"Top Ten" UFO Case - Yukon, Canada, 1996 - BUSTED!?

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets
reply to post by cripmeister

 

You're looking at the data selectively again. And that was the problem here to begin with.

I think the problem here is how we view the outliers. Good observational data tends to be short and concise, bad data on the other hand tends to be the opposite. I see that here with regards to the outliers, this leads me to believe that they are observational errors in Jaseks data. Their drawings seem to substantiate this also.

If you really want to get into some data, cripmeister, take a look at the various witness locations, and use the Zimmer and Molczan numbers to determine what would be visible from where, and when. I think you'll be surprised.....

I am working on that right now.

Originally posted by cripmeister
I think the problem here is how we view the outliers. Good observational data tends to be short and concise, bad data on the other hand tends to be the opposite. I see that here with regards to the outliers, this leads me to believe that they are observational errors in Jaseks data. Their drawings seem to substantiate this also.

You may be right. Who knows? As I said, I'm uncomfortable with several bits of the witness reports. I'm not willing to just throw everything out though. What's critically important, before we even begin analyzing witness reliability and credibility, is whether this re-entry could have even been visible from some witness locations. How could it possibly have been the stimulus for a UFO report if the piece of the sky in which it was occurring could not have been visible?

I am working on that right now.

Excellent! Let us know what you find.

Just as a prelude to where this may be going, and because seeing it is of course much more effective than having to imagine it, I'll first put this out there:


(Note that the pic is not of the Yukon. It's from Stellarium. I can't see a way to get an azimuthal grid into Google Earth in the way that's needed, which would be extremely illuminating. Still working on that.)

One big problem with respect to the Fox Lake witnesses is the horizon. Both the theoretical one, and the one actually visible from various locations in the Yukon. Because, for the southern-most Fox Lake witnesses, the re-entering rocket would not have ever been above ~8 degrees. (The blue line in the image.) And it would have been above the red line, 5 degrees, for perhaps 80-90 seconds... if the terrain were perfectly flat, i.e., if floating on the ocean.

The above introduces several problems. The most significant is that most of this area of sky (under ~5 degrees) would be totally obscured in this area of the Yukon. There are hills, mountains and trees everywhere, and keep in mind that a row of trees that's a mere 10ft high and 100 ft. away from you would block out almost 6 degrees of that sky. Even a distant mountain range can easily occupy 3-5 degrees, and they're all over the place. This geometry -- especially after considering that we need significant vertical room to accommodate any apparent 'height' of the object -- should bother anyone who has just taken it on word that this re-entry could have been the ONLY stimulus at play here. It might've been, but that needs to be established, not just assumed, because none of us can see through our horizon.

Originally posted by FireMoon
The best thing that could happen to Ufology would be for You Shaeffer, Greer, Friedman and a few others to just shut the hell up for for 5 years and not appear on the radio or the TV for that period.

Who is this 'Shaeffer' you keep referring to? Do you deliberate misspell his name just to show personal contempt?

Lots of people have wanted me to 'shut up', so you're in good company. They have included the Soviet government, the Russian mafia, NASA managers who screwed up flight safety, loony left and loony right conspiracy nuts, most recently the Pyongyang regime and its 'peaceful' rocket launch, and simlar evidence-challenged advocates who can't argue rationally so appeal for sympathy from the easily confused, and for exemption from dissent.

reply to post by JimOberg


Ahh Jim, me lil scutter, how wonderful it must be to have spent a life being able to deliberately misunderstand people for a living. I didn't ask you to shut up on here and you know that, however stung by the truth that you simply do not contribute to the vast majority of threads about those cases, that still baffle people I can perfectly understand why you had to try and "get smart". My dad was a journalist, the down side of that for me, as a typical kid was, it took him about 30 seconds to spot when I was avoiding the subject. The upside of that was, when you have it done to you from the moment you can speak coherently, then you become pretty damn good at spotting it with others and the deflection and obfuscations people employ in order to try and wriggle out of answering a question they are directly asked.

Now you obfuscating lil minx, you know know exactly what I was saying. You and your lil clique of "UFO celebs" should quit for a few years and give everyone a rest and others a chance to have their mugs on TV or actually quit dancing around playing silly asses and go toe to toe with each other live, about the "difficult" cases you and your "pen friend" sic, spend most of your lives avoiding cos , that's actually what the people want.

