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Imagery from the Digitized Sky Survey shows a blue splotch (nicknamed the "cosmic wiener") that was wrongly identified as an alien spaceship.
If you repeat UFO fiction often enough, does it eventually get reported as fact? Yes ... especially if you add in a 2012 doomsday angle and some dodgy astronomical imagery. Fortunately, an Internet truth squad finally knocked down this alien invasion.
Claims that we're about to be visited by alien spaceships are generally a dime a dozen (or a quatloo a dozen?), but for some reason one particular urban legend about "Giant Spaceships Heading Towards Earth" kept itself alive for more than a year, mostly by metastasizing on UFO forums. From the very beginning, the reports pointed to three eerie blue-green shapes on Sky-Map.org's archived imagery from the Digitized Sky Survey. "Trust me you will be very amazed. I WAS FOR SURE!!!!" one commenter wrote in February.
As the story was passed along, another forum commenter (who claimed to be a SETI investigator writing "at great threat to myself") said the spaceships were on a trajectory that would bring them to an area near Washington, D.C., on Dec. 21, 2012 — just in time for the Maya apocalypse. Later versions of the story incorporated the 2012 doomsday angle as well as the attribution to a SETI astrophysicist. Some even gave the researcher a name: Craig Kasnov.
Those are all the elements of a good UFO tale: a supposed insider, sharing seemingly legit evidence about an impending alien invasion with a well-known doomsday deadline. It's clear that thousands of folks wrote about the tale, based on an Internet search of key terms in the text. Sky-Map.org said it recorded nearly 100,000 Web visits on Dec. 2, when the tale was picking up speed on the Internet.
The truth squad finally caught up with the story around Dec. 9, when level-headed forum participants noted that the blue-green shapes were clearly flaws in the photographic plates that were digitized for the sky survey. In each of the three cases, emulsion problems showed up in one of the color-coded plates but not the others — which explained the bluish color. Craig Kasnoff (with a double-f) also weighed in: He wrote that he was indeed involved in the genesis of the SETI @ Home alien-searching project — but he denied that he was an astrophysicist, and denied making any comments about approaching alien spaceships.
"This post may, or may not have, made any contribution to the discussions of 'objects flying towards Earth,'" he wrote. "But I hope it clears up any question regarding my involvement [in] this announcement."
To recap: The weird shapes on the astronomical pictures were nothing more than photographic flaws. The UFO claims had no authority behind them. And the 2012 date merely capitalized on the Maya apocalypse hype.
Bad Astronomy's Phil Plait provides a detailed smackdown of the UFO tale. Discovery News' Ian O'Neill, a charter member of the 2012 truth squad, weighs in as well. O'Neill also provides a handy B.S. detector for the seemingly scientific claims you might come across in the social media mix.
Meanwhile, the UFO beat goes on: The same YouTube user who posted a "Giant Spaceships" video last December has plenty more where that came from.
Bottom line? Watch the skies if you like ... but also watch what you believe.
More UFO tales:
- UFO tales just keep going, and going ...
- UFOs explained, from N.Y. to Texas
- Oberg: UFO book based on questionable foundation
- Kean: Skeptic misses point behind UFO book
- Share your UFO stories
- UFO cases that generate buzz
- Best places to spot UFOs
Connect with Cosmic Log by "liking" our Facebook page or hooking up on Twitter, and check out "The Case for Pluto," science editor Alan Boyle's book about Pluto and the planet quest.
Leave a Comment:
Belief in UFOs is similar to belief in God. You need to have faith. Science will never prove the existence of God or the stories in the Bible.
Of all the planets in all of the galaxies, is it possible that there is other intelligent life? Only God knows the answer and science does not.
Travel to the center of Mars and there could be intelligent beings living in a colony making preparations for a visit to you know where.
Is it that important to know whether there is or there is not? A cynic might ask, Who cares?
I am not an astrophysicist and I leave it to NASA scientists and engineers to explore and go beyond where no man has ever gone (before.)
I am a chemist who wants to purify drinking water here in New Jersey so that the technology can be used to benefit the billion earthlings who do not have clean drinking water. I believe that I have the technology to demonstrate feasibility, but it is difficult to get the public interested in providing clean water to the unwashed in Haiti or any other nation on Planet Earth.
Water purification is neither sexy nor fashionable. It is low tech. But it is easy to convert hexavalent chromium in your tap water to the non-toxic and essential trivalent chromium using electron transfer. Trust me on this one.
