UFO Images

APIGuy

Independent Field Investigator
I have seen a sequence of photos I thought were credible of an egg-shaped craft, but there were no details of any investigation available. Quality was so-so, but they were clear and had none of the red flags of a hoax.

Still without the investigation and a chain of custody, a clever fake remains distinctly possible.

The best I have investigated is only about 20 pixels wide, but I had 2 eyewitnesses and knew exactly when and where the images were taken and who took them. I also had a pretty good estimate of the cloud ceiling that the object was below. My analysis showed the the object was probably very far away and quite large. No corroboration ever surfaced, but I would expect someone else saw the same thing. I've never published the full details, but perhaps I will.
 

1963

Noble
Any Bruce Maccabee analysis is bogus in my mind. He thought the Guardian flying saucer was real. He authenticated the red light coming from an optical mouse as a real flying saucer. He thinks the laughable Gulf Breeze UFO photo's were the real deal. He's discredited himself with several ridiculous analysis so I won't listen to anything he has to say.

Like I said earlier, in my mind the McMinnville photo's are bogus.

Not a Brumac fan then CGL. .. I never said he was infallible ,.. who is?.. but his integrity, expertise and qualifications are beyond reproach :Whistle: ... And what are your objections to Brad Sparks' rebuttal of the Klass/Sheaffer hatchet job? ... After all, he is a well known debunker himself isn't he, and throughout his fifty years or so of ufological and fortean analysis he has not ever been open enough to fall for the odd 'set-up' has he? . So what axe would he have to grind , or in other words , why aren't you taking any notice of his assessment of the "toy on a wire" claim of Klass and Sheaffer??
What about Martin Shough's analysis? or VJB Olmos? etc...
And what about the official Condon Committee [pre-runner to Blue Book] conclusion after their very top scientist [whom was expected to rip the pictures to shreds].. had performed his meticulous analysis and said....

Dr. William Hartmann of the Condon Committee concluded that “This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical[,] appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.

... So again CGL,... why are you so certain that the photos are bogus, when there is really no evidence that they are??... and in fact , for almost seventy years the general consensus of the 'unbiased examiners' is that whatever the object in the photographs is, the pictures themselves, showing a flying saucer over the Trent farm on 11th of may 1950 seem to be legitimate!
... If your answer is simply 'gut feeling' then I will readily accept! as this elusive and imo under-rated tool drives most of my own verisimilitude too. But if you are still willing to cite thoroughly discredited debunks from a couple of disingenuous with an axe to grind debunkers.... then I don't know what else to say to you matey.

Cheers buddy.
 
UFO Caught By Oz City Worker's Digital Camera - Whittlesea, Australia - January 15, 2004
I like that image for a couple of reasons. Granted, it’s quite blurry. I’m trying to see a bird there but I don’t – I’m not ruling it out, I’m just saying that I can’t make out a bird there. The blur seems to indicate fast lateral motion.

Now compare that object from the Whittlesea, Australia, January 15, 2004 photograph:

s1600


…with the object that I posted yesterday from the October 1981 Vancouver Island photograph taken by Hannah McRoberts:

image.jpg


I mean, that could be the same object: the shape is indistinguishable, and even the hues and values look very similar (also, a dark and somewhat dull metallic finish is a common feature of AAV descriptions).

And in both of those cases, the photographer didn’t see the object in the frame at the time the picture was taken. That’s a really weird coincidence, right? And on top of that, consider the testimony of the USS Nimitz CSG radar operator Trevor, who said that the optical gun camera footage that he saw showed a domed object with a flat bottom darting from one position to the next so quickly that the transitions couldn’t be seen.

This is highly speculative of course, but what if all three cases are related to the same kind of technological devices that don’t really “fly” as much as they jump from one position to the next at speeds so fast that they’re optically invisible when they change position? That hypothesis could explain all three of these cases quite neatly, because it would explain why neither photographer saw the object at the time the images were taken – the object could’ve simply been within the frame for a fleeting moment, too brief to be noticed by the camera operator.

It’s an interesting thought anyway.
 
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Rikki

High Priestess
There are two photographs I offen wonder about. My husband does not know what they are. let us look and see.
Gemini 10.

gemini.png

My husband thinks this is fake. "Black knight"

AS1.png

Blessed be
Rikki
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
This is highly speculative of course, but what if all three cases are related to the same kind of technological devices that don’t really “fly” as much as they jump from one position to the next at speeds so fast that they’re optically invisible when they change position?

That is exactly the case, they just jump aroudn very fast, because they can cancel inertial mass.

There is a whole category of UFO cases, recorded mostly on photos, and with one recorded on videos, where UFOs do just that. What typically happens, some farely regular people go for a holiday, and they do a family photo. When the receive the film from developement they spot and UFO in the picture nobody was aware of at a time photo was taken.

There was one case where a freelance videographer who worked a lot for local TV station was sent to do a panoramic shot of the city where TV station was located (I think it was Chicago, but it doesn't matter). When he went back to his office to edit the recording he spotted this UFO, just few pixels, that was jumping up and down. Point is, that UFO was inside the city perimeter, above some ore dump of some local factory. Fast up & down movements were so fast, that when looked by naked eye it was practically invisible. But because his video camera was slightly faster than the eye, it managed to catch it. There is a whole report on YT.

Human eye's speed is somewhere around 1/15sec. If UFO constantly zig-zags every, say 1/30sec, than it will become invisible. I think one can easily prove that with a simple computer program.

@Thomas R. Morrison, please check my response to our conversation. I found a scientificly accepted way to reduce inertial mass by 20% (in black holes ;-).
 

APIGuy

Independent Field Investigator
Much more interesting are the photos from Skylab 3.
  1. No one suspects a hoax at all. All three astronauts saw the object.
  2. It's not a photographic anomaly.
  3. Satellites aren't red, except when passing through the Earth's penumbra, which takes only about 15 seconds.
That said, I disagree with Bruce Maccabee's analysis of the size. It mightn't be very large at all. James Oberg is also wrong in his handwaving attempt to debunk it. I dug up the old orbit elements and calculated the beta angle, to make a long story short.

We don't know the shutter speed used, but it was a good Nikon film camera. I expect we are seeing a bit of motion blur in this picture:

skylab3.jpg
 

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There are two photographs I offen wonder about. My husband does not know what they are. let us look and see.
Gemini 10.

View attachment 4714
I've never seen an analysis of this one, but if I find one I'll share it with you. Here's the original photo:

http://tothemoon.ser.asu.edu/data_g/G10/Maurer/full/S66-45774_G10-M_f.png

My husband thinks this is fake. "Black knight"

View attachment 4715

Blessed be
Rikki

The "Black Knight" isn't. It's just some space debris.
Yeah that's a thermal blanket that slipped away from the astronauts during an ISS space walk operation. This video explains it in detail - he even found audiovisual footage of the event:



Much more interesting are the photos from Skylab 3.
  1. No one suspects a hoax at all. All three astronauts saw the object.
  2. It's not a photographic anomaly.
  3. Satellites aren't red, except when passing through the Earth's penumbra, which takes only about 15 seconds.
That said, I disagree with Bruce Maccabee's analysis of the size. It mightn't be very large at all. James Oberg is also wrong in his handwaving attempt to debunk it. I dug up the old orbit elements and calculated the beta angle, to make a long story short.

We don't know the shutter speed used, but it was a good Nikon film camera. I expect we are seeing a bit of motion blur in this picture:
I think you're right.

Brad Sparks and Bruce Maccabee provided a rigorous analysis of this case here:

SKYLAB 3 PHOTO SIGHTING
 
That's one of five photos taken by George Stock in Passaic, NJ, on July 29, 1952 - Open Minds wrote about the case here:

New Jersey UFO photos taken during 1952 UFO wave | Openminds.tv

This photo was used in a CIA document that offered public tips on how to photograph a UFO, so it appears all over the internet, making the search for a more substantial analysis very difficult.

You can do a reverse image search of any image by uploading it into the Google Image search field when you hit the little camera icon:

Google Images
 

Creepy Green Light

Don't mistake lack of talent for genius
what are your objections to Brad Sparks' rebuttal of the Klass/Sheaffer hatchet job? ... After all, he is a well known debunker himself isn't he, and throughout his fifty years or so of ufological and fortean analysis he has not ever been open enough to fall for the odd 'set-up' has he? . So what axe would he have to grind , or in other words , why aren't you taking any notice of his assessment of the "toy on a wire" claim of Klass and Sheaffer??
What about Martin Shough's analysis? or VJB Olmos?
I'll have to admit I am not familiar with any of these. Are they all in relation to Paul Trent's photos? Thanks.
 
I'll have to admit I am not familiar with any of these. Are they all in relation to Paul Trent's photos? Thanks.
Yes, he’s referring to the Trent McMinnville photos.

Brad Sparks also very adeptly analyzed the faux-scientific IPACO report on the McMinnville case and dismantled it completely. I’ll post his lengthy and rigorous analysis of their 2013 document below, because it merits repeating.

This doesn’t prove that the case wasn’t a hoax – it simply proves that if it was a hoax, the IPACO document failed to prove it, and it is in fact a completely worthless document.

This is representative of what I’ve said before: just because somebody or another has claimed to debunk every widely popularized UFO photo ever provided to the public, that doesn’t mean that they actually did so. Because it’s one thing to say that anything photographed “could have been” a hub cap or a rearview mirror or whatever at close range to the camera (which you can say about any photograph of anything) – it’s another thing entirely to actually prove that argument. And the burden of proof in on the claimant. So when they fail to do that, their argument is void.

But first let’s look at the photo comparison that you offered:

ScreenHunter_886 Nov. 16 01.01.jpg

I printed each image at a best-fit scale and then drew a clean silhouette of each object so we could compare them in overlay – here’s what I found:

Trent silhouette.sml.jpg mirror silhouette.sml.jpg Trent and mirror silhouette overlay.sml.jpg

There’s no doubt about it: those aren’t the same object. The flat area on the left-hand side is 1.73 times larger in the Trent UFO image than the same flat region on the mirror. And you can clearly see that the curvature doesn’t match; the UFO image has a steep and flat conical rise to the flat plane on the left-hand side, whereas the mirror arcs gently and spherically in that same region. And the placement and size and shape of the mirror’s mounting post is drastically different than the protrusion we see on the object in the photo.

The object in the photo might have been a rearview mirror, but it’s definitely not that rearview mirror. So that explanation fails.

Here’s what Brad Sparks had to say about the IPACO analysis:


From: Brad Sparks
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 06:56:32 -0400 (EDT)

The IPACO Debunkers Attack the Trent Photos (McMinnville, Oregon, May 11, 1950)
<AOL - login>
The IPACO team has jerry-rigged its case and cherry-picked its figures to coincide with its convenient but grossly contradictory hoax model. Contradictory modeling is IPACO's number one fault violating the laws of physics, optics and geometry -- and they do claim to use "mathematics and physics" (p. 3). They have thrown together so many simplistic "simplifications" (p. 11) or bald assumptions to streamline and "clarify" the case that their patchwork of questionable parameters hide gross errors. They conveniently assert that these self-serving simplifications "do not impact significantly upon the results" (p. 11).

This points up the fundamental error in their overall methodology: Instead of creating a comprehensive and integrated computer 3-D reconstruction model of the Trent backyard site and postulated objects where every adjustment of a parameter is automatically adjusted throughout the reconstruction, they have created a patch-work "tool" that allows gross errors to creep in and get taken advantage of in order to debunk the UFO case.

For those needing a refresher on the famous McMinnville photo case read my summary below, or else skip to the next section.

CASE SUMMARY (from BB Unknowns Catalog) May 11, 1950. 8 miles SW of McMinnville, Oregon (UFO at 45.1043° N, 123.3335° W). 7:20 p.m. (PST). Evelyn Trent was feeding the rabbits in her backyard just before sunset when she spotted an object to the N in the distance and called out to her husband Paul Trent, who was in the house at the back door, asking him to retrieve their camera. She went into the garage to look for the camera but Paul found it in the house, ran out into the yard toward where his wife had been standing, then he saw the rapidly approaching large metallic object to the N heading almost directly towards them, tipped up its flat underside towards them, felt a gust of wind seemingly from the object, snapped a photo of the object at azimuth 335° (about NNW) elevation 14°, angular size 1.67°. Paul Trent was at 45.1007° N, 123.3335° W, in his back yard between the house and garage. Then as the object turned on a W heading he walked 5 ft to his right to compensate for object's motion to the left, snapped a 2nd photo about 30 secs after the 1st, which shows a metallic pie-pan shaped object 1.46° angular size with a large off-center tilted antenna or pole projecting from the top, at azimuth ~317.5° (about NW) 12° elevation. Evelyn had joined Paul by the time he started taking pictures and later described the arc covered between photos as about 15° (close to actual figure ~17.5°). Distance and size of object estimated by the witnesses as about 1/4 mile distance and 20-30 ft diameter, or "parachute-sized" (about 24-28 ft), which size/distance figures translate to a maximum angular size 1.3° (close to the photographically measured 1.46°-1.67°). AF Colorado Project and Bruce Maccabee estimated distance about 1 mile and object diameter about 100 ft but methodology is mistakenly based on excess brightness of what was supposed to be dark shadow of the bottom of the object (in fact the bottom was not in shadow but caught bright near-sun sunset sky illumination at near grazing angle 2° off of direct sunlight). Several other witnesses reportedly saw the object. (Sparks; Condon Report pp. 396-407; Bruce Maccabee; Hynek UFO Rpt pp. 244-5; etc.) Duration 2-3 mins



The Fatal Flaw -- The Dilemma of the 5-inch Hoax Model versus the 6-inch Model

The IPACO debunkers never consistently follow through on a numerical result throughout the rest of their analysis to see if it fits and is physically consistent. They cannot make up their collective minds whether the UFO hoax model is 0.4 ft or 0.5 ft (about 5 inches or 6 inches). It cannot be both! It is a crucially important parameter and it is based on the most accurately determined parameters in all of the two photos, namely the angular diameters of the UFO's base (1.67° and 1.46° in Photos 1 and 2, respectively). If the hoax object was 5 inches in diameter then the closest distance to camera, which is in Photo 1, must be about 14 ft according to the geometry of the angular size (angular size is roughly the size-to-distance ratio). This is mathematically locked and cannot be fudged or adjusted or obscured -- as IPACO attempts to do. (I will call these debunkers collectively as "IPACO," and in the singular or the plural regardless of grammar, for ease of reference.)

TECH NOTE: Angular size is approximately the size to distance ratio, as I mentioned above. That means the object -- no matter what it is whether a pie tin, a UFO or a planet in space -- must exactly fit mathematical laws of geometry. If it is 1.67° is angular size then it must be exactly 34.3 times farther away than its size (1 / [2 tan 1.67°/2]).(to the three-digit precision I am using). If it is 1 ft in size then it must be exactly 34.3 feet in distance. If 1/2 foot in size then its distance must be ~17.15 feet. These are exact mathematical rules and cannot be broken at the whim of those who find it inconvenient. Similarly, in Photo 2 the angular size is 1.46° and hence the distance must be 39.2 times its size. If 1/2 foot in size then the distance must be exactly 19.6 feet.


Since the wire that IPACO claims the hoax object was hung from (by a thread) was about 14 feet from Trent's camera (p. 9) the 14-foot distance set by the 5-inch diameter of the hoax model would seem to fit just about perfectly. So why do they bother to keep bringing up the 0.5 ft (6-inch) figure for the UFO hoax object when that would result in distances of about 17 feet and 20 feet?

The reason is that the UFO increases distance from the first to the second photo by a very exactly determined amount of about 14%, established mathematically by the object becoming smaller in apparent (angular) size. IPACO points out that that would mean the hoax model had to increase in distance 2 ft, going from 14 ft (where the wire was located) to a distance of 16 ft in the second photo. But the height of the wire above the object, and thus the approximate length of the alleged suspension thread, is only about 2 feet.

This 2 foot distance increase is about the same as the purported length of the 2 ft pendulum thread! If the alleged hoax model was "swaying" on a pendulum thread it would have to swing so violently that the model would be suspended horizontally and away from Trent's camera in Photo 2. Imagine if you were swinging in a children's swing and you managed to get as high as the bar holding up the swing! It would be very unstable from a dynamic physics standpoint and a geometrically impossible position because the UFO model would also be about 2 feet higher above the ground too and it is manifestly not. (The angular space between the UFO and the wire above, which are supposed to be about the length of the suspension thread, are about 9° to 8° in the two photos but this 2 foot swing away would reduce the spacing to about 0° in the second pic and it obviously is not! See IPACO p. 8 for diagrams and angular figures.)

This is why IPACO fudges the numbers throughout by injecting the 6-inch hoax object diameter where it does not belong, since it increases the scale of dimensions and thus the length of the suspension thread to almost 3 feet. A 2 ft swing backwards on a 3 ft long thread is not so enormous and violent. IPACO insists throughout that there was only gentle "swaying" of the hoax object in a "light wind."
But IPACO can't have it both ways! The UFO model can't be 5 inches in diameter for some situations and 6 inches for others!

