life capable of building spaceships capable of visiting Earth (or any other inhabited planet, for that matter), it makes sense that there would be some variation of designs.

Of course, whether or not they visited Earth during the time humans have been around is another mater entirely but I think the safe answer is 'no'.
 
smartcooky said:
Another source of triangle or V shaped UFOs, particularly ones seen in the vicinity of Groom Lake and elsewhere around Arizona - New Mexico - Neveda, may have been sightings of these when they were still under development and top secret....

[qimg]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98915197/JREF/B2.jpg[/qimg]

The B2 Bomber

Before that, there were these gong back to the late 1940's

[qimg]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98915197/JREF/XB35.jpg[/qimg][qimg]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98915197/JREF/YB49.jpg[/qimg]
Nortrop's XB35 on the left, and YB49 on the right


In Europe, there were over 100 of these flying around between the mid 1950s and mid 1980's

[qimg]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/98915197/JREF/Avro Vulcan.jpg[/qimg]
The Avro Vulcan
Click to expand...
.
The B-2s first flight was from Plant 42, in Palmdale. I watched it from my back yard. Any prototypes were not quite that shape.
The B-35 and B-49 flew from the Northrop plant in Inglewood.
Dunno about the Vulcan. Saw one at EAFB years back, where one of the crew was bragging on the wall of fuses in the electronics bay!
 
jakesteele said:
You are using Mitch's testimony which is antecdotal, the same thing you won't allow the Woos to do. What's up with that?

Anybody
Click to expand...

A good question, I think.

I asked for something similar re the Hudson Valley lights recently. I got help from a forumite who sent me an old magazine article (by snail mail!) which backs-up the few Internet anecdotes about pilots pulling a UFO prank.

It's not evidence-evidence, but I'm not sure what would be.

In this case, a bloke who knows how to use a telescope used it to identify an airplane and said so. I find it adequate simply because it's in-line with reality. If he had seen a weird spaceship, his word would be doubted.

Yeah, it's a bias all right. Mea culpa.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom