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Things That Are NOT UFOs

It seems to me that there is no reason to expect explanations to be resolutely fixed within current scientific knowledge. And so, yes, the plasma/EMF hypothesis does push the problem down the road a bit, but at least there's a road. There is a direction to investigate.

There is a lot more to discover with plasma/EMF/ball lightning. And at least ball lightning is, at very long last, being taken seriously by science.

We're getting somewhere -- slowly.
It’s not for lack of trying. Scientific theories about ball lightning have been floating around since the 19th century. Lots of them in the 1970s to the present were proposed suggesting all sorts of mechanisms from vortex rings, plasma, plasmoids, chemical reactions, charge seperation, nuclear processes, etc. The trouble is, this phenomenon (though it may be more than one thing) is ephemeral and hard to observe and recreate under controlled conditions. That makes it difficult to study and make any progress. Maybe someday someone will get lucky.
 
Footage of ball lightning exists....although it is almost always rather poor.
I know that the electrical discharge when (eg) welding can create similar effects as shown part-way through the 2nd of these clips but I wouldn't say they count. And in the 3rd clip that looks more like 'arcing' from a power line.
 
Footage of ball lightning exists....although it is almost always rather poor.
I know that the electrical discharge when (eg) welding can create similar effects as shown part-way through the 2nd of these clips but I wouldn't say they count. And in the 3rd clip that looks more like 'arcing' from a power line.

The first clip shows what looks like arcing along a down power line. A fireball can travel along the line - it’s that typical blue color. The second clip shows a lot of interesting phenomena - some of which are typical “UFOs” but not strictly ball lightining. Some can be flares or chinese lanterns - hard to tell without context. We also see here the confusion inherant in labels of earth lights, spook lights, min-min, etc. because these lights are just floating around. No electrical storm seems evident. Are they UFOs? UAP? Earthquake lights?The third clip shows just an artifact from the conventional lightning flash. But people call lots of things “ball lightning” these days. Loose labeling means the idea changes across public perception. (See chupacabra)

This is why I say that these things are very messy to classify and may have multiple mechanisms. There are balls of light created from electrical discharges that may be bits of molten metal or flaming gases. And then there are those that seem to move almost intelligently, not via convection. This is why ball lightning is the Fortean phenomenon that I’d most like see solved.
 
...This is why ball lightning is the Fortean phenomenon that I’d most like see solved.
Thanks to your good self and Trevp666... fascinated subject.

Quite some years ago, I recall watching film of a 'plasma ball', inadvertently created in a lab, by scientists experimenting with something related.

Anyone help with this?
 
It’s not for lack of trying. Scientific theories about ball lightning have been floating around since the 19th century. Lots of them in the 1970s to the present were proposed suggesting all sorts of mechanisms from vortex rings, plasma, plasmoids, chemical reactions, charge seperation, nuclear processes, etc. The trouble is, this phenomenon (though it may be more than one thing) is ephemeral and hard to observe and recreate under controlled conditions. That makes it difficult to study and make any progress. Maybe someday someone will get lucky.

My impression is that ball lightning has begun to be taken much more seriously in the last 10 years or so. Before that my impression was that its existence was doubted but, more recently, the existence of it and, importantly, the existence of a concrete phenomenon that is worthy of investigation seems to be taken more seriously.

Perhaps the reason for this seeming change of attitude is that better video of it exists now than in the past. This is an area where the increasing ubiquity of cameras in society does seem to have produced results.
 
The first clip shows what looks like arcing along a down power line. A fireball can travel along the line - it’s that typical blue color. The second clip shows a lot of interesting phenomena - some of which are typical “UFOs” but not strictly ball lightining. Some can be flares or chinese lanterns - hard to tell without context. We also see here the confusion inherant in labels of earth lights, spook lights, min-min, etc. because these lights are just floating around. No electrical storm seems evident. Are they UFOs? UAP? Earthquake lights?The third clip shows just an artifact from the conventional lightning flash. But people call lots of things “ball lightning” these days. Loose labeling means the idea changes across public perception. (See chupacabra)

This is why I say that these things are very messy to classify and may have multiple mechanisms. There are balls of light created from electrical discharges that may be bits of molten metal or flaming gases. And then there are those that seem to move almost intelligently, not via convection. This is why ball lightning is the Fortean phenomenon that I’d most like see solved.

As a matter of semantic clarity, I'd prefer to follow the MOD's nomenclature and refer to all unknown aerial phenomena as "UAP"s. This terminology is the best we have to avoid preconceptions about what is being observed.


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Ah, I see this was discussed above too.
 
As a matter of semantic clarity, I'd prefer to follow the MOD's nomenclature and refer to all unknown aerial phenomena as "UAP"s. This terminology is the best we have to avoid preconceptions about what is being observed.
Seconded.

There's also the issue of priming by naming the phenomena in a hopeful way, e.g. naming a fugue-like experience or hallucination as a 'timeslip' when there's nothing to show that's actually the case.
 
