Yukon UFO "Mothership" Incident: December 11th, 1996

Here's a detailed study connecting the 1996 Yukon 'giant UFO' reports to a simultaneous reentry of a spent rocket booster stage through the same skies at the same time in the identical direction as the eyewitness reports.

This respected international website has often discussed satellite reentries, see satobs.org... and especially the November 5, 199o northern France ‘UFO fleet’ [www.ufonet.nl...].

Old Unknown Identified as a Re-entry
From: Ted Molczan ([email protected])
Date: Mon Apr 30 2012 - 02:24:47 UTC
satobs.org...

The estimated time of decay of 1996-069B / 24671 is strongly consistent with the time and location of the Yukon sightings of 1996 Dec 12 UTC, as well as the observed trajectory and visual appearance, after allowing for fading of memory with time, and the misperception that frequently attends this type of phenomenon.

Experienced sky watchers on SeeSat-L may find it difficult to believe that anyone could misidentify a re-entry as a spaceship, but human perception is notoriously fallible, and no one is immune. Much depends on the circumstances and personal experience. Driving through the wilderness under a pitch black sky, and suddenly faced with a slowly moving formation of brilliant lights can be awe-inspiring and even terrifying. The human mind races to make sense of the unfamiliar, drawing on experience that may be inadequate. Depth perception can play tricks, such that something 200 km away, 100 km long, and moving at 7 km/s, seems to be just 200 m away, 100 m long, and moving 7 km/h - the angular velocity is roughly the same.

WOW! I was IN THE AREA at that time when I PCSed from Alaska and drove back to NY, how did I miss this....or did I???

reply to post by JimOberg

Jim,

Many thanks for the link to Molczan's fine piece of work.

So I was on the right track after all - see my previous posts on Cosmos 2335.

Does Jasek now accept this analysis? He ought to.

Molczan's demonstration of a prosaic explanation for the December 1996 Yukon sighting raises many interesting points, as you correctly point out. And it highlights the lack of a prosaic explanation for the July 1996 Yukon gold fields sighting, also analysed by Jasek.

www.ufoevidence.org...

Cheers.

reply to post by Lowneck


The time span is all wrong.
As Jim states on the previous page, a re-entry is visible for 3 minutes at most..

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot
reply to post by Lowneck

 

The time span is all wrong.
As Jim states on the previous page, a re-entry is visible for 3 minutes at most..

And all the witnesses reported seeing it cross the sky in a few minutes. What's the problem?

They REPORTED different clock times, sure -- when they thought to guess, hours later. Why should they all have remembered the SAME time even if it HAD been simultaneous? Isn't that expecfting a little too much omniscience and chrono-precision?

reply to post by JimOberg


Come on Jim..

Comparing the size of the UFO observed equal to that of a football stadium is not due to exaggeration on the witnesses’ part. On the contrary, this comparison is conservative, as it will be shown in this report that the UFO was likely much larger then a football stadium. A reasonably accurate estimate of the size of the UFO (or UFOs) was accomplished through a method based on geometry called "triangulation". Triangulation relies on the observation of an object (in this case a UFO) from different vantage points at the same time. The details of this are explained in "Calculation of UFO size". This method was employed 6 times to obtain 6 estimates for the size of the UFO. All revealed staggering results; the UFO ranged anywhere from 0.88 km (0.55 miles) to 1.8 km (1.1 miles) in length! For comparison, the Toronto Skydome stadium is 0.21 km (0.13 miles) at it’s widest point.


In the Village of Carmacks, four gentlemen (CRM1, CRM2, CRM3, CRM4) were travelling in a truck pulled over to watch a huge UFO fly slowly over the village. At one point it went behind a hill. When it came out on the other side of it, one witness recalls waiting a long time from when the leading light of the UFO appeared to when the tail end of the UFO came in to view. That's how big it was! Also in the Village of Carmacks a family of five (CRM5 through CRM9) viewed the UFO from their living room window.

Source

And do any of the sketches look like a re-entry?

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot

And do any of the sketches look like a re-entry?

Yep, they do.

Problem seems to be at your end -- you don't seem to appreciate what past witnesses have described reentries of this type to look like. Try some of those links [above] to the northern France case [1990], the tampa FL case [1999?], etc.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot

And do any of the sketches look like a re-entry?

