Lights in the Sky are highly overrated

OK. So we have another light in the sky. It moves funny “defying the laws of physics!!” It moved up, down, sideways, then splits into two or three and moves some more. It disappears and reappears. We just had another one in the “My Mum talks to aliens” thread. Of course, his Mum hasn’t ever talked to aliens; she’s talked to abductees, some of whom say they’ve talked to aliens, but don’t let that little discrepancy bother you. Everyone’s impressed with the moving lights. And we had a bunch of balloons over New York a few days ago, 150 replies later they were still a bunch if balloons, but people actually argued about it.

Now I know some of those lights in the sky really might not be airplanes or balloons or helicopters, or some crazy guy with a flashlight “defying the laws of physics!!” by moving the light in a jerky fashion. Maybe they are lights from alien spacecraft! Maybe they really are!

But where exactly are you going to go with this? What exactly does it prove? Don’t tell me that because you saw some strange lights in the sky you are now a believer in alien abductions! What does one have to do with the other? In fact, what does a light in the sky have to do with anything? Well, Okay. So it’s unidentified and it’s “flying” or, at least, it appears to be in the sky, so it might be flying. And it might represent an object, or maybe not. It’s hard to tell. So technically it might be a UFO.

Personally, it is impossible for me to look into a night sky without seeing a moving light somewhere. Unless you can corroborate those lights with something that happened on the ground, complete with multiple witnesses in different geographical areas so you can triangulate the position, you really don’t have anything. You can’t go anywhere with it. It doesn’t lead to any greater understanding. There is no “there” there.

They are just lights in the sky.

reply to post by schuyler
What is your point? That lights are lights? Yes they are lights but from where or what?

Yes most lights in the sky are earthly, but some are not, and i'm convinced of that. Care to discuss?

some crazy guy with a flashlight “defying the laws of physics!!”

Yeah... that's some flashlight.

But the point I agree with is that there's no way to actually know what the lights are therefor we should keep an open mind about such things. Obviously someone is trying hard to let us know about something, either that or someone's trolling hard in real life.

I agree with your comments that UFO "lights in the sky" are very over-rated. I set out to list some "classic" good Australian UFO reports of the not LITS kind. I turned up the following. (Originally posted at ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com...)

I divided the list into two. Cases I had read about but which occurred before my UFO interest started i.e. up to and including 1967; and from 1968 onwards where I had personal knowledge of the events.

First list

1. 31 August 1954 Goulburn, New South Wales

An Australian Navy pilot sighted two objects near his aircraft, with ground based radar confirmation.

2. 26 & 27 June 1959 Boianai, Papua

Multiwitness sighting of UFO and its crew.

3. 4 October 1960 Cressy, Tasmania

An Anglican priest and his wife reported sighting a cigar shaped object, plus multiple smaller "saucers."

4. 15 February 1963 Moe, Victoria

A close range observation of an unusual object, by a farmer.

5. 24 May 1965 Eton Ridge, Queensland

Three men sighted a "machine" near the ground.

6. 19 January 1966 Euramo, Queensland

A "saucer" was seen rising from a swamp, and a flattened area of reeds on a lagoon was found.

7. 6 April 1966 Westall, Victoria

Dozens of students and a teacher, saw an object pass over their school. An associated ground trace was reported.

Second list

1. 22 August 1968 Zanthus, Western Australia

The crew of an aircraft reported sighting a formation of objects.

2. 8 August 1971 Kadina, South Australia

A man reported his car engine and lights were affected by a nearby oval shaped object.

3. July 1972 and subsequently Frankston, Victoria

A woman reported encounters with an object, which affected the car; and follow-up events.

4. 30 November 1972 Murray Bridge, South Australia

A motor mechanic's vehicle was affected by a nearby diamond shaped object.

5. 4 February 1973 Kimba, South Australia

Four people in three separate vehicles saw an orange rectangle in a clearing, with an entity present.

6. 30 September 1980 Rosedale, Victoria

After a very close encounter with a dome shaped object, an unusual trace was discovered.

7. 25 July 1988 Jamestown, South Australia

A depression in the ground was found by police after a farmer reported a close encounter.

reply to post by schuyler


Great thread. I've been barking up that tree for a long while now (see my signature).

Unfortunately, one random light in the sky will create way more fervor that "it's proof" than the rational discussion about how useful that light actually is in determining the reality of alien visitation.

Originally posted by XxRagingxPandaxX
reply to post by schuyler

 

What is your point? That lights are lights? Yes they are lights but from where or what?

Yes most lights in the sky are earthly, but some are not, and i'm convinced of that. Care to discuss?

