Has anyone ever seen a UFO?

I find myself nodding away while reading all the replies. Mark makes one of the best points. Ask a big crowd how many have seen a UFO and several put up their hands. Ask amatuer astronomers amongst the crowd and none usually put up their hands. You might actually get one or two however that do but for the reasons of semantics if thats the right word.

What I mean is this. Those amongst the general public who put up their hands do not have the trained eye to recognise celestial objects, events, natural phenomina which they assume to be a UFO....AND they take the term UFO to mean Alien Spacecraft. When they put up their hands they are saying, "Yes I saw an Alien Spacecraft"

On the other hand, of the amatuer astronomers amongst the crowd, those few that might have put up their hand did so because they saw an "Unidentified Flying Object" not an Alien Spacecraft like the general public use the term. They used their knowledge of Astronomy to rule out any celestial objects and thus it was no longer an "Unidentified Celestial Object" but an Unidentified Flying Object. But the astronomers also used their laymans knowledge of Cosmology and Physics which the general public usually don't have either to realise that for myriad reasons there is a vanishingly small chance this was an Alien Spacecraft either. While they had the specialist knowledge of astronomy to rule out celestial objects, they did not have the specialist knowledge of Biologists or Ornithologists to rule out Bird formations, they did not have the specialist knowledge of a Meteologist to rule out a weather/atmosphere related Phenomina, they did not have the specialist knowledge of the secret advanced top secret aircraft designer or test flight pilot, they did not have the specialist knowledge of the events co-ordinator who organised the release of thousands of silver foil helium baloons or glowing chinese lanterns.

I guarantee that if you got a large group of people together with experts in many fields, one would be able to rule out many possibilities, but I also guarantee at least one type of expert would be able to explain what it was.

Me personally. I am only an amatuer astronomer for 12 months so I don't even have the knowledge to rule out all celestial objects yet. My story involved a light in the sky making a sharp 90º turn. For an instant I thought, OMG!! I have heard the UFO folks talking about UFO's making sharp 90º turns, what have I just witnessed. My answer came a few seconds later. What I had seen was a chance alignment from my perspective of 2 airliners traveling high in the sky at right angles to each other but because of obscuring cloud I only say one at a time. From my perspective it turns out the South to North trajectory of one plane intersected with the West to East trajectory of another plane right behind a small patch of cloud. So the S-N plane disappeared behind the cloud and a split second later reappearred heading east. A near instantaneous 90º turn. Of course then the S-N plane reappearred also...still heading North. and the other plane still heading east, both visable at the same time. Interesting illusion all the same.

So I was able to explain the event a few seconds later. How many people would have run inside before the other plane reappeared too to tell the family before the explanation could become apparent to them? Thats when the really funny thing happened. I chuckled to myself, "thats one Unidentified Flying Object that just got identified." With that a bright yellow point appeared stright overhead, moved at the spead of a meteor but without a meteors tail, seemed to follow a curved trajectory from traveling east west but bending around to the south west before disappearing. I don't have enough astronomy knowledge to rule out a celestial explanation never mind any of the others but Occams razor tells me its much more likely to have an explanation other than an Alien Spacecraft.

Don't get me wrong, I believe the Universe is full of life. It might even be full of intelligent life. We have the proof at least from a sample size of one. Life on this planet exists, intelligent life exists. Us!! The universe is so unfathomably big, the chances are vanishingly small that there is no other life out there. But because the universe is so unfathomably big is also the reason why we will never know for sure, never be able to communicate with the other life in the universe and certainly never be able to visit them or them us.

Just another small point. A lot of people who may claim to know what occams razor means actually use it the wrong way round!! They take the meaning of the "Simplest explanation" of the phrase totally wrong.

I remember discussing ghosts with some people. Several said they had seen ghosts appearing and disappearing down the road in front of them. I said I had seen similar but it was not a ghost. I qouted Occams razor and the nodded and claimed they too had used occams razor but we had reached opposite conclusions based on it. I had to laugh when i found out how this could be.

We both came at the problem with different assumptions about the nature of reality. I assumed based on the total lack of physical proof that Ghosts do not exist and they assumed on anecdotal stories of other people that they did exist. Ironic that in effect this meant they were believing in ghosts only because other people believed in ghosts and thus interpretted an event the same way.

Anyway, the Occams razor "simplest explanation' to me was that from my perspective down the road, the chance interplay of bush branches and shadow had created the optical illusion of a ghostly figure appearing down the road in front of my eyes. There are many examples on the web that show how the brain mentally fills in the gaps in ones visual perception, often jumping the gun and drawing an erroneous image on your visual cortex before correcting itself. Think of things like the Vase/Two faces illusion. Now you see a vase, oh, now you see two human faces facing each other. Well in the dark, my brain took the visual stimulous of the bush branches and shadow and jumped the gun and drew a ghostly human figure on my visual cortex. However when I got closer the ghost disappearred... or maybe it was that the angle from my eyes to the bush and shadows changed as I got closer and the illusion broke down. With the new visual information my brain was able to correct itself and on the next refesh of the screen to use computer terminology, it redrew the ghostly figure as what it really was. A few bush branches and shadows. The Ghost had indeed disappeared!

Whats this mis-interpretation of Occams razor I talked about the others having?

The others viewed my simplest explanation of the events as Visual angle perspective, blah blah, Brain visual cortex, blah blah, Brain physiology cognitive refresh blah blah......

....they said, "Thats not a simple explanation! Thats complicated. The simplest explanation is that...It...Woz...a....Ghost!!"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry tbh! :laugh: