THE eXchanger
08-18-2009, 06:27 PM
UK Publishes UFO Files on 800 SightingsSource: The Associated Press
Posted: 08/17/09 8:42AM
Filed Under: World
LONDON (AP) - The deputy commander of a U.S. Air Force base in England was baffled by what he'd seen: bright, pulsing lights in the night sky.
Britain's defense ministry couldn't explain it either, but concluded that the unidentified flying object posed no threat.
UFO and Alien Encounters?Stan Romanek11 photos Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)
http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNo des=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=693461&pid=693460 &uts=1250513084
http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf
UFO and Alien Encounters?
Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.
Stan Romanek
Stan Romanek
UFO and Alien Encounters?
Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.
Stan Romanek
Romanek, left, has claimed more than 100 encounters with aliens. Jeff Peckman, right, used Romanek's film to argue that Denver should open an "Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission" to deal with alien encounters.
CNN
This witness drawing of an alleged UFO sighting is in one of 19 once-secret files posted to the British National Archives Web site Oct. 20. The files cover sightings reported between 1986 and 1992. Although many of the reports were debunked, some remain unexplained.
National Archives / PA / AP
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
Eric Draper, AP
The Air Force issued the "The Roswell Report" in 1997. Countering claims that aliens were recovered at the site, the report said military officials picked up 200-pound dummies, above, that were used in an experiment.
Air Force / AP
Mexican Air Force pilots filmed strange brightly lit objects that moved quickly in the skies on March 5, 2004. Some scientists said the phenomenon could have been caused by gases in the atmosphere.
AP
An investigator in 1989 measures markings that some said were left behind by a UFO in Normandy, France. France began releasing its "X-Files" on UFO sightings in 2007.
CNES / AP
President Jimmy Carter, shown here in 1980, reported that he saw a UFO above Leary, Ga., in 1969. He filed a report about the sighting to the International UFO Bureau in 1973.
Gene Forte, AFP / Getty Images
An unidentified flying object was photographed by a government employee over the Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico in 1964. Conspiracy theorists have claimed the photo is proof that the U.S. government has been in contact with aliens.
Bettmann / Corbis
Astronaut Gordon Cooper, who piloted several space missions in the 1960s, once said he saw a "typical saucer shape, double-cylindrical shape, metallic" UFO.
AP
NOTE: Poll results are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those users who chose to participate. Poll results are not reflected in real time.
Back to Poll Results
Have you ever spotted anything strange in the sky?
Yes 62%
No 38%
Total Votes: 851
Note on poll resultsiThe National Archives on Monday released the government's complete file on the "Rendlesham Forest Incident" of December 1980, one of Britain's most famous UFO sightings.
It was among more than 4,000 pages posted online Monday documenting 800 alleged encounters during the 1980s and 1990s. Over the past three years the Ministry of Defense has been gradually releasing previously secret UFO papers after facing Freedom of Information demands.
The Rendlesham file contains U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Halt's first-hand account of the event, which has been public knowledge for many years. The file includes the conclusions of a British government investigation and a letter from a former defense chief urging officials to take UFOs more seriously.
Halt reported that two servicemen had noticed "unusual lights" about 3 a.m. in the woods outside the gates of RAF Woodbridge, a U.S. base in eastern England. He wrote that patrolmen sent to investigate saw "a strange glowing object" in the forest.
The metallic, triangular object "illuminated the entire forest with a white light," he wrote.
UFOs? Maybe They're Just ...ILAN Science Team / Space.com10 photos Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)
http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNo des=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=693479&pid=693478 &uts=1250513197
http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf
UFOs? Maybe They're Just ...
Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
UFOs? Maybe Theyre Just ...
Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
Chinese Lanterns: These candle-lit decorations can rise high into the sky and recently were mistaken for UFOs in England.
China Photos / Getty Images
Weather Balloons: Gas-filled balloons measure conditions in the upper atmosphere to help forecasters.