So why doesn't IPACO just stick with a 6-inch diameter for the UFO model and use that throughout? Because it would run into the same problem of a 3-foot thread swinging backwards by about 3 feet and worst of all, it would be 3 to 6 feet away from the wire it is supposed to be hanging from! (The wire at about 14 feet and the 6-inch object at about 17-20 feet.) Obviously it cannot possibly be 6 feet away while connected with a 3-foot thread! Maybe the hoax model was capable of sustained flight -- like a UFO!

So why doesn't IPACO get rid of the 6-inch diameter figure altogether? Because they need to slip it in whenever there is a problem with the 5-inch model swinging too wide and high, and they just obfuscate the more severe problems with the 6-inch model by not running through all the logical consequences of that bigger size.

Here is a classic example of IPACO obfuscation where they mix inconsistent numbers from the 5-inch model with the numbers from the 6-inch model in their General Conclusions:

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, p. 23, emphasis added):

"Explanation 1
"The UFO is a model hanging ca. 3 ft under the lower power wire, at a distance of ca. 14 ft from the camera.
"Its size (diameter of its circular base) is ca. 0.5 ft.....
"Between both shots, its distance from the camera increases by 2 ft."
The 3 ft and 0.5 ft (6-inch) figures belong to the 6 inch model's parameters, of course. The 14 ft and 2 ft figures only apply to the 5-inch diameter object. IPACO has slyly mixed inconsistent numbers from two different scenarios and size scales.

TECH NOTE: If as stated it was really a 6-inch diameter (0.5 ft), then the distances from camera would be 17 to 20 ft not 14 feet and the increase in distance (from 17 to 20 ft) would of course be 3 ft not 2 ft. (20 - 17 = 3 ft.)


IPACO is caught on the horns of a dilemma. A 5-inch would have to swing up too high and too violently and it simply is not seen in that position in the photographs. A 6-inch model would be much too far away, so far away that it would not even be connected to the thread!

Could the violent swing be reduced to more manageable and viable proportions by splitting the total swing between a swing towards the camera in Photo 1 and a swing away in Photo 2 -- as IPACO seems to obscurely be reaching for at one point in their almost unintelligible discourse (p. 11)? No, because the 5-inch model would be at about the same distance as the overhead wire, 14 ft, in Photo 1, and thus hanging directly below the wire not swung towards the camera.


IPACO Claims to Discover a "Thread" in the McMinnville Photos -- But it would be Nearly 1 Inch Thick!

The IPACO debunkers claim to have discovered something -- a purported thread above the UFO -- that no one else has been able to see in 63 years, including high-tech image processing by the Jet Propulsion Lab director Robert Nathan, by Bruce Maccabee and others, that never found a thing. Naturally, IPACO did not conduct a control study to see if this was just noise in the film or photoanalysis. They checked only 60° or 1/6th of a full 360° circle. They did not check underneath the UFO -- because obviously they know it's a hoax and so it cannot be something absurd like a thread below the object. But that's how one makes scientific checks. If an absurd result emerges then it tells you the analysis is wrong. I can already see other "threads" in their data, which would make nonsense of their findings.

But worst of all, the purported IPACO "thread" -- which cannot be seen visually -- would be almost 1 inch in thickness (using the half-value width as a rough thread width; it is about 0.2° in angular width or about 1/7 or 1/8 of the width of the supposedly 5 or 6-inch object). What kind of "thread" is that and why wouldn't a 1-inch thick line -- more like a rope or heavy cord -- not be painfully obvious in the photos?


Another Typical Example of Error in IPACO Assumptions -- The Two Power Wires are Not Vertically Stacked

IPACO's assumptions from the very start are in error. Early in their report they say:

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, p. 5, emphasis added except bold-only is in original):

"In the first steps of the analysis, we concentrated on the following elements of the scene:
The UFO, localized in space by the center of its base, which is assumed to be nearly circular (seen as nearly an ellipse from the camera),
The two power wires above the UFO, assumed to be motionless.
"It was possible to check, from the already mentioned detailed map of the site established by Maccabee, and from a picture published in Condon report™s Plate 25 (Hartmann 1967), that these two power wires were one above the other (i.e. in the same vertical plane). Therefore, if the UFO is effectively a model, it should logically be hanging from the lower power wire."


The two wires in fact are not vertical except at the back of the house. LIFE magazine photographer Loomis Dean visited the Trents and took dozens of photos in mid-June 1950. Dean's photos show that the two wires twist in the air gradually to attach almost horizontally (not vertically) to the roof edge of the garage at the south end. The lower wire is attached about a foot down and east from the peak of the garage roof where the top wire is attached. That means that in the middle of the gap between the house and the garage the wires are not situated directly above each other in a "vertical plane" but are rotated and offset by roughly 30° from vertical. That makes the lower wire closer to the camera and still more distant from the sighting line crossing point, and thus makes a hoax model even more difficult. You can even see in Condon project astronomer William Hartmann's photo of the backyard that the two wires immediately narrow as you follow them from the house into the space to the garage, which space is where the UFO was photographed.


Debunker "Science" -- Confusing Thermal Physics with Optical Physics

These French debunkers have incomprehensibly asserted that the UFO and wires are "black bodies" to which they apply "radiometry" -- which is the science of measurement of heat. They claim to derive an estimate of distance from this. They apparently have no idea what they are talking about. Yeah, the Trent farm and nearby objects are "black bodies" but at around room temperature emitting heat in the far infrared (about 9,000 nm) invisible to the eye and invisible to the ordinary camera and thus unseen on visible-light optical photographs (visible light is about 300 to 700 nm wavelength). Visible light "radiometry" would be at about the temperature of the sun ~ 5,000° C and a camera is not a radiometer! They have confused photometry (light measurements) with radiometry (heat measurements from black body heat radiation, thermal emissions).

