Thursday, March 31, 2011

A List of Best UFO Sightings?

While we’ve ragged on Paul Kimball for his filmed list of the best UFO sightings ever, we came across a list by former flying saucer “expert” William Spaulding, who provided his take on some top UFO sightings and events for The People’s Almanac’s The Book of Lists #2 by author Irving Wallace and family [William Morrow and Company, NY, 1980, Page 417 ff.].

His first offering was the McMinnville/Trent photos which we deem as bogus.

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His next sighting was the 1952 Nash-Fortenberry Pan-Am encounter, over Norfolk, Virginia.

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The third listing was the 1952 Washington D.C. incidents.

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The fourth episode was the Ralph Mayher [sic] film of 1952.

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Fifth was (another) 1952 radar/visual sighting of a USAF B-29 training crew over the Gulf of Mexico

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Six on Spaulding’s list was the Kimball/Sparks B-47 incident, so there is some consensus that the sighting was and is significant.

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Seventh in Spaulding list of eight is a November 1957 on the outskirts of Levelland, Texas where witnesses had encounters with a large UFO.

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And eighth on Spaulding’s list was the 1976 Iranian encounter.

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We won’t elaborate on Spaulding’s list, as we see lists as entertainment rather than edifying information.

But we note that Kimball and Sparks are not the only UFO aficionados to see the RB-47 event as a significant UFO encounter.

Again, the RB-47 sighting is interesting, but so are dozens of other sightings, including the B-29 sighting (number five, above) which has as many or more technical accoutrements as the RB-47 incident.

UFO hobbyists, each, have their favorite UFO sightings or stories – mine include the 1966 Ann Arbor/Dexter/Hillsdale sightings; the infamous “swamp gas” sightings.

But have any of these classic sightings given us a clue to the UFO enigma? Nope. So listing them is a futile, silly endeavor, that passes for research for some “ufologists” but they are fun to read, right?

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

UFOs, String Theory, Quantum Gravity

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Physics has become as discombobulated and goofy as “ufology.”

String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones and Daniel Robbins [Wiley Publishing, Indianapolis, 2010] presents a pithy overview of string theory and quantum physics; an overview that shows just how crazy the study of physics has become, and how physicists have resorted to mathematics as a kind of abracadabra to help them find an answer to the mysteries of the Universe that discombobulate them.

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Ufology, that faux research sobriquet use by UFO hobbyists to provide cachet for their irrational attempts to uncover the nature of UFOs, is loopier than string theory, but is also encumbered by overt pathological participants whereas physicists keep their pathology suppressed, masking it with calculus and other mathematical formulae.

Physicists are trying to discover the reality of the Universe.

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Ufologists once tried to uncover the mystery of flying saucers and then generic UFOs, but have since devolved into a babbling clique of pseudo-researchers who are so flummoxed by the enigma they once hoped to explain that they are now babblers of nonsense that borders on total insanity.

The UFO phenomenon is not amenable to mathematics, it seems – but who has tried to use math to provide a theoretical paradigm?

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Moreover, UFOs have attracted crazies of all types, while physics (quantum, string, and classical) attracts brilliant loonies who see beyond the prosaic and mundane to theoretical models of the Universe that may provide profound truths of our existence.

The study of UFOs takes us nowhere and thus far has only provided babbling of a pathological kind. (See Alfred Lehmberg’s ditherings for example.)

One holds out hope for a rational denouement in the realm of physics (string theory notwithstanding).

But in the realm of UFOs? One should keep their distance, remaining aloof and disconnected, if only to remain compos mentis.