Evolution of UFO shapes, and taking a step back.

Hello all.

I've recently become more interested in the changes in UFO reports over the years. It seems that you can plot a change in UFOs. In the last 10 years people have embraced the concept of mechanical-biological hybridising in alien technologies, and shape shifting UFOs, if not completely new are coming to the fore.


But to skip back to the beginning of the 20th Century and Kenneth Arnold's sighting, it seems that UFOs were much different back then. Kenneth's UFOs were not saucer shaped but more akin to streamlined aircraft. Contemporary photographs prove this:




This shape with the scalloped rear end is close to what Arnold reported, and was also reported elsewhere. Infact one train of thought regarding Roswell alludes to this shape of craft crashing there.

The popular (dis)information regarding Flying Saucers is that such shapes only started being sighted after the frantic reporting of Arnold's sightings and that memorably mangled quote from Arnold and the motion of the craft he saw.

So therefore you could write off Billy Meier, Adamski, Villa and Walters in a heartbeat if the core 'truth' behind saucers is that their very structure is the product of widespread mis-representation of Arnold's initial sighting.

I find also that Saucer photographs of a given era roughly reflect the technological and cultural advances of the time. Paul Villa's UFOs scream of the 1960s trend for chrome and chrome banding, streamlined shapes etc... Even the legs protruding from Villa's landing scout craft seem a period piece now.





My big point about taking a step back is thus; why have we not had a contactee taking such brilliant shots recently? Even if they get disproved savagely now with anybody with desktop image editting software, those earlier contactees certainly had a brace of clear UFO shots to their name.

The step back is that currently UFO footage going onto youtube shows little more than lights or sparkles. I've yet to see clear Saucer footage on youtube that is not clearly CGI. Even Adamski managed to get 8mm footage of a UFO somehow.


I'm not discreditting those guys automatically, I'm just saying that;

1) Their UFOs look a bit dated now, real or not, and seem to too-readily reflect the technology of the day.

2) Everybody now has a camera and/or camera phone atleast, yet less clear UFO footage seems to come to the fore.

I'm not pushing any agendas here, I'm trying turn these things over in my mind the best I can.

Differnt races, different technologies?

Holding onto belief for a second, the closer races get a first look in, then pass the info onto other races further way, who must therefore have better tech to get here for a look, otherwise they wouldn't.

e.g race 12 light years away finds us, passes the info to a race 12light years from them the other way, and that race has to come 24ly for a look etc etc. So the 5th race to get the info must have right Mutha F tech to get here.

BTW, that second photo always strikes me as so "bad" that it has to be real. There must be one helluva electrostatic charge on that thing that it needs landing gear that long.

UFO's are a mixed bag in my opinion.

Most are probably human-made, which is why their technology seems to evolve before our eyes, especially since after WWII.

The problem with this idea is that it means there is a huge "conspiracy", and that technology is probably far ahead of what we're told. The implications of such a thing could be huge.

Most people who are interested in UFO's seem to prefer a more simple "conspiracy of silence", with the assumption that there are ET's (from "out there"), and the governments are just hiding the fact. Some may go a bit further, and say there is collusion as well.

The truth is that when one looks at more of the whole picture, you find that the more "unexplainable" UFO's more typically are associated with the OCCULT, which some famous Ufologists were even surprised to find, after decades of research.

Trying to understand what this means is another story.

Some may prefer to believe that there are other races on (or beneath) the Earth, or in the oceans. Certainly a fair amount of UFO flight behavior correlates with mountains, and oceans, where they seem to disappear beneath the waves, or into the mountains.

Could there be "others" living on this planet, that have gone officially undetected?

The polar regions seem to be mostly off-limits. Why? Why is it impossible to get a complete satellite picture of the North Pole? This is discussed at length in other threads, such as those dealing with the Hollow Earth Theory, so I don't want to dwell on it.

LOTS of possibilities.

What's the most basic thing we can take away from it all?

I believe it's this: Things are not what they seem. Whatever the reality may be, it is being kept from us, for whatever reason.

S & F from me. These discussions should be kept alive. The common man is continually jerked around, and kept in the dark, on a massive scale, in my opinion, and there is an elite with an agenda. Why they refuse to let us in on the secret could have everything to do with plans they have, that would not play well with the population.

Hmmm. Doesn't sound too good, does it?

