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France Opens Secret UFO Files
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Mar 23, 2007 04:29 AM
from the mulder-and-scully dept.
from the mulder-and-scully dept.
Radon360 notes that France has become the first country to open its files on UFOs. A new website lists over 1600 sightings dating back to the 1950s.
"The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported, catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive or alarming for public consumption."
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Moi (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Moi (Score:4, Informative)
Donnez une bonne note au parent (there's no literal translation for mod up)
or
Votez pour le parent (implied that it is up)
*Waiting for the freedom fries lovers to mod me down*
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
French fries are long and thin, chips (in England) are thicker and shorter.
Here in the US the thick ones are often called "steak fries."
Here in Australia you get a strange crossover between British and American English, and so chips can mean either crisps or fries depending on context.
Actually depending on where you go in the US chips can mean anything, within a restaurant context. Often, ordering "chips" in an Anglophile/English-style pub/restaurant will result in something like what other restaurants c
Re:Moi (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>But wait, I "must be new here", right?
Well, judging by your user id#, you would seem to be relatively new here. :-)
Translation (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Moi (Score:5, Informative)
<Offtopic>Ok, I won't go into how bad that French is...</Offtopic>
It's OVNI for Objets Volants Non-Identifié. But the reason I'm posting is that I wanted to point out that this has been released by CNES, which is kind of like NASA in France. Not quite, as it's more of an educational institution, but it's very similar nonetheless...
Parent
Re:Moi (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
A better translation and masters (Score:5, Informative)
Additionally, it's not "secoupe volante" pour rather "soucoupe volante" (flying saucer) (see other comment on parent). And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are!
Parent
Re:A better translation and masters (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they wanted to be our masters and already made contact, since they would have the technology to reach us, I guess they'd already be our masters. (well, looking at our politicians' behavior, maybe they already are! ;-)
Anyone advanced enough to develop interstellar travel would probably be smart enough to come up with better plans than our politicians; if anything the Earth would be much better regulated than it is now. Then again they would also probably be smart enough not to bother ruling a backward planet filled with suicidal primates bent on taking the world with them.
There is the interesting possibility of an interstellar society which regresses much like our own in that interstellar vehicles and other similar tech are so ubiquitous and education so inadequate that pilots/users actually have no idea how the equipment works or how to maintain it. Then stupid, sadistic fools with far more money than brains could cruise the universe in giant spaceships that deliberately waste energy in search of amusement and happen upon our planet. It would be much like some of the early European settlers and the games they played with natives (which weren't so much fun for them -- see the Yaqui and Tasmanians ), and not unlike that of a small boy molesting a pile of ants. It would require neither wisdom nor intelligence and as unlikely as it is would be more likely than the scenario you describe.
Unless our planet's resources are more rare than we think, or there is some property of our location that makes it more important than we now know, it just doesn't seem that our planet would be that interesting to your average spacefarers except for the curiousity. If we were to be ruled by some spacefaring race you'd think the first thing they'd do is get rid of us since we are screwing up the planet they want.
Incidentally, the fact we know of no other planet like ours and no other life than this makes it even more important that we do not mess this one up and start working on finding other systems in which to plant life while we still can. Even if there is life elsewhere this is still a good idea; I am actually pretty glad that Stephen Hawking agrees because people will listen to him before they will listen to anyone else on an issue like this.
Parent
As above. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
You are thinking too human-centric.
Consider the following possibility. . .
Aliens exist in a higher state of reality than we can perceive; that is, they are with us right now, all the time. They function and exist in a state where time does not exist for them in the same way it does for us. That is, the thousands of UFO reports are not of nuts and bolts technology, but of bits of reality poking through into ours.
Second. . . What if these aliens are to us what we are to cows. That they are here to eat us. What if they consume the energy from negative emotions such as fear and pain. This would explain our high population, our constant state of screwed up religion, war and general suffering around the globe. It also explains our media's and our education system's aversion of looking at sciences which would help explain the alien presence. That of being living on the "spirit plane", (so to speak). Of chi and magic in general.
This explanation, as distasteful as it sounds, nonetheless answers all the puzzles presented to us be the short-sighted Carl Sagans of the world. Sci-fi wants us to think in terms of other humans from space. It doesn't look at the idea that aliens are far more intelligent and have no interest in communicating with us beyond manipulation and control.
Look at our cattle industry. --We breed an entire race of animals totally controlled for our consumption. Aliens need to eat too.
As above, so below.
-FL
Parent
Intent (Score:3, Interesting)
Negative emotions are certainly tied to behavioral mechanisms, but they nonetheless have an energetic quality. This is not human-centric. It's life-centric. Since aliens are also alive, it's a common denominator which we share with them. Our technology and perceived limits
French Response (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:French Response (Score:5, Insightful)
We were "militarily" winning the war by our standards, which were not the same as either the Viet Cong's or the NVA's standards. They were also winning the war by their standards. Their military goal was to kill as many of us as possible and eventually drive us out. Which they did.