We are frankly, sick to death of videos always taking each sides views uncritically or being utterly biased towards either side, be it pro or con. What the public wants is to hear you live unscripted going head to head over say.."Shag Harbour" or the multiple witness sighting, on both land and sea, from "Operation Mainbrace".

Till that happens and to the best of my knowledge, Stanton and few others are only too happy to "get it on" which means..... It;'s you and your pen friend who are dragging your heels about it. Oh and yes, having been asked to do a couple of TV shows, I also know about the bits people don't hear about about, how certain celebs from both sides of the argument have it written into their contracts that certain subjects and incidents cannot be brought up in the show. Not that, before you start another epic about my delusional state, I'm accusing you personally of that however, my non appearance on TV was, in part, due to refusing point blank to agree to such clauses in my own contract.

I personally, enjoy many of your posts on here as they do explain to the uninitiated, many of the so called "sightings" seen from space. However my lil scutter, don't for one minute assume I'm not wise to what you subjects don't take on and, in the end, you don't discover anything of true worth, without taking on the cases that don't suit your own prejudices. That you spend half your time on here, seemingly in a desperate quest for "proper analysis" and yet, where there is truly good evidence you are almost 100% noticeable by your absence has been noted by others as well. .

Oh and "tow the line" us damn Brits eh? and our Naval traditions, as far as i know, it comes from the days of yore when fleets encountered fog or poor visibility conditions they would use the line head formation with a tow rope between each vessel , hence "tow the line" then again I might take you a tad more seriously about my use of language when you can both spell and pronounce the word Aluminium and actually work out there's a sounded "Aitch" in the word herb(s)

Be seeing you

Originally posted by TeaAndStrumpets[


Just as a prelude to where this may be going, and because seeing it is of course much more effective than having to imagine it, I'll first put this out there:

Also as prelude, here's the way reentry processes have been explained to me:

Atmospheric drag gets serious at about 60 miles, or 100 km, or 400,000 ft, in different operating systems. But real fireball action begins a few miles lower.

For reentering satellites, the flight path is still essentially horizontal, at orbital velocity of 8000 m/sec[ about 25,000 ft/sec]. That's about, say, 90 km up, or 55 miles.

The object is both enveloped in super-heated plasma, and undergoes severe deceleration which crushes and scatters the main components. They remain individual fireballs for several minutes, still headed mostly forward with a slight descent angle, and soon slow down enough to lose the glowing plasma sheath, if they haven't fully disintegrated or vaporized.

Harder components can scatter and reach the ground 800 to 1600 miles or more downstream of where 'entry' began.

Based on elevation angle of 'becoming visible' to crossing a segment of sky to the opposite horizon, one can make ballpark estimates of how long a fireball, or swarm, could be visible.

As the objects react to air drag based on their mass and frontal area, some pull ahead and some lag behind. The length of the fragment swarm during the fireball phase is non-computable because the size of the fragments can't be known in advance, but tens of miles seems a reasonable upper limit.

How big this all will appear in the sky is the serious question. Angular size can be roughly measured by fist-at-arms-length, about 10 degrees wide top to bottom of fist.

Considering 'typical' scatter of eyewitness estimates of event duration, and even actual clock time [see the linked previous cases, above], I don't see any gross mismatches of Yukon reports with earlier similar events. But that requires a more quantitative evaluation, I agree.

Eyewitness estimates of range, absolute size, and absolute speed can, I suggest, be totally disregarded under the observing conditions described. The only measure they can be expected to have been accurately observed is angular size and angular rate, and that raw data does not often appear in these eyewitness reports, alas.

Are there any reliable reports of such angular data for the Yukon event?

reply to post by JimOberg


I'm a little short on spare time right now, but my concerns with the geometry with respect to the Fox Lake witnesses have certainly not been extinguished. It's all about geometry, and visibility. And for Fox Lake, making the new trajectory data reasonably fit is like trying to stuff a fat lady into a size 4 dress-- push something in, and something else pops out....

Regarding visibility, here's what Ted Molczan said about elevation:
"Atmospheric extinction typically is severe near the horizon, so practical visibility begins well above the horizon. Since the sky was reportedly clear, I have assumed that the brilliant decay would have been readily visible from about 8 deg elevation and higher, which I have colour coded in green. If the conditions were exceptionally good, then visibility below 8 deg to about 5 deg might have been possible; that data is in red."

Note that, for the Fox Lake witnesses, the latest data puts the re-entering booster rocket above 8 degrees for only about 36 seconds. A problem....

From the original report:
"The duration above 8 deg elevation ranged from 1.4 min at Fox Lake to 2 min at Pelly Crossing. Most eyewitnesses probably saw it for a shorter time; however, the eight (8) who reported the duration, gave values ranging between 30s and 5 to 10 min. The approximate mean and median values of 4.7 min and 4 min, respectively, are 2 to 5 times longer than the decay was actually observed; however, such after-the-fact estimates are notoriously inaccurate, especially after events as impressive as described. Allowing for that reality, I find the prediction and observations to be in reasonable agreement."

Well, those 'duration above 8 degrees elevation' figures have now shortened significantly with Zimmer's refined data: there are only ~36 seconds of visibility above 8 degrees at Fox Lake, a significant issue I believe, and ~1.4min at Carmakcs, ~1.7 at Pelly Crossing and ~1.8 at Mayo. So the "approximate mean and median values of 4.7 min and 4 min, respectively," are now about 4 to 6 times longer "than the decay was actually observed," not 'just' 2 to 5....

Given that, it would be completely foolish to ignore people at Fox Lake who've consistently said they saw something come from the west or even WSW, go directly over them (or nearly so), and then leave to the East or even SE. With the exception of Fox1's 'first' sighting, these are the testimonies and drawings that also look most like a 'UFO', and least like a re-entry. Witnesses make errors, sure, but this isn't the typical size / speed / distance miscalculation; these guys would have to be getting direction, angular size and elevation almost absurdly wrong. That's hard to buy.

There's also possibly an issue with Anchorage. Any reports from there? This latest geometry seems to require the 'fireworks' of re-entry to have begun at a point in time when the rocket was as close to Anchorage as it was to Fox Lake. Its ground track was less than 100nm north of the capital city, but I'm assuming things probably did't get really hot and bright until ~8:25, when it was farther northeast.... The Anchorage weather seems to have been clear to partly cloudy on that date, but I've not yet gotten more specific data. It doesn't appear that the mountains to the city's east would've impeded this view, but it depends on the specifics of when and where.

There are more concerns, especially as to Fox Lake, but I'm tired, and that's the gist of it.

Many Yrs ago, wife and I were out in our boat fishing around 10pm, there were about 12 other boats out there, fish were really running that week. A very bright light appeared off the Coast, it slowly came towards our area, could see the Red glow reflecting off the water, we observed it for about ten minutes and it just hovered there, not a sound, wife and some others got scared and asked to leave, thing is, not One Boat would start, even the smaller hand pulled outboards, then we could hear some women crying saying I want to go home, this thing just hovered there, no visible shape, no sounds, after a while it slowly rose to about 30 feet, turned and headed back down the Coast, every now and them stopping and just hovered, then in a blink of the eye it shot up and vanished, everyone tried and their boats started, up anchored and headed for the ramp, funny thing is, no-one spoke about it.
Two days later there was a report of a UFO, and of course the Military said it was a Weather Balloon.
Weather Balloons do not just behave that way, they would have said, panic, optical illusion, or the usual mumbo jumbo they use, if we all had reported a sighting, we know what we saw, and who cares if ppl think we are loonies, guess that is why most ppl never report it, just look at the debate going on here, who would open themselves up to that ridicule, can imagine some true sightings and ppl just won't report anything because of persecution
Our little chapter on a close encounter, as for me, I was as Excited and loved every minute of it

Hello all,

Here is a repost of a blurb I wrote over at

www.theparacast.com...

I was born and raised in the yukon, and helped my father run a trapline in the fox lake area as a child. I stumbled across this thread while looking up some stuff today about it just for fun, and it is interesting there has been a recent revival of this siting, and i too came across the explanation here:

www.satobs.org...

