CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents | Hacker News Reader

CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

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420 pointsXzetaU8212 comments

I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead.

But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed they were very interested) in knowing about US military planes and their capabilities. There's an anecdote I recall reading - I apologize for not having the link handy - about how, at Area 51 (their airfield for testing experimental aircraft), they would leave big airplane-shaped objects on the tarmac to create cold spots for Soviets' spy satellites to photograph in infrared, corresponding to planes that didn't exist.

The reason I'm unable to find that anecdote is because the search term "Area 51", combined with any other search terms, brings up an enormous a flood of incoherent crackpot ramblings. I'm pretty sure this is the result of a deliberate strategy: create a bunch of fake information, so that real information about US military capabilities will be harder to find. A few hints and a few taunts, and voila, every discussion about unidentified aircraft is guaranteed to have a schizophrenic walk in and start rambling about aliens!

I remember hearing about this in a documentary, actually...so you might not be able to find the link because it doesn't exist on the Internet. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men

This one?

I read a history of Area 51 that had several interesting stories in a similar vein. The book struck me as down-to-earth and well researched. http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/d...

Oh, I remember reading something about this in the book "Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base"

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

"Delta Force" is not what it's called, either. The Army cycles through bureaucratic sounding names -- "Combat Applications Group" for example -- in order to keep it confusing. "Delta" comes from one of these names -- "Operational Detachment: Delta." This sounds like an unimportant support team for a Special Forces group. "OD: Alpha" is the main team of green berets (aka, "ODA" or "the A-Team"). They are supported by 'OD: Bravo" and "OD: Charlie" (logistics support, etc.). So "OD: Delta" sounded meaningless to an uninformed listener. By the time Chuck Norris made "Delta Force" a known name for the pinnacle of Army Special Ops, they weren't actually called that anymore in reality.

The army of Western Virginia.

The army of West Virginia.

They are currently called "1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta". They haven't changed their name in years (or ever, really).

What you are likely confusing is "Seal Team 6", which is now properly listed as "United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group" or DEVGRU.

Nope, that's not what I'm referring to. This is in the public domain:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/delta-fo...

I called them "CAG" in 2008. I'm willing to guess they're not even "ACE" anymore.

small companies do this too, because it works great.

employee #63, invoice #51775. press 1 for sales, 2 for support. sure.

As a cashier when I was a teenager, I was told to ID and call in anyone with a check # under 500 with the assumption that low check numbers were less likely to be reliable. When I ordered my first book of checks a few years later, I started with # 1550 and was never bothered.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

It's not completely silly: a check number under 500 is still highly likely to be a newish account. The test is cheap and has low false positives, so the fact that the it is easily subverted only diminishes its effectiveness but doesn't make it useless.

But who's actually rejecting low number checks? It seems more common to see businesses reject accepting checks altogether.

Yeah, most businesses seem to use a check verification service these days.

Wow what country still uses cheques? Most stores won't take them anymore, here in New Zealand.

While no stores take checks here in the US either, it's far more common to use for settling personal debts. Also, many utility bills are most commonly paid by check here as well (for those who don't pay online), as people do not mail cash.

> While no stores take checks here in the US either

My mother still routinely pays for nearly everything (groceries, pizza, hardware, etc.) using personal checks. She lives in a small town though.

I probably should've specified 'most'.

If you haven't been stuck in queue behind a check-writer recently, presumably someone else does your in-store shopping for you. Or maybe you only shop late at night, after the old ladies have gone to bed? That demographic just loves to write checks, and most USA stores accommodate that preference.

I can't think of any stores in the US that don't take checks.

Most major retailers (e.g. WalMart) have electronic check acceptance, where they scan the check, print all the details on it, then hand it back to you. It's faster than a debit card, if a bit awkward at first.

France, the US, among others.

First thing I got when I moved to France (admittedly 12 years ago) was a checkbook. Hadn't heard of them since the 80s in Sweden.

In France they are still very common. In particular, checks cannot be refused by members of small-enterprise associations recognized by the fiscal authority.

Italy as well, even if with more and more restrictions and difficulties.

Israel, for long-term monthly payments, mostly rent. Thanks to checks, I pay rent every month, but see my landlord once a year.

I pay monthly rent but see my landlord once a year too, but because of internet banking :)

If local banking market wasn't under oligopoly of a couple of banks who lock down regulation to forbid any new competitors, it would've happen a long time ago :( Sadly, although the start-up scene here is second only to SV, all of them are targeting world markets first, local just isn't big enough to grow.

Still widely used in the the UK for person-to-person transactions. Also for paying single-person businesses like plumbers, painters, etc. Almost all shops and larger businesses refuse to accept them.

Widely? I'm pretty sure that it's one of the least used methods for person to person transactions in the UK. If I had to guess I would put Cash, Faster Payment/BACS, and PayM (the mobile number thing) as more commonly used these days.

I used to pay my milkman with a cheque, but he's online now.

Grandparents sending money to kids and grandchildren is pro ably their number one use.

