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

JimOberg

JadeStar
You can't go wrong with Leslie Kean.

That's why this thread got bumped. Kean is coming out in support
of the 1996 Yukon 'mother ship' UFO version -- and apparently
denying there is any prosaic explanation for it. This case has
risen to new international prominence as the top case in the
kick-off premier episode of a new Discovery-Canada UFO series.

Looks like I may have to revisit my opinion of her. Thanks Jim.

maryhinge
reply to post by elevenaugust

 

what does my head in is that people saw a craft and not a rocket reentry
BUT somebody WHOM was not there says its not a ufo so lets all just go with that

this place has some dumb sheeple and i am starting to regret ever joining

C'mon, most UFO believers understand that 95-98% of UFOs are explainable in some way. Natural phenomena, astronomical objects, satellites, re-entering space vehicles or debris have all been seen by people not familiar with seeing them as UFOs.

It stands to reason that someone who keeps track of space debris and sees a correlation with the time of something re-entering with the time of a UFO sighting in the part of the sky that re-entry is visible in would conclude that, yes, people who were there didn't understand what they were seeing and thus it was a UFO meaning UNIDENTIFIED (to them) but not alien.

It's basic research.

Even a 7 year old could proably tell exactly what that is. I dont buy it at all.

Kandinsky
The Yukon UFO sightings aren't very well-known to me so I haven't got a 'dog in the race' here.

If it was a Cosmos re-entry, I wonder how it was only visible to this location in the Yukon? There are such things as a 'privileged view' whereby perspective and terrain renders something observable only to those in certain locations. Could this be reasonably applicable in this incident?

I've looked at rocket re-entry footage and can appreciate how some might opt for UFO. Still, the footage is hard to equate with the descriptions by the witnesses...either by shape, speed or size. I concede that 'size' is too slippery to base a case on in these situations...

Here's another one slowed down...

I wonder if anyone can find sighting reports of this re-entry from other locations in Canada? It was a reasonable time for people to be out and about and should have received some attention in the press. As an idle afterthought, I wonder why subsequent Cosmos re-entries weren't also misperceived in such a grand way?

reply to post by K-PAX-PROT

as you well know my original point was that were is the EVIDENCE to suggest that EVERY single UFO witness testimony ever made is nothing more than hallucinatory in origins..

You have made an excellent argument against what no one has claimed. Well done again. I really don't think you do it on purpose though. I truly believe that people in general have gross misconceptions on what hallucinations, misperceptions and what normal human perception is.

So if you are sincerely trying to discuss the topic, let's drop the "nothing more than mass hallucination for EVERY single case" Straw man. Why not try to understand the basics of the argument?

What is being presented as an explanation here should be considered very reasonable by anyone but only if they know some very basic fundamentals of human perception. Anyone can look at the body of scientific literature on perception or just go to Wikipedia for some basics. It is really not hard.

One thing that never happens is someone referencing a scientific paper on perception or some other related topic showing that these cases are so unlikely to be due to misperceptions as to not be even be considered an explanation. However, there seems to be plenty of information available in support of what Jim Oberg has presented.

Perhaps once someone can demonstrate how human misperception can be ruled out and back that up with actual documentation and not links to UFO websites, aliens can be considered. Until then, misperception is the best explanation.

ATSZOMBIE
Even a 7 year old could proably tell exactly what that is. I dont buy it at all.

Kandinsky
The Yukon UFO sightings aren't very well-known to me so I haven't got a 'dog in the race' here.

I couldn't find the original post of this but Kandinsky's questions are reasonable, here's the way I see the answers going:

If it was a Cosmos re-entry, I wonder how it was only visible to this location in the Yukon? There are such things as a 'privileged view' whereby perspective and terrain renders something observable only to those in certain locations. Could this be reasonably applicable in this incident?

Reentry fireballs are occurring at an altitude between maybe 60 miles and 40 miles, so line-of-sight limits restrict witnessing it above the horizon to a fairly narrow corridor. This is just geometry.

I've looked at rocket re-entry footage and can appreciate how some might opt for UFO. Still, the footage is hard to equate with the descriptions by the witnesses...either by shape, speed or size. I concede that 'size' is too slippery to base a case on in these situations...

