UFO or not UFO? Area 51 declassifying pours cold water on theory..

A former engineer at the top secret airfield "Area 51" in Nevada has spoken out about UFO sightings in the region in the 1960s, saying the witnessed flashes of light were part of top secret US aircraft experiments.

In an interview with ABC News, Thornton "T.D." Barnes, 72, a former special-projects engineer at Area 51 said: "No one really knew we existed. Even our wives didn't know where we were going when we left Monday morning and came back Friday evening."

Barnes was an electronics engineer for NASA who also specialised in advance radar and Soviet MiG fighter aircraft and was asked to join a team of CIA experts who would work on secret military projects at the infamous base.

UFO folklore has it that Area 51, about 80 miles north northwest of Las Vegas, is where captured aliens and their spacecraft have been stored by the US military. The conspiracy theory comes in part because of the preponderance of strange, unaccounted for lights that have been seen in the region of the top secret military base.

However Barnes poured cold water on the theory saying the "alien spaceships" were in fact light flashes from top secret spy planes being flown at 2,000 miles per hour at altitudes of 90,000 feet.

The experimental planes produced light flashes that some interpreted as alien spaceships and this was considered helpful by the team in covering their activities.

"We considered it to be a bonus," said Barnes. "They made it easier to conceal what we were doing."

However some ufologists have said the area has only been partly declassified and UFO work at the base may well have carried out though in a region unknown to engineers such as Barnes.

"Those guys who came forward may very well be telling the truth, with the caveat that they wouldn't know if there was something going on," said Stanton T. Friedman, a nuclear physicist, lecturer and top UFO researcher.

Friedman added that evidence coming out of places such as Area 51 proved how much was going on in the country without peoples' knowledge.

"National security has a real place in all of this stuff. There is no way to tell your friends without telling your enemies," he said. "A lot of Americans woke up to the fact that there's a lot going on that they don't get told about."

Demons..

And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon

the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy Watchers is their beginning and primal origin;

they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called. [As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for the spirits of the earth which were born upon the earth, on the earth shall be their dwelling.]

And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but nevertheless

hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.

These are the demons we deal with, that most confuse as aliens. The demons roam the earth and torment mankind, causing them to sin and everything else.

Friedman made a statement regarding security compartmentalization that is completely correct. Why would that be extraordinary? It would be extraordinary for a member of one high-clearance project to say they know what is happening on another high-security project. In the context of the article in question, there was no extraordinary claim by Friedman.

As for other claims he has made in other discussions, he addressed those claims, with evidence and areas for further study.

“The general theory of relativity, the discovery of the atom, Lemaitre’s Big Bang, all extraordinary.”

I agree. The creation of the atomic bomb was predicated on thought experiments from Einstien, backed up by hints at atomic/subatomic behavior that had been only very recently detected. But Einstein and his colleagues did not have PROOF, just an assumption that he was a brilliant man amongst a group of brilliant men. Further work had to be agreed upon to both prove the chain reaction concet and develop it. The letter he sent to Roosevelt did not give chapter and verse, it was a high-level look that spurred further work, which meant likewise further reference to past work.

UFO study has much evidence behind it, but is not afforded the same courtesy, because it has been redefined as “crazy”. People just keep throwing up their hands when told to check this subject out for themselves.

“Aliens visiting this planet in interstellar vehicles is an example of an extraordinary claim.”

You tell me why that is extraordinary. That is not to say I disagree with the sentiment, but it would be interesting to see how you define extraordinary in the context of the existence of aliens.

“Where did I demand encyclopedic personal knowledge from anyone?”

I think it was unfair of me to include that on my response to you, as it was a general commentary. Mea culpa.

“I would simply ask for some piece of evidence that is reproducible, verifiable, and accessible to observation and experimentation.”

Zoology is often not in posession of evidence with such qualities, but that doesn’t mean animals don’t exist. You can’t reproduce a Mammoth, but we have samples. Few people can consider a mile down with a bathysphere to be accessable, but we keep getting information on new deep sea creatures all the time. We rely in that case on video and personal testimony. High-energy physics has had whole classes of subatomic particles proposed by inference alone, and only later found after searching for decades.

Science has become very entrenched, and if information or materials don’t fit what you expect, it often gets labeled “not evidence”. That’s very stifling to really learning about the cosmos.

I don’t hold with every claim that people make about UFO’s, but claims of no evidence are false.

“I don’t really understand your “business setting” jibe. But as someone who is in the business of knowing a product with encyclopedic knowledge, I can say that you’re quite wrong about that. On the contrary, not being able to back up your claims is the way you get your ass thrown out on the curb.”

For one person, a spacecraft is far too complex to know, at a moment’s notice, every detail requested. As you go up the chain of people who know about a spacecraft, you’ll eventually find someone (the chief engineer) who has a very high-level view of the whole ship. But they still have to consult others for details down to the nuts and bolts. Likewise, you have some people who know in great detail their one system or subsystem or component, and can back up information in a meeting, but may know only the bare minimum on several other systems on the spacecraft. If they are asked such specifics, it is of greater value to know who to ask to get that information. that is more what I was meaning.

Even highly-trained and educated leaders in a particular field are not on a constant ready state to give a dissertation-level discussion of their subject area, and often cite references for others to look into.

What happens in ufological discussions in forums like this is there is a statement made, and someone says “Prove It!” If the person making the statement does not have time to answer EVERY question in detail, or they have just general knowledge, the reasonable response is to refer to other published work. The next thing you know, the new response is “No, YOU tell me RIGHT NOW. If you can’t tell me EVERYTHING I want to know to my satisfaction, you know NOTHING!”

What bilge.

You're really milking the semantics here. But OK; I give. What Friedman said about the compartmentalization of secret projects would be correct and not extraordinary if we were just referring to the compartmentalization itself and nothing else.

But you and I both know that Friedman has made a career of claiming evidence of extraterrestrials visiting this planet, and our government's knowledge of it. This is where I demand extraordinary evidence, since the claim is as well.

You tell me why that is extraordinary.

I said it earlier; something that fundamentally changes our understanding of the universe. Right now, we don't if extraterrestrials exist. Proof of a positive would change mankind forever, even if it was just an intelligent radio signal.

Zoology is often not in posession of evidence with such qualities, but that doesn’t mean animals don’t exist. You can’t reproduce a Mammoth, but we have samples.

Your first sentence defines cryptozoology. The second sentence on the other hand, references an animal that left reproducible, verifiable, and accessible evidence that can be observed by just about anyone.

I don’t hold with every claim that people make about UFO’s, but claims of no evidence are false.

Let's be clear here; if you see an object in the sky that moves in a way that is contrary to everything we know about air travel and natural phenomena, you have seen a UFO. However, it is only evidence of the fact that you have seen something you can't explain, it is NOT evidence of aliens. There is a difference.

You could just as easily claim that it was evidence of time travelers in a Boeing jet from the future as you could aliens, since we have equal evidence of the existence of both (i.e. none).

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