This wasn't a UFO, but something more sinister

[Brian G Turner]

From the countryside of Siberia it looked like this:

In one local town, it looked like this:

But it was neither a UFO, nor a doorway to another dimension - but instead, rocket exhaust from an intercontinental ballistic missile test:

Reports of spectacular UFO - a giant glowing ball lighting the sky - in Siberia

 

[Venusian Broon]

Reminds me of, but is not as spectacular as, the Norwegian anomaly reported in 2009

2009 Norwegian spiral anomaly - Wikipedia

 

[HanaBi]

Of course there will be conspiracists out there suggesting we are being "visited/observed" by alien beings; but it does make for quite remarkable imagery that could quite easily be mistaken as extra-terrestrial.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I don't really put belief in 'nuts and bolts' UFO's in the conspiracy camp. Unless said believers believe that authorities here know something and are hiding it. However, to be fair, there is a degree of overlap amongst the two groups. Especially in the US.

It's a little sad, like the belief that 'aliens built the pyramids' where some quite amazing things we experience are either a product of amazing natural processes (and I'd wager there's a great deal still to figure out - look at earthlights being generated close to Earthquakes) or man-made endeavours (yeah, something amazing did build the pyramids - it was bronze-age human endeavour and intelligence).

Invoking aliens is now the sort of 'god did it' argument, I feel. And possibly sells books.

However my two sightings of 'real' UFO's were much better and more mysterious than those photos.

 

[Mike Donoghue]

If I could take a crack at the physical mechanism behind it, I'd say the exhaust expands into a giant, diffuse "cloud", sort of like how high altitude ice crystals can create a "sun halo".

 

[Danny McG]

However my two sightings of 'real' UFO's were much better and more mysterious than those photos.

I had a sighting once, witnessed by a dozen or so at the same time, scattered around different viewpoints in our town.

Local newspaper had jolly fun making light of it. However it transpired from discussions later that a whole lot more had saw it but kept quiet to avoid ridicule.

How many in Chronicles have glimpsed one?

 

[J Riff]

you've all seen one - They have been disguised as commercial aircraft for a few decades now. * )

 

[Foxbat]

| friend of mine specialised in the interpretation of arial reconnaissance photographs for the RAF and he said people would be amazed just how many UFOs are actually natural phenomena. Here's a lenticular cloud and you can see how somebody might mistake it for a spaceship.

 

[Alexa]

Wow ! That one is amazing, Foxbat.

So there is no point of buying myself a new dress for an officiel alien welcome anytime soon ?

 

[HanaBi]

I am not a believer in UFOs, but during my more lucid moments (i.e. after 3 or 4 pints of San Miguel!), I do often think about what a UFO ship would actually look like!

Hollywood suggests the archetypal "flying saucer", but I rather suspect aliens with advanced technologies would probably think of a design way outside our current thinking. From our point of view, a rocket or saucer offers the best aerodynamics, as far as our understanding of physics is concerned. But perhaps alien species think on a far more advanced level with their understanding of building the best and sleekest space craft.

That said, I am reminded of a scene from the BBC Tv adaptation of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where two advanced but warring alien beings put aside their grievances and decided that somehow planet Earth was to blame, and that they both decided to invade us, only to have their respective fleets eaten by a small dog!

So perhaps we shouldn't think that alien craft should be large and/or saucer-shaped. For all we know they could be the size and shape of a garden pea or runner bean!

Remember than when you're tucking into your Christmas turkey dinner, with peas and beans - you could be eating a whole alien civilisation!

 

[Danny McG]

That said, I am reminded of a scene from the BBC Tv adaptation of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", where two advanced but warring alien beings put aside their grievances and decided that somehow planet Earth was to blame, and that they both decided to invade us, only to have their respective fleets eaten by a small dog!

So perhaps we shouldn't think that alien craft should be large and/or saucer-shaped. For all we know they could be the size and shape of a garden pea or runner bean!

Remember than when you're tucking into your Christmas turkey dinner, with peas and beans - you could be eating a whole alien civilisation!

The small alien thing puts this 60 second Thinkbox ad in mind...

 

[Alexa]

That was funny !

