Flying Triangles

Rodsw

http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/Cas...ction=Triangle
http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/triangles.htm

They have been sighted all over the world including a friend of mine who saw it up close just hovering about 4 storey high in a 2 storey home almost covering it. Who created them? The US Department of Defense? But why do they keep hovering at people houses and scaring them? They can execute fast acceleration and 90 degree turn at say 2000 km/hour that seems to cancel inertia and defy physics. What are they? Are they triangular baloons? Has anyone seen them here?

zoobyshoe

I have no idea what they are.

I can tell you, though, that I met a guy who saw one and told me about it in the late 1970's. That is: he told me about it in the late 1970's. This was before they became incorporated into UFO lore.

He said he and a friend were lying out in a field on a hot summer night looking up at the stars. A huge triangular shape passed slowly over them. They couldn't make out any details or features. The only reason they were aware of it is because it blocked out a huge triangular section of the sky as it went over.

FlexGunship

I think it's safe to say that a surprisingly high number of them are misidentified airplanes. Not all of them, certainly, but the "prodigious number" of flying triangle sightings is surely bolstered by misidentified airplanes.

Secondly, a few that I've heard of, actually have turned out to be triangular balloons (interestingly enough), so that's not impossible.

Additionally, I know that in my area, out on a local (ocean) beach, a sport known as "night gliding" has gained popularity. It's the suicidal act of hang gliding in the middle of the night. It's also illegal in New Hampshire. A few sightings that have made the local newspaper ended in the re-arrest of repeat offenders; apparently the police know how to recognize the signs, but the public doesn't.

I should be clear, I have no idea how prevalent this activity is, and I've never seen it in person, but I understand that they use marker lights that don't flash and sometimes carry hand-held spotlights to find places to land... you can imagine the effect it might have on an unknowing observer.

Lastly, I know I've misidentified RC airplanes at night. There's a field near the county courthouse where folks are allowed to fly RC airplanes day and night. Turns out, you can't hear an RC airplane very well over slight background sounds; it's basically white noise and blends in very well. That gives the illusion of something silently flying over a field. Like I said, I've been tricked by this long ago... but now I know what to look for.

I'm sure there are PLENTY that have not been explained or cannot be explained this way. However, you have to ask yourself, if there are so many amazing explanations, isn't it pretty likely that they all have earthly explanations?

Mazulu

Speaking hypothetically, if they were real spaceships could we draw any conclusions from their demonstration of technology? For example, do they manipulate gravity fields as a form of propulsion?

This is a debunking discussion. So I will give you something to debunk.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...09939745631584

FlexGunship

Given that modern airplanes don't require "manipulation of gravity fields as a form of propulsion" yet they seem to fly on a routine basis, I don't see any reason to introduce such wild speculation. Furthermore, modern aircraft are generally triangular in shape.

So... speaking hypothetically, if they were "real spaceships" (operating in the Earth's atmosphere), I would assume that they are using airfoils operating in accordance with Bernoulli's principle and the Kutta-Joukowski theorem. We know this works with triangular spacecraft... no speculation needed.

DaveC426913

There is reason to apply wild speculation if we accept the accounts of these craft being able to hover and other strange maneuvers. Most people are pretty familiar with how aircraft can move and how they can't. I find it hard to believe they could be so easily misidentified.

OK, so switch the Space Shuttle for a Hawker Harrier, but frankly, I find it almost as implausible that people all over the world are seeing all these Hawker Harriers floating around at night with nary a positive ID.


Flex's night-hang-gliders actually sounds pretty plausible. They would very nicely describe many of the maneuvers people describe, and many people are not aware of just how hang-gliders can move, so it makes mis-identification more plausible. And they're silent.

Mazulu

At 44 minutes into the video, there are Belgium military officers who describe there encounter, and chase, of a triangle shaped UFO. At 55min, the Belgium Air Force is on alert. 2 F-16's chase the triangle shaped object. They locked onto it with on-board radio, but the craft bolts out of range.

FlexGunship

Yeah, maybe... I don't really wonder that, though. Hearing reports of airborne geometry and thinking first of Alcubierre drive is like hearing reports of facial tissue sales and thinking alien biological warfare.

Kind of a non sequitur.

Meh. I've shared my UFO stories on this forum before. I'm pretty well versed in human flight, and I've certainly let my imagination run wild with something that later turned out to be just a plane. A steeply-banked cargo plane seen at night makes for quite an optical illusion.

I had an ex-girlfriend who was convinced there was a flying saucer outside of Taco Bell. Just from her description, I was able to determine it was a spotlight hitting a cloud. The moment I said that to her, she said: "Oh my god, you're right!"

No, but there are a lot of social forces at work with these things. Maybe one person saw a Harrier (just as an example, not actually suggesting it as an explanation) and created the archetype for the flying-triangle report. Other reports of other, more mundane, phenomena are artificially lumped with the original report, memories are distorted, and witnesses are given more credibility because of "similar" events.

Like I said before, I've never seen it in person... but, as I understand it, most of the reports come in as UFOs (triangle, I would assume) and the police know exactly what to look for now. I can only imagine their reactions to the first few reports and the struggle to explain them or to even react appropriately.

I used to be a total UFO nut. UFO books were my second favorite (after dinosaur books) when I was growing up and I still buy quite a few of them. But the sad fact is that most UFO reports have nothing of value in them. We should resist the urge to put more weight on these stories than they deserve because the implications are so fantastical!

There are currently 181 known California Condors in the wild; they live (almost entirely) in remote and un-populated areas. Furthermore, it's hard to find numbers, but I suspect that there are fewer amateur birdwatchers then there are amateur UFO hunters... yet...



