Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Not-Quite-Science Forum Two Airlines Sight a Large UFO

Are the UFO's back?
After a lack of sightings for the past few years, we now get two different confirmed sightings by two different airlines and their passengers last Monday 18th.June '07.
I'm nomally reluctant to comment upon UFO sightings except this was seen from two different directions, -very large, bright, and stationary, about 2000ft high.
I often wonder whether some bright individual was able to release
a cloud of fluorescent powder, somehow? Prehaps not, but I have never yet seen a clear unambiguous photograph yet.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/27/mystery_object/

http://www.thisisguernsey.com/code/showarchive.pl?ArticleID=002080&year=2007&category=news

Okay, you mean to tell me you beleive in UFO's?
That is pseudoscientific nonsense, everyone knows that except for those darn conspiritors.
come on, this is a science forum, not some nonsense junk.

Wow, Tim, that's some viscious vitriol you got goin' there, I thought you So-Cal guys were laid back. I read the post, thought he was refering to an odd phenomenon of weather. Chill out, Dude.

"I thought you So-Cal guys were laid back," haha, not really.
Im sorry, I didnt mean to come off that harsh, its just UFOs are so obviously false. Wouldnt everyone here agree?

No- I think that there are UFOs. I just don't think that they have litle green men in them waiting to take me to Alpha Centuri. Mike was giving a suggestion as to what this particular UFO may be.

After all UFO means 'unidentified flying object' NOT 'some thing from a galaxy far, far away about to eat me for lunch'!

I agree with the others. There are plenty of UFOs. I have seen one (which later became and IFO). However, there are plenty of fake UFOs and there are plenty of kookie explanations for real UFOs and there are plenty of fraudulent claims related to UFOs (alien abductions, crop circles, certain kinds of channeling, etc).

Tim: "its just UFOs are so obviously false. Wouldnt everyone here agree?"

For many people, "UFO" has become synonymous with "alien spacecraft", whereas to the scientist it means an 'observed aerial phenomenon for which there is no definitive explanation'. Many so called UFOs have been eliminated from the definition following investigations that have either proven them hoaxes, or have provided explanations with a high probability of being correct. There are others, such as those of June 18, for which the term "UFO" is still applicable. There's nothing pseudoscientific or unscientific about it. It's similar to the case of dark matter - an observation has been made but there is, as yet, insufficient data to determine its nature.

According to current knowledge of the cosmos and of the laws of physics, the probability of a flyby by aliens may be extremely remote. Even so, it would be unscientific to say that it's impossible - that would be to assume that our current knowledge is sufficiently complete to arrive at such a conclusion. Clearly, there's a great deal that we don't know.

I am more inclined to believe that some sightings are unknown advanced military aircraft rather than visitors from another solar system.