AP
Clouds: Saucer-shaped or "lenticular" clouds that form at high altitudes have been confused with UFOs.
Beth Wald, Aurora / Getty Images
Meteors: Space debris can create a spectacular light show when it burns through the Earth's atmosphere.
Ethan Miller, Getty Images
Civilian or Military Aircraft: Planes can look mysterious at night or in certain light conditions.
Sean Cole, U.S. Navy / Getty Images
Stars or Planets: Heavenly bodies can be confused with UFOs.
Robert F. Bukaty, AP
Sundogs: Also called "mock suns," these bright spots on the solar halo appear as balls of light in the sky.
S.K.Mohan, AP
Blimps or Advertising Balloons: These can look like flying saucers from some angles, especially at night.
Lars Baron, Bongarts / Getty Images
Mirages: In this natural phenomenon, cold or hot air bends light rays to produce an image of a distant object. (Source: AP)
Loomis Dean, Time Life Pictures / Getty Images
The next day, investigators found depressions in the ground and unusual radiation readings. That night many personnel — including Halt himself — saw a pulsing "red sun-like light" in the trees that broke into five white objects and disappeared.
The Ministry of Defense could offer no definitive explanation for what the Air Force officers had reported seeing, but also found no evidence of "any threat to the defense of the United Kingdom."
Nothing had registered on radar, and "there was no evidence of anything having intruded into U.K. airspace and landed near RAF Woodbridge."
A 1983 letter in the file proposes a possible explanation involving a combination of the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, a fireball and bright stars.
Case closed, as far as the ministry was concerned. But not everyone was convinced.
A 1985 letter from Lord Hill-Norton, former head of Britain's armed forces, to then-Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, complained that the "puzzling and disquieting" episode had never been explained properly.
Hill-Norton said if the sighting was genuine, "British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree." The alternative explanation was that "a sizable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception, the consequences of which might be grave in military terms."
Britain's defense ministry has charted UFO sightings since the 1950s, when a Flying Saucer Working Party was established. More files are due to be released by the archives through 2010.
Some of the newly released events came with easy explanations.
In 1993 and 1994, the ministry received numerous reports of a "brightly illuminated oval object" over London. It turned out to be an airship advertising a new car.
More mysterious was a UFO "attack" on a cemetery in Widnes, northwest England, in July 1996. A police report said a young man — "a sensible sort of lad and genuine" — reported seeing a UFO firing beams of light into the ground.
A police officer sent to the scene found a smoldering railway sleeper. "It does look rather odd," reported the officer, whose name was blacked out in the document.
The files include a little grist for conspiracy theorists.
The head of the ministry's UFO desk wrote briefing notes in 1993 reporting a spate of sightings in southwest England and speculating whether they might be connected to Aurora, a secret U.S. spy plane whose existence has never been officially admitted.
Atop one of his letters, someone scrawled: "Thank you. I suggest you now drop this subject."
The files reveal a 1996 spike in UFO sightings: 609 that year, up from 117 the year before.
David Clarke, a UFO historian and consultant to the National Archives, said it was probably no coincidence that the supernatural TV show "The X Files" was popular in Britain at the time, and that alien-invasion movie "Independence Day" came out the same year.
"It's evident there is some connection between newspaper stories, TV programs and films about alien visitors, and the numbers of UFO sightings," Clarke said.
"Aside from 1996, one of the busiest years for UFO sightings reported to the MoD (Ministry of Defense) over the past half century was 1978 — the year 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' was released."
+ xxx
Posted: 08/17/09 8:42AM
Filed Under: World
LONDON (AP) - The deputy commander of a U.S. Air Force base in England was baffled by what he'd seen: bright, pulsing lights in the night sky.
Britain's defense ministry couldn't explain it either, but concluded that the unidentified flying object posed no threat.
UFO and Alien Encounters?Stan Romanek11 photos Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)
http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNo des=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=693461&pid=693460 &uts=1250513084
http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf
UFO and Alien Encounters?
Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.
Stan Romanek
Stan Romanek
UFO and Alien Encounters?
Stan Romanek claimed last summer that this still image from a three-minute video he shot in 2003 shows an alien looking into his home in Nebraska. In the film, a strange face appears to be popping up and down outside Romanek's window. Click through the photos to see other reported alien and UFO sightings.
Stan Romanek
Romanek, left, has claimed more than 100 encounters with aliens. Jeff Peckman, right, used Romanek's film to argue that Denver should open an "Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission" to deal with alien encounters.
CNN
This witness drawing of an alleged UFO sighting is in one of 19 once-secret files posted to the British National Archives Web site Oct. 20. The files cover sightings reported between 1986 and 1992. Although many of the reports were debunked, some remain unexplained.
National Archives / PA / AP
America's most infamous UFO case centers in Roswell, N.M. Some people claimed an alien spacecraft crashed there in 1947; the military said it was a weather balloon.
Eric Draper, AP
The Air Force issued the "The Roswell Report" in 1997. Countering claims that aliens were recovered at the site, the report said military officials picked up 200-pound dummies, above, that were used in an experiment.
Air Force / AP
Mexican Air Force pilots filmed strange brightly lit objects that moved quickly in the skies on March 5, 2004. Some scientists said the phenomenon could have been caused by gases in the atmosphere.
AP
An investigator in 1989 measures markings that some said were left behind by a UFO in Normandy, France. France began releasing its "X-Files" on UFO sightings in 2007.
CNES / AP
President Jimmy Carter, shown here in 1980, reported that he saw a UFO above Leary, Ga., in 1969. He filed a report about the sighting to the International UFO Bureau in 1973.
Gene Forte, AFP / Getty Images
An unidentified flying object was photographed by a government employee over the Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico in 1964. Conspiracy theorists have claimed the photo is proof that the U.S. government has been in contact with aliens.
Bettmann / Corbis
Astronaut Gordon Cooper, who piloted several space missions in the 1960s, once said he saw a "typical saucer shape, double-cylindrical shape, metallic" UFO.
AP
NOTE: Poll results are not scientific and reflect the opinions of only those users who chose to participate. Poll results are not reflected in real time.
Back to Poll Results
Have you ever spotted anything strange in the sky?
Yes 62%
No 38%
Total Votes: 851
Note on poll resultsiThe National Archives on Monday released the government's complete file on the "Rendlesham Forest Incident" of December 1980, one of Britain's most famous UFO sightings.
It was among more than 4,000 pages posted online Monday documenting 800 alleged encounters during the 1980s and 1990s. Over the past three years the Ministry of Defense has been gradually releasing previously secret UFO papers after facing Freedom of Information demands.
The Rendlesham file contains U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Charles Halt's first-hand account of the event, which has been public knowledge for many years. The file includes the conclusions of a British government investigation and a letter from a former defense chief urging officials to take UFOs more seriously.
Halt reported that two servicemen had noticed "unusual lights" about 3 a.m. in the woods outside the gates of RAF Woodbridge, a U.S. base in eastern England. He wrote that patrolmen sent to investigate saw "a strange glowing object" in the forest.
The metallic, triangular object "illuminated the entire forest with a white light," he wrote.
UFOs? Maybe They're Just ...ILAN Science Team / Space.com10 photos Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)
http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNo des=uiConfig,feedConfig,entry&id=693479&pid=693478 &uts=1250513197
http://cdn.channel.aol.com/cs_feed_v1_6/csfeedwrapper.swf
UFOs? Maybe They're Just ...
Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
UFOs? Maybe Theyre Just ...
Some UFO sightings may be due to a natural phenomenon known as sprites, like this one shown above in February. "Lightning from [a] thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite," said geophysicist Colin Price. Click through the gallery to see objects sometimes mistaken for a close encounter.
