Subject: Re: They Came From Outer Space - Or Did They?
Date: Nov 21 00:19:56 1997
From: Don Baccus - dhogaza at pacifier.com


At 10:21 PM 11/20/97 -0500, you wrote:

>Arnold also commented:

>"What startled me the most was the fact that I could not find any
>tails on them".

>Which would seem to be consistent!

Worse, his comment that it "startled me the most" labels him an incompetent
observer.

>There's considerable information about the American White Pelican
>(AWP) available from several web sites and this has also proved to be
>informative. One thing I couldn't find anywhere was confirmation of
>the typical airspeed for an AWP.

>Any ideas what this might be?

Relatively slow, but it's impossible to judge airspeed relatively without
knowing the object's size. Without size, you can't determine its distance
from you, and without knowing the distance you can only state "the object
traversed N degrees per minute". Draw a triangle with yourself at one
apex to see what I mean.

I'm talking about visual observation here, radar first and foremost gives
you distance (indeed, early US radar only gave you range, i.e. distance,
not bearing, as delta range is the most important single piece of information
you need to know - if it's decreasing rapidly, you've probably been spotted
and are under attack). Conversely, visual observation yields plenty of
data but obtusely, *not* range. That's why rangefinders were developed.

>What has been cited as evidence ruling out a flock of birds, is that
>Arnold, unquestionably a highly experienced pilot, claimed, "I hadn't
>flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash
>light reflected on my airplane. It startled me as I thought I was too
>close to some other aircraft".

This could've, of course, been a coincidence. However slim the probabability
that it was only a coincidence, one must admit that the probability of a
true sighting of an alien aircraft is somewhat slim as well.

Indeed, to the best of our knowledge the latter is actually *zero*. This
makes the coincidence argument the most probable, as it is certainly
non-zero. This is true even though the coincidence apparently happened
twice - non-zero times non-zero > zero, therefore more probable...




- Don Baccus, Portland OR <donb at rational.com>
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