Possible fireball sighting by UK pilot (attrib to UFO..)

Popoutman

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/jet-in-near-miss-with-ufo-near-heathrow-pilot-says-29889595.html

The pilot's description sounds quite like a mid-size bolide.

okioffice84

From the Independent: "bright silver and apparently “metallic” in construction." ??

Popoutman

If you see a bolide in daytime it would easily be describable as silver and metallic, with the core of the bolide giving the appearance of a specular reflection.

maninasia

Seems very improbable, it should be making a lot of noise and emitting smoke, gas, different coloured light, trailing fumes etc. It shouldn't be silver but blackened iron/rock colour no?

Besides according to this bolides are objects that supposedly explode in the athmosphere.

http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/faqf/

First of all, if a meteorite is found fairly quickly after it falls, most will exhibit an overall blackened surface, called a fusion crust. This fusion crust is a souvenir of ablation heat from the meteorite’s rapid atmosphere transit. Depending on the composition of the meteorite, the fusion crust may appear glassy, or dull. Irons develop a fusion crust consisting of magnetite, and having the appearance of a fresh weld on steel.

MeteoritesEire

One could not see the nature of a bolide in flight as the light emitting from it would simply be too bright.It would be like a mini sun

A bolide isn't a defined term but generally accepted to be a fireball bright enough to be seen in broad daylight.Thus one would not see any metallic looking surface.This pilot didn't see a bolide but as for what it was...the mind and eyes play tricks on even the most experienced observers at times.

Lefticus Loonaticus

MeteoritesEire wrote: »

...the mind and eyes play tricks on even the most experienced observers at times.

In all honesty, if the pilot was seeing or imagining things he would probably be suspended and put under investigation as he would be a serious danger to his passengers.

He clearly saw a 'UFO', just like thousands of other pilots have seen through the decades. Its pretty normal for pilots to see ufos during the course of their career, but it is odd to have a near miss.

Many pilots have tried to break the stigma associated with the UFO issue by speaking out about what they have seen. Unfortunately society still has its head up its ass and cannot/will not accept or even entertain the idea that there are vehicles in our skys which dont belong to any country on earth.

MeteoritesEire

ridiculous---pilots are human beings--there is nothing about them which precludes them from having visual experiences like the rest of us i.e. things which can seem unexplained temporarily while the brain tries to make sense of the signals.

now , I don't know what he saw and none of us likely ever will but I know one thing--he didn't see a bolide or any type of meteor

Lefticus Loonaticus

MeteoritesEire wrote: »

ridiculous---pilots are human beings--there is nothing about them which precludes them from having visual experiences like the rest of us i.e. things which can seem unexplained temporarily while the brain tries to make sense of the signals.

A visual experience?

Maybe we should start drug testing them.........

trancemuzic

I believe , they tried to take me one night .

slade_x

Lefticus Loonaticus wrote: »

In all honesty, if the pilot was seeing or imagining things he would probably be suspended and put under
investigation as he would be a serious danger to his passengers.

In all honesty all of our perceptions and memory can be seriously flawed and biased and actually are, memory is consistently flawed because of the nature of what it is and how our brains store them and access them (actual memories are not stored, just markers of the memory, the script if you will which is as plastic as our brains are when those memories are recalled, memories are only interpreted by our brains). This is a finding of modern psychology and neuroscience, no one is immune to the failings of our brains to accurately perceive reality. And this is a fact, some of the failings are amusing to us, we call them optical illusions but others bother even the most rational of us, including me.

For anyone interested I would not only recommend documentaries that illustrate that point but also peer reviewed journals in neuroscience. The truth of how we consistently fail to perceive the world around us is very disconcerting.

A good example of memory fallacy is one that all of us experience and a particular example is one I know a lot have experienced; the "You didn't put the toilet seat down Conspiracy" Who is right? the (stereotypical) male who claims I always put the toilet seat down or the Female who claims the toilet seat is always up. The real issue? they are both wrong!

One of the problems with memory is you only retain the outline of an event when you actually do the act. if you forget to put the toilet seat back down that is not a memory, you completely forgot about the toilet seat situation, therefore the memory does not get retained. when you remember to put the seat down then that is a memory because first you remembered the situation and then you put the seat down. so the act of remembering the situation caused you to retain the outline of the memory that has the male putting the seat down.