JR

I have always thought that too, that UFO pictures have often reflected the time period of the day they were taken. Unless the UFOs are man made or mirroring our fashion and/or technology advances, they are probably hoaxes.

I would love for any clear and believable picture of an ET craft to surface, though I haven't seen a believable one yet. Anyway, nice thread. S&F!

--airspoon

We come out with new makes and models of cars each year. We come out with new models makes and models of air planes each year. So why not new makes and models of UFOs?

Real or fake you are going to see new makes and models as time goes on. That is just the way it is.

I believe the contactees of that era were what the Steven Greer, and others like him, are to us now. Most were charlatans looking for attention and a quick buck and some were, knowingly, and some maybe unknowingly, used by intelligence in disinformation and counterintelligence operations, for who knows whatever reasons.

Did any of them, however, present any legitimate information? I can't obviously reject the possibility, but I'm inclined to say no.

I think your point that the footage and photos of the craft these contactees were seeing or interacting with seems to reflect the aesthetics of the time is, I think, indicative of the legitimacy — or lack of in this case — of their claims of contact with alien beings.

You ask why don't the ‘contactees’ of modern times present ‘clear’ footage like Adamski or Meier did? Well, I think people nowadays aren't as gullible, we're much more aware of hoaxes and we're all, in some way or another, exposed to what can be done with CGI. Maybe the analog technology of those days also allowed for more ‘seemingly real’ fakes to fool the untrained and not as informed people.

The reason why we now have footage of only lights in the sky is, in my opinion, because people want to see something and they can believe these lights represent whatever they want them to. Or — assuming there's a non-human source behind some UFOs — then perhaps lights in the sky is the best we can capture right now of a yet to be understood phenomenon.

I think there's something worthy of scientific investigation behind the UFO phenomenon, what that something is I have no idea, but whatever it might be, I don't think the contactee movement, or the disclosure crowd for that matter, has anything relevant or insightful to tell us about the phenomenon itself.

The only thing the contactees and the disclosure people can give us is a window into human behavior — the hopes, fears, aspirations, the belief systems — but that, in my opinion, has nothing to do with the phenomenon and I don't see how it can get us any closer to the answers, whatever they may be.

[edit on 29-8-2010 by Spangler]

Originally posted by fixer1967
We come out with new makes and models of cars each year. We come out with new models makes and models of air planes each year. So why not new makes and models of UFOs?

Real or fake you are going to see new makes and models as time goes on. That is just the way it is.

"Years" are purely the product of our attempts to nail hard maths onto a pretty fluid concept. We base our years on our rotation with the Sun, but even that does not properly fit and we need to add leap years... just saying!

A very human-centric look at things. I always laugh at Abductees who claim their aliens came from "the constellation x". Constellations only appear thus from our vantage point.

Here is a reasonable sample of reported sightings in Europe dating from the fifties to the year 2000, they are drawings unfortunately but may or may not give some credence to your thoughts, personally based on these reports I think the shapes have not necessarily followed current assumptions in technology, however they are only anecdotal and you have to make your own mind up as to their accuracy.

Originally posted by Manolete

Originally posted by fixer1967
We come out with new makes and models of cars each year. We come out with new models makes and models of air planes each year. So why not new makes and models of UFOs?

Real or fake you are going to see new makes and models as time goes on. That is just the way it is.

"Years" are purely the product of our attempts to nail hard maths onto a pretty fluid concept. We base our years on our rotation with the Sun, but even that does not properly fit and we need to add leap years... just saying!

A very human-centric look at things. I always laugh at Abductees who claim their aliens came from "the constellation x". Constellations only appear thus from our vantage point.

So you are saying that an alien would be flying the exact same make and model as its great-great-grand-dad (or mother)? That when new tach comes along that they are not going to upgrade. Now that is silly. They did not get where they are now by not upgrading to the newest tech when it comes along. Our understanding of time and there's may not be the same but they are going to upgrade when given the chance. If they did not they would have never even left there own planet.

And they need to upgrade. It seems the older ones keep crashing.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by Manolete


First, per your opening statements, the 20th century started in 1900. Kenneth Arnold sighting was in 1947.

In about 1960 the U.S. Air Force publishd a poster that listed I believe it was 66 different types of UFOs that had been reported. The poster enjoyed some popularity among the UFOers and was available for purchased for some years. Those were in the days before many reports of small balls of lights or motherships.