ILAN Science Team / Space.com
Chinese Lanterns: These candle-lit decorations can rise high into the sky and recently were mistaken for UFOs in England.
China Photos / Getty Images
Weather Balloons: Gas-filled balloons measure conditions in the upper atmosphere to help forecasters.
AP
Clouds: Saucer-shaped or "lenticular" clouds that form at high altitudes have been confused with UFOs.
Beth Wald, Aurora / Getty Images
Meteors: Space debris can create a spectacular light show when it burns through the Earth's atmosphere.
Ethan Miller, Getty Images
Civilian or Military Aircraft: Planes can look mysterious at night or in certain light conditions.
Sean Cole, U.S. Navy / Getty Images
Stars or Planets: Heavenly bodies can be confused with UFOs.
Robert F. Bukaty, AP
Sundogs: Also called "mock suns," these bright spots on the solar halo appear as balls of light in the sky.
S.K.Mohan, AP
Blimps or Advertising Balloons: These can look like flying saucers from some angles, especially at night.
Lars Baron, Bongarts / Getty Images
Mirages: In this natural phenomenon, cold or hot air bends light rays to produce an image of a distant object. (Source: AP)
Loomis Dean, Time Life Pictures / Getty Images
The next day, investigators found depressions in the ground and unusual radiation readings. That night many personnel — including Halt himself — saw a pulsing "red sun-like light" in the trees that broke into five white objects and disappeared.
The Ministry of Defense could offer no definitive explanation for what the Air Force officers had reported seeing, but also found no evidence of "any threat to the defense of the United Kingdom."
Nothing had registered on radar, and "there was no evidence of anything having intruded into U.K. airspace and landed near RAF Woodbridge."
A 1983 letter in the file proposes a possible explanation involving a combination of the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse, a fireball and bright stars.
Case closed, as far as the ministry was concerned. But not everyone was convinced.
A 1985 letter from Lord Hill-Norton, former head of Britain's armed forces, to then-Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine, complained that the "puzzling and disquieting" episode had never been explained properly.
Hill-Norton said if the sighting was genuine, "British airspace and territory are vulnerable to unwarranted intrusion to a disturbing degree." The alternative explanation was that "a sizable number of USAF personnel at an important base in British territory are capable of serious misperception, the consequences of which might be grave in military terms."
Britain's defense ministry has charted UFO sightings since the 1950s, when a Flying Saucer Working Party was established. More files are due to be released by the archives through 2010.
Some of the newly released events came with easy explanations.
In 1993 and 1994, the ministry received numerous reports of a "brightly illuminated oval object" over London. It turned out to be an airship advertising a new car.
More mysterious was a UFO "attack" on a cemetery in Widnes, northwest England, in July 1996. A police report said a young man — "a sensible sort of lad and genuine" — reported seeing a UFO firing beams of light into the ground.
A police officer sent to the scene found a smoldering railway sleeper. "It does look rather odd," reported the officer, whose name was blacked out in the document.
The files include a little grist for conspiracy theorists.
The head of the ministry's UFO desk wrote briefing notes in 1993 reporting a spate of sightings in southwest England and speculating whether they might be connected to Aurora, a secret U.S. spy plane whose existence has never been officially admitted.
Atop one of his letters, someone scrawled: "Thank you. I suggest you now drop this subject."
The files reveal a 1996 spike in UFO sightings: 609 that year, up from 117 the year before.
David Clarke, a UFO historian and consultant to the National Archives, said it was probably no coincidence that the supernatural TV show "The X Files" was popular in Britain at the time, and that alien-invasion movie "Independence Day" came out the same year.
"It's evident there is some connection between newspaper stories, TV programs and films about alien visitors, and the numbers of UFO sightings," Clarke said.
"Aside from 1996, one of the busiest years for UFO sightings reported to the MoD (Ministry of Defense) over the past half century was 1978 — the year 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' was released."
+ xxx