"Evidence" of UFO technology?

Wait, wait! I'm pretty sure you can't predict what this post is going to be about. Read on:

First, the obvious: Every few years, a group of people say they saw something that was clearly in physical existence---according to them---that falls under the general category of "UFO-using-technology-no-has-ever-seen-before." Scientific commentators always say some version of the same thing: eyewitness testimony is not scientific evidence. (Of course, standards of legal and historical evidence are different than standards of scientific evidence.)

Big yawn, right? But wait. I predict BOTH SIDES of the UFO debate will be changing their tune in the next decade or so. Why?

Video-enabled camera phones (and surveillance cameras) of course. Because of them, each side will have new evidence sometime in the next few years.

Eventually there will be a group of witnesses with these phones who all or mostly believe they saw something close enough to photograph clearly with no credible rationalization outside of a UFO-type explanation. And it will happen again. And again. And once it happens enough times we will have something much closer to actual evidence---or it's absence---than we've had before. The video evidence (three or more simultaneous videos, close enough to show some kind of shape) is going to support the reality or falsity of "advanced technology UFO" explanations---eventually. And large numbers of people on one side of the debate will join the other side, due to the evidence. (Of course, it can be hard to get your phone out fast enough for everything, but groups will get video.)

Both sides of the debate will of course believe in advance that these multiple photographs/videos will support their pre-existing position. Imagine:

A strange object flies alongside a commercial jet. The pilot see it, it shows up on radar, and several passengers take video and photographs of it, most of whom download it to the internet, some from the plane, some after landing. The evidence, the source and timing of the video downloads, should lend itself to supporting or disproving whether there really was something to see. Especially after this has happened several times.

The key of course, is that multiple videos need to be taken and compared. But eventually, this is a certainty, as more and more video-enabled phones are on the market all the time, and groups of people regularly (although not frequently) report UFO-like phenomenon.

Dog walker spots UFO

HAS anyone seen a mystery light hovering over Cross in Hand?

Local resident Lynnda Rose contacted the Express to describe the strange sighting.

She said: 'I was out with my dog and noticed a light above the field moving in a circular motion.

'I can only describe it as looking like an oval, thick mist which was quite bright.'

Lynnda said she watched it for about another 20 minutes, then went to get her camera

A UFO photographed over Scotland in 1999.

'Yes,' she said. 'You've guessed.

'Nothing came out.'

The light then descended out of sight.
She ran upstairs and watched it from the window while it continued in the same motion for about twenty minutes, then disappeared.

Lynnda added: 'I've never seen anything like it before and can find no explanation.

'I thought perhaps it was a searchlight or a laser but there was no beam so this had to be ruled out.

'I must say I don't believe in little green men, ghosts or the like and have had the mickey taken by everyone I have spoken to so I hope I am not the only one who spotted it.

Region hotspot for UFOs

Green men in flying saucers are out there – and they’re watching us, if reports to the Ministry of Defence are to be believed।

Scores of UFO sightings from the Midlands were reported to the Government in 2006, making the region Britain’s X-Files hotspot.

None of the aliens spotted in the skies above the region landed, instead shooting mysteriously into the distance.

But the MoD says it is required to treat each report seriously and they have now been logged and published.

Among the reported sightings reported today are:

l A UFO “doing funny, sharp turns over a field” in Walsall, on March 6, 2006.

l An unidentified flying object in Oldbury in April.

l A “white light” in the night sky over Dudley on December 12.

l A “mothership” spotted twice within a month in Barlaston, near Stafford.

In another report, a light was seen “travelling rapidly due south west” over Shrewsbury at precisely 6am, on January 30.

Elsewhere in Shropshire, “two extremely bright lights were seen” on the evening of August 21.

And at 8.30pm, on November 25, “three sphere-shaped, bright yellow/white lights were seen on a clear night” in Newport.

The sightings are among around 100 reported to the MoD last year from across Britain, details of which officials have released under Freedom of Information laws.

Witnesses claim to have spotted all sorts of unidentifiable objects and bizarre happenings in the skies including flashing lights, fireballs, changing colours, darting lights and glinting metal spheres – many convinced they had experienced a UFO sighting.

Two people thought they saw “an alien” outside their kitchen window in Hastings, East Sussex, while a “rotating silver pyramid” was seen in Sunderland, and pink shell-shaped objects were spotted flying across Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.