Spooky

When I recently saw the news about the incident in China recently on my BBC World News wire where the government shut down a regional airport because of a fiery ufo overhead I stumbled across something I didn't even know existed: a National UFO Reporting Center. As a raging skeptic when it comes to reports of extraterrestrial life visiting earth I still found this sight to be utterly fascinating. Wikipeida tells us the National UFO Reporting Center was founded in 1974. Curiously enough and coincidentally when you visit the actual site you will quickly discover that this past month of July had a record breaking number of reported sightings since its founding: 658. This beat their September, 2009 record by 63 sightings. It has a pretty extensive data base and several ways to contact the center (i.e. phone, e-mail, web site, etc) from anyone in the general public to report an unidentified flying object.

For me the world of Ufology is fascinating in itself because of the interest I have in spaceflight and NASA. Its just that I find the possibility of earth being visited by life outside the confines of our solar system unable to overcome the realities of the physics involved to overcome the vast distances in question. Despite my healthy skepticism I find the MUFON and attendant UFO community organizations around it fun to follow as an indulgent guilty pleasure. Having said that I want to make it clear these communities are filled with respectable members of society and professionals from a variety of scientific fields which is why it so fun to follow and fascinating. Still, I guess its sort of like those individuals who read the gossip rags and follow the Internet celebrity gossip sites as guilty pleasures but are loath to admit it to anyone. All I know is its fun to follow and write about and I'm admitting it!

Chinese Media Wants To Believe

Recently a well publicized (well, on the Internet anyway) UFO sighting in China's Zhejiang provincial capital Hangzhou caused quite an international media stir (except here that is). The photographic and subsequent video record of the actual sighting aren't very convincing. I've seen to many video clips of old post cold war ICBM & lost derelict spy satellite boosters succumbing to Newtonian law and finally finding its way back to the insane world that launched them in secrecy no longer able to cling to their anonymity. The Hangzhou airport sighting actually looks pretty mundane in light of past clips of old spacecraft hardware giving up the ghost and de-orbiting to a fiery end.

I was just somewhat amused this event caused this much excitement with the weighty logical explanations on hand for what they obviously observed. Though I'm sure there's a little Fox Mulder in all of us when it comes to the possibilities of extraterrestial life. I reside quite comfortably in my skeptic's easy chair when it comes extraterrestrial visitations due to the distances involved and the resources needed to make the trip. As to the possibility of the existence of life as we define it outside the confines of our solar system I am definitely in that camp. This puts me in the S.E.T.I. school of thinking as opposed to the Roswell mindset and the expectations associated with that community.