 

[Venusian Broon]

| friend of mine specialised in the interpretation of arial reconnaissance photographs for the RAF and he said people would be amazed just how many UFOs are actually natural phenomena. Here's a lenticular cloud and you can see how somebody might mistake it for a spaceship.

I agree, it's sometimes almost unbelievable what people can mistake. In one case that I read, a woman and her grown up daughter said they saw a UFO rise up from the horizon. They were mesmerised by it and soon they found themselves mentally communicating with an entity. Then it went. Clearly it had impacted them deeply as they had reported it and, the author of the piece (the marvellous level-headed Jenny Randles) had heard of it and was interviewing them.

By piecing together what they said and making observations, her conclusions were that they had probably seen the moon rising, but perhaps not usually paying attention to the sky and being bamboozled by that curious effect that the moon can look extremely big close to the horizon (I can certainly attest to that psychological effect, it's very weird when it happens - it makes the moon look so alien!) they had mistaken it and 'allowed another explanation' to form in their minds.

It makes you wonder that perhaps such misidentifications happen all the time to everyone, just that 99.99% of the time they aren't nowhere as impactful or they just throw up mundane unrealities. (Hallucinating a tree in the distance in the middle of a forest is not going to make you stop and wonder what the hell is happening. )

However, I'm am not convinced by the lenticular cloud 'identification' as a UFO. I can't think of any case where the probable answer of the sighting was resolved as a lenticular cloud. Partly the reason is that such clouds tend to form in very specific locations, near mountains no? I don't know how rare they are, but I do think in some places conditions make them reasonably common and well known.

Having said all the above, the two occasions I saw mysterious lights in the sky, if they were 'real' I have really no idea what sort of natural phenomena could possibly be. I think they are the reason I am so interested in all things mysterious (hopefully drawing level-headed conclusions ) and I suppose has had a big impact on my character. It feels like I've really touched the unknown, which is an odd feeling as everyday life is usually so tightly organised, mundane and regimented.

 

[Foxbat]

Oh, I don't know. I think it bears a resemblance to the spaceship from This Island Earth

In truth, though, I only threw up the cloud picture as an example because my RAF pal told me that many sightings had been identified as cloud formations. What I find more interesting is how the description of sightings change as does our perception through the lens that is Hollywood. In the fifties and sixties, people saw flying saucers but after the release of Close Encounters, people started seeing lights in the sky. I call it Sci-Fi-Scotoma

 

[Venusian Broon]

What I find more interesting is how the description of sightings change as does our perception through the lens that is Hollywood. In the fifties and sixties, people saw flying saucers but after the release of Close Encounters, people started seeing lights in the sky. I call it Sci-Fi-Scotoma

Not just Hollywood. We had a generation lapping up 'Fantastic stories' and pulp SciFi. Think of all those 1930's stories of rocket ships and visits to the deserts of Mars and the jungles of Venus. When aliens did turn up, they of course would also come in lurid clunky metal spacecraft!

And there must be other factors, people tying other anomalous effects into the myth. I believe, for example, that Greys only really started to come through into popular consciousness with the release in 1965 of the account of the Barney and Betty Hill abduction. And these aliens quickly became quite malevolent - abductions and experimentation. I do think people were then experiencing hypnogogic or 'hag' experiences and therefore tying that into explanations of aliens at that point, but also perhaps society was changing - we'd gone off the heady optimism of the 1950s and were going into much more strife and darker places in the late 60s.

The Mothman Prophecies by John Keel is another account of weirdness at this sort of time and it's fascinating how the explanations for anomalous events are changing at that time. On one hand there's a very '50s sort of encounter mentality - Indrid Cold actually is much more like an alien a'la George Adamski's Orthon. He has a metal spaceship etc... , but other encounters are much more frightening and disturbing: lights in the sky, cryptids, men in black, etc... If feels like a transition into a more horrible and paranoid world.

It is also fascinating the parallels between encounters of the fey and fairies hundreds of years ago and some of the alien abduction accounts - strange lights, strange humanoid creatures, timeslips etc... Possibly suggesting some sort of common mechanism? (Or perhaps some entity that can appear how we expect it to appear? )

 

[Boneman]

Yeah, but it was what was inside the lenticular cloud that was interesting... Besides, once it's identified it becomes an IFO...

 

[anno]

Mothman Prophecies was a favourite of mine back in the day...