I have driven past this lake, and been fishing in it many times, it is very interesting to me to see the artwork and conceptual drawings of this siting and see how accurately they portray fox lake and the mountains themselves, most of the drawings and sketches ive seen look exactly like the lake if you are driving by on the highway, perhaps next winter i will go take a picture, the sketches are eerily accurate, which I think lends creedence to the witness testimony.

I remember this siting as a teenager, it was in the news briefly, and I think I dismissed it initially as a bunch of yahoos making stuff up, I was in prime highschool years and partying, friends and girls were my first priority, not UFO nonsense. Also back then the comet hale bopp was bright in the sky, although i think the comet was in the opposite direction, if i recall most of the fox lake sightings were toward the NW direction. Hale bopp was visible to south as I recall ( I could be wrong) We also have the northern lights etc. up here and a ton of tourists that get way too excited over nothing. I wont lie there are more than a few odd ducks living out in the woods who would make up some crazy claims, but they are the minority. Google teslin bigfoot for example, we all roll our eyes up here lol.

That said,

in hindsight, perhaps i should not have dismissed it so easily, as I too once witnessed a UFO in southern BC, not as dramatic as the fox lake sighting, but without a doubt it was an object I cannot easily explain, and demonstrated movement capabilities ive never seen before or since anywhere. Regardless of what my logic says, i saw what I saw. End of story, it is undeniable. My instinct until this point in time was that it was UFO, it was the best explanation available to me. However, Since reading about the cosmos 2335 object I am now trying to pinpoint any satellite activity around my personal sighting as a logical justification, and will share if i find anything out.

In regards to the fox lake sighting, I was NOT a witness.

I have to say the fact there was a rocket stage re-entering along the same decay path that many witnesses claim (below big dipper) at the same time (roughly 8:30) is pretty compelling evidence for an "explanation" of this sighting. I felt a bit of a sinking feeling in my stomach when I learned of this as the fox lake sighting was always something I thought was pretty awesome, most likely not a hoax, with some credible witnesses as I have worked with some of the people in the nedaa news video.

NEDAA for people interested is a first nations funded and run broadcasting corp (radio & TV) up here in the yukon.

In the skies up here we get alot of military activity (US and Canadian), and we have no other "traffic" really in the sky. There are a few regular scheduled flights from down south at the airport, and one from frankfurt germany i believe that crosses from over the pole, but nothing once you get out of town. The sky is usually clear, clean, and eithier really well lit in the summer, (hardly any dark) or pitch black in the winter (hardly any daylight) so usually when you see something it is interesting and pretty cool, be it man made or natural.

I was discussing this with my father and he doesn't take the satellite explanation, he still believes it was a legit sighting. Personally i feel I am leaning more toward the re-entry explanation now, but doing so with reluctance, I would have rather this sighting gone unexplained as there are so many hoaxes nowadays, it's just getting sad.

Regardless, it is great to see that whether it was extra terrestrial or not, at worst case there was an actual sighting of unexplained origin and this was not a hoax. People just reported things to the best of their memories.

Thats how we roll up here in the Yukon, we're pretty cool, and for the most part "good" people.

The only evidence I can see to the contrary of the satellite decay explanation is that the time frames don't line up for some of the sightings. There were sightings as late as 10pm in Dawson, which is several hundred km's further north than fox lake. However Fox lake at 8:30 pm seems to be the peak, and where the satellite was visibly decaying, just below the big dipper as people described.

In my mind it is still possible it was a UFO of course, but the booster decay is a very plausible explanation. The odds of an object re-entering along the same path at the same time as witness testimony are no pun intended "astronomical" to say the least.

I wish I had the knowledge to verify the calculations myself, and access to the source knowledge they were based off of to verify authenticity and correctness.

One other thing that stands out to me as well in favour of it being a UFO:

Why does the satobs.org re-entry article reference the UFO sightings, and offer explanations to the "exaggerations" of eye witnesses. This in itself points to deliberate disinformation and an attempt to debunk something over 15 years old now. Made me raise an eyebrow when i got to that part of the article, had me hooked until that point.

For future reference, I would suggest Mr. Ted Molczan stick to the facts and just present the information at hand as so:

"I calculated the decay of this object, here is the info. Make of it what you will."