Personally, I exclude triangles and chevrons and shiny tub ships from my list of legitimate ET UFOs. The are ours.

The general understanding among some of us is there is no limit to what type of ship we may see. The Universe harbors a lot of 'em.

Just wait 20yrs from now, the Aliens will have even more cool looking UFO's.
I heard UFO depot is building a bigger dealership in the Auriga constellation.
Still their will be vintage aliens with their flying trash can lids with classic license plates. Those clubs will always exist because those work horses were and still are the muscle crafts.

The "evolution" of UFO design that perfectly matches the time period from which it is reported has always amazed me. To me it means that the majority of them are 100% fake. I love hearing the answers people give as to why UFO design mirrors pop-culture. You really have to get creative to explain it, at the same time ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room in order to arrive at the least probable conclusion.

But, ignore the 800lb gorilla in the room is Ufology's specialty.

Originally posted by fixer1967So you are saying that an alien would be flying the exact same make and model as its great-great-grand-dad (or mother)? That when new tach comes along that they are not going to upgrade. Now that is silly. They did not get where they are now by not upgrading to the newest tech when it comes along. Our understanding of time and there's may not be the same but they are going to upgrade when given the chance. If they did not they would have never even left there own planet.

You have made your brain into a prison dude. Quit being so anthropocentric. The idea of technology is human, the idea of "great-great-great-grand-dad" is human.

The idea that using old technology is somehow wrong is human. Stop turning aliens into humans, and stop expecting their behaviour to match ours.

Afterall, has our quest for new technology benefitted the planet? We are mining ores out of third world countries at an unsustainable rate just to make all this technology. 40 human years might be 1000 years to an alien orbitting a different sun, or it might be 5 minutes to them. Can you really say?

Originally posted by Manolete
The idea that using old technology is somehow wrong is human. Stop turning aliens into humans, and stop expecting their behaviour to match ours.

Let's say the humans do chase new technology and the aliens don't. That might explain the Fermi Paradox.

Fermi Paradox

Regarding the evolution of UFO shapes, there are some clues that we do tend to take an anthropocentric view on what we see. Not only do UFOs themselves have this tendency, but so do the occupants. Note the vast majority of "aliens" don't look alien (to me) but look like bipedal humanoids.

The data posted above shows the most common shape for a UFO is disc shaped. And we've known since this show came out that what we see as disc shapes, may be airplanes (starting at about 2 minutes the disc is shown to be an airplane using OLD technology):



I'm not saying all discs are airplanes, but obviously, some are.

Speaking of old versus new technology, that is one case where I have to say I prefer new technology, did you see how long it took to do that analysis, whereas today it would be what? A million times faster?

[edit on 30-8-2010 by Arbitrageur]

I get the point of your original post and tend to agree, however there is no reason to think that alien technology wouldn't have changed at least as much as ours has in the last 100 years and would probably have changed more as our rate of technological advancement seems to speed up every year.

For example

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/d614fde3e99e.jpg[/atsimg]

to

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a582ca097489.jpg[/atsimg]

or

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/622b4cea6ea1.jpg[/atsimg]

to

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0681f3d6a687.jpg[/atsimg]

reply to post by Manolete


It's a fake, it's CGI, it's a weather balloon, it's a secret military aircraft, it's swamp gas, it's too far away, it's too blurry, etc etc etc.

Of all the photos and videos out there, we can't get a census of one true UFO (as in the ET type).

So, if the photos are homemade, of course it only stands to reason that they would follow the technology of the day.

Then again, if only 5% of sightings are "unidentifiable", then it would also seem likely that only 5% of the photos are too.

The challenge is to locate the photos that are deemed most likely ET craft then compare them to the technology of the day.

The earliest known photo that I've seen was from like 1860, a full 45 years before the first heavier than air flight (Kitty Hawk). I'd say that it was well ahead of the technology of the day (then again, someone is bound to call it a hoax).

Jacques Vallee seemed to think the evolution of UFO designs was intended by "THEM" to give us a little glimpse into the future, and guide our thinking and research in that direction. I don't know.

I tend to think that since Aliens and UFOs strangely seem to depend on our perception of them for existence, then it might be the case that we (all of us) are projecting our expectations on them to be advanced -- but not so advanced we can't comprehend them. Which is not to say that they're only "imaginary." They're real enough, but our expectations, perceptions and our imaginations are a large component of their existence.

It's a thought, anyway. Very hard to test.