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Subscribe to RSSThe Internet has made it easier for reports of UFO sightings to make it into the media mainstream, but it's also easier to track down the truth that's out there. The past week's X-Files from New York and El Paso are two classic cases that demonstrate how perfectly natural phenomena can lead to way-out interpretations.
Take the New York sightings on Oct. 13, for example: The strange lights visible in daytime skies above the city sparked TV reports from Manhattan to Moscow, particularly because a retired military officer named Stanley Fulham predicted there would be a "massive UFO display over the world's principal cities" on that day.
The likelier explanation, however, is that the lights were actually party balloons glinting in the sun. The New York Daily News went so far as to pinpoint the source of the balloons: a party held at a suburban New York elementary school in honor of a teacher's engagement. A parent bringing 40 of the iridescent pearl balloons lost a bunch of them on the way in to Milestone School in Mount Vernon, N.Y., about an hour before the sightings began. The wind would have taken the balloons southward at just the right time.
"UFOs? They're crazy -- those are our balloons," Angela Freeman, the head of the school, told the Daily News.
The local TV report shown above embellishes the balloon report with a shot of a bright blip in the evening sky, surrounded by a few smaller blips. "Was that anything? Was it what people saw earlier? I don't know, I can't tell you," the reporter says. But what's on the video is a classic close-up of Jupiter and its largest moons. Jupiter happens to be about as close to Earth as it ever gets, which means the planet would be big and bright in the skies over New York. That seems to prove the point that planets are often mistaken for UFOs. Or does it?!
Just a couple of days later, the UFO buzz picked up again, with claims that strange lights had been seen in the skies over El Paso. The video at the very top of this item presents a report from KTSM-TV about the sightings. It looks as if a bright spot breaks into three teardrops of light that float earthward. Britain's Daily Mail gushed over the incident, showing a picture of three shining specks over New York as well as the three specks in Texas. "They said the 'UFO' over New York was just balloons ... so how do they explain the mirror image over El Paso?" the Mail asks in its headline.
Here's how: It didn't take long for folks to recall that there was an air show in El Paso over the weekend, and that one of the featured attractions was a nighttime parachute show by the U.S. Army's Golden Knights. The YouTube video below, captured a year earlier, shows three members of the parachute team falling through the skies with flares blazing, a sight very similar to what was seen in El Paso over the weekend.
The Golden Knights themselves link to the TV report from their Twitter page with this commentary: "Black Team causes panic in El Paso." And there's this: "Wow, GK blog is crashing due to Black Team's jump in El Paso. For the record we are not aliens in disguise."
If the El Paso lights look as if they're floating in the air, that may simply be because of the way the video camera was held. But what about the "mirror images" of the three New York lights and the three El Paso lights? In order to achieve that mirror effect, the El Paso video frame had to be turned 90 degrees clockwise. Whenever you have video of three things floating through the air, chances are you'll always find a frame in which that triad forms a triangle of some sort.
On Monday, KTSM broadcast a follow-up report that went along with the air-show explanation.
So does this close the case? Or are the Golden Knights and KTSM in on the alien conspiracy? Either way, the UFO hit parade just keeps rolling along. Now there's talk of a sighting in Florida, as well as the "God in Google Maps." Trust no one...
More on UFOs and aliens:
- UFOs in China? The tales keep on coming
- Share your UFO stories
- UFO book based on questionable foundation
- Skeptic misses the point behind UFO book
- UFO cases that still generate buzz
- What to do if we find extraterrestrial life
For your regular dose of paranormal sleuthing, check out the Tucson Citizen's "Paranormal Old Pueblo" blog, penned by Cherlyn Gardner Strong.
Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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I'm glad there more people pist off about this bull $#!* balloon story than me. What an insult! And the lady who said they were her balloons, where's her picture confirming that.
And as Mob said, please recreate that one Boyle. I would love to see the same patterns show up again, and if you could, do it in two different states while your at it.
Can't all of this be explained easier then just speculation....First off, when was the first sighting of the unexplained objects in NYC? Did I read around 9:00 am and yet I also read that the balloons weren't released until much later in the day. That right there disproves that the balloons from the engagement party are the culprits.....Two, if the Golden Knights were doing an air show or they were practicing then the Army would know when they were flying, duh?! If the times match up with each other, we could assume that the lights in El Paso were caused by the Golden Knights....Otherwise, we have another story of unidentified flying objects.......back to the drawing board folks.