But this goes far beyond a simple confusion of terminology since they repeatedly invoke "black body" radiation (p. 17; see original IPACO March 2013 report, pp. 19, 23 "behaved approximately like a black body," etc.) as somehow involved in reflection and absorption of light (not infrared) at roughly room temperatures and that they are able to determine "distances from the camera" because, you see, "a lower radiometry roughly corresponds to a lower distance from the camera" (p. 17)!!! No it doesn't!

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, emphasis added):

"If we assume that these elements are dark enough to be considered as sort of black bodies (i.e absorbing all the light they receive), we may compare their respective radiometric levels and infer a classification of their respective distances from the camera: a lower radiometry roughly corresponds to a lower distance from the camera.


This must be on the order of saying "if I like the object it must be closer to me and the more I like it, the closer it is!!" ROTFL. (Normally if there is a lower radiometric power received from an object -- less heat radiation -- it indicates a greater distance not a "lower distance," but hey this is trying to make some sense out of nonsense, to extract the science from pseudoscience.)

IPACO's "physics" is very much like that of William Spaulding who used to announce that he could determine the "thickness" in feet or inches of the UFO in a photograph, using "computer analysis." He confused x-rays with visible light photos. X-rays are beamed through objects and can be used to determine the linear thickness of an object, in feet or meters. But visible light photos involve light reflecting or scattering off the surface and thus cannot possibly determine the thickness of the object below the surface.

Remember, IFO's must obey the laws of physics. Unfortunately, debunkers don't care about whether their hoax or IFO scenarios grossly violate the laws of physics -- that's a problem for someone else to solve, if anyone still cares after they succeed in destroying the hated UFO case.

Brad Sparks

Source: UFO Report
 
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Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
Quarelling with sceptics is huge step backward for UFO research. Complete waste of precious resources. Sceptics make ufology to get stuck on it's starting point. Not very promissing. We should focus on discovering new cases and extracting more valuble physical data.

OK, some UFO cases are hoaxes some are genuine. Just focus on the genuine ones and stop being stuck in the same place. If physics of the case doesn't ad up, case is hoax and just move on. If witness' body language and the way he tells story seems suspisious to you, dump the case. Etc. etc. Ufology is not perfect.

Use big data approach, like Jaque Vallee with his database of 200,000 cases. Big Data analysis makes billions in advertising revenu to both Google and Facebook. Big Data works and even makes money. If you apply Big Data onto physics of Hollywood movies, you get crap. If you apply Big Data onto physics in UFOs you get real physics all the way:
  • they leave inundations in soil,
  • plasma around UFOs changes color exactly matching emission lines of gasses in Earth's atmosphere,
  • petrol engine disruption distance when graphed exactly matches inverse square law of the fall in the electric field, For education of sceptics, that's unambiguous material proof everybody is looking for.
  • UFOs disrupt radio, plasma around ufo is obvious culprit,
  • UFOs are completely closed shells and don't have windows because that would create holes in Alcubiere drive, and make warp drive leak space time ;-)
  • aliens use artificial telepathy whose existance was confirmed immediately after WWII with radar microwaves and later with ultrasound. There are BBC documentaries done with MIT. Telephaty is real, only most people don't know about it. It's not in use because it microwave telepathy increases chances of geting brain cancer.
  • back in 50's witnesses said that aliens have soft black mebrane over their eyes to give them night vision. Recently DARPA deemonstrated night vision on a sheet of glass, no batteries, no circuits, no housing, just some organic compound film you put in a front of your eyes.
  • GR offers, at least in theory, reduction of inertial mass on several levels. It's over the horizon, but not unimaginable.
  • Time dillation, as in general relativity,
  • 77% of all Sun-like start in our Milky Way galaxy are 3.5 billion years older than Sun. That means that 77% of inteligent civilisations, even if there is just 1,000 of them, are 3.5 billion years ahead of us technologically.
  • Just stop and think about all the above.
And that is a misly sample that I extracted from about 200 cases. Just imagine what can be extracted from 200,000 cases that Jaque Vallee proposes.

A politician, or a good lawyer or a good public relations company can turn truth into a lie and lie into truth, just pay them more. Some of your data will be true, some will be false, but when you average large statistical sample (Jaque Vallees 200,000 cases) you hoaxes will sink, and real physics will rise.

Studying UFOs on individual case basis is just thrill seaking and lazy entertainment. Because expected unpreparedness and confusion of the witness no single UFO case can cover all the physical phenomena. Not to mention that witnesses don't walk around with gaussmeters and gravimeters. The only realy scientific way is what Dr. Mark Rodegheir and Jaque Valee are proposing: extracting physics from Big Data, probably with aid of AI.

It is essential to keep making progress.
 
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Creepy Green Light

Don't mistake lack of talent for genius
Yes, he’s referring to the Trent McMinnville photos.

Brad Sparks also very adeptly analyzed the faux-scientific IPACO report on the McMinnville case and dismantled it completely. I’ll post his lengthy and rigorous analysis of their 2013 document below, because it merits repeating.

This doesn’t prove that the case wasn’t a hoax – it simply proves that if it was a hoax, the IPACO document failed to prove it, and it is in fact a completely worthless document.

This is representative of what I’ve said before: just because somebody or another has claimed to debunk every widely popularized UFO photo ever provided to the public, that doesn’t mean that they actually did so. Because it’s one thing to say that anything photographed “could have been” a hub cap or a rearview mirror or whatever at close range to the camera (which you can say about any photograph of anything) – it’s another thing entirely to actually prove that argument. And the burden of proof in on the claimant. So when they fail to do that, their argument is void.

But first let’s look at the photo comparison that you offered:

View attachment 4734

I printed each image at a best-fit scale and then drew a clean silhouette of each object so we could compare them in overlay – here’s what I found:

View attachment 4730 View attachment 4731 View attachment 4732

There’s no doubt about it: those aren’t the same object. The flat area on the left-hand side is 1.73 times larger in the Trent UFO image than the same flat region on the mirror. And you can clearly see that the curvature doesn’t match; the UFO image has a steep and flat conical rise to the flat plane on the left-hand side, whereas the mirror arcs gently and spherically in that same region. And the placement and size and shape of the mirror’s mounting post is drastically different than the protrusion we see on the object in the photo.