The female in this scenario only remembers when she had to intervene to put the seat back down and doesn't remember all the times she didn't have to put the seat down. the times she didn't have to put the seat down is a non event for her. since the seat is already down and no intervening is necessary the whole event is an non issue and therefor goes unnoticed.

A lses hmoruous eaxpmle is porof raeidng. the msot acucrate wihch sitll isn't inlfalbile is to raed the doceumnt bacwkard and raed ecah wrod seaprately.

Lefticus Loonaticus wrote: »

He clearly saw a 'UFO', just like thousands of other pilots have seen through the decades. Its pretty normal for pilots to see ufos during the course of their career, but it is odd to have a near miss.

It is also pretty normal or should I say common for people to see ghosts and to believe in supernatural deities. I find UFO one of the most ridiculous terms to even try to explain what is really happening. Unidentified: speaks for itself. Flying: is an assumption, Object: also an assumption. there are many ways with which light itself fools our perception, rainbows aren't the only ones, yet I don't experience anyone describing rainbows as flying or objects in the sky. Although a lot of ufos mistakenly reported by the public do in fact turn out to be objects sometimes, namely stars and planets and/or otherwise distant aircraft and embarrassingly even clouds, Yes even cloud formations.

People clearly see optical illusions all the time and cannot make sense of them no matter how hard they try. I have referenced this before in a previous post;

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=86656158&postcount=5

We don't even experience events as they happen, the way we perceive different sources of stimuli and the limits of the sources of those stimuli cause our perceptions of visual and auditory information to sync up when within the range of our perceptual latency. For example a person clapping in front of you seems perfectly in sync. the truth is they are not. we know light travels much faster than sound, yet we only notice the true effect from a distance, which is out of sync auditory information with visual information. We experience what we perceive to be real time effects 80 milliseconds in the past which is our present. might not seem like a lot of time but it is when referencing how fast light travels. light travels 299,792 metres / 299 km approx in 1 millisecond thus obviously 299,792,458 metres per second

Lefticus Loonaticus wrote: »

Many pilots have tried to break the stigma associated with the UFO issue by speaking out about what they have seen. Unfortunately society still has its head up its ass and cannot/will not accept or even entertain the idea that there are vehicles in our skys which dont belong to any country on earth.

And that is exactly the issue, "about what they have seen". And you are right many in society do have their heads up their ass and cannot accept or even will not want to entertain just how fundamentally flawed our perception really is and in fact how our brains (all of our brains) do not construct a true representation of reality but fills in the blanks. the post I linked to above is evidence of this no matter how hard you try no matter how much information you have that completely contradicts your perception your brain will not let you perceive an optical illusion for what it actually is.

Our brains approximate the information that it receives and it does so rapidly. its horribly flawed a lot of the time, but it was an evolutionary imperative on the plains of Africa that was imperative for the survival of our species, this is the way our brains have evolved, to react fast, if the brain slowed down to force critical rational thought to accurately perceive all the information and give us a true representation of what is really going on we would have already been eaten by a predator. the truth of all the information your brain could have waited to process before acting is irrelevant if your dead. Evolution favoured the non inquisitive. the hominid curious about the rustling in the bushes likely perished from the predator waiting to pounce compared to the hominid that just ran the moment an event was perceived.

Lefticus Loonaticus wrote: »

A visual experience?

Maybe we should start drug testing them.........

Even without advances in neuroscience and the awareness of how seriously fundamentally flawed our perception really is, Eye witness testimony is absolutely unequivocally not evidence. The scientific method is the best solution we have and any claims purporting to support the ufo myth completely fails this. ufo's and invading aliens seem to be modern versions of ghost stories and we are only now really starting to grasp why they exist at all. Our brains invented gods, ghosts, ghouls, monsters etc.

Science, the scientific method and experiment is our only escape and it is the reason we have come so far in such a short time. Before the Scientific revolution we were plagued by the fallacies our brains create for us. And a serious problem in modern society is, most are still plagued and are unaware of those fallacies, logical or otherwise.

Disclaimer: there may be a lot of typos herein contained in this post, but as I am also subject to flawed perception as I have a human brain most of those typos possibly went unnoticed even though I proof read numerous times. You will justly have to forgive the failings of my oh so human brain.

The I don't really know what I saw but I know what is wasn't fallacy is all too persistent even now.