Unsure if it's totally related to cheque acceptance, but as I understand it NZ fares much better in the card payments realm because of EFTPOS [1] adoption. EFTPOS in NZ is independent of MasterCard/Visa/other credit card companies (but processes transactions for them). For a very long time in NZ bank-issued debit cards on the EFTPOS network have required PIN identification. The cost to a merchant of accepting a bank-issued (read: not MasterCard/Visa/Amex/Diners etc.) debit card on the NZ EFTPOS network is much lower than the cost of accepting a card from one of the big credit card companies. I presume this is because fraud is lower as card-not-present transactions are not allowed. I further presume this is the reason for the far greater rate of acceptance of card payments in NZ than in any other country I've visited.

I thought cheque books were a relic of the past until moving to the UK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS

I actually had a clerk at a local county court tell me they have to refuse checks if the number was less than 500 (and they already didn't take cards without a 5% fee). Thankfully, I had just ordered new checks and had number 501.

Oracle release 2, there was no R1

I once wrote a paper at university about the psychology of version numbers.

You must have had a bloody field day with all the moaning about chrome and firefox climbing the numbers.

Was it published? I'd be very interested to read it.

I would too! Do you happen to work for Microsoft now? Either in Xbox or Windows division?

No sorry, it was a.) philosophy b.) before the internet

Bump for paper if it's published.

Microsoft are at it too with Windows 10. Sneaky beaky ;)

This one is to workaround coders stupidity, despite winapi having functions to give windows version numerically, lots of coders just used regex on windows name... and the regex for "windows 9*" is extremely common

Well couldn't we further push that blame to MS' cockamamie versioning?

I originally wrote "versioning convention" but realized I had to drop convention.

The CEO at a very small company I worked for not too long ago made me do this when assigning phone extensions because "Having 4 digit extensions makes us look like a big company." The only people this would fool would probably need supervision to use a phone.

I also worked for a megalomaniac CEO who would go through a sales rep every two months and insist on leaving their voicemail and extension enabled in the company directory for the very same reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

This actually hit my previous company in a software context.

We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk release.) Many awkward discussions ensued.

Solution: new policy to number hotfixes randomly instead of sequentially. Whoops, now sometimes hotfixes that had dependencies would get deployed in the wrong order.

Solution: also name hotfixes by date. Whoops, now the client can figure out that two weeks elapsed before they got the hotfix. (For all your usual enterprisey red-tapey risk-aversey reasons.)

The solution should have been to append a random string to the hotfix number. Still sorts the same way, but unguessable.

That doesn't help anything. You can't guess the next hotfix number, but you can still tell what order they were in and, after seeing a few examples to figure out how long the non-random part is, tell how many were skipped.

The canonical solution that the Wiki suggests (which seems like a fairly good idea to me) is to make your "serial" number an encryption of the actual serial number; that way your tooling can still get the real ordering, but customers will find it computationally hard to get that information.

Why is it an issue for alerting about hotfixes? Wouldn't it make sense to get fixes out sooner rather than later? Or maybe I'm missing something here.

There may be a decision making process on the client's side about whether to accept the new hotfix, maybe they have a workaround for the broken functionality or maybe it's just not worth the risk to them.

Then you might create another hotfix while that decision making process is going on, and both you and the client need to evaluate whether it's possible and desirable to apply the first one, second one, or both.

It's why versioning, source control, build process automation, and client communication are so important to get right from the outset.

Why not add random increments to the sequence? This way order is preserved, but you never know how many hotfixes are between hotfix X and Y. Of course, you can still have rough estimate (as between #1000 and #2000 there is from 999 to 10 hotfixes) but for your case it may be enough.

Precisely.

Just because there private hotfixes that deliver custom tweaks to specific customers. in fact, that's exactly how Microsoft has had it set up for years.

Giving random numbers to regiments and battalions isn't new it's done partially due to historic honor and to prevent the enemy from getting accurate strength numbers by simply counting unit numbers.

Not the same thing but similar, a programmer wrote once how he made his software delay the answer to some user action to make it look like the program was hard at work. The process was actually very fast, almost instantaneous, so he added some message like " working - x seconds left ". Maybe it was on HN some years ago...

Reticulating splines...

I've also done this in some programs I wrote as a teenager to solve math / physics homework to make it seem like it was doing more than it was.

I used to do the same, I remember adding labels saying "Processing" inside a while and then adding a dot for every loop, just to make it look like a "real" program. Good old times.

I had to do this for a program I wrote for a study - basically it pretended to be a networked game with other users, which meant I created fake "Loading" screens that had a random-ish delay.

I did the same thing once for a dialog box on an iPhone app. The check would fail instantly if the phone was offline. It didn't feel "right" and we didn't really have the time to change the UX so I just added a random delay of between 1.0 to 1.5 seconds. Still in production today.

There were many such programmers, myself including. I don't even want to check if that software still lives, it was security theater abomination.

Now there's an interesting UX paper if it hasn't been done already. In UX we hear that a milliseconds long delay directly affects user retention rates. I wonder how users feel about search reliability, or data integrity when results are faster than expected.

I don't know about papers, but I've read writeups from companies adding a "delay", usually with a progress bar, for things that are actually near-instant to perform. For "large" seeming operations, sometimes users assume an instant response actually means a failure.

DigitalOcean's Create Droplet flow comes to mind. You get a progress bar indicating your droplet is being created, but in just a few seconds you can click "My Droplets" and go use it immediately.