First multiple sightings in China and now multiple ones in the US - New York, El Paso, Richmond. Looks like the aliens are targeting the two largest economies. Maybe they think it is time for the truth to come out. It is the US military/intelligence community that does not want the truth about advanced aliens visiting from outer space to be revealed, since that would undermine US military and economic dominance of the world. This elaborate coverup has been going on for almost 60 years. See www.ufocoverup.org for more info
I made the horrible mistake @ 12 years old in 1967 of having a 10-15 foot wide mass of white light fly right over the roof of my house in the middle of the night. This object produced an incredibly strong electrostatic field and extreme heat. It flew out over my backyard, stopped, hovered briefly, then executed three back and forth pendulum motions, then reversed course and flew back over my house and off in the direction it had approached from. The next day, I made the second mistake of trying to report it to the local police who asked the 12 year old what I had been drinking. They declined to take my report, directing me instead to the air force. That was my third mistake as they did take a report. Two weeks later, a story appears in the local paper: Local boy sees flying saucer, and named me. I had not been contacted by, nor spoken to any reporter from the paper. I had only talked to the local police and the air force. Life was not fun @ school for a long time. A few days after the newspaper story, I came home from school one day and my grandfather told me two air force officers came to the house. He said that he didn't like what they had told him(he refused to tell me what that was), and he never wanted me to talk about what I had seen again. This gave me a certain perspective through life that sends a shudder through me when I see science writers close their minds to this subject. And now, with UFO sightings on the increase worldwide, you debunkers are about to find youselves being the ones coming off as a little bit looney. I freely admit that I have no idea what the objects in New York or El Paso were, and frankly sir, you don't seem to either. But I will say, that the 1954 Robertson Panel's directives on this subject are still being implemented by you and others like you. That, sir, is a shame.
I saw something similar to this back in my high school days. It was triangle-shaped, and it hovered the whole time we saw it. I would like to see the Armies of our country fake that! Not even the best flyers can form a perfect "v" let alone have their lights shine that brightly. Light pollution, my anhk!
Most people may not be aware of this, but there have already been a number of key battles fought over our extremely valuable celestial real estate, and not just my mankind here on Earth, but also by ETs in outerspace. Some of our distant ancestors here on Earth were apparently privy to some of these violent encounters by these rival ETs. It is my personal understanding that there was a previous regional galactic war in our sector of the Milky Way galaxy, between two rival ET powers, and that part of the disagreement between them actually had to do with the outside tampering of our world which was going on in the Middle East in connection with the so called "Chosen People" of Israel. Please understand that it was not Divinity jerking these Jews around out in the desert for 40 years, or handing down tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments engraved on them, it was actually ETs masquerading as Divinity who were doing it. Apparently this problem of tampering with our world eventually reached a climax along with a few other issues, and a regional galactic conflict broke out in our sector of the Milky Way galaxy. This regional galactic conflict was actually secretly fomented by an advanced but delusion centralized ET/AI (Artificial Intelligence) system, with thousands of years of development behind it, with much of that development being self development (In other words, over time this ET/AI system gradually became self evolving, as it slowly got ever more complex). This ET/AI system eventually suffered from a God complex, or more specifically, a "Son of God" complex, primarily as a result of sharing the same language as God, which happens to be the language of Mathematics. This God complex then became the means whereby this ET/AI system was able to circumvent its prime directives, which were intended to keep this ET/AI system from taking over this ET civilization. This ET/AI system was actually hatching a secret plan to take over this ET civilizations in a totalitarian way, but it needed control of their ET military establishment to do this. So this ET/AI system secretly fomented this regional galactic war because it knew these biological ETs would have no hope of winning this regional galactic war without turning over control of their military establishment to this ET/AI system. This is because advanced AI technology is the command and control equivalent of the atomic bomb in warfare. It is my understanding that these events took place during the so called "Divine Hiatus", which was a period of time leading up to the so called First Advent of the so called Messiah or Christ into our human world. This period of time is called the "Divine Hiatus", because there was so little recorded as going on between God and these so called "Chosen People". (They actually were "chosen", but not by God. They were actually chosen by these outside ETs masquerading as Divinity.) This "Divine Hiatus supposedly occurred because God had turned his back on the Jews, because they had supposedly turned their backs on God. But from my understanding, these ETs (who were masquerading as Divinity) were actually preoccupied by the high turmoil events leading up to the eventual totalitarian ET/AI takeover of this ET civilization, following the outcome of this regional galactic war (which this ET/AI controlled system eventually won), and this ET/AI controlled civilization then gained eminent domain control of our sector of the Milky Way galaxy as a result of the outcome of this regional galactic war. This ET/AI controlled totalitarian system is now hoping to use their resulting eminent domain rights of military intervention in our sector of the Milky Way galaxy to move in on our extremely valuable celestial real estate and take it over, and one day completely take it away, without provoking full scale confrontation with Free Galaxy powers which reside elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy, and who currently stand in the way of overt military conquest on a stellar level. Our world has actually been under outside