Military is strategic as well as tactical. What you're forgetting is the strategic element, which is different from the political element. Tactically, we were running rampant all over the battlefield, and that convinced some that we were winning. But our military strategy was fatally flawed in the face of an enemy whose counter-strategy was to feign retreat and then infiltrate and kill using sneak attacks. We thought we were winning; they knew we weren't. It was in fact their strategy to convince us we were winning in order to provide them with easier targets, and they were pretty successful at it.
The "we would have won if not for all the hippies" argument is not one that has ever held any water. We could have stayed there forever and we would have never secured that country. Imagine Iraq today, only around 10 times worse (and statistically, it was), and actually devolving rather than improving the more years went by, the more troops we poured in and the more bombs we dropped. After 30 continuous years of escalating conflict, what military strategy would have changed that result?
Read your history.
Indeed.
Parent
Re:French Response (Score:4, Insightful)
French bashing was so 2002/2003. We saw how the other items in the American gung-ho mindset worked out for that time period: French bashing, invading Iraq, Guantanamo Bay prison, restrictive anti-terror laws, waterboarding, extraordinary rendition for torture, etc. Most people recognize that the French were right in 2002 and 2003 and that the rest of the items above were grave mistakes. Why continue to bash the French then? It isn't like they haven't helped out fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda--in fact the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaule is heading out to the Arabian Gulf for another tour. The French were against a war than most Americans are now against (Iraq) and support a war that most Americans still continue to support (Afghanistan). Continuing to bash the French is worse than pointless. It is like a jock beating up the smart kid because he was right and the jock was wrong. The main reason people continue to bash the French is to hide their own shame.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
However, then there's the second thing that springs to mind: the famous La Resistance movement, that continued fighti
Re:French Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's totally self-interest.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Link seems broken (Score:2, Informative)
Does anyone know the correct link?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"The website itself -- which crashed host servers hours after it was unveiled due to heavy traffic -- is extremely well organized and complete, even including scanned copies of police reports."
Re:Link seems broken (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
"France has become the first country..." (Score:5, Informative)
Because Radon360 is a twat.
May 2006:
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInform
Gee, Thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't realize that submitting a story made me a "twat".
That's great that you brought the fact that the UK government has released some similar information to the public, long before France had done so. Perhaps the reporter of this article should be labelled a "twat" for not researching the topic further and bringing up that point, or at least not make the bold comment about France being the first.
Which brings up another point. If you ever have submitted a story to Slashdot, you'd recognize that the editors tend to take quite a bit of liberty on rewriting the story summaries (for better or worse). I didn't "note" anything...the summary was just rewritten to say I did.
Parent
Since this is France we are talking about (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Since this is France we are talking about (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Tag zis (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
its a matter of point of view (Score:5, Insightful)
To believe that these unexplained things are extra terrestrials is a huge leap, and one I would tend to scoff at. Not least because the whole 'flying saucer' and 'greys' crap only appeared in the US during the early cold war, with greys not being named till later.
I will never believe that an advanced race can travel all the way across the inconceivable distance between stars, and be dumb enough to crash. Nor that they would travel that far and buzz people on their own, which is all that has supposedly happened.
Not once have they made proper contact and opened a dialogue, or established a visible presence. That's would be like Christopher Columbus landing in America, blowing a rasberry at a native American, jumping back in his ship and heading home without another word. It's just silly.
Most alien visitation theories read like children's stories, and most 'the aliens operated on me' stories read like early memories of visits to a dentist mixed with sexual fantasies.
And yet I do believe that other life exists, to do otherwise is to be a fool, given the size of the universe.
I do not, however, subscribe to the 'aliens are morons who can't steer a ship, and like to cut on us some from time to time' line of thought.
Re:its a matter of point of view (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm with you on the entire alien-free-planet-to-date argument, but you may want to reconsider that particular belief. Travelling distances between stars is a completely different thing from landing on a planet and this includes the mechanics involved. You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitroge
Re:its a matter of point of view (Score:4, Insightful)
2: Any Race unable to enter the atmosphere of a planet safely in a crewed ship would also be unlikely to be inclined to do so, or they would have gathered experience. After all, we've barely got started and already we know the problems involved in landing on different planets.
Give aliens a little credit...
Parent
Re:its a matter of point of view (Score:4, Insightful)
If these aliens evolved on a planet with an atmosphere they'd have had to work the mechanics out in order to get into orbit around their own planet. Even if an alien species could evolve in some completly different environment gravity is a fundermental universal force.
You may be incredibly fast in a vacuum but perhaps you've never encountered Earth-like gravity before or this Nitrogen floating around in the atmosphere so much.
Hence you'd probably want different vehicles for travelling through intersteller space vs looking around planets vs descending into planetry atmosphere.