I stated elsewhere that I introduced a delay for those very reasons. In that case the search functionality was reported as broken for the second search. Because the first and second test searches happened to have the same results in that particular case, but the fast response prevented an understanding that something was in fact done.

> Maybe it was on HN some years ago...

On HN there was this about Well Fargo "Establishing Secure Connection".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5305925

TurboTax's online tax prep software does this. You can just click the Next button as the slider animations slowly fill up. Maybe this comment will save someone else some time this year :)

Having sporadically just done my taxes last night, I've gotta' say, I'm a fan of TurboTax. Probably the best website experience I've ever had. I can't recall anything else that knocks it out of the park on aesthetics, function, latency, UI etc like it does.

I did this myself just a few weeks ago. The complaints was that search results would often come back fast enough that the user may not understand anything was done if the results happen to be the same.

Saw a form recently with search-as-you-type that included a fake button that when pressed would write "Search Complete" to the screen, but had no other function, for users who didn't comprehend search as you type.

I would have to link that up to analytics just to see how many people clicked on it.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

It was pretty hilarious.

I got a bug-fix from the form developer that his button wasn't working, and I kept trying to explain to him that it couldn't possibly work, it didn't do anything.

Finally he explained that if the user had clicked the fake button already, and then changed their search to a search that reported the same results, it wasn't pretending to search again, and this was causing a lot of bug reports from his client.

I helped him rewrite the fake button to make a bigger deal about (fake) searching again, and apparently the bug reports went away.

I wish I could find where I read this, but this used to be an issue with LED brake lights on cars, they would come on so fast that people had longer reaction times because they knew something had changed but couldn't put their finger on it instantly.

I did that with my strategy game Proximity. It takes a fraction of a fraction of a second for it to calculate what move to make next, but if it places it immediately, it feels aggressive and intimidating.

Just imagine if you were playing chess against an opponent and as soon as you made your carefully planned movement the other player immediately made his move and it was your turn again right away. It feels pretty aggressive, doesn't it?

So I gave players the impression of the computer taking time to think by instituting a random delay (within a given range which I tested until it felt right) before it acted, and I think it felt a lot more natural and less aggressive because of that.

If people are curious about the game, it's easy to find and you can play it online.

I suspected that this was the case with Proximity, but the delay still served its purpose for me. I haven't played it in a while, so maybe I'll give it a whirl again. Thanks for putting together such a fun little game!

Thanks! The game is almost 12 years old now, which still feels weird to think about. I did have high ambitions to make it like the next timeless game (like chess), including making it a bit less tactical and more strategic, but my own ego and life got in the way and it kinda withered on the vine from me not keeping it updated, making a proper multiplayer version, not making it cross-platform enough, etc.

I even turned down a request from the Puzzle Pirates guys to include it as a minigame in their game (that was a mistake), and OmgPop almost paid me to make a version for their website (shortly before they made Draw Something and got bought by Zynga), but I was too busy trying to finish my degree at the time.

I've been tempted to start an open source version to get some help developing it, but I started getting more into board game design lately and I've been programming less and less in my spare time. Kinda hoping I get a reputation in the board game world and then get a board game version of Proximity published (it's an abstract, so it's a harder sell to publishers).

Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the game. Hopefully someday I'll put out a newer version of it.

The Soviets managed to fool the US government into believing that they had many more strategic bombers than they actually did, using the same tactics.

> At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, then flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and flew past the stands again with eight more, presenting the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts extrapolated from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judging that by 1960 the Soviets would have 800.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap

sometimes attempting to fool or convince your own people you get the side benefit of doing the same to a foe

I don't think the US had any desire to accurately measure the threat from the Soviets as reality would have contradicted what politicians needed - the curse of all intelligence activities.

Here's a link that explains all the fakery used at Area 51 including the fake cardboard planes to fool infrared.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/05/110520-area-...

>... at Area 51 (their airfield for testing experimental aircraft)

I'm Canadian but that reminded of some relatives who sent a video of a birthday party. They were outside and a big booming noise could be heard and they all looked to see what it was.

I didn't think much of it since it was hard to hear other than a sort of jet sound but they lived there and seemed to think it was different or unusual in some way.

They lived in Apple Valley in the "high desert" (I didn't know what that meant) years later I found out Area 51 is pretty close.

I don't beleive in aliens but it was interesting to know the video had a mysterious aircraft and Area 51 in it.

I doubt it was anything Area 51 related. They have a large highly restricted airspace over Nevada to fly around in. However, Apple Valley is even closer to Edwards Air Force Base which has a long history of flight test including things like Chuck Yeager's supersonic flight, and for that matter the Virgin Galactic spaceship:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_Air_Force_Base

Many interesting things like the B-2 and the space shuttle were also produced in Palmdale (to the west of Apple Valley). You often see interesting things flying around that area.

EDIT: Virgin Galactic has nothing directly to do with Edwards, but they test in that airspace.

I doubt the CIA were gaming Google in the 60s. It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way. The fake aircraft seems more reasonable though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50#Development

> The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them.[19] The "windows" evidently worked, as the first western reports of the aircraft were wildly inaccurate, to the point of some analysts even concluding its primary mission was as an air superiority aircraft for hunting and killing NATO attack helicopters.

don't overestimate Soviet competence. Soviet system was completely submersed in the sea of utter incompetence, with occasional pockets of competence here and there

It's more about "how can we waste their time" than it is about competence.

