Phoenix 'UFO' revealed as NASA experiment

www.foxnews.com...

"the strange sight has nothing to do with UFOs or aliens. Instead it’s a HASP 643N — a High Altitude Student Platform balloon sent up to research things like wind patterns and air quality."

And from the picture, I agree.

However, there's something about this article that's fishy...
It smacks of an effort to discredit the truly remarkable events of 1997, when "The Phoenix Lights" were seen.

Notably, the article, which mentions that "this is only the latest of many purported UFO reports near or over the city of Phoenix," makes absolutely NO mention of the 1997 event.

It only refers to lesser events in the area, and then makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell...in an article about Phoenix.

I think this is a propaganda piece. The 1997 lights over Phoenix were special, and there have been periodic attempts, like this, to lessen over time the significance of what happened.

Nothing about it doesn't look like a weather balloon.

Not much of a revelation.

reply to post by draknoir2


Agreed - but I think that's the point.

Look "another Phoenix light" that's clearly a balloon. I think by association it's meant to imply that all Phoenix sightings are/were benign or explainable.

I guess they're referring to this .

Makes a change from lanterns

Originally posted by MarkusMaximus
www.foxnews.com...

"the strange sight has nothing to do with UFOs or aliens. Instead it’s a HASP 643N — a High Altitude Student Platform balloon sent up to research things like wind patterns and air quality."

And from the picture, I agree.

However, there's something about this article that's fishy...
It smacks of an effort to discredit the truly remarkable events of 1997, when "The Phoenix Lights" were seen.

Notably, the article, which mentions that "this is only the latest of many purported UFO reports near or over the city of Phoenix," makes absolutely NO mention of the 1997 event.

It only refers to lesser events in the area, and then makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to Roswell, New Mexico. Roswell...in an article about Phoenix.

I think this is a propaganda piece. The 1997 lights over Phoenix were special, and there have been periodic attempts, like this, to lessen over time the significance of what happened.

I agree,

I clicked as I thought it was going to be an explanation for the 1997 event.

Originally posted by MarkusMaximus
reply to post by draknoir2

 

Agreed - but I think that's the point.

Look "another Phoenix light" that's clearly a balloon. I think by association it's meant to imply that all Phoenix sightings are/were benign or explainable.

When they break out Robert Sheaffer you know that's the intent.


But I doubt even most skeptics believe that the famous Phoenix Lights were weather balloons.

reply to post by MarkusMaximus


I think you're right: It is a propaganda piece. There have been many subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to make that incident something ordinary, when it clearly was not. Those continuing efforts alone tell me that there's something to "debunk."

And their own incidental connecting of it to Roswell only reminds me of the Air Force's lame "Case Closed, Dammit!" efforts. It's a demented and fruitless attempt to make us make that connection in our minds—as if we were just so many weak-minded cattle....

I dont know why it would light up to study wind patterns and air quality, seems a redundant feature unless its so planes dont fly into them, in which case they should be lit all the time, thus meaning constant sightings of extended duration. I have no doubt they can explain some sightings, but Phoenix i'm not so sure. It doesnt explain why the formation, why the relatively short duration, and unless they are/were a black project, why no mention before now to explain the 1997 event, (most likely flares imo but still a bit unusual)

Speculation:-

And if it is/was a black project, whats so secret about how you monitor those parameters that needed such secrecy ? And why mention it at all ?

Uhm what about the witness's who saw a SOLID TRIANGLE CRAFT, not a fuzzy dot light, a SOLID CRAFT fly over them? This is all bunk and trolling at its worst. Fail

reply to post by ATSZOMBIE

Uhm what about the witness's who saw a SOLID TRIANGLE CRAFT, not a fuzzy dot light

This is a sighting from this month not 1997 .

Trolling?

How so and by whom?

reply to post by MarkusMaximus


if as you say in your article this is an effort to discredit the pheonix lights of '97 then it can be taken as a direct "insult" to the public...

Another, belated excuse for an answer. Didn't they learn after the balloon excuse for Roswell?
Sure they did. They learned a lot. They learned that large percentage of people didn't accept that story but beyond the baloney of the balloon story a lot of people knew enough about the topic to reject it. This new story is not intended to make any believer to give themselves a palm plant and say, "Why didn't I think of that!" Naw! It is a continuation of the topic in a backhand way: Are UFOs real or not. Their folks in the psy-ops department actually want people to suspect that they are lying and to suspect further that there is yet a larger truth out there which is that UFO/ETs are here and now. The conversation must be kept going. --You think all of those triangle sightings of those craft flying low and slow over residential communities and highways are happenstance, crewmen that forgot that there were supposed stay high and out of populated areas? --All done for show as I've repeated detailed of a sighting that I and about twenty others had of a low, slow and silent, strobe-lit triangle moving over Laramie in 1998 as we exited a UFO conference at the University of Wyoming.