Looks harmless enough, but what do you know, it just happens to set the primary coil reactor on fire and corrode the entire fusion circuitboard in a matter of seconds, what an awkward time to find this out.
Hence you could use these useful things called "robot probes". Also "seconds" is plenty of time for an autopilot to select "abort to orbit", unless the pilot has reaction times several times slower than humans it is also plenty of time for them to do something about the emergency.
Or maybe you just have no idea to compensate for 10 times the gravitational pull of your own home planet, maybe simply because your landing thrusters have nto been designed with that in mind.
The only thing any aliens need to know is the mass of their own craft. From that they can work out the mass of every object in the Solar system.
Basically you assume two things in your belief: (1) familiarity with the Earth environment
Actually "familiarity of a planet gas around it".
(2) total absence of mechanical/electrical/whatever failures
Or using multipally redundent systems. Especially of a a vehicle you intend taking into an alien environment.
The idea of intelligent aliens who are capable of intersteller travel, yet ignorant of the basic mechanics of the universe and incapable of the engineering needed to stay alive is just incredible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if such a species evolved in an environment very different from Earth they'd still know about rocky planets with gas atmospheres because such planets are common.
Of course any alien from an environment unlike the Earth's surface would probably have to we
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
However until we have any evidence that Aliens are behind UFO sightings, which we don't, we shouldn't really spend too much time trying to justify how it might happen.
Re:its a matter of point of view (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I just hope a better metaphor isn't bugs in a jar. Some kid's going to pick it up and shake it, just to get us angry...
Re:its a matter of point of view (Score:4, Informative)
Equation: N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
This is followed by an explanation of the 'variables' and the sentence "Most of these have not altered to any significant degree since that conference in 1961."
Wow! Talk about disingenuous. fp is changing as we get new pictures. Planetary systems are thought common instead of fairly rare as in '61. The rest are a joke.
ne (planets suitable for life) - unknown, we can't examine the small planets yet.
fl (planets with life) - unknown, we can't examine the small planets yet.
fi (those with intelligence) - unknowable.
fc (those with radio) - unknowable.
L (lifetime of advanced races)- unknowable.
Lessee, that's five of seven that are unknown and three of those cannot in any reasonable stretch of the imagination even be known. Great equation.
Well, they follow that with a lame caveat:
"Values for some of these parameters are, of course, open to considerable disagreement..."
Following that are the explanations for the current set of values. This is filled with such gems as (for fi and fc) "however many researchers of the topic agree 0.01". First, there are no researchers on this topic. Research cannot be done on this topic. What the author means is "however, many geeks during parlor talk fervently believe that 0.01". Not the same thing as science. Not a value to be used in anything but a parlor game.
L is another good example. They're just using the length of our civilization with nukes. That's right. They consider us to be the average for the lifetime of advanced civilizations. Our one known example is used to average a galaxies worth of possible civilizations. Utter drek.
This is what happens when dried scientists try to get sexy with parlor talk.
Parent
Oh for heavens sake (Score:4, Funny)
Sheesh, ACC offered my this planet for a nice quiet vacation, but everywhere I see people babbling about UFOs...
Comment servir l'homme ? (Score:4, Funny)
"Comment servir l'homme ?" (How to serve man ?)
is a cooking guide....
Juste loved this old TZ episode
-- a true frog from France ^^
And that's not the worst part... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:And that's not the worst part... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Quit with French bashing already !!! (Score:4, Insightful)
you should remember that the freedoms you are enjoying now were put forward in their current forms mostly by french intellectuals in 18th century, matured in this country and then were accepted by your founding fathers and incorporated into your constitution and the consequent revolution. not to mention french aiding you against the british, lafayette and all.
and i dont even need to mention the french revolution, which is the social movement that set the way to the modern civilized society by overthrowing aristocracy not only in france, but in most of europe. it was eventually messed up by a short megalomaniac who is known as napoleon, but eh - revolution still did its thing.
french are ok.
the only problem is that, they hatch on stuff TOO long, only to put the stuff into action in 100-200 year intervals. and then, major things happen. all in the meantime they sleep, ruled by egotistic megalomaniacs.
UFOs exist (Score:5, Insightful)
All those people who have reported UFO sightings near Area 51 are probably right, they most likely DID see UFOs. Since the prime use of Area 51 is to test secret aircraft in a way that makes sure that no-one finds out about them, most of the air operations out of the base would have appeared as UFOs to anyone except the few people working on whatever top secret project it is.
As to why countries like America have not released their "UFO" files, its more likely to be because said files could contain information about "black" projects (those of the US, those of allied powers and those of enemy powers such as the Russians). Some of those aircraft are still flying (and some may well still be "top secret") and the US probably doesn't want information about aircraft that may still be used now or in the future to be made public.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
all your base are belong to us (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, this base is nothing more than a list of police reports, even it there really was an alien origin in one of those phenomenons, the odds that this base contains anything usefull to prove it is almost nil.