We're talking about bright fireballs moving horizontally and for the most part 'in formation', and hand-held brightness-challenged smeared videos don't seem to capture the actual perception of being there. That's why the 1963 Kiev report is so crucial to appreciating the actual perceptions of a hundred witnesses and how these perceptions ranged from fireball swarms to giant craft, all from the same vent.

I wonder if anyone can find sighting reports of this re-entry from other locations in Canada? It was a reasonable time for people to be out and about and should have received some attention in the press.

Answered above -- low altitude.

As an idle afterthought, I wonder why subsequent Cosmos re-entries weren't also misperceived in such a grand way?

Reasonable question, and the documentable answer is, they were. Aside from the 1963 Kiev event, I've collected about two dozen other instances where the unusual contributing factors seem to have repeatably reproduced the same misperceptions.

1. Dark, clear skies
2. LARGE and multi-structured object to create a number of similar-sized fireballs
3. Population outside along descent path of maximum entry heating.
4. Existing social mechanism to collect and disseminate eyewitness reports

The 'coincidence' of a documented reentry moving at the same time at the same rate in the same direction as reported 'mother ships' becomes significant when it can be shown to occur again and again and again.

Such reports are found in UFO data bases and the collectors of these reports deserve credit for their diligence.

It's certainly correct how it is hard, 'a priori', to imagine how such apparitions can spark such misperceptions. But the data shows that they have done so, many times.

The data is trying to tell us something we didn't start out knowing.

Let's be open to reality even if it is saying what we don't like to be true.

Jim Hasn't debunked this case at all. Don't let ATS or anyone else tell you otherwise.

He has yet to provide explanations for his theory that correlate with the eyewitness testimony in this particular case. His only defense is "re-entry here, thus look at this other case".

He has no explanation for the eyewitness testimony short of misrepresentation of their own sightings, which would be fine if two of the witnesses didn't corroborate each other in seeing a low flying solid object that flew over their cars and then proceeded to hover over the lake.

DeadSeraph
Jim Hasn't debunked this case at all. Don't let ATS or anyone else tell you otherwise.

He has yet to provide explanations for his theory that correlate with the eyewitness testimony in this particular case. His only defense is "re-entry here, thus look at this other case".

He has no explanation for the eyewitness testimony short of misrepresentation of their own sightings, which would be fine if two of the witnesses didn't corroborate each other in seeing a low flying solid object that flew over their cars and then proceeded to hover over the lake.

Actually, my explanation is far more consistent with the actual witness reports in the Yukon than is the assumption they ALL saw and reported a massive 'mother ship'. Even over the Yukon, most witnesses reported and drew a swarm of fireballs [just like over Kiev in 1963], which some assumed were lights on a larger craft -- and a few did report seeing the craft's perimeter -- just like over Kiev and two dozen other similar events sparked by large satellite entries.

I have yet to find any reasonable explanation for the remarkable coincidence of satellite entry fireball swarms and ground reports of fireball swarms OR [never'AND'] large structured craft at the same time and same direction and same motion.

One or two cases would -- have indeed, have -- remained baffling. But two dozen cases with the same stimulus and the same range of perceptions -- this becomes a pattern that is more and more clearly telling us something we did not previously know about the eyewitness perceptual process under these rare and unearthly circumstances.

We already knew that some people would just close their eyes and minds to new ideas and defiantly reject them. But that these people would be mostly self-styled 'open-minded' UFO buffs is dismaying.

DeadSeraph
He has no explanation for the eyewitness testimony short of misrepresentation of their own sightings, which would be fine if two of the witnesses didn't corroborate each other in seeing a low flying solid object that flew over their cars and then proceeded to hover over the lake.

Understanding the Yukon case on a stand-alone basis has led nowhere, but realizing it is part of a classic witness reaction to particular -- and extremely rare -- visual stimuli, finally provides useful insight.

to show that the SAME perceptions have been generated elsewhere by documented satellite entries raises the possibility -- not the proof, but the possibility -- that they were also generated in Yukon by the undeniable passage of a similar visual stimulus.

