Why UFOs "as big as a football field?"

originally posted by: draknoir2
Personally I prefer analog gauges.

My guess is that over the next several decades our own technology will develop to the point where we will be able to project a clear image of something (including airplane gauges) directly into our brains, superimposing it on our fields of vision, completely eliminating the need for any kind of clunky gauges to monitor anything. I figure the aliens would have at least that level of technology, flying around between planets and all.

I'd actually like to know if anyone outside the USA has reported a UFO the size of "a football field".

In the rest of the world where football is considered to be a game played 'mainly with the foot' our UFOs are not as big and supersized. I am joking a little bit. But the giant UFOs do seem to be something that Americans tend to report.

Heh! Not just the term, but UFO's that are apparently the size of football fields - is a very American thing. As someone else mentioned in Finland there's no real claims of seeing/describing "giant" UFO's. In UK here we rarely get anyone talking about a UFO of any considerable size. In fact, from what I've seen - football field sized UFO's just don't seem to be many places other than over U.S. soil. As we know it's a cultural way of saying "a huge UFO", I think there is a good question behind it - but it's more a question of why they are reported in America and not a lot of other places globally.

So why is that? Why are the big UFO's interested in America and not really anywhere else? Someone elses theory of the football field sized UFO's being cargo transporters or something... Perhaps they unload their cargo into secret American bases? And the smaller ones seen in other parts of the world are just scouts?

Whatever it is - they seem to have a prevailant interest in America - as history records (through eye witnesses etc) but look around the rest of the globe and you'll find mostly glowing orbs, small craft and only very occasional mentions of "huge" UFO's. A football field sized UFO didn't land in Rendlesham, England. A probing UFO that poked and injured a man in Scotland wasn't a mile wide. UFO's that stopped a football game in Italy(?) were only of moderate size. The Hessleden lights are exactly that - lights. The Jersey pilot UFO was apparently 15 miles long which is the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Valentich did not report anything beyond a small craft. But now let's throw America into the mix and then you get "huge" as part of the encounter. WHY?

Could that part also be cultural. Bit like small dick huge car, kind of thing? Compensating, over-embelleshing? If not, you Americans need to figure out why your country is the one being visited/invaded by such huge craft...!

Note to self: Did "football field" sized UFO's begin to spring up in reports before/after Eisenhower's supposed meeting with E.T.?

a reply to: audenine

I think you have a lack of skill when it comes to basic thought process. "as big a s a football field" is a term that relates to size and size of something most people can picture and relate to seeing as football is popular event witha field that is measured out. Everybody can picture a football field sized object and its one object not many, far more clearly that saying something like "it was as big as 72 cars"

I dont understand how with your background you couldn't figure this out!!

ITs a saying that people can relate too and a saying that has caught on for practical purpose!!

a reply to: projectbane

Im not sure you put much effort into that post. The point you are missing is that its kind of becoming a fad to exaggerate your UFO sighting. Used to be a one seater was good enough but now it has to be these giant "football field" sized ones. Nevermind that you cant really tell how big something is with no reference points. I mean unless it actually landed in a football field, what is this size based on? Most likely your imagination since people imagine what they are seeing is the same thing that the guy said was as big as a football field. Its not that hard.

1.) A football field is one of the larger structures that the average person is exposed to on a regular basis (see. caveat #2)
2.) Other familiar large structures, such as a skyscraper, would not make a good reference because it is oriented in the wrong direction.
a. We can't judge the distance of something going up as easily as we can something going across due to perspective
b. A skyscraper is in the wrong orientation with respect to a potential sighting (our view from the ground would either be the bottom or profile of the object which translates to length and width)
3.) An American Football Field has dimensions 360 feet x 160 feet (measured end-zone to end-zone) this is a ratio of 2.25 of length to width for the rectangle.
a. This is important because one dimension is prominent and therefore is likely visualized as a ruler by the listener. In other words, it is reduced to 1 axis as opposed to an area.
b. If viewed as an area, a skinny rectangle, approximates the structure of our existing known aircraft as opposed to a circle or a square. Perhaps this seems more "aircraft-like".
4.) A football field viewed by a spectator in a stadium consists of a lot of negative space. So if we think of the entire volume of the stadium instead of just the area of the playing field it is composed of mostly air. This might be reminiscent of a sighting which has the same "volume" with the object of interest as a 2d-plane (mathematical plane) in the sky. This is an inverted football stadium, so to speak. In both cases we have a "spectator" to the events (a game and sighting).