The object in the photo might have been a rearview mirror, but it’s definitely not that rearview mirror. So that explanation fails.

Here’s what Brad Sparks had to say about the IPACO analysis:


From: Brad Sparks
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 06:56:32 -0400 (EDT)

The IPACO Debunkers Attack the Trent Photos (McMinnville, Oregon, May 11, 1950)
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The IPACO team has jerry-rigged its case and cherry-picked its figures to coincide with its convenient but grossly contradictory hoax model. Contradictory modeling is IPACO's number one fault violating the laws of physics, optics and geometry -- and they do claim to use "mathematics and physics" (p. 3). They have thrown together so many simplistic "simplifications" (p. 11) or bald assumptions to streamline and "clarify" the case that their patchwork of questionable parameters hide gross errors. They conveniently assert that these self-serving simplifications "do not impact significantly upon the results" (p. 11).

This points up the fundamental error in their overall methodology: Instead of creating a comprehensive and integrated computer 3-D reconstruction model of the Trent backyard site and postulated objects where every adjustment of a parameter is automatically adjusted throughout the reconstruction, they have created a patch-work "tool" that allows gross errors to creep in and get taken advantage of in order to debunk the UFO case.

For those needing a refresher on the famous McMinnville photo case read my summary below, or else skip to the next section.

CASE SUMMARY (from BB Unknowns Catalog) May 11, 1950. 8 miles SW of McMinnville, Oregon (UFO at 45.1043° N, 123.3335° W). 7:20 p.m. (PST). Evelyn Trent was feeding the rabbits in her backyard just before sunset when she spotted an object to the N in the distance and called out to her husband Paul Trent, who was in the house at the back door, asking him to retrieve their camera. She went into the garage to look for the camera but Paul found it in the house, ran out into the yard toward where his wife had been standing, then he saw the rapidly approaching large metallic object to the N heading almost directly towards them, tipped up its flat underside towards them, felt a gust of wind seemingly from the object, snapped a photo of the object at azimuth 335° (about NNW) elevation 14°, angular size 1.67°. Paul Trent was at 45.1007° N, 123.3335° W, in his back yard between the house and garage. Then as the object turned on a W heading he walked 5 ft to his right to compensate for object's motion to the left, snapped a 2nd photo about 30 secs after the 1st, which shows a metallic pie-pan shaped object 1.46° angular size with a large off-center tilted antenna or pole projecting from the top, at azimuth ~317.5° (about NW) 12° elevation. Evelyn had joined Paul by the time he started taking pictures and later described the arc covered between photos as about 15° (close to actual figure ~17.5°). Distance and size of object estimated by the witnesses as about 1/4 mile distance and 20-30 ft diameter, or "parachute-sized" (about 24-28 ft), which size/distance figures translate to a maximum angular size 1.3° (close to the photographically measured 1.46°-1.67°). AF Colorado Project and Bruce Maccabee estimated distance about 1 mile and object diameter about 100 ft but methodology is mistakenly based on excess brightness of what was supposed to be dark shadow of the bottom of the object (in fact the bottom was not in shadow but caught bright near-sun sunset sky illumination at near grazing angle 2° off of direct sunlight). Several other witnesses reportedly saw the object. (Sparks; Condon Report pp. 396-407; Bruce Maccabee; Hynek UFO Rpt pp. 244-5; etc.) Duration 2-3 mins



The Fatal Flaw -- The Dilemma of the 5-inch Hoax Model versus the 6-inch Model

The IPACO debunkers never consistently follow through on a numerical result throughout the rest of their analysis to see if it fits and is physically consistent. They cannot make up their collective minds whether the UFO hoax model is 0.4 ft or 0.5 ft (about 5 inches or 6 inches). It cannot be both! It is a crucially important parameter and it is based on the most accurately determined parameters in all of the two photos, namely the angular diameters of the UFO's base (1.67° and 1.46° in Photos 1 and 2, respectively). If the hoax object was 5 inches in diameter then the closest distance to camera, which is in Photo 1, must be about 14 ft according to the geometry of the angular size (angular size is roughly the size-to-distance ratio). This is mathematically locked and cannot be fudged or adjusted or obscured -- as IPACO attempts to do. (I will call these debunkers collectively as "IPACO," and in the singular or the plural regardless of grammar, for ease of reference.)

TECH NOTE: Angular size is approximately the size to distance ratio, as I mentioned above. That means the object -- no matter what it is whether a pie tin, a UFO or a planet in space -- must exactly fit mathematical laws of geometry. If it is 1.67° is angular size then it must be exactly 34.3 times farther away than its size (1 / [2 tan 1.67°/2]).(to the three-digit precision I am using). If it is 1 ft in size then it must be exactly 34.3 feet in distance. If 1/2 foot in size then its distance must be ~17.15 feet. These are exact mathematical rules and cannot be broken at the whim of those who find it inconvenient. Similarly, in Photo 2 the angular size is 1.46° and hence the distance must be 39.2 times its size. If 1/2 foot in size then the distance must be exactly 19.6 feet.


Since the wire that IPACO claims the hoax object was hung from (by a thread) was about 14 feet from Trent's camera (p. 9) the 14-foot distance set by the 5-inch diameter of the hoax model would seem to fit just about perfectly. So why do they bother to keep bringing up the 0.5 ft (6-inch) figure for the UFO hoax object when that would result in distances of about 17 feet and 20 feet?