For that matter, it would be awesome if he or others with his knowledge calculated all the decay of all known objects...could go a long way to solving some unexplained phenomena.

When all is said and done decaying booster or not:

It doesn't mean a UFO wasn't watching the light show as well 8-)

reply to post by yukonranger


Thanks for pitching in with real 'ground truth' and an intelligent outsider's assessment, it's extremely helpful.

The idea that observers of a bright fireball swarm can unconsciously interpret it as a large structured object is flat-out bizarre, and sounds like 'force fit' over-stretching of marginally-relevant phenomena. I would never have believed it, myself -- and I deliberately LOOK for prosaic explanations.

Fortunately, enough cases have been thoroughly documented to demonstrate that despite any instinctive or a-priori distrust of the idea's plausibility, it HAS happened. The most graphic example, only recently come to light, is the 1963 Kiev case where upwards of a hundred witnesses produced drawings. Half showed a swarm of parallel fireballs; half showed bizarre artificial craft with lights. Both groups had been looking at the SAME apparition. And earlier this month we saw it happen again over Chile and Argentina.

Without such documentation, even a 'debunker' like me would have been unwilling to suggest such a perceptual pattern merely on theory or faith.

Fortunately, dozens or hundreds of amateurs, volunteers, working over the years in the hope that the UFO reports they gathered and documented would someday make sense, have created searchable data bases where such repeating patterns can be extracted.

I think it is a small step forward, but even more, it is a tribute to the men and women who wanted to make a difference with their dogged determination to capture the data, rather than daydream or bicker endlessly.

What of the cases Dr James E McDonald investigated and the conclusions he reached on them, surely his top ten or even five do show that on occasions there ARE those cases that defy any mundane or known explanations, flight characteristics are a primary source of indication of intelligent control , and his Science in Default; 20 Years of Inadequate Scientific Investigations of UFOs; provides us with some of his cases he investigated. Surely any debate on this subject is built on an official investigation of debunking , even the top ten cases are contaminated by some sort of inadequate method of scientific investigation.

Contamination was the primary source and goal all along by the official agenda of debunking or the deliberate "force fit" debunking agenda of those cases that where harder to explain away with mundane explanations.

The ET origin of any UFO case that contained primary data of "extraordinary significance" was never given a chance to germinate or take any significant scientific foothold in the scientific main stream community. So when people flag up any case not just their top ten the damage or contamination has already been done. Dr James E McDonald was right when he reached his conclusions on the state of the official case histories and the historical scientific methods or "imperfections" of those investigations and the justifications used for those explanations and reached by the various official investigatory intelligences, one word ,INADEQUATE.

Originally posted by K-PAX-PROT
What of the cases Dr James E McDonald investigated and the conclusions he reached on them, surely his top ten or even five do show that on occasions there ARE those cases that defy any mundane or known explanations, flight characteristics are a primary source of indication of intelligent control ,....

McDonald did some good work. He showed, for example, how Gordon Cooper was a hallucinating old tall-tale-teller rumors with his phony account of seeing a UFO land on its legs, at Edwards AFB in 1957. Do you accept McDonald's debunking of the Cooper claims?

reply to post by JimOberg

McDonald did some good work. He showed, for example, how Gordon Cooper was a hallucinating old tall-tale-teller rumors with his phony account of seeing a UFO land on its legs, at Edwards AFB in 1957. Do you accept McDonald's debunking of the Cooper claims?

Do you accept Jim McDonald's overall hypothesis that some UFO sightings were physical objects from places unknown and unearthly? Of course you don't.

Dr. McDonald. May I say I wouldn't use the word "believe." I would say the "hypothesis" that these are extraterrestrial surveillance, is the hypothesis I presently regard as most likely.

As I mentioned, it is not hard facts in the sense of irrefutable proof, but dealing with case after case wherein the witnesses showed credibility I can't impugn. That impresses me. These are not at all like geophysical or astronomical phenomena; they appear to be craft-like machine-like devices. I would have to answer you in terms of case after case that I and others have investigated, to make all this clear. It is this very large body of impressive witnesses' testimony, radar-tracking data on ultra-high-speed objects sometimes moving at over 5,000 miles an hour, UFO's, combined radar-visual sightings, and just too much other consistent evidence that suggests we are dealing with machine-like devices from somewhere else.