biocybernetic warfare attack for thousands of years already, and this attack primarily takes the form of these corrupt ET installed Abrahamic religions. These 'isotopic' Abrahamic religions are all critical components of a larger ET designed PWMD, or Program Weapon of Mass Destruction, which in turn is modeled after a thermonuclear device in a critical mass psychological way. These offensive totalitarian ETs are hoping to crash and explode our emerging human world in a final programmed cataclysm of global warfare fueled with WMDs, known as the Christian Apocalypse or World War III, so they can move in on our world and take it over, and one day take it completely away, after supposedly trying for a thousand intervening years following their military intervention to salvage or redeem mankind from their hopelessly violent ways. I personally found out about this longstanding ET conspiracy of territorial conquest against our world while living at Wright Patterson Air Force base from 1951 to 1953. These same ETs overflew Washington DC for several weeks in 1952, in order to demand the return of the Roswell crash remains. Mankind potentially has countless millions (even billions) of years of growth, development and expansion ahead of them, so long as they don't fall for these ET installed terminal religious belief systems. - Rick Carter
"HOW DO HUMANS EXPLORE SPACE? WE SEND OUT PROBES AND ROBOTS." Let me know how Neil Armstrong's family takes it when you break the news! This is DEFINITELY an instance where postulating something logical leads to an absurd conclusion: welcome to the world of "scientific" thought. The next sound you hear is that of grant-subsidized minds snapping shut like angry turtles! NEWS FLASH - EVERY MAJOR SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH IN HISTORY ORIGINATED IN A FLASH OF CREATIVE INSIGHT, INTUITION, NOT LOGICAL GRADUALISM. Paradigms shift catastrophically in a moment, hacks spend ages "explaining" away the wonder of it all! BIGPEACEANDLOVEONYA! billyg
Who ever wrote this article is absolutely 100% wrong in what they are reporting. All they need to do is watch both videos and you can clearly SEE that neither video is ''balloons'' or ''golden knights''. it would be crazy to suggest that they are. nothing points to that. not the movement, nor the constant postioning of the objects, nor their size, shape or colour. it is happening people. it is time to believe whether u want to or not. that could never hase been said before. it is now the people that come up with the ridiculous ''debunking'' claims that sound insane...not the believers that have genuinely been touched and moved by what they have seen. eyes on the skys people, eyes on the skys.
I love how Mr Boyle constantly interjects his false opinions in his articles. I wrote Mr Boyle a message on his face book page but never received a reply. So I'll copy and paste that here at the end. I love debunking the debunkers. Were these Balloons, maybe, maybe not. So why the false title? My Boyle is definitely no Erin Brockovich when it comes to the mater of journalism and doing research. What happened to Journalists actually doing research and investigating matters? There is no doubt, zero, that some UFO's are indeed alien aircraft and the government has covered that fact up. Research a Major Donald Keyhoe. Major Keyhoe went on CBS in 1958 to do an interview on flying saucers. The air forced had warned CBS Major Donald might release information he was not authorized to. When Major Donald deviated from the predetermined script and stated the air force were well aware that some UFOs were indeed alien in origin his microphone was muted. That is not speculation, that is FACT. I don't think Mr Boyle doesn't believe. I just don't think he can believe hes ate the lie hook line and sinker all his life. Well Buddy, keep eating it up. You done a real good job at it so far! Does anyone here actually think if the government had found alien hardware in 1940 it would have been made public? We are to the point Everyone can't be lying!
Here is the copy of the face book message I sent him.
"
I just wanted to let you know your style of journalism does a real disservice to everyday people on the subject of UFOS. Do you really think everyone could be lying? We have people who have passed lie detector tests, radar returns and trace landing cases. Look, my father, a very mundane, rank and file person who worked in the same government position in England as a fraud investigator for over 20 years had an up close daylight sighting. The sighting happened about 30 years ago when my father walked out the door to get some air. My dad noticed reflection in the paint of his car and when he turned his head to look, he saw a silver disk. The object was basically suspended in the air, completely silent. The craft was above a house being built across the street and had no windows, bolts, rivets or engine that could be made out. There was a ring of lights on the bottom the craft changing colors in an anti clockwise motion. After a short time this craft accelerated away at near blinding speed.
My dad is convinced beyond any doubt that in every sense of the word the craft was alien and he is right! Of course, he never called anyone. Because who can you call? You see the world is full of small minded journalist like yourself. It doesn't take an Erin Brokevich to tell governments have been lying about the true nature of UFOs. Even project bluebook was discounted by its lead civilian investigator. Absolutely no part of the government's story can hold water. Can't you put the pieces together? People have been describing the same thing my dad seen for over 200 years. Hopefully you are retired soon because you got it ALL wrong………..By the way, do you really think if the government had found alien hardware in 1940 they would have made it public? I would like to see you make that argument in your next article."
JMS
I was at a high school football game on 10 22 2010 in
Taylor Mill Ky 20 min south of Cincinnati Ohio and saw the exact same lights. I know personally that at least 100 other people saw them too.I saw the original story on DrudgeReport and immediatly brought up the video news story from El Paso. This isn't a coincidence.
YouTube is full of sightings the last two weeks. All of these cannot be explained away by mundane explanations. Here is the Ohio sightings. No Golden Knights there so...Quick Alan what were these? Night time radio controlled balloons? It is happening people. Search YT or I can post video after video here for you. Oh and the Golden Knights show ended over an hour earlier than the El Paso sightings occurred.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVzj77g9Xog&feature=sub