Creative Speculation
Related: About this forumLeslie Kean asks: "Is the the case UFO skeptics have been dreading?"
Answer: It probably is! Ms. Kean has an article over at HuffPost: UFO Caught on Tape Over Santiago Air Base, and it's going viral!
Journalist Leslie Kean is the author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. The book has received praise from people as diverse as Dr. Michio Kaku, Astronomer Derek Pitts of the Franklin Institute, and Rudy Schild of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The case mentioned is a sighting from Chile in 2010, presented to the public in a March 13 press conference. In Ms. Kean's words:
Please note: Chile's CEFAA is only one of a number of agencies established by governments that think UFOs are worthy of serious, scientific study. Those other countries are: Brazil, Peru, Equador, Uruguay, Argentina, Belgium, France and Britain. France's GEIPAN is part of their national space agency: CNES.
What makes this particular incident harder to dismiss?
As I said, this has gone viral: There are articles on Business Insider, and MSNBC.com.
'Debunkers' like Robert Shaeffer are already weighing in on the case:
Sheaffer has admitted that he hasn't examined any of the videos:
Here's one of the videos:
Ms. Kean has a Facebook page, linked from her website
Edited to add - for those who think the Phoenix Lights case has been thoroughly debunked: The explanation usually given was that witnesses saw flares dropped by Air Force jets during a training exercise. That's disputed by Ms. Kean and by Former Arizona Governor Fife Symington III:
Other witnesses also related the fact that the lights maintained a constant spacing throughout the sighting, unlike parachute flares which would drift with the wind. Also, the timing is off:
William Seger
(11,040 posts)I was looking at the Santiago video last night, and one thing that struck me was that the UFO does not show any motion blur, which I would expect at the speed it was supposedly flying and the shutter speed the camera was likely using (i.e. not especially fast when shooting blue sky).
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)It's hard to dismiss all of them. Please feel free to remain skeptical; but, try to keep an open mind until CEFAA and others have made their analyses.
William Seger
(11,040 posts)Without even knowing the specifics -- frame rate, exposure time, actual distance to the object or its speed -- the motion blur should have been a very noticeable percentage of the distance traveled from one frame to the next, which is simply to say that the exposure time should have been a noticeable percentage of the frame capture cycle. That would be true even if it was a small object very close to the camera, not flying particularly fast (e.g. the "rod" phenomenon that some people find so baffling is caused by bugs flying close to the camera). Even if the camera was capable of the high shutter speed necessary to essentially "freeze" an object flying at 4000 to 6000 MPH (which is doubtful, anyway), standard CCD and CMOS sensors are not nearly sensitive enough to shoot that fast in ordinary daylight and get a useable image.
Apparently, there was no sonic boom, either.
Without saying what it is, we can safely say this was not an object flying 4000 to 6000 MPH. If the CEFAA hasn't even noticed the problem with the lack of motion blur, I'm not holding my breath waiting for their analysis.
frogmarch
(12,226 posts)for Chile's CEFAA to analyze them?
Why aren't they sharing them with investigators outside of Chile?
Oh, and how can it be known that no one tampered with the videos?
Thanks for your interesting post. I like reading about supposed UFO sightings, even though I doubt Earth is being visited by ETs.
frogmarch
(12,226 posts)from the first link:
further enhanced:
I'm skeptical.
zappaman
(20,617 posts)Response to LongTomH (Original post)
Logical This message was self-deleted by its author.
Quantess
(27,630 posts)Especially before bedtime.
frogmarch
(12,226 posts)eSkeptic book review snip:
In an interesting essay included in the book titled Militant Agnosticism and the UFO Taboo, two political scientists, Alexander Wendt and Raymond Duvall, advance a theory as to why the U.S. government has supposedly been less than forthcoming on the UFO question. As they point out, skeptics cite a number of seemingly intractable obstacles to interstellar travel to argue against the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Nevertheless, Wendt and Duvall argue that the origins of the UFO taboo are political, not scientific.
eSkeptic book review snip:
Kean endorses Wendts and Duvalls call for a militant agnosticism in pursuit of UFO investigations. By agnostic, they mean not rushing to ascribe UFOs to extraterrestrial sources. If, however, the eyewitness accounts presented in Keans book are to be believed, then one would be hard pressed to conclude otherwise. Other explanations proffered in the past would be at least, or even more, mind-boggling, such as time travelers, Nazi flying saucers from underground bases in Antarctica, or visitors from other dimensions. What is most compelling about Keans study is the number of seemingly credible and authoritative first person sources who go on the record for her with their positions on UFOs. None of them claimed to have experienced any repercussions from the government or men-in-black visitations.
FarLeftFist
(6,161 posts)Orsino
(37,428 posts)...but that loaded sentence shows Kean is pandering to the sort of paranoia one finds among the most diehard of believers.
And the phrase "as agreed by authorities around the world" makes her laughable.