That's all that an 'explanation' needs to do, because the burden of proof on the claimant of extraordinariness is that they must prove there are no other plausible explanations than a hitherto-unrecognized phenomenon.

And the satellite entry theory is becoming more and more plausible based on acquisition of reports such as the 1963 Kiev event -- a report that was in the archives of UFO investigators for decades, but suppressed from wider knowledge.

The Discovery-Canada program featuring the Yukon ufo airs in Canada on January 10, and in the US a few months later. I hope our Canadian friends can watch and report on it.

JimOberg
The 'coincidence' of a documented reentry moving at the same time at the same rate in the same direction as reported 'mother ships' becomes significant when it can be shown to occur again and again and again.

Such reports are found in UFO data bases and the collectors of these reports deserve credit for their diligence.

It's certainly correct how it is hard, 'a priori', to imagine how such apparitions can spark such misperceptions. But the data shows that they have done so, many times.

The data is trying to tell us something we didn't start out knowing.

Let's be open to reality even if it is saying what we don't like to be true.

Excellent points.

Have you ever encountered reports of electrophonic noise associated with reentrying debris?

1ofthe9
Have you ever encountered reports of electrophonic noise associated with reentrying debris?

YES. It was a regular feature of shuttle reentries witnessed from the ground.

JimOberg

1ofthe9
Have you ever encountered reports of electrophonic noise associated with reentrying debris?

YES. It was a regular feature of shuttle reentries witnessed from the ground.

Wow! I didn't know that. Do you know what frequency that would have been? I'm curious if there could have been some kind of entrainment effect going on as a result. The theta state seems to be the one where people have weird experiences, so if anything shows up around 4-7 hz then things might just get interesting.

New overview by Ted Molczan on how often such spaceflight events have sparked UFO perceptions: satobs.org...

Serious UFO investigators continue to ignore these findings at peril to their reputations.

Put me in the camp that believes this was indeed actually a massively large ufo which was witnessed by a large number of people, who from what I know all thought this was something they could NOT explain.

data5091
Put me in the camp that believes this was indeed actually a massively large ufo which was witnessed by a large number of people, who from what I know all thought this was something they could NOT explain.

Sure, it was something they had never seen or even heard of before.

And they reacted the same way many previous witnesses to night-time clear-sky heavy-satellite reentry fireball swarms.

Their perceptions and testimony echo that of earlier witnesses to previous reentries.

What's your explanation as to why these bizarre but man-made events kept being accompanied by the same flavor of misperceptions again and again and again?

And why, for those who thought they were seeing a giant craft, did none of them ALSO report seeing the fireball swarm crossing the sky at the same time, in the same direction and speed? Why wouldn't they have seen BOTH -- if the craft was NOT the reentry 'in disguise''?

JimOberg

Serious UFO investigators continue to ignore these findings at peril to their reputations.

This is how it is interpreted in Discovery's latest UFO documentary series Close Encounters -

JimOberg
I hope our Canadian friends can watch and report on it.

The show is only about 20 mins long without commercials and only about 10 mins of that was about this case. Nothing new was revealed, it was a brief re-creation of the sighting from the point of view of the 2 cousins near Fox Lake and an unnamed couple. Leslie Kean was not part of this segment, Martin Jasek and Chris Rutkowski are the 2 investigators that talk about it. The visuals are very well done, but that's all the show has going for it so far. It was another disappointing show about UFO's in my opinion.

Thanks! I also hear their graphics show the December 11 event occurring December 17 -- just sloppy note taking, presumably.

reply to post by JimOberg


No, it shows the date December 11.

reply to post by torsion


Some artistic license to say the least, but at least one witness did describe the object scanning the ground with a beam of light. I suppose re-entries must do that all the time, but I've yet to get confirmation on that fact from Mr.Oberg. It would be very interesting to track down any of the witnesses that might still be alive and offer them Jim's hypothesis and document their reactions. Maybe show them a youtube video or two of such events and kindly explain to them that there is a much more prosaic explanation for what they witnessed. I'd like to see the looks on their faces.