Yep, they do.

Problem seems to be at your end -- you don't seem to appreciate what past witnesses have described reentries of this type to look like. Try some of those links [above] to the northern France case [1990], the tampa FL case [1999?], etc.

I see lots of sketches on that site, Jim. (ufobc.ca/yukon/22index) So maybe you can link to the ones you specifically think bear some resemblance to a booster re-entry? (It is your area of expertise, after all.) Because the sketches I see mostly look like giant round / domed / elliptical craft.

Also... kinda surprised you didn't nail a 15 year-old "Top Ten" UFO case as a rocket re-entry long ago, since you do seem to spend a good bit of time trying to line up such explanations. Interesting that it took a query from Ian Ridpath? (He still thinks that lights north and south "moving out fast" to the north can be explained by a lighthouse to the east, so many people have a few... uhm... "trust" issues with him. ;-)

Further to my previous post about Martin Jasek, I think we should give Jasek time to respond to Malczan's recent analysis.

Jasek is a good, science-based researcher and I predict he will accept Malczan's conclusions - if he hasn't already done so.

After all, it was Jasek's thorough research that provided the crucial data for Malczan's report.

So, working together, Jasek and Molczan have done some good science.

And of course, thanks to Jim for bringing Molczan's work to our attention.

Originally posted by Lowneck
Further to my previous post about Martin Jasek, I think we should give Jasek time to respond to Malczan's recent analysis.

Jasek is a good, science-based researcher and I predict he will accept Malczan's conclusions - if he hasn't already done so.

After all, it was Jasek's thorough research that provided the crucial data for Malczan's report.

So, working together, Jasek and Molczan have done some good science.

And of course, thanks to Jim for bringing Molczan's work to our attention.

I wouldn't count on it. The problem with Molczan's analysis is that he ignores all aspects of witness observations that directly contradict his explanation.

Lets start with the fact that none of the witnesses described the lights as "looking like meteors" with "a trailing tail of glowing plasma".

Fox4 and 5, who were nearly twice as far from the decay trajectory as PEL2, drew a much shorter object (variously estimated by Jasek as 3.95 deg, 8.44 deg and 12.8 deg), as would be expected, since the angular size varies inversely with distance.

But here Molczan totally refrains from mentioning that the witnesses FOX2 and FOX3 had much closer encounter with the UFO than FOX4 and FOX5. Whereas FOX4 and 5 at the south end of Fox Lake saw a smaller object passing lower in the sky, FOX3 saw the object pass much closer and from a different angle. He watched the object pass directly over FOX2, who was parked .36 miles north of him. The object not only "covered the sky" but he gestures high up in the sky to indicate the position of the object as it passed over FOX2. FOX2 saw the object pass directly overhead. These combined observations indicate that the object was passing low over the witnesses, not a hundred miles away, high in the sky, but less than a hundred meters above them, directly overhead!

Both FOX2 and FOX3 witnesses describe the object as being oval or elliptically shaped with lights around its broad perimeter and a bright light at the base of the object. FOX3 describes the object as having two rows of large white rectangular lights across the middle. This is consistent with the drawing by FOX4, who seems to remember more detail than FOX5. Both FOX4 and FOX5 saw the object emitting a white "search beam" which swept the ground back and forth in front of it (from the right side of the object) as it moved from left to right.

I could go on and on in noting information from the witness reports which contradict Molczan's assertions and conclusions.

I think that he is simply jumping to an unfounded conclusion that because a rocket was in the sky that night, that all the witnesses were watching the rocket when they had their encounter. Those who "believe" it is a rocket, may simply prefer to ignore any evidence which contradicts their belief, no matter how compelling that evidence is. This doesn't surprise me in the least, and is in fact quite predictable (if unfortunate) behavior.

reply to post by bluestreak53


bluestreak,

You're right, I may have been overhasty in endorsing Molczan's analysis.

As it happens, I'd been studying this case before Jim's intervention. I'd found several features supporting the kind of interpretation that Malczan and Oberg eventually made. That's why I was quick to respond to Jim's post, make my own short additional study, and thought Molczan's analysis was correct.

I still think Molczan and Oberg are right.