Best of luck to you.

originally posted by: audenine
a reply to: skunkape23

That is fascinating because I no sooner know offhand how big a Walmart is (plus parking lot?) than a football field, though that is the way I described what I saw!

I wonder if research might reveal that the "as big as a football field" originated with a man and is most often used by men who are avid football fans. The description "as big as a house" would probably not be so gender-specific and refera to a different size. In the reports I've read, "as big as a football field" referred only to size not shape. How many things of that size come to mind other than football fields and a Wal-Mart? Not many.

Because Football fields in themselves are large. Especially NFL stadiums. They are actually a decent thing to compare size to.

a reply to: mirageman

In other countries, they just say "Mile Wide" or "Mile Long" etc.

The English Channel UFO Incident

Plenty of Large UFO sightings elsewhere.

a reply to: markymint

I just watched a documentary about the black triangle sightings in UK. Guess what were the terms that the witnesses used to describe the size of those things? "Football field", "three quarters of a football pitch" and so on. The only exception was someone who saw multiple of the craft and described them as being something like twice the size of a single seater plane.

I never said that there haven't been any giant UFOs seen here in Finland. I cannot think off-hand of many cases but I remember one where a man saw something he described as "like a flying apartement building". Basicaly a huge rectangular block. I don't know how that compares to a football field since I'm not a sports person myself.

The most credible triangle sighting here I've read about was a small one though. Observer was an amateur astronomer and estimated that each side of the triangle was 6-10 meters and that i was flying about 50 meters above ground. So not very big at all.

originally posted by: Blue Shift

originally posted by: draknoir2
Personally I prefer analog gauges.

My guess is that over the next several decades our own technology will develop to the point where we will be able to project a clear image of something (including airplane gauges) directly into our brains, superimposing it on our fields of vision, completely eliminating the need for any kind of clunky gauges to monitor anything. I figure the aliens would have at least that level of technology, flying around between planets and all.

Google glass.

The aliens have probably long since figured out that wearing that in public is a good way to get kicked in the cantina.

Whatever these entities are, they are capable of building craft that are beyond our scale of comprehension in size both large and small. As others have posited, a football field is a convenient reference no matter which form of "football field" one is referring. It's also very difficult to accurately estimate the true size of an object w/o knowing the altitude and having some form of reference to compare it.

I once saw a massive boomerang fly directly over my head. Instinctively, I held out my thumb as an angular reference as it streaked across the sky covering a patch of sky in 3 to 4 seconds that a commercial jet liner covers in about 30 seconds. The whole craft was covered in a greenish glow that had both bright red and reddish brown colors sheeting back and forth across its span. It disappeared behind a cloud bank whereupon I lost view of the craft.

Now, the cloud ceiling that night was at 7200 feet so I had a lower altitude bound. The reddish brown color I saw is an emission mode of excited Oxygen that does not occur below about 90Km altitude as higher atmospheric density causes it to be quenched if it encounters another Oxygen molecule. It appears reddish brown at that wavelength because it's very near the far red that our eyes can perceive. The craft also was very distorted as if there was a lot of air between me and it. Imagine those videos of the space shuttle returning to land when it was at high altitude for a reference to that distortion quality. I took these two lines of evidence to assume I was dealing with a high altitude case versus the lower altitude one.

Anyway, some basic trigonometric calculations made easy as I had some pine trees to calculate angles led to a width on the order 1 to 1.25 miles for the high altitude case which I deem most likely due to seeing that far red excited Oxygen emission. The low altitude case would yield a width of around 200 to 1200 feet based on it being at or near the scattered clouds level of flight. This thing was much higher than the cloud deck.