I've got into it elsewhere over the years on ATS, but the tool that both the government and the ETs is using is to build a solid myth about these things called UFOs so that we begin to slowly accept them in a cerebral way without the urges of emotional panic. (Triangles are our three-axis versions of the alien craft.)

Originally posted by ATSZOMBIE
Uhm what about the witness's who saw a SOLID TRIANGLE CRAFT, not a fuzzy dot light, a SOLID CRAFT fly over them? This is all bunk and trolling at its worst. Fail

Care to share?

or are you confusing sightings?

reply to post by flipflop


For sure.

This piece of "journalism" just has the clammy feel of being a piece of a larger effort to downplay the events of 1997.

I was ok with what I was reading, until I came across the Roswell reference.

That's a classic tactic. Bring up a completely unrelated event, and one which happens to attract the most eccentric of the alternative theory crowd. It de-legitimizes anything that's happened (or happening) in Phoenix.

Originally posted by Ex_CT2
reply to post by MarkusMaximus

 

I think you're right: It is a propaganda piece. There have been many subtle and not-so-subtle attempts to make that incident something ordinary, when it clearly was not. Those continuing efforts alone tell me that there's something to "debunk."

^^^
THIS. Absolutely.

Are we talking about the Phoenix Lights? If yes, then calling it a balloon (just like Roswell may have had actual crash besides a balloon) is pure idiocy. It's an insult to people to call everything 'balloon' reminds me of that USAF chart. Weather balloon, weather balloon..

I've watched documentaries and seen accounts of people that even the mayor besides putting that alien costume said he did see an aircraft.

So I would understand an answer such as 'No aliens, it was a military aircraft' but an answer 'it was balloon, not aliens' sounds like BS, if I were at FoxNews I would send them a letter - do you call everyone idiots??

There are multiple accounts of people seeing an aircraft and considering this is not the only case of seeing an aircraft, let's not call every witness a liar shall we? People did see some sort of aircraft passing over.

-- Oh it's about some other 'UFO' case. well then it may be a balloon, it doesn't seem to be like the one from '97

Originally posted by ImpactoR

-- Oh it's about some other 'UFO' case. well then it may be a balloon, it doesn't seem to be like the one from '97

edit on 9-9-2013 by ImpactoR because: (no reason given)

Right. So, in the skies of the area where the most witnessed and credible (1997) UFO event in recent memory took place, NASA feels the need to launch a "flashing" balloon into the air for experimental purposes.

And like the article/OP says...this isn't the first time that a coincidental/ironic object has been put into the Phoenix sky, since the 1997 event.

Taken all together, there is anecdotal evidence that actions like these, and the journalistic tripe which accompany them, are part of a larger effort to minimize the small percentage of truly unidentifiable objects in the air.

As another poster said: If the 1997 event was military in nature (which is almost certainly was), just say so.

Originally posted by MarkusMaximus

Originally posted by ImpactoR

-- Oh it's about some other 'UFO' case. well then it may be a balloon, it doesn't seem to be like the one from '97

edit on 9-9-2013 by ImpactoR because: (no reason given)

Right. So, in the skies of the area where the most witnessed and credible (1997) UFO event in recent memory took place, NASA feels the need to launch a "flashing" balloon into the air for experimental purposes.

I think it's a bit much to declare the greater Phoenix area a no-fly zone to weather balloons for the purpose of maintaining the purity of an historic mass UFO sighting. Besides, this is not the only launch from Fort Sumner this year, but rather one of many.

I think it's more a case of Discover Magazine implying a connection.

draknoir2
I think it's a bit much to declare the greater Phoenix area a no-fly zone to weather balloons for the purpose of maintaining the purity of an historic mass UFO sighting. Besides, this is not the only launch from Fort Sumner this year, but rather one of many.

I think it's more a case of Discover Magazine implying a connection.

Perhaps it was just shoddy journalism, then, to leave out the most relevant instance of the multiple examples of unidentified objects in the Phoenix skies, and to weave in the Roswell cliché for good measure...?

I'm willing to say that's all it was, sure. But it just doesn't feel that way. Especially when it comes to that topic.