But I respect Jasek greatly, understand your own considered arguments, and, as I said, we must allow time for Jasek and others to come to their own conclusions.

Cheers.



.

Originally posted by bluestreak53

I think that he is simply jumping to an unfounded conclusion that because a rocket was in the sky that night, that all the witnesses were watching the rocket when they had their encounter. Those who "believe" it is a rocket, may simply prefer to ignore any evidence which contradicts their belief, no matter how compelling that evidence is. This doesn't surprise me in the least, and is in fact quite predictable (if unfortunate) behavior.

But aren't YOU ignoring ALL of the cited earlier examples of booster reentries that created, in the testimony of eyewitnesses, extremely similar perceptions?

Are you pretending there have BEEN no previous analogous reports which WERE caused by reenetries?

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by bluestreak53

I think that he is simply jumping to an unfounded conclusion that because a rocket was in the sky that night, that all the witnesses were watching the rocket when they had their encounter. Those who "believe" it is a rocket, may simply prefer to ignore any evidence which contradicts their belief, no matter how compelling that evidence is. This doesn't surprise me in the least, and is in fact quite predictable (if unfortunate) behavior.

But aren't YOU ignoring ALL of the cited earlier examples of booster reentries that created, in the testimony of eyewitnesses, extremely similar perceptions?

Are you pretending there have BEEN no previous analogous reports which WERE caused by reenetries?

No Jim. I'm not ignoring what you are calling "analogous reports". I am simply stating that a huge component of the sightings DOES NOT match the "reentering rocket" explanation and it is my opinion that the "rocket reentry" fails to explain the sightings.

Originally posted by Lowneck
reply to post by bluestreak53

 

bluestreak,

You're right, I may have been overhasty in endorsing Molczan's analysis.

As it happens, I'd been studying this case before Jim's intervention. I'd found several features supporting the kind of interpretation that Malczan and Oberg eventually made. That's why I was quick to respond to Jim's post, make my own short additional study, and thought Molczan's analysis was correct.

I still think Molczan and Oberg are right.

But I respect Jasek greatly, understand your own considered arguments, and, as I said, we must allow time for Jasek and others to come to their own conclusions.

Cheers.

Thanks for your feedback.

I think that all investigators face challenges in trying to interpret witness testimony against possible known (and usually quite mundane" explanations. Plus every investigator comes with there own biases which may determine which observations they believe, and those that they simply shrug off as "misperceptions" or "false memories" or whatever.

If an investigator has a predisposition to disbelieve any possibility that ET may possibly be visiting in their ships, then I guess this investigator is going to filter out anything which suggests "otherworldly" technology in every single case.

Ultimately, as far as the Yukon case is concerned, "I don't know - I wasn't there". But I still think it makes for an interesting case - much more interesting than most since there are many witnesses describing something which sounds quite anomalous - a huge "craft" with bands of huge rectangular lights, and a dome covered in smaller, fainter lights. A craft emitting "search beams", sweeping the landscape - beams that are clearly visible due to the ice crystals in the air (anyone familiar with these weather conditions knows how ice crystals reflect light).

We can't know with certainty what the witnesses saw that night, but I think it is highly pretentious for anyone to state that they have "BUSTED" an investigation - and it shows a certain level of disrespect of the witnesses and investigator to make such over-inflated proclamation.

Originally posted by bluestreak53
We can't know with certainty what the witnesses saw that night, but I think it is highly pretentious for anyone to state that they have "BUSTED" an investigation - and it shows a certain level of disrespect of the witnesses and investigator to make such over-inflated proclamation.

I think this is why ufo research has gotten nowhere in half a century -- because well-meaning people conflate misperceiving a visual stimulus with doubts about intelligence, sanity or honesty -- instead of being a normal aspect of the perceptual process that has major evolutionary advantages. And when you call up 'ego defense' as your main argument for accuracy of interpretation of really weird stuff, then all rational discussion ends. Was that your intention?

Strictly logically speaking, it's perfectly possible for two very unusual events to happen at the same approximate time and same approximate place. And the natural human tendency is to link the two events, and it may be wrong to do that. Unfortunately, we can't go back in time (yet) or get inside someone's head and record what they perceived with their eyes.