VERSUS



You don't have to lecture me on how people don't plan to see UFOs, and they're not prepared, and how difficult it is to photograph at night... I get it all.

But over time, the quality of amateur bird photos has increased proportionally with the quality of camera equipment.

The photographs of UFOs, however... can you tell which one is from the 1960s and which one is from the era of amazing consumer digital photography?




Image sources:
http://nwpassages.wordpress.com/2010...eindeer-pause/
http://ufos.about.com/od/visualproof...elgium-jpg.htm
http://www.ufo-chat.com/ufopics.php?show=all

Dotini

In the OP the ufoevidence.org website is cited, so it seems to be acceptable to the moderators and others on this thread. So I ask to be forgiven for citing the same source in reference to the famous Belgium flap of '89 and '90. This is by far the best investigated case involving our topic, Flying Triangles.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc473.htm
"...the two photos supports statements by the pilots that the UFO dove from 2,000 meters (7,000 ft) to 00, indicating that it was below the 200 meter limit on the radar. This occured in ONE second."

The F-16 pilots plus up to (4) radar sets have the UFOs performing sharp turns and accelerations, including diving either into the ground or stopping short in a ridiculously brief amount of time and space before ascending again. On the surface, this might be evidence that gravity was being manipulated, or more likely that the object simply lacked much in the way of mass and consisted mainly of energetically ionized particles which might change speed, altitude and direction in response to radar or other stimuli.

I now cite Ivan Seeking. Well researched was he on the subject of UFOs and radar.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...6&postcount=20

In brief, I think that although Flying Triangles pose a slightly more difficult problem than balls of light, the physics involved are similar enough that the prosaic explanations of unusual meteorological occurrences and electrical eccentricities are greatly to be preferred over extraterrestrial, i.e., alien hypotheses. The going gets stickier when assertions are made, like by the Belgians, that the objects exhibited intelligent behavior. But these claims are countered by experimentally known adverse effects of electromagnetic fields upon human consciousness, and too by the innate desire for exotic solutions driven by the wishful thinking and imagination of overawed humans.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

Mazulu

So you think that the radar was seeing energetically ionized particles (cosmic rays?) while the people on the ground were seeing triangle shaped objects. Perhaps I'm biased, but that explanation doesn't seem to fit. There were observers on the ground watching the F-16's chase the triangle.

Dotini

Not cosmic rays (though these may play a role). Plasma.

Plasma well organized into multiple DLs.

Respectfully submitted,
Steve

zoobyshoe

The old, original hang gliders were very triangular. That being the case, and, given Flex's reports of people hang gliding at night even though they're not supposed to be, my train of thought runs less toward misidentification of military and commercial craft and more toward what happened with crop circles.

Once the hang gliders heard reports of strange flying triangles at night, and realized people were talking about them, a secret hoax culture may have evolved wherein increasingly larger hang gliders were developed and flown simply to whip the UFO believers up and have a good laugh about it. They may now be hybrids: part balloon part aerofoil, who knows what dedicated amateurs could come up with. If the complexity of crop circles is an example, hoaxed flying triangles could be more sophisticated than you'd suspect.

Once people are surprised by such a thing, they'd start seeing it do all kinds of things it probably isn't actually doing, and all sense of scale, speed, etc. in verbal reports would be unreliable.

DaveC426913

At 1 minute 16s into the video they show a short bit of footage of a well-known "encounter" that was so badly reported and debunked, it ruins any credibility this show might have had.

As any moderately intelligent amateur with a mildly critical eye could see, the artifacts were out-of-focus particle flecks but were flogged as semi-transparent rotating disks of significant size.

Attached Thumbnails

 

Mazulu

Plasma from what? Also, what does DL stand for?

Hand gliders might explain some hoaxes involving triangles that just hang there in the sky. But the Belgian airforce locked onto triangles that they found in their air space. Within 5 seconds, the triangles were observed to break lock by accelerating rapidly. You can't get gliders to do that. The argument could be made that these triangles are secret (under research) US military planes. Military planes can detect radar lock and respond accordingly.

I wish that the evidence was more clear cut. The skeptics can always say that fuzzy pictures are not particularly convincing. And, admittedly, it is "non sequiter" to see fuzzy pictures and then start talking about Alcubierre drives and gravity manipulation. I don't know what to tell you. I wish that theorists would start looking at this kind of technology, even if evidence of their existence isn't convincing.

zoobyshoe

A lot of people have suggested that flying triangles might be military engineered "lifter" technology.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft

Dotini

Plasma is a natural, routine and ordinary feature of our atmosphere. Thunderclouds, particularly the anvil section, are highly ionized. The lightning that arcs from, to and inside thunderclouds creates even more of it. Cosmic rays, as you noted, as well as the solar wind and CME's provide a source of atmospheric plasma by intermittently penetrating our magnetosphere. There are other sources.

DL (double layer) is term used by plasma physicists and electrical engineers. To progress, we will need their help.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_layer_%28plasma%29

You will never see a non-fuzzy UFO picture that isn't fake or mistaken identity. Fuzzy, diffused and amorphous is precisely what characterizes atmospheric plasma phenomena.

Please take a few minutes and read through my thread, "Electrical Eccentricity?", also found in this forum. This will provide essential background for understanding unidentified aerial phenomena, UAP.

Respectfully,
Steve

Drakkith

There's a reason they are theoretical. It is because we simply don't have anything close to whatever technology is required to operate devices such as this, assuming that they do in fact work of course. There is no known way to alter gravity and spacetime to make these drives work. As such there is almost no way to "look" any closer at this hypothetical technology. It isn't that the evidence isn't convincing, it is that there simply isn't any evidence at all for the existance of these types of drives.