The reason is that the UFO increases distance from the first to the second photo by a very exactly determined amount of about 14%, established mathematically by the object becoming smaller in apparent (angular) size. IPACO points out that that would mean the hoax model had to increase in distance 2 ft, going from 14 ft (where the wire was located) to a distance of 16 ft in the second photo. But the height of the wire above the object, and thus the approximate length of the alleged suspension thread, is only about 2 feet.

This 2 foot distance increase is about the same as the purported length of the 2 ft pendulum thread! If the alleged hoax model was "swaying" on a pendulum thread it would have to swing so violently that the model would be suspended horizontally and away from Trent's camera in Photo 2. Imagine if you were swinging in a children's swing and you managed to get as high as the bar holding up the swing! It would be very unstable from a dynamic physics standpoint and a geometrically impossible position because the UFO model would also be about 2 feet higher above the ground too and it is manifestly not. (The angular space between the UFO and the wire above, which are supposed to be about the length of the suspension thread, are about 9° to 8° in the two photos but this 2 foot swing away would reduce the spacing to about 0° in the second pic and it obviously is not! See IPACO p. 8 for diagrams and angular figures.)

This is why IPACO fudges the numbers throughout by injecting the 6-inch hoax object diameter where it does not belong, since it increases the scale of dimensions and thus the length of the suspension thread to almost 3 feet. A 2 ft swing backwards on a 3 ft long thread is not so enormous and violent. IPACO insists throughout that there was only gentle "swaying" of the hoax object in a "light wind."
But IPACO can't have it both ways! The UFO model can't be 5 inches in diameter for some situations and 6 inches for others!

So why doesn't IPACO just stick with a 6-inch diameter for the UFO model and use that throughout? Because it would run into the same problem of a 3-foot thread swinging backwards by about 3 feet and worst of all, it would be 3 to 6 feet away from the wire it is supposed to be hanging from! (The wire at about 14 feet and the 6-inch object at about 17-20 feet.) Obviously it cannot possibly be 6 feet away while connected with a 3-foot thread! Maybe the hoax model was capable of sustained flight -- like a UFO!

So why doesn't IPACO get rid of the 6-inch diameter figure altogether? Because they need to slip it in whenever there is a problem with the 5-inch model swinging too wide and high, and they just obfuscate the more severe problems with the 6-inch model by not running through all the logical consequences of that bigger size.

Here is a classic example of IPACO obfuscation where they mix inconsistent numbers from the 5-inch model with the numbers from the 6-inch model in their General Conclusions:

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, p. 23, emphasis added):

"Explanation 1
"The UFO is a model hanging ca. 3 ft under the lower power wire, at a distance of ca. 14 ft from the camera.
"Its size (diameter of its circular base) is ca. 0.5 ft.....
"Between both shots, its distance from the camera increases by 2 ft."
The 3 ft and 0.5 ft (6-inch) figures belong to the 6 inch model's parameters, of course. The 14 ft and 2 ft figures only apply to the 5-inch diameter object. IPACO has slyly mixed inconsistent numbers from two different scenarios and size scales.

TECH NOTE: If as stated it was really a 6-inch diameter (0.5 ft), then the distances from camera would be 17 to 20 ft not 14 feet and the increase in distance (from 17 to 20 ft) would of course be 3 ft not 2 ft. (20 - 17 = 3 ft.)


IPACO is caught on the horns of a dilemma. A 5-inch would have to swing up too high and too violently and it simply is not seen in that position in the photographs. A 6-inch model would be much too far away, so far away that it would not even be connected to the thread!

Could the violent swing be reduced to more manageable and viable proportions by splitting the total swing between a swing towards the camera in Photo 1 and a swing away in Photo 2 -- as IPACO seems to obscurely be reaching for at one point in their almost unintelligible discourse (p. 11)? No, because the 5-inch model would be at about the same distance as the overhead wire, 14 ft, in Photo 1, and thus hanging directly below the wire not swung towards the camera.


IPACO Claims to Discover a "Thread" in the McMinnville Photos -- But it would be Nearly 1 Inch Thick!

The IPACO debunkers claim to have discovered something -- a purported thread above the UFO -- that no one else has been able to see in 63 years, including high-tech image processing by the Jet Propulsion Lab director Robert Nathan, by Bruce Maccabee and others, that never found a thing. Naturally, IPACO did not conduct a control study to see if this was just noise in the film or photoanalysis. They checked only 60° or 1/6th of a full 360° circle. They did not check underneath the UFO -- because obviously they know it's a hoax and so it cannot be something absurd like a thread below the object. But that's how one makes scientific checks. If an absurd result emerges then it tells you the analysis is wrong. I can already see other "threads" in their data, which would make nonsense of their findings.

But worst of all, the purported IPACO "thread" -- which cannot be seen visually -- would be almost 1 inch in thickness (using the half-value width as a rough thread width; it is about 0.2° in angular width or about 1/7 or 1/8 of the width of the supposedly 5 or 6-inch object). What kind of "thread" is that and why wouldn't a 1-inch thick line -- more like a rope or heavy cord -- not be painfully obvious in the photos?


Another Typical Example of Error in IPACO Assumptions -- The Two Power Wires are Not Vertically Stacked

IPACO's assumptions from the very start are in error. Early in their report they say:

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, p. 5, emphasis added except bold-only is in original):

"In the first steps of the analysis, we concentrated on the following elements of the scene:
The UFO, localized in space by the center of its base, which is assumed to be nearly circular (seen as nearly an ellipse from the camera),
The two power wires above the UFO, assumed to be motionless.
"It was possible to check, from the already mentioned detailed map of the site established by Maccabee, and from a picture published in Condon report™s Plate 25 (Hartmann 1967), that these two power wires were one above the other (i.e. in the same vertical plane). Therefore, if the UFO is effectively a model, it should logically be hanging from the lower power wire."


