Scotland: Aliens' Official Favorite Destination 610
scubacuda writes: "This Reuters article says that Scotland has the highest concentration of UFO sightings--300 per year, the most per square kilometer and per head of population of anywhere in the world. That means 0.004 UFOs for every square kilometer of Scotland -- a rate four times as high as in France or Italy, earth's other UFO hotspots. (In comparison, only 2,000 UFOs are spotted every year in the United States represent, making just 0.0002 sightings per square kilometer. Bonnybridge--30 miles west of Edinburgh--seems to be the Scotland equivalent of Roswell, New Mexico). UFO nuts explain it in terms of aliens being attracted to remote areas. But can anyone say *autosuggestion*?"
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:1, Insightful)
Those ratios are slightly off!! (Score:2, Insightful)
-Ben
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:3, Insightful)
Like what? Convinced the Hippies not to have "free love"? Or perhaps convinced the country that handing out condoms was a good idea?
What would have been really helpful is if someone had come to earth and warned us that all our idiotic perversions could cause plagues, sickness and death.
You know, the interesting thing about Judaism and Christianity is that even if you don't believe any of the "God" stuff the whole bible makes a lot of sense from a societal health point of view.
All of these ideas were first recorded in the Jewish Torah:
>Wash with running water
>Bath at least once a week, especially women after a menstrual cycle.
>Don't eat shellfish or pork (Revoked in the Christian new testament. Many believe this was in Mosaic law for health reasons.)
>Adultery and Fornication (premarital sex) forbidden. (Prevents STDs, Illegitimate children)
>Establishment of a first-cousin rule for prevention of inbreeding
Something to think about.
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:3, Insightful)
* People who believe that the creator of the universe chose _one_ single person in all of history to be his official representative, and that if you don't believe that, you're going to suffer for all eternity.
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:2, Insightful)
Great - I love the idea that God pretty much hates everybody in the present/future, so we're pretty much left without any more useful information from the All-Knowing. (Though personally, my view of someone All-Knowing would at least have their "one person in all history" include a chapter on "weird fucking shit that doesn't exist yet, but will in 2000 years, like 'cloning', 'nuclear energy', and 'Britney Spears/Backstreet Boys sexual fantasies'.)
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to the lengths that people will go to in order to remind everybody else within shouting distance that they do believe in all that "silly stuff?" I don't recall Sagan ever having conducted television services on Sunday morning, and I know that Stephen Jay Gould never rang my doorbell asking me for a few minutes of my time, and for the life of me I can't remember Bertrand Russell ever coming up to me on the street and asking me if I had let Reason into my heart.
Almost like they have to do it constantly to remind themselves.
Precisely.
If you don't think you'd like the book, don't read it. Pretty simple stuff.
You, of course forgot... (Score:2, Insightful)
And naturally, you're one of the chosen 5% right? The elite? Take up that +5 Ogre Slaying knife that only the chosen one can wield once in a generation and charge into battle, big dog.
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:5, Insightful)
Now don't get me wrong -- I agree that *serious* study of the issue is warranted, and certainly that is going on in a few places. However it is a basic feature of the scientific process that if a reasonable claim is continually made, but there is never any real evidence to support it, eventually science will start treating it as if it's nonsense. Usually, science is right. Occasionally, it's wrong, and when *real* evidence comes up, it's a shock to the system, but almost invariably when it's looked into, science finds that there is something worth examining, and eventually the topic becomes "legitimate".
Note that this is distinct from the phenomenon of new ideas that are at first rejected by "mainstream" science because they conflict with the mainstream's view: Galileo's view of the universe, Wegener's theory of plate tectonics, and so on. In these cases, the theory is disdained because it conflicts with an established theory (theory in the scientific sense, not in the sense of, "My theory is that Oswald was an alien."). In the case of UFOs, there is no established theory -- the hypotheses are disdained because there isn't any strong evidence supporting them. UFOlogy is, so far, just an inchoate mass of eyewitness reports and blurry photos. Serious scientists disdain it because there's nothing that you can build a *real* scientific theory on.
I for one hope that some real evidence *is* found, so that all this harping can be put to rest, but I think it's important to understand that just because an idea is plausible, and there's no evidence to contradict it, does not mean that our time is well-spent researching it in great detail. Look at it this way: How long do all our scientists need to research UFOlogy (to the exclusion of other topics) before they can come to the conclusion that there's nothing to research, and can go back to other things? It's easy enough for someone to say, "Just a little longer, 'til we're REALLY sure," ad infinitum.
Re:A book recommendation for the submitter: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh Jebus, not Roswell again. Look. The debris found in the Roswell "Incident" was the remains of a string of balloons launched as part of Project Mogul, which was an attempt to detect Soviet atomic bomb tests.
There's a lovely Straight Dope article [straightdope.com] about it.
And for the love of god, why the hell won't our government even acknowledge Area 51?
Um, they do acknowledge it. They just don't tell us what goes on there because, well, it's secret. You don't expect them to give out press releases like, "Today at Groom Lake, the Air Force made several test flights of an airplane which is nearly invisible on radar."
There's another Straight Dope article [straightdope.com] about Area 51 too.
Plausible explanation? (Score:3, Insightful)
1.) It can 'levitate' and pass through some solids.
2.) It tends to lose mass as the plasma breaks down, causing it to rise into the air before disintegrating or occasionally bursting with a loud pop.
3.) It often accelerates at an extremely high rate, likely due to electromagnetic fields. This typically occurs near the end of the plasma's 'life' and often after rising back into the air.
4.) It is often attracted to nearby metal objects and has been known to follow automobiles and perhaps airplanes.
5.) The plasma, depending on its makeup, often releases noxious gasses readily identifyable by their odor or color. Some of these gasses cause dizzyness, hallucinations, and loss of consciousness at high enough concentrations.
6.) It seems to form most often in flat terrain. (such as farmland!) Large formations may be of sufficient temperature to burn away grass or crops after descending.
7.) It sometimes rotates visibly on an axis.
8.) It usually emits a high pitched or even wavering sound.
Sound anything like the typical UFO encounter? I'd say so. Granted, many distant sightings are probably just aircraft or weather balloons. So sorry to burst your bubble X-Files fans. The truth IS out there but it's not that exciting.