I don't know, I can't speak for their military leaders, but I've read Soviet physics papers and they had (funded and educated) some solid scientists.

Physics as a field doesn't have the same pressures and people aspiring to it as intelligence military analytics.

Also in physics, you can't get away with politicking and reading the Party plenary speeches alone. That nuke better has to work and is easily verifiable: Beria, the head of Soviet secret police, personally compared the mushroom cloud photo of the U.S. test to the Soviet one, to ensure the bomb was copied correctly.

I wonder what he'd have concluded if it had looked different?!

That the discrepancies were the work of wreckers and saboteurs.

Probably followed by liquidation of the parties responsible.

While I agree intel and physics are apples to oranges, the soviets had a pretty good intelligence arm and quite capable analytics. The soviets where very good at Human Intelligence:

http://sputniknews.com/military/20150928/1027670037/kgb-cia-...

Yeah, nothing tells true stories about KGB like the face of modern Russian propaganda machine.

The facts are easily verifiable read about Yuri Totrov. It is well documented by both sides.

Don't underestimate either. Soviet/Russian rocket engines are still better than American.

> I doubt the CIA were gaming Google in the 60s

Not Google but they were gaming ufo people. Thee was a good documentary about this called "Mirage Men"

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/aug/14/men-in-black-ufo...

Mirage Men is great.

>It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way.

Communist Russia was coming apart at the seams, and it took the US many years to realize it. There's a lot of complexity.

USSR. Russia has never been falling apart. Calling USSR Russia is HLN/Fox level discussion.

The terms were interchangeable back in the Cold War, everywhere outside academia; and there are interesting continuities between the Tsars and the Soviets. "Glasnost" and "perestroika" were first used in reference to Peter the Great's policies, and Great Russia (Russia proper) was known as Red Russia as far back as, I think, the 1400s.

Also: _The Structures of Everyday Life_ and _Simplicius Simplicissimus_ both touch on Russia, in ways that suggest that the country (post-Mongol-conquest) always did have a certain amount of proto-Sovietness to it -- alcohol sales as a state monopoly, for example, or arms always coming from royal treasuries.

It was used during the Cold War, because it was important to simplify, demonize the enemy. Russian Ivan with bottle of vodka, in a tank, driven by a brown bear with ushanka creates an a lot more simple image; you add Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Armenians, dozen of languages, without profound racial discrimination - and people will start having the Thoughts; counterproductive for the narrative of the Cold War.

Except right now?

》It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way.

The USSR was not much of a superpower in the technology side. They got ALL of their technology from western corporations in technology transfers and sales from 1917 to today. They constantly got "last years model" of weapons and tech. This is documented in a three volume scholarly work called "Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development 1917 - 1930, 1930-1945, 1945-1965". Also I find it funny this is released the same week the X-Files returns to Fox. Talk about the CIA / Entertainment nexus.

TLDR 10/10 would make this assessment again. USSR Tech:US/British Tech::Bizzaro:Superman. Like them or not, but it is actually quite hard to copy-paste Raytheon, General Dynamics, BAE Systems et al into a system that uses force as its key mechanism of control.

>> they would leave big airplane-shaped objects on the tarmac to create cold spots for Soviets' spy satellites to photograph in infrared, corresponding to planes that didn't exist.

You're referring to project OXCART which preceded the Blackbird program. The documentary you're referring to was called "Area 51 Declassified" which was on National Geographic channel:

https://youtu.be/fE8xqTO6hXk

It's a fascinating documentary

>A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead.

The OXCART program (SR-71 predecessor) was a CIA program. This is probably one of the best pieces of journalism I've ever read on the topic:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-mag-april052009-back...

While the entire article is good, paragraphs 5-8 are by far the best. The CIA literally drugged their own test pilot during debriefing.

>I'm pretty sure this is the result of a deliberate strategy: create a bunch of fake information, so that real information about US military capabilities will be harder to find. A few hints and a few taunts, and voila, every discussion about unidentified aircraft is guaranteed to have a schizophrenic walk in and start rambling about aliens!

I was actually just writing about this, except in context of aviation industry insiders perhaps misleading a respected industry journalist:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971548

Entire thread for context:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957365

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_convers...

Page 3, point 4:

"Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomenon or known types of aerial vehicles."

Also note the National Security Council directive on the last page.

The reason I'm unable to find that anecdote is because the search term "Area 51", combined with any other search terms, brings up an enormous a flood of incoherent crackpot ramblings

You might have more luck if you google "Groom Lake Air Force Base".

>>> "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify).

There are only so many military aircraft and drones. They are relatively distinct. Add to those a handful of properly-black projects and there are perhaps a hundred types in service. Compare that to the thousands of civilian models out there, many of them very odd looking. Things like Rutan's VariEze get rather close to the flying-triangles. And some very unique objects, including random light patterns, also fly in the civilian world. So given the far greater number of civilian aircraft, outside of restricted airspace I'd say that most sightings are probably of strange but non-military flying vehicles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_VariEze

http://www.hugeskyadvertising.com/Scrolling-LED-Flying-SIGN....