Most lights in the sky are not earthly like stars and planets, meteors, etc. According to Hynek, Pilots don't make real good witnesses regarding the unearthly objects and may report them as UFOs:

www.msnbc.msn.com...

One of the world’s first genuine UFO investigators, Allen Hynek of Northwestern University, came to believe that some encounters really could have otherworldly causes. But he was much more skeptical about the reliability of pilot testimony. "Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses," he wrote in "The Hynek UFO Report."

Hynek found that the best class of witnesses had a 50 percent misperception rate, but that pilots had a much higher rate: 88 percent for military pilots, 89 percent for commercial pilots, the worst of all categories listed. Pilots could be counted on for an accurate identification of familiar objects — such as aircraft and ground structures — but Hynek said "it should come as no surprise that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects."

Even president Jimmy Carter reported Venus as a UFO (before he was president)!

To the OP, I agree completely, a light in the sky is not a useful sighting.

Whats even worse are the infrared videos at night showing birds and bats.

my thought is you have to look at it on both sides, Get your science fiction cap and science cap on for a minute.
Watching lights floating way up in the sky is pretty boring, heck lightning is more exhilarating to watch, at least for me it is.
Now if the light was 3 feet away from my face, circled around me and moved through a wooded forest that would be cool and much more exciting than lightning.
But a light way up in the sky, does nothing for my curiosity other than oh, a light in the sky moving kind of weird.

Now I take this boring light in the sky,
What could it be?
Some sort of plasma ball lighting, a natural occurrence of some sort we just don't know about?
But if it was nature, It wouldn't move like it was intelligent would it? Does lightning move like it knows something or wants to observe something? To me, lightning just moves do to an electrical discharge connecting positive and negative electrons, there is no intelligence associated other than physics. But I could be wrong.

Now let's look at these lights, are they intelligent? I don't know?
If we are in the silicon stage of computers, and we are working on the next stage of quantum computers, maybe after that it could be photon computers?
So an intelligent life creates a photon computer as a prob sends it to my tree top and collects data for what ever reason.
That's a possibility isn't it? I think it's possible, but probable I don't know because I'm a skeptic.

now I know that in a couple decades computers will exceed human intelligence and that's before quantum computing and we haven't even fathomed photon computing yet.

So in the future we have a prob smarter than human intelligence, so is the prob just a data collector or has it become an entity of something?
It doesn't have eyes, or ears, nor tongue for taste and a nose to smell so how can it be anything but a prob at most?
It looks like It can reproduce itself by splitting?
If these are alien probs or aliens for that matter why doesn't it behave like what we know, populate until it becomes overpopulated? We should see a million of these lights. They should appear all over the sky, in a few seconds it could analysis the earth and know everything it needs to know even when the earth becomes non existent.

How would the boring light transmit data, and why would it want data? It may not want data at all.
It could split apart collect data, form back to one big ball and then disappear? Ok then did it do it's job?
How did it transmit and to where would it transmit the data it may have collected?

The next thing that pops in my head,
Why would a monkey rather eat a banana, climb and play in trees, rather than sit in a nice comfortable home and watch TV?
Why is my TV and computer boring to the monkey? if it is too complex then maybe it is boring?
So is that why the lights are fascinating up to a point for me?
I mean I want to see a Big Friggin UFO! not a little light in the sky! Why is my mind excited about the Big F'n UFO and not the little light? Maybe like the Monkey it could be too complicated therefor boring?

I don't know, I still go back to the light and what is it?
Everything I know that has some sort of intelligence, lives off of instinct.
The more complex, the more tools the creature is given like senses. Then us humans can make tools to enhance our senses.
In the end what becomes of us? Do we just shut off? Everything we did, Everyone we love and who loved us is just gone? or do we transmit to somewhere else?

a boring light in the sky can become a deep thought. Even if we are lucky to live a 100 years life is too short.

Originally posted by mysteryskeptic
Now let's look at these lights, are they intelligent? I don't know

Of course a lot of lights are planes, helicopters, RC planes and other toys, and all of those are intelligently controlled. People fail to recognize them as such because at a great enough distance you may just see a light and the features of the object (other than the light) aren't visible at a great distance.

Some are Chinese lanterns (even flares attached to balloons) and they aren't intelligently controlled, but some people look at them and think they are, because they can get moved around independently by little eddy currents in the wind.

And if you're driving along in your car looking at Venus out the side window, it will follow you, making you think it's intelligently controlled, but it's not (and it's not really following you, but it looks like it is).

Sure the lights have to mean something.
Light is something.
So they should be explained.