The problem with the term UAP is that a significant number of sightings are caused by celestial objects and phenomena- causes that are beyond the Earth's atmosphere so don't really count as 'aerial'.
 
The problem with the term UAP is that a significant number of sightings are caused by celestial objects and phenomena- causes that are beyond the Earth's atmosphere so don't really count as 'aerial'.

I don't think that's a problem. There is no need for excessive pedantry. Like many terms of art, it is impossible to be semantically perfect in all cases. Instead, we can simply, easily and pragmatically accept that "UAP" represents all unknown phenomena in the sky, whether they really be in the atmosphere, in space, or even in people's minds.
 
Ah yes- hallucinations. I've encountered a few of those. Charles Bonnet syndrome for instance.

How about hoaxes and CG fakes? Do they count as UAP? They aren't even phenomena except in the cultural sense, and certainly aren't aerial.
 
How about hoaxes and CG fakes? Do they count as UAP? They aren't even phenomena except in the cultural sense, and certainly aren't aerial.

An UAP, much like a UFO, is unidentified. That's why we need a neutral descriptive term to refer to unidentified phenomena that appear to be in the sky.

If and when we know that something is a hoax or a CG fake then it is no longer unidentified. At that point we can call it a hoax or CG fake, can't we.
 
More not a UFO than not a ghost. But interesting none the less. I think it’s the sun catching a jet trail.
9DA5EB7B-2FEF-45F4-A2D8-C31A11202015.jpeg
 
The glowing bobbled edge stripe! Yes, can imagine people getting exicited!
 
so we have a photo thats clearly of a contrail and looks nothing like a ufo and even less like a ghost ?
 
More not a UFO than not a ghost. But interesting none the less. I think it’s the sun catching a jet trail. ...

The photo does illustrate something that's known to be claimed in UFO reports. There are two contrails that cross each other (from the viewer's vantage point), visible within a break or gap in the cloud cover.

The particular juxtaposition of crossed contrails and framing by clouds could easily be misinterpreted as a single contrail left by something that made a sudden 90-degree turn. Such sudden turns are often cited as evidence an airborne object can't be a known aircraft.
 
The 'bobble' effect is what makes it interesting to me. Those 'bobbles' must be parcels of cooling air falling from the original contrail; they seem to be spaced less than100 metres apart. The exact meteorological process that produces these bobbles must be fascinating; I bet radiative cooling and electrostatic attraction are also involved.
 
Prepare to believe...

I was looking through some old photos the other day and was about to delete the following snap as it's a bad picture in every technical sense: boring, poorly framed, exposure too long to hold perfectly still, too much gain...

...until I then noticed that I have appear to have inadvertently captured a metallic flying disc of a type with which R.Lazar might be familiar! The evidence is irrefutable!

To be serious, I don't know what the object or artefact is; a bird? A drone?

It's not an unilluminated street lamp - there isn't one, nor any other structure. The road is a bridge which crosses busy railway lines btw.

The phone camera in question performs quite poorly at night without a lot of fiddling with settings but I've never seen this kind of artefact before or since.




FMB UFO_1.png
FMB UFO_1_lvls.png
FMB UFO_2.png
FMB UFO_3.png
 
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well at least theres something in this one, even if it looks like a classic hubcap slung by a barn
 
It does, doesn't it? But there's nowhere to throw a hubcap from, unless someone in a sidestreet down the hill has a trebuchet on their roof.
 
Nothing in particular, and in fact I don't know why I bothered - I just tend to take 'record shots' of this and that and enjoy, (and sometimes don't enjoy) looking back at the changes in familiar places after say, five to ten years or more has passed.

On this occassion (04 ‎December ‎2018, ‏‎18:15:31) I'd broken my journey home from work to:

a) Visit the nearby Iceland to pick up a delicious microwaveable curry - one of the posh ones which are surprisingly good these days, honest.

b) Photograph nearby streets which still had low-pressure sodium lighting, for which I have a deep nostalgic fondness, before they were replaced by LEDs - which has now come to pass. These pictures came out rather well as I was able to take a bit more time, but no hubcaps in evidence.

and for some reason (subliminal telepathic suggestion from beamship?) chose to grab that shot despite being on a busy narrow pavement near the entrance to St Albans City interchange, where being jostled by panicked commuters from one direction and those in need of a kebab fix from the other is a certainty.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.750...4!1sslZ08SY1uXENxLA2Mz3RpQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
 
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For him, it began one lost night on a lonely country road, looking for a shortcut that he never found. It began with a closed deserted diner, and a man too long without sleep to continue his journey ...
 
formative viewing ... i love to youtubes

epilogue : a daylight photo might throw some light on the situation ...
 
I don't have a daytime photo from that week, or indeed month from that viewpoint, but I do have some from other human Earth-time periods. There wasn't, and hasn't been, any temporary or permanent structure there that would create the impression of an airborne disc under night time lighting conditions.

I'm guessing it's a bird.
 
This saucer-shaped drone might be a proof-of-concept model for future human-built flying saucers. Or it might not; looks good, though.
 
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