I recall a thought-provoking article about how a lot of UFO "folklor" (abductions, cows etc.) was fabricated at some point by secret service agencies in order to distract the UFO crowd from actually observing the sky.

This is one of my favorite twists on conspiracy theories - that they themselves are often a product of conspiracies. Or that they get discreetly, erm what would be the right word, native speakers? Kinda "fed" (by controlled information leaks, for instance) if it serves some purpose.

Anecdotal examples of the management of information and personal for this and similar areas. While in the military we had a sergeant transfer in from that area. They were flown to and from the base on transports without windows. While there were a lot of on base persons apparently there were quite a few who rotated out weekly. Later in the 90s working for a rent a guard company we had a special group doing perimeter security. These guards could not so much as bounce a check, get a traffic ticket, or be charged with a crime, without risking their jobs. The idea was that you don't get leverage on people who work in areas where things can be seen. You also tend to have some of the most over the top patriotic types who take pride in keeping the trust

All that really circles back to the first part of my comment, the CIA and military had people dedicated to management of the story and the people involved. Legends and myths can be created, you just have to plan it out and act on the plan correctly

An apparently metallic or luminous object in the sky at any time after the 1940s could possibly be explained away as experimental terrestrial craft but we have reports of such things going back much further in history.

It's funny how today many people call them "flying saucers" due to a misunderstanding of Kenneth Arnold's description of the objects that he claims to have seen in 1947 because more than 800 years ago, someone reported seeing what he described as a "flying earthenware vessel" in the sky over Edo(Tokyo) Japan.

People have been seeing things in the sky for a very long time. We simply don't know all of them are. Anyone who claims to know with absolute certainty what they are is just speculating. Chances are, that person just wants to sell you their book.

But, as some XKCD notes, nowadays all of humanity walks around with great photo cameras all the time and nobody is taking pictures of UFOs with them.

People take a lot of pictures of UFOs.

Most of them are eventually identified as mundane.

Here ya go: http://jalopnik.com/5804400/area-51-secrets-the-us-military-...

It was the second match when I used the search query: area 51 cold spots russia satellite -alien

> I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify).

While this is true, it isn't incorrect to call them "unidentified flying objects". All top-secret aircraft projects are by definition unidentified flying objects. It's up to the crackpot bullshit artists to interpret "unidentified" as "confirmed alien".

I really enjoyed those. I particularly like some of the descriptions.

In the early 80's I worked in the Image Processing Institute at USC where one of hte UFO shows had us analyze some of the "best" photographs (at that time) of UFO sitings. We pulled all sorts of fun stuff out of the pictures, like the letters "9 oz" on the bottom of a pie plate type UFO, "old skool" photo doctoring where someone had taken the picture of a "ufo" and literally placed it on top of a picture of the sky, and then re-photographed the composite. As I recall there was only one picture we could not definitively rule out as a fake. But my best memory of that project was when the producer asked the camera man to get some footage of the "computer" and when he pointed it at the 11/55t front panel the producer said, "No, the computer!" and pointed at the tape drives. I knew we had top shelf folks on the team at that point :-)

You have to hand it to the CIA for taking advantage of the XFiles reboot to boost their social media a bit. Especially on 37 year old documents!

It's fun and maybe slightly disconcerting to see the CIA handle its job with humour.

This was likely the work of the web master or a PR person; I doubt a CIA agent wrote it.

They declassified them in 1978. So these documents have been publicly available for a mere 37 years. Figures - what else are they hiding that they aren't hiding?

Correct me if I am wrong.

I don't think all declassified documents are publicly available. They sure will be produced if requested upon but I doubt all of them are just available to download as soon as they get declassified.

Good to see that the CIA has a little bit of a sense of humor about this kind of thing.

What a PR coup by the X-files reboot, as well.

I love that part at the bottom that says "Do you want to believe?".

The CIA twitter feed [1] is pretty cool. This isn't them just taking advantage of X-files, their social media was already pretty good.

[1] https://twitter.com/CIA

From this perennial-on-HN article (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-w...):

> At this time [the CIA], staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.

If that culture has persisted to any degree, then the CIA is probably the most "geeky" government department we've got, second only to perhaps NASA.

Their first tweet is hilarious:

https://mobile.twitter.com/CIA/status/474971393852182528

I found the documentary "I know what I saw"[0][1] rather interesting.

In this Mercury 7 astronaut, former pilots, retired air force officers, Major Generals etc give account of UFO sightings.

Although produced by History Channel, it features only accounts of these distinguished people and recollect no spin (if my memory serves me right).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTEZeY-fNCU [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1579236/

Human brains are really poor at interpreting new brief visual stimulus "correctly". Furthermore, our first impression can affect the perception of the stimulus even if it lasts several seconds.

I'm 36, and visually quite acute. I've seen my visual system doing the craziest interpretations in various situation, and observed my interpretation of a visual field completely changed by a sudden re-interpretation of some small detail.

Given proper conditions I could have interpreted these as apparitions, ghosts, materializations or whatnot. The difference is, all of these situations happened in calm mundane situations where I had the luxury to pause and look at the thing for a long while and figure it out.

The craziest was a low-lit room where I saw the patterns of a carpet as my son, walking. I had woken at night and presumed it was because my kid was awake. When I came closer I realized it was the carpet.

If I can mistake a rug for a human being I do not find it unlikely that a pilot trained to be aware of bogeys to interpret unexpected stimulus first as a vehicle (this interpretation is very hard to shake off).

I love UFOs because UFOs tell us a lot about how we deal with non-reproducible observations. Walk outside and see a green, glowing light that hovers then disappears? You can walk outside again for the rest of your life and never see it again. Does that mean you didn't see anything? Of course not.

This really messes with people's heads. The rationalists will say that since we can't independently observe it, it might as well not exist. Folks who have a deep mythology as part of their worldview will simply incorporate their observation into their mythology.

Even cooler is the fact that something is obviously going on that we can't categorize or figure out. (See thunderstorm sprites and jets as a recent example). Is it one phenomenon? Highly unlikely. But beats me how many different and really cool things there are out there to discover. I'm sure some of these may take hundreds of years to nail down, if ever.

And then the government gets involved and -- get this -- starts deliberately fucking with people about it. Hey, that wasn't a new stealth bomber, that was probably aliens. While it may have confused the Soviets, it was also a deliberate attempt to mislead the voters. I'm not a constitutional expert but seems to me the one thing that ought to carry the severest penalty is government officials in a democracy deliberately trying to mislead the public about critical issues.

And then we have them pawning their B.S. off on mentally ill people. Nice. Very classy.

UFOs tell us a lot more about ourselves than they do anything from another planet. Unfortunately, much of what they tell us is rather unpleasant.

> I'm not a constitutional expert but seems to me the one thing that ought to carry the severest penalty is government officials in a democracy deliberately trying to mislead the public about critical issues.

There's nothing in the constitution that requires the government to reveal the existence of classified projects to the public. Would you expect the Air Force to admit that "yes, actually, that's our new stealth plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, don't tell the Soviets" when someone sees one?

Our American government was never based on the idea that the people would have direct input on all issues.

We elect leaders (not followers) to run the country. They probably shouldn't keep fundamental facts about government from us. But lying about our first strike nuclear capabilities to get an edge is understandable.

That's why it's important to vote not just for a platform but for the candidate. Because they'll be dealing with issues that aren't known, be them hidden or just yet to surface. Especially for president. Our president is modeled after a limited monarch, just with an limited term.

Hope I didn't sound like I was arguing for a totally open government. That would obviously never work. I'm arguing for a "well-enough" informed electorate. Informed enough to strategically make choices about choosing representatives.

Abusing mentally ill citizens, performing experiments on the poor and destitute, gathering records on citizenry forever -- these are things that an informed electorate would shut down if given the chance. These are things that the constitution would forbid if it were foreseen.

Nobody's arguing that secrets can't be had. The argument is that those employed by the voters are actively acting long-term in ways neither the voters nor the constitution would approve of. Short term bend any kind of rules you think the system will allow. Long-term? This has got to stop. (Perhaps you do that by a constitutional amendment sunsetting any secrecy classification after 20 years or some such)

My first UFO story:

I was ~13 years old in The Civil Ait Patrol, this occurred in Truckee, Ca at the Truckee Airport.

We were doing standard marching exercises and our troop leader was a former SR-71 mechanic/maint person...

It was a full moon - and as our gatherings typically started after 5PM - it got dark fairly quickly.

We were marching and then looking to the mountain line in the horizon, we saw a light come up over the mountain line and fly vertically up at a steady clip as it was near the moon which had also just risen over the ridge.

We all watched, speculating what type of plane this was (Civil Air Patrol was like the cub scouts for the air force)

As we watched and guessed, this craft flew straight up from the mountain - then directly toward us.

I came to a complete hover just above us by about 300 feet. The craft was the classic triangular shape with large round whit lights at each corner.

As it hovered - the troop leader said "OK KIDS - EVERYONE INSIDE NOW!!!" and he ushered us into the end of the hangar building that had our CAP office.

Ever since then.... I've had an interesting relationship with believing UFOs...

Kinda sounds like the long rumored TR-3B ( http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ ). I love UFO mythology, and that around the TR-3B is wild, to say the least.

During a summer break jaunt to see the American Flag Art Exhibit in 1996 (found it! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-ex...), I was coming back down the 10 just past Wiley's Rest Stop, in California and pulled off the road into the desert about 500 yards from the highway. It was me with my best friend (from kindergarten) and 2 sisters we were mutually involved with. No drugs, no alcohol, no cell phones, and some remaining film in a disposable did nothing in a pitch black night. Playing truth or dare around a makeshift fire, one sister saw 3 lights moving toward us. It took awhile to wrap our heads around what it was, till it was blocking out stars. I have been on aircraft carriers and cruise ships prior. This thing blocked out a lot of the sky, as it passed silently overhead. It was either equivalent (but larger in surface area) to an aircraft carrier or larger than a couple city blocks if it was higher (impossible to tell how high it was in the pitch black desert). We killed the fire pretty quick, but it just passed silently overhead without further incident. It flew on toward the southeast over a the mountains in the distance. Unlike a lot of other videos and reports, there was no center light (red or otherwise).

Could it have been a thick stray cloud combined with some light reflection/refraction effects from the ground or maybe stars/planets in the background ?