There are so many serious problems here on this fragile planet that must be addressed if we are to survive, endure and evolve for the next thirty billion years. We can, but we need to support science and math in our educational system. We must expose ignorance in the media and politics. When we hear that global warming is a hoax or myth, we need to present the facts to the public in the most objective and concise fashion.
Is there intelligent life on earth?
Is there intelligent life on earth?
Sometimes I wonder.....
Sky survey? Plate emulsions? How long has it been since this picture was actually taken? My guess would be at least 15 years ago, since pretty much everyone has switched over to digital astrophotography. In fact, amateurs today are taking better photos using relatively small telescopes and high-tech digital astro cameras than giant observatories could with film-based cameras 20 years ago.
Yes, you're right, AC5TF ... the imagery is from the Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-II), which was carried out in the 1980s and 1990s. The POSS-II pictures were later scanned for inclusion in the Digitized Sky Survey.
that made no sense "faith" in ufos? so u basically just said if u believe in ufos are are palin stupid believing in the gods.
it just takes a bit of intelligence to understand the vastness of the universe that allows such things as aliens to exist. as when u start talking about gods u have crossed into palin stupid levels of wackiness.
seems odd that artists created images of ufo's thousands of years before christ
http://www.alien-ufo-pictures.com/ancient_aliens5.html
and a bit ironic that those ancient images look exactly like the ones from "todays world"
yepp.... must be a hoax alright...
cheers
:)
What about the myths of sky beings that watch over us all and through some arbitrary system we can never understand some of us of wildly successful and other painfully fail, they kill children and old people with abandon but if you kneel to them and say certain words in a certain order they will help you.
BTW, I am not talking about UFOs.
Well, if you have to ask...maybe your question concerns your intelligence as much as anyone else's.
Darwin's belief in our alleged primate origins, to my thinking, was more of a low self image issue than anything else.
Intelligent Design maintains the planet is only 6,000 years old and humans rode dinosaurs. Sounds more like the idea of a pothead who watched way too much Flintstones.
Well ya had ta wonder, what with everyone and their brother having at least a still-camera with them at all times, let alone video cameras: Where are all the UFO's and aliens, now?
To paraphrase Edward G. Robinson in the Ten Commandments "Where's yer messiah, now, Moses?"
(Probably one of the greatest mis-casts in movie history!) (LOVED it)
That is a pretty crappy looking UFO! Did you ever notice reported alien faces look a lot like a Praying Mantis? I wonder where they dreamed that up?
Well . . . not all of this UFO stuff is fiction.
http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/
No, a lot of it is innuendo, rumor, and conspiracy theory, too.
Besides innuendo, there's a lot of ignorance and incoherence too ;-)
Check out what the stereo and soho satelites have been showing.http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query
try 2011/01/01 23:48 time frame. Watch the jpeg movies and slow through them.
This specific image may not have been a real UFO, but there are many cases where NASA has removed objects from their photos when it does not know what the object is. In any case, we do not have to wait till 2012 - the aliens are already here and have already made contact with the US government many times. 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 ufocoverup.org for more info
Drawing on the aphorism that if one cannot say something nice, one should say nothing at all--I remain silent.
roflmao... I'm with you Jim - no sense trying to have a battle of wits with someone who's clearly unarmed..
And don't forget your foil hat to suppress the mind control signals..
So the Chinese must be better allies with the aliens then. That explains their dastardly industrial strength and growing economy. They must be processing the dilithium crystals more cheaply for the aliens.
Guess I better go paper the walls of my house with aluminum so they cant read my thoughts.
Jim....so true and Lunchbox...I'm going to join you.lol!!1
In need of a good laugh this morning and the photo caption did it!!!!! I am lmao!!! C'mon people, have a sense of humor!!!! Science aside, it's freakin' hilarious!!!!!!!! I can only imagine what they were thinking before they settled on weiner!!
I long for the day we are actually visited by aliens. I have never seen any good evidence that they've ever been here. They are definitely out there. Anomalies on a grand scale don't occur. If you look all across the universe and only find life on Earth - that is a grand anomaly - and everything we no from science says that grand anomalies don't occur.
The only problem is that when the aliens do finally arrive, the population will split into a few camps:
Unfortunately the folks who react badly will probably ruin it for the rest of us.