So, what can we do? Allow for a reasonable probability that the two events are linked, and that people don't always interpret what they see correctly? Or continue to let the whole event remain an "unknown," and wait for additional information to turn up?

I guess it's a personal preference.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by bluestreak53
We can't know with certainty what the witnesses saw that night, but I think it is highly pretentious for anyone to state that they have "BUSTED" an investigation - and it shows a certain level of disrespect of the witnesses and investigator to make such over-inflated proclamation.

I think this is why ufo research has gotten nowhere in half a century -- because well-meaning people conflate misperceiving a visual stimulus with doubts about intelligence, sanity or honesty -- instead of being a normal aspect of the perceptual process that has major evolutionary advantages. And when you call up 'ego defense' as your main argument for accuracy of interpretation of really weird stuff, then all rational discussion ends. Was that your intention?

Huh? You are (once again) reading a completely different meaning into my statement from what I actually said.
I didn't make the argument you suggest - so, "No, Jim, that was not my intention."

And to be more precise, my reaction to the Thread topic was, "Busted"?? So where is the crack house? And so who appointed YOU to be our SWAT team anyways??? (this refers to another thread on the Yukon Giant UFO for those who are now genuinely confused)

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by UKWO1Phot
reply to post by Lowneck

 

The time span is all wrong.
As Jim states on the previous page, a re-entry is visible for 3 minutes at most..

And all the witnesses reported seeing it cross the sky in a few minutes. What's the problem?

You're the problem Jim. You keep ignoring that the sightings spanned 3 hours.

I hope someday you see a UFO and come here to report it. Then we can tell you what a #ty witness you are, and that you must have had some gunk in your eye, your memory has faded over time, and what you saw was just the moon.

Originally posted by Blue Shift
Strictly logically speaking, it's perfectly possible for two very unusual events to happen at the same approximate time and same approximate place. And the natural human tendency is to link the two events, and it may be wrong to do that. Unfortunately, we can't go back in time (yet) or get inside someone's head and record what they perceived with their eyes.

So, what can we do? Allow for a reasonable probability that the two events are linked, and that people don't always interpret what they see correctly? Or continue to let the whole event remain an "unknown," and wait for additional information to turn up?

I guess it's a personal preference.

Hi Blue Shift.

I enjoy reading your posts and agree with much that you say.
But first I must make a point that the fact that a rocket is in the sky does not automatically suggest a "solution" to the anomalous reports anymore than discovery that Venus was in the sky. You must look at, and analyse all the data to determine if there is a genuine connection between the two.It is not just a question of probability, but of evaluating "evidence".

I know your frustration and I feel for you. But ask yourself, "would I be better off if I REALLY knew if aliens are visiting this planet?".

Maybe, maybe not. The guy who stood watching as the "craft" flew over witness FOX2, wrote this about a month after his encounter:

"It was like I had this overpowering sense of loss... Like that was it???!! A close encounter but not of the third kind. No missing time line, no beaming me up, no probing, no implants, no extraterrestrial abduction, no glimpse of other worlds or of other beings, no nothing but just clear silence. Just a memory. Like ships that pass in the night"

What if we have that day when we find out that "yes, the aliens are visiting our planet". What happens under all the subsequent scenarios of that discovery, if:

1) They tell us that we have failed our "test" as a species, and they will not "rescue us" from the mess we have created on this planet?
2) They tell us that "yes, we have the secret to unlimited renewable energy, but they have determined it is too risky to give us that secret?
3) They simply pity us for our delusions and tendencies to place ourselves as "more important" than every other species in the cosmos?
4) Any other similar scenario,

Its possible that our "first day of contact" might be the most "disappointing day of our lives" under any of these scenarios. So although I think we all do genuinely want to know the truth, it is at least possible, that "the truth" might not be what we were hoping to hear.

Originally posted by bluestreak53
"It was like I had this overpowering sense of loss... Like that was it???!! A close encounter but not of the third kind. No missing time line, no beaming me up, no probing, no implants, no extraterrestrial abduction, no glimpse of other worlds or of other beings, no nothing but just clear silence. Just a memory. Like ships that pass in the night"

I think that shows a problem with some witnesses in UFO cases: they are already expecting something to happen, so they are predisposed to see something and are not completely unbiased.