I respect the skepticism. I do not subscribe to the 'UFOs are aliens' idea myself. Though in this case I believe the OP did see what he claims. There's a longstanding rumor that some branch of the armed forces is in possession of a 'stealth blimp'. Exactly what a 'stealth blimp' is, I don't know. But there have been numerous sightings over the previous 20 years that match very closely with that OP saw.

I think most "credible" UFO sightings (especially those in the western US) are Government owned aircraft. For the most part, Humans are just bad at interpreting what they have seen. One of my favorite examples is the rumored "flying artichoke" that was likely just a sighting of an F-117A Stealth Fighter ( http://i.imgur.com/D22OrQ1.jpg )

A "stealth blimp" has been sighted numerous times for at least 20 years now. It is said to be very large, just as you describe. The assumption is that it's an observational aircraft of some sort.

Im pretty sure that is it.

How much money does it take to get a US agency to issue a blog post in support of a TV series?

Granted, those in charge of the CIA blog are probably the right age to be die hard Xfiles fans, but after the StarWars promotion at the white house I'm seeing lobbyists everywhere.

CIA is there to support the country overseas. To actively promote a major TV Series which will lead to jobs, money coming into the company, potentially increased goodwill to the country is exactly their mission.

One thing to remember with spying these days is that the nation spy agencies these day spy for corporations, because if the companies do well then the country does well.

Honestly even if you don't believe in aliens visiting earth (and I do not), these documents are still an interesting read.

Just seeing how they investigated and the investigators opinions/thoughts/methods was quite interesting to me. Some more than others, some are very short and only contain a witness statement.

If you're interested in the CIA's involvement with the UFO phenomena check out this article on the Robertson Panel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Panel

“(t)he "debunking" aim would result in reduction in public interest in "flying saucers" which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the "secret" is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The Panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy….The Panel took cognizance of the existence of such groups as the "Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators" (Los Angeles) and the "Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (Wisconsin). It was believed that such organizations should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.”

Title is misleading, text starts with "The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

"Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings."

The most interesting thing about this is the lack of seriousness that the CIA puts into UFO.

At this point we're pretty settled that alien life probably exists in some form out there. Whether that alien life could evolve to create technology and build spacecraft is another thing. But the even bigger thing is when you take into account just how vast the distances involved are. It's just so unlikely that alien life could exist, develop technology, and then be in the same neighborhood as us.

Not really unlikely if you consider the vast scale of time as well. A few million years is enough to reach the end of the galaxy even at very very low percent of the speed of light. That's a long time in our terms, but a very short time given the age of the universe, or even our own planet.

Self replicating Von Neumann probes could handle the issue of exploring such a large number of solar systems by increasing their numbers exponentially. They could leave behind machines that could continuously monitor and survey planets for millions of years.

If aliens exist, then I would expect for them to have observed us like that. Unless they have no interest in the outside world at all, which seems unlikely.

i think the main issue with people having trouble believing in visitations from extraterrestrial species (or at least their technology), is that they have absolutely no sense for the age of the universe.

and the fact that so many people believe it to be utterly ridiculous that alien life forms could be exploring the galaxy, yet here we humans are, doing exactly that, is just completely mind-boggling to me.

I think the main issue that most people have with aliens is that we kinda expect that if they exist (which scientifically and religiously they should) and they have the technology to have found us and interact with us (possible) they would have subjugated us or annihilated us by now.

The fact that they haven't suggests that either they don't exist or that they haven't found us.

That's just anthropic bias/survivor bias. There have probably been a lot of Earth like planets that have been annihilated. Perhaps the only reason we exist is because we are lucky enough to have friendly neighbors, or perhaps no neighbors.

Well I do wonder how friendly they are, given that they haven't intervened at all in Earth's history. I find that very unlikely. Moral aliens would probably want to help us, amoral ones kill us like you said. But the probability of aliens existing yet being indifferent seems unlikely.

Given a pride of lions in Africa having severe domestic turmoil over leadership selection issues, what are the odds anyone in, for example, Wisconsin, either knows, cares, and is capable of sending an effective peacekeeping force?

You can even abstract out distance. I'm pretty sure there's some hierarchical struggle going on with the squirrels in my front yard, but I'm also pretty sure I don't care. And we're fellow mammals competing for the same nut trees and fruit bushes. If there are Star Trek Hortas tunneling under my backyard, I really don't care as long as they stay out of my basement.

Even within our own species there's a pretty strong taboo against colonialism that seems to automagically form right after (inevitable?) failed early experiments with colonialism. The odds of white people running Africa again are pretty low, even though we obviously did a better job than they are doing. Despite being incredibly easy to reach and staggering power imbalance, the colonies in Africa didn't last long and even a fairly irrational space alien would see the futility in trying to take over Earth.

There are many reasons to invade Canada. Stealing their resources of spar and mast grade timber for 1800s era sailing ships would be a pretty stupid idea in the current year. Its possible there's a natural magic filter such that being able to travel interstellar and having enough power to turn earth into a colony naturally means there are no material resources on earth worth the taking... What would a galaxy wide empire do with titanium, silicon based semiconductor electronics, or rocket engines, only miserable savages a million levels beneath them use stuff like that. It would be like handing a modern american a flint spear tip, what good is that other than in a museum?