@FormerMarineSgt - It will definitely take a bite out of religion, as did the discovery that universe doesn't rotate around the Earth (prior Catholic dogma). I believe Group 1 will be very small - but would have been large a thousand years ago. I think Group 2 will be very small - most will adapt their religion to the new information (an ongoing process), with a few finally being able to drop their arbitrary religion entirely. Group 3 may be moderate in size, but not large enough for the attacks to be common, or commonly accepted, meaning the attackers will be hunted down and prosecuted. Group 4 is a tough one. "Bad" isn't set in stone. Cultures are very different, even here. I think if the aliens used their own technology to get here, then we don't need to worry about them. As for just capitulation - that may be common. As for Group 5, I can't see anyone not caring one way or the other, but as for the second part of that (accepting if the aliens are good...) - I think that will be common.
Bearing in mind that this film plate image was taken over 20 years ago, that would mean the "alien ship" must've been maybe twice the size of jupiter and somewhere out around the orbit of Pluto, just sort of creeping along since it won't arrive until 2012. Real plausible, huh!?
On another note, I'm not a subscriber to the "benign, giving alien" image. If a civilization is old enough and advanced enough to make the jump between star systems, then it is far more probable they have exhausted their own planet's resources and are sniffing around for more! Of course, we might be there now ourselves had religion not caused the Dark Ages.
Hmmmm
Not to take the fun out of all of this.....BUT...these posts are assuming we can see the extra-terrestrials coming. What if it's a parallel universe scenario??? Has anyone had an experience with a plane of existence that comes and goes near them? Has anyone who studies the sky ever noticed that every once in a while the stars seem/look different? Just wondering.....HMM-M-M-M.
Please see SOHO and stereo images try 20011/01/01 time frame 2348 these were visible over 12 hour time frame. maybe longer. here is link http://sohodata.nascom.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/data_query
correction 24 hrs.
So.... this "truth squad" is really just part of the conspiracy to hide the FACTS about UFOs, right?
:D ;) :D ;)
now I know how to spell quatloos. ;)
I think that useing the term "UFO" is a trap. Unidentified Flying Objects. The word "Flying" is the trap. It implies some kind of intelligence behind a flying machine with a physical construction. What we should be useing is a phrase something like "unknown lights in the night sky" which is what I perceive that most people observe other than the few random hoaxes put forth by publicity hounds. In my opinion I believe that useing a phrase such as I have mentioned would lead to fewer hysteria based posts and reactions.
Personally I would love to see real physical evidence of machines constructed from someplace other than earth. This would tell us a couple of things including that there is other intelligent life in the universe and that space flight between the stars is possible.
Alan Boyle's final comment in this article; "Bottom Line? Watch the skies’ if you like . . . but also watch what you believe" is very poignant.
I was once a field investigator for a very well known international organization that investigated UFO sightings. I analyzed a decade's worth of UFO sighting reports from the organization's database and discovered 45% of sightings were given a case disposition of 'Unknown'.
While I described the results in another article as having holes in the data and that the skill sets of those investigating and reporting the sightings may not have the skills and knowhow about aerial phenomenon, I brushed off the results as if this was a learning experience within the organization. I stated 'Unknown's' should be at 1% or less; "Unable to explain".
Later, as I continued to 'explain' all these sightings in my investigative work, (I am a financial & business analyst by profession) my case work was hijacked by those in the organization over me who took it upon themselves to reassigned my closed cases because they did not like that I was 'Identifying' sightings as IFO, Hoax or Insufficient Data. I was even told NOT to use Hoax anymore by a well known member of the organization who was a member of the USAF for 30 years. None the less I resigned from the organization because of their; "I Want To Believe" agenda even though their mission stated that they stood behind science.
Is there a possibility that we may be visited by other extra-terrestrial intelligence? Yes, it's possible as I have seen something I could not explain in the company of another witness. Seeing is still not proof unless you have physical proof in hand which can be corroborated by others. I will continue my efforts as an independent investigator.
So . . do indeed be very careful as to what is being sold to you . . . most often, it's just someone's political agenda. "The Truth Is Out There" . . .
"I stated 'Unknown's' should be at 1% or less; "Unable to explain"."
Often wrong . . . never in doubt.
We have sufficiently exterminated everything is this part of the galaxy. Thats what they were trying to do to us. Now we have thier planet, earth, took all the water from their fourth planet mars, blew up what was once their fifth and sixth planets, decimated enceladeus, gathered up the fog of war and used it to crush the once tropical planet jupiter and somehow lost our original planet satan, it was that damned ring structure that did it,, gives off an awful resonace....there are no ufo's, we already killed them off, you are just experiencing a long gone genetic memory of a time when we were the ufo's..if the indians had known all this when the white man bought manhatten, they would of asked for more purple glass beads up front....sorry.