The two wires in fact are not vertical except at the back of the house. LIFE magazine photographer Loomis Dean visited the Trents and took dozens of photos in mid-June 1950. Dean's photos show that the two wires twist in the air gradually to attach almost horizontally (not vertically) to the roof edge of the garage at the south end. The lower wire is attached about a foot down and east from the peak of the garage roof where the top wire is attached. That means that in the middle of the gap between the house and the garage the wires are not situated directly above each other in a "vertical plane" but are rotated and offset by roughly 30° from vertical. That makes the lower wire closer to the camera and still more distant from the sighting line crossing point, and thus makes a hoax model even more difficult. You can even see in Condon project astronomer William Hartmann's photo of the backyard that the two wires immediately narrow as you follow them from the house into the space to the garage, which space is where the UFO was photographed.


Debunker "Science" -- Confusing Thermal Physics with Optical Physics

These French debunkers have incomprehensibly asserted that the UFO and wires are "black bodies" to which they apply "radiometry" -- which is the science of measurement of heat. They claim to derive an estimate of distance from this. They apparently have no idea what they are talking about. Yeah, the Trent farm and nearby objects are "black bodies" but at around room temperature emitting heat in the far infrared (about 9,000 nm) invisible to the eye and invisible to the ordinary camera and thus unseen on visible-light optical photographs (visible light is about 300 to 700 nm wavelength). Visible light "radiometry" would be at about the temperature of the sun ~ 5,000° C and a camera is not a radiometer! They have confused photometry (light measurements) with radiometry (heat measurements from black body heat radiation, thermal emissions).

But this goes far beyond a simple confusion of terminology since they repeatedly invoke "black body" radiation (p. 17; see original IPACO March 2013 report, pp. 19, 23 "behaved approximately like a black body," etc.) as somehow involved in reflection and absorption of light (not infrared) at roughly room temperatures and that they are able to determine "distances from the camera" because, you see, "a lower radiometry roughly corresponds to a lower distance from the camera" (p. 17)!!! No it doesn't!

Revised IPACO Report, June 2013 (released Aug 2013, emphasis added):

"If we assume that these elements are dark enough to be considered as sort of black bodies (i.e absorbing all the light they receive), we may compare their respective radiometric levels and infer a classification of their respective distances from the camera: a lower radiometry roughly corresponds to a lower distance from the camera.


This must be on the order of saying "if I like the object it must be closer to me and the more I like it, the closer it is!!" ROTFL. (Normally if there is a lower radiometric power received from an object -- less heat radiation -- it indicates a greater distance not a "lower distance," but hey this is trying to make some sense out of nonsense, to extract the science from pseudoscience.)

IPACO's "physics" is very much like that of William Spaulding who used to announce that he could determine the "thickness" in feet or inches of the UFO in a photograph, using "computer analysis." He confused x-rays with visible light photos. X-rays are beamed through objects and can be used to determine the linear thickness of an object, in feet or meters. But visible light photos involve light reflecting or scattering off the surface and thus cannot possibly determine the thickness of the object below the surface.

Remember, IFO's must obey the laws of physics. Unfortunately, debunkers don't care about whether their hoax or IFO scenarios grossly violate the laws of physics -- that's a problem for someone else to solve, if anyone still cares after they succeed in destroying the hated UFO case.

Brad Sparks

Source: UFO Report
I never thought or said it was the exact same truck mirror. Just like Heflin's train wheel. I don't know the manufacturers name or the model # of the train wheel but you can tell it's basically the same thing. Same with the truck mirror (Trent). That's why I keep saying in my mind it's debunked. There's no amount of geometry, computer enhancements, mathematical equations to figure out sunlight & shadows, etc. etc. etc. to convince me otherwise. That's what I meant (in other posts) when I said sometimes people are so smart - they can't get out of their own way & see the truth when it's right in front of their nose. Like all the over analysis with Billy Meier. Experts said it's impossible that its a hoax - they verified everything (with the help of "the computer") and it's real. Meanwhile it's a model on a string. Same with the crop circles. I heard a dozen different experts explaining how it's impossible that it was created by man. If it were someone pressing the corn down with their foot or piece of wood, it would bend or break the stalks a certain way - and the crop circles weren't done like that, suggesting it had to be a flying saucer that created it. Meanwhile, it's two guys with a plank of wood & a rope connected to it. So my point it - same with Trent's photo's - it doesn't really matter who comes up with what - I know it's a truck mirror & would be my life on it. Can I prove it? No - but I know it is - just like I know Heflin used a train wheel.
 

Dejan Corovic

As above, so bellow
I know it's a truck mirror & would be my life on it. Can I prove it? No - but I know it is

You can't proove it, but you are prepared to risk your life on it. That's not very promissing as a rational approaceh.

If a stem of grass is exposed to microwaves, internal water just boils off and stem explodes at a specific weakest point, to joint between two streight parts of grass. If somebody trumples on the stem with a plank than stem breaks like a mechanical failure anywhere along the streight parts of grass. So these two failure modes are completely different and can easily be recognised.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Like all the over analysis with Billy Meier. Experts said it's impossible that its a hoax - they verified everything (with the help of "the computer") and it's real.

Using the Billy Meier fakery as an example to discredit all other ufo images is just silly in my opinion...I don't know what alleged experts you read concerning Billy but I've seen plenty that shows his images are fakes...Even that alleged dinosaur image he claims he took from a ufo that took him back in time is an image from a book...Your grasping for straws if you want to get into Billy's nonsense or use that nonsense as a comparison...

...
 

humanoidlord

ce3 researcher
It's a conundrum. I've inherited this collection of photos without any background information whatever. I know some of them are hoaxes or misinterpretation. Maybe I should just delete the lot of them.
well, at least they aren't CGI
that one from lexington, i have never seen before, but there are a lot of similar ones showing blurry black blobs in old B&W photos, as thomas said this one also is suspiciously focused only in the UFO wich means its probally a object glued to a window
 
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