James E McDonald Statement: 1968 UFO Symposium

You and me both agree that Cooper told a tall story, but it's disingenuous to cite McDonald in this case when you'd dismiss everything else he hypothesised as some kind of mental aberration or dumb credulity.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
You and me both agree that Cooper told a tall story, but it's disingenuous to cite McDonald in this case when you'd dismiss everything else he hypothesised as some kind of mental aberration or dumb credulity.

Why put phony words into my mouth? That's usually a sign of reality-disconnect or even intent to deceive. I suspect you were being rhetorical since you've shown you're NOT those things.

Thanks for agreeing re the Cooper Edwards story, that shows your desire.to really dig into these mysteries. I value your critiques, our goals seem parallel.

reply to post by Kandinsky

Do you accept Jim McDonald's overall hypothesis that some UFO sightings were physical objects from places unknown and unearthly? Of course you don't.

I don't accept McDonalds overall hypothesis in this regard and yet I find his reports rather fair and well balanced and even understand why he would come to that conclusion.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by K-PAX-PROT
What of the cases Dr James E McDonald investigated and the conclusions he reached on them, surely his top ten or even five do show that on occasions there ARE those cases that defy any mundane or known explanations, flight characteristics are a primary source of indication of intelligent control ,....

McDonald did some good work. He showed, for example, how Gordon Cooper was a hallucinating old tall-tale-teller rumors with his phony account of seeing a UFO land on its legs, at Edwards AFB in 1957. Do you accept McDonald's debunking of the Cooper claims?

In reference to your question i would say yes but McDonald unearthed a lot of preposterous and down right lazy debunking explanations for a number of cases he looked into, that is my primary concern that "contamination" of data ect was done deliberately by various official investigations, now where does that leave those who are just out for truth about the UFO situation in the historical case histories and over all trusting of those in positions of authority, i feel that there is nothing worse than being caught with ones pants down and squirming away into the ether with embarrassment, the UFO situation deserves so much more respect if not just for the ET possibility of even just one case.But cheers for the feed back.

Originally posted by ZetaRediculian
reply to post by Kandinsky

 

Do you accept Jim McDonald's overall hypothesis that some UFO sightings were physical objects from places unknown and unearthly? Of course you don't.

I don't accept McDonalds overall hypothesis in this regard and yet I find his reports rather fair and well balanced and even understand why he would come to that conclusion.

I agree. What I think everybody lacked in the 1960s even after twenty years of UFO reports was an appreciation of the wide range of possible hard-to-track-down prosaic stimuli, and the degree to which intelligent, experienced people could on occasion react to unusual apparitions by cueing up memories of familiar past perceptions. Those insights were slow to accumulate and spread, even today.

reply to post by JimOberg
My apologies - I was being needlessly abrasive

In regards to McDonalds ET hypotheses i have every respect as to why he came to that conclusion , why, not for just those exceptional cases alone but because the ET hypotheses has to be included in such cases, it has to be included along with other possibilities because i feel we or present scientific understanding is in no position to dismiss it.What branch of physics or religion can out right prove that such ET intelligences far advanced than us technically do not exist, who can be in any position to dismiss an ET origin for exceptional cases. Science unfortunately does not know all there is to know about everything and certainly not in this universe.

McDonald perceived ET intelligences on a observational agenda, stealth if you like and it sits well with me because of the lack of any coherent attempts at global contact or mass landings. The ET hypotheses is a valid and credible one until proven other wise.

I would be very interested to see any present scientific prosaic stimuli regarding the wide range of possible hard-to-track-down prosaic stimuli for those historical case histories that where investigated by McDonald.

In short is there any cases that McDonald investigated and concluded that no mundane prosaic stimuli was responsible solvable by any of today's known prosaic stimuli.He had a number of various cases that he deemed "significant" enough to cite a no known "prosaic stimuli" to them by the data they contained .

If most or some of his cases remain in the zone of the "no known "prosaic stimuli" by today's known "prosaic stimuli" then surely that is a historical and important case for the ET hypotheses.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by JimOberg

 

My apologies - I was being needlessly abrasive

Not even noticed -- but thanks for the good manners. It's an example for me to try to follow.