(ok, I thought it was funny)
Belief in UFO's is similar to belief in God.
Not hardly. Belief in god is the belief in the unknown or the unseen or super natural forces that before the dawn of a piece of equipment known as the microscope were the norm in which all occurances were thought to have occurred on Earth. before science came along the notion of the pagan belief that a god controlled the winds, movement's of the planets tectonic plates, the movement's of the planets around the sun was the norm. Then astronomy came along and began to prove the very reasons why planets move around each other as well as beginning to bring about an understanding of the nature of the bodily systems seperate of the notion of the pagan beliefs that a god caused this or a god caused that to happen which resulted in a person's actions as such. Aliens will exist because of the involvement of two factors the first being Newton's Law's of Motion involving energetic reactions of an equal and opposite reactionary result coupled with a detailed use of Newton's Equation's of the Motion in the Langrangian Form of combining physics with chemical applications we can quantify such a method to use in the formulation of interactions that would cause a microbial to evolve into a different state of sentinent equality.
Having a belief in an unseen or super natural god does not preclude the reality of such an existance rather the existance would be proven by paying witness to the tangible facts associated with what can be seen with the human eye as well as the unseen which can be discovered with a microscope.
Nope, they are indeed similar. UFOs taken as a popular culture subject mean things things from outer space, alien in origin, and not completely knowable at the time. Hey, that sounds comparable to faith in God (and your disinterest in capitalizing a proper name is just merely a grammatical error)!
It would be nice if someone knew what they were talking about. We in the community already know that most, and I say Most UFOs are our own beloved Air Farce playing with new toys, then there are the ones that leave all of us scratching our heads., but the truth is out there somewhere. To believe we are the only life in the universe is absurd, get over it we arnt alone, and to equate it to God, geeze, ever watch Ancient Aliens? may not answer the questions but leaves the question mark up..?????
This crap worked its way into some of the physics and astronomy boards I visit, finally died off about four months ago.
I am sure there are aliens (has to be given the almost infinite number of stars), some are likely more advanced than we are and probably have visited Earth on occasion. That said, I still don't believe they visit Cleetus, Bubba and Darlene in their trailer park every weekend. Just like there are probably people with psychic abilities, but you aren't going to find them calling a 900 number for $4.99 a minute.
You know.. this is getting old now. Has anyone notice how everything is "Aliens Everywhere" all of a sudden? If they are going to release alien information to the public JUST DO IT ALREADY! quit with the whole "if aliens were real" maybe aliens are real, and I suppose aliens are real but there fiction articles. We ALL know the truth, so if you're going to reveal the truth please do so, and stop procrastinating! This universe is so huge, our solar system is just a mere spec of dust on a beach, so you have to be a complete idiot to believe that we are the only thing living in space. UFO's and alien activity is fiction you say? hmmm lets take a quit look:
1. Time travel and dimensional tech exist (Montauk Project, Philadelphia experiments)
2. Eisenhower/Truman Greada Treaty
3. Project Blue Book
4. Multiple encounters with certain beings and their technology (research Phil Schneider, Billy Meier, David Adair, Amaury Rivera, and many more)
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if those in the office are aliens! I mean seriously, some of the things I have been seeing done to us lately, and said to us to promote killing, just seems.....well not humane. Our race can be violent and ignorant, but damn!! lately it seems like there is something dark ruling our worldly governments! Throw in the mix a few willing human beings, who just want power and more money, then you have a recipe for a world full of bullsh!+ and chaos. Whether some people want to admit it or not, but something is attacking our world, look at all the animal deaths, and wars breaking out just in time for the big 2012 scare.
So with that being said, it almost seems like a elaborate plan to slowly ease the idea into our heads, by accepting these beings, without them showing their faces, or like the article says it could just be FICTION.
one day all of man-kind is going to find out the truth that we are not the only ones in this vast universe after universe and then they will come too know what a real ant farm is all about...amen-ra
Thinking that only one intelligent life form could form in the vast universe is like thinking in a vast field only one weed will grow.
I saw a light in the sky one time.
I would agree on the bunk, but it is funny how the object has moved from one image to another and in the comparison of the blue/red plates that there is nothing behind the image. Additionally, the one star/light that is in the top left corner (middle between the two other lights) is diagonally flat where the 'blue ship' outline was. Not trying to fuel the fire, but funny, nonetheless.