Monday, January 08, 2007

Clouding The Issue

You'll often hear ufologists dismiss out of hand the possibility that some UFO cases might be misidentifications of clouds. Indeed, on your average day, should you glance up at the sky, you'll see average clouds, and think to yourself, "well, no-one could ever mistake those for a UFO."

And you would probably be right.

But what about a cloud like the one pictured below, perhaps seen from a distance?

Lenticular clouds like this one (and others you can see at this really nifty site - a few remind me of Cylon baseships!) can indeed be mistaken for a UFO - particularly of the very large, slow moving "mothership" kind.

Does that mean that all UFOs are clouds?

Of course not. It just means that the idea that some UFO's are clouds is not as silly as it might at first seem.

Addendum: By the way, New Scientist had a short article with the same title, about the same subject, back in October. I didn't know that when I first posted this - a weird synchronicity.

Paul Kimball

1 comment:

Mac said...

To make matters more confusing, there are sightings of apparent structured objects exiting and entering obvious clouds or exuding vapor. Camouflage? Maybe.