In either case, it was exceeding supersonic speeds with the classic no sonic boom observed. Of course, I had no measuring tape to measure the width and had to make some assumptions prone to various errors, but this craft was massive from what I observed and calculated. I like to think of it in terms of like 10 to 12 aircraft carriers of volume.

a reply to: pdawg67

This is what I was getting at earlier in the thread. Whether you've pulled that description out of your ass, or it happened as described, you've included clear details that can help others who try and identify what you say you saw. Nowadays, MUFON and NUFORC receive reports most days that are devoid of any useful detail beyond categorising shapes.

I had a sighting some years ago, with company. Instead of jumping to conclusions, I worked out the possible altitude by identifying the cloud-type. It was easy to work out the time it took to cross the sky by reenacting the reactions and comments we made - came up with an outside figure of ~4 seconds. Then I spent some time reading amateur astronomy sites to see if there were any similar reports. Looked at academic astronomy sites to see if there exist any historically similar reports. The singular issue wasn't so much the fact that it travelled faster than anything we build because it could have been a meteor. No, the issue was that it zig-zagged and that ruled out anything of ours as well as passing meteors. IMO, it also tends to rule out anything intelligent too.

I know it's easier said than done...wouldn't it be much better if more people would analyse their own sightings before reporting them anywhere? Maybe the historical databases would be cleaner and more cases would be resolved.

a reply to: audenine


That phrase was coined by a football player that saw a UFO about that size. LOL Its caught on for two reasons. One its a measure that most can grasp and another is that folks believe that those guys play a sort of field hockey inside those things.

Although I know for a fact that the guy that coined that phrase didn't actually see anyone playing a field sport inside that deal.

a reply to: Kandinsky

Thanks Kadinsky. Unfortunately, all you have is the word of some random guy on the Internet, but it really did happen as described. If I were able to have obtained a video, it would have been mind blowing. I'm still haunted by seeing it even 3.5 years later.

I have a scientific background so I am a trained observer of fact. I dug into it very, very hard. It was so in your face that there was no doubt at all. The first thing I said to myself after the experience was "I see green. I see red. I see reddish brown". These would be excited Oxygen, excited Oxygen or possibly Nitrogen(Bright Red), and excited Oxygen at low pressure. I've often wondered if the sheeting action of the other glows superimposed over the green Oxygen glow would be an indication of some type of force modulation indicating a flight control system.

The main hole in my excited Oxygen high altitude case is if the craft were capable of creating a vacuum near its surface that would allow that particular phosphorescent emission mode to occur. I still had a lot of atmospheric distortion though so I'm still going with high altitude. The MUFON case number is 28090. I included a crude drawing of it. It was very much shaped like the traditional Australian throwing boomerang. I reported it to MUFON the next day and have had years to process it. I still have my handwritten notes on it.

a reply to: pdawg67

You might enjoy reading Paul Hill's 'UFO Enigma.' 'Unconventional Flying Objects - a scientific analysis.' He worked at NASA at one time and wrote a book discussing/speculating that the spectra of UFO lights were related to propulsion. If I can find it, there's a good table that explains his hypothesis and I'll post it up later. It's similar to yours

ETA - basic summary 'Illumination' by Paul R. Hill

a reply to: Kandinsky

I'd love to read it. I've always been fascinated by UFO emission spectra as they indicate something about the phenomena.

After reviewing my notes, I think I may have switched molecules that created the reddish brown emission at high altitude as it should have been Oxygen. I was writing this from memory so I'm going to refer to my research notes to correct my prior posts. In either case, my point is still valid if what I observed is true. It's not like one can have a spectrometer at the ready for a once in a lifetime event.

I've read stories saying that they saw a ufo the size of the moon.

I don't remember the tides getting any higher.

a reply to: AboveBoard

Ours not to reason why...

a reply to: Specimen

I've read reports where people compare the size of an UFO to full moon...and I'm pretty sure they didn't mean it was literaly as big as moon. Just that it looked about the size of it from their position.