While I agree with some of your points, I must take issue with your implication that white people ran Africa better.

http://diglib1.amnh.org/articles/kls/

Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain did a good job illuminating how people tended to think this way, all the while forgetting that the people under a heavy thumb might not agree! Some things may have been better organized when white people were in power, but the German concentration camps of World War II were also "better run" by some definitions than a bickering gaggle of democratically elected disagreeing men in nearby European countries, and I don't think we'd really use them as an example of better run. I grew up partially in Nigeria, the target of many jokes, and no matter what issues they have there I know that many Nigerians who would never wish for a return to British rule.

Sounds like both of us rephrase the same priority list, or at least nothing either of us wrote breaks the priority list:

1st) Freedom or self determination or at least less control over their lives by people far away

2nd) Racism (people want their leaders the same color as they are)

A distant 3rd) Measurable statistical demographic numbers for quality of life, like disease rates, death rates, crime rates, economic activity, education levels, etc.

I would propose this priority list is human, cross cultural, doesn't matter if its Rhodesia, Haiti, India, Korea, people naturally seem to come up with this sort order no matter the culture.

I think humans do care about wildlife. We don't care a lot, but we do care a little. Some people try to protect wild animals, feed them, rescue sick or injured ones, etc.

I think if we had super advanced technology and AI, we would do more. And certainly if we found other intelligent beings that were like us. We would probably do what we could to share technology with them. Or at least medicine and food.

I do doubt aliens would want resources. They might want our solar system to colonize with their own kind though. If they have population growth, then that is a serious issue. Or to build dyson spheres and computers out of our solar system. Or they might want to eliminate us because we could grow into a threat in the future. Etc.

There is little reason to not interact with us unless they are totally indifferent to the outside world.

All the documents that appear startling are actually just recounts of stories that appeared in a daily newspaper, marked as completely unsubstantiated.

Come on guys, stop conflating UFOs with alien spacecraft. UFOs are real, alien spacecraft are probably not.

Reports of strange new energies & crafts also made science seem magical and helped fire the imagination of the next generation of scientists and engineers for the ongoing cold war. The UFO phenomenon was handy on a few fronts.

Odd thing. I just watched the new X-Files last night and this kind of news is on HN frontpage the next morning.

They had to have timed this with the X-Files premier on purpose

At last the truth can be told.

Just in time for the x files reboot.

If you want to understand the UFO story better, you should watch Mirage Men about Air Force Office of Special Investigations Agent Richard Doty, a self-admitted UFO disinformation agent-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14

The intelligence agencies aren't hiding anything about UFOs from my experience. And I don't really think the USAF is either. But the USAF did tell various people that UFOs were real and they did run a psychological operation against Paul Bennewitz, destroying his life and forever obsfucating whatever truth there is about UFOs. (None in my opinion.)

Here's a good summary:

http://www.openminds.tv/open-letter-u-s-air-force-allegation...

*Fixed link

You linked a different movie for the Mirage Men trailer. The correct link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14

Here's my tin-foil-hat theory on UFO's.

The whole idea of a UFOs and flying saucers was a kooky ass idea from the US government to spook the Soviets into thinking, the US actually had in their possessions aliens, and futuristic alien technology.

It is too coincidental the first reports of flying saucers came in the late 40s. When the cold war first started to heat up.

I think the Soviets actually bought it up and the government (CIA?) kept running with it. Why not? It was probably a cheap and effective way psychologically mess with the Soviets.

That isn't particularly outlandish. The Red Mercury hoax is pretty well documented and very similar:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam...

The whole thing might have been a great way to 'out' spies (by tracing information flow) and generally confuse and psych out the Soviets.

UFOs predate the cold war; the "flying saucer" image is from that time, but that's a time when advantages of flying saucers were being discussed and experiments being tried.

The "airship sightings" are especially fun(ny).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_airship

When I was a kid, I asked my grandfather, who was at that time an AF Colonel (he's now passed away), whether UFOs were real and whether he has seen aliens. He just looked at me, took me aside, and told me that UFO stories were propagated by the "boys from Langley" as a way to hide experimental aircraft testing. That way, every report of some black plane that was seen by the public, would be chalked up to UFOs and Russians wouldn't know what to think of it. We had a good laugh and I never told this to anyone. I don't think it's even a big secret anymore.

Since then, I always laughed at all these UFO reports and reports of abductions etc. It's become a national meme that's ingrained into the minds of so many... yet it's a complete fabrication.

RE: Abductions, it's entirely possible that those stories could be, instead, related to MK Ultra [0] rather than Air force testing.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Anybody who hasn't, do read to see how much they were ready to do. Abductions or just "anal probes" are nothing compared to their actions. Note the use of different drugs and the brain washing experiments after which some innocent people never recovered.

E.g.

"In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels in San Francisco, California to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events." (...) "In other experiments where people were given LSD without their knowledge, they were interrogated under bright lights with doctors in the background taking notes. The subjects were told that their "trips" would be extended indefinitely if they refused to reveal their secrets."

> Note the use of different drugs and the brain washing experiments after which some innocent people never recovered.

One of the victims of MK ULTRA experiments was Harvard undergraduate student Theodore John Kaczynski (who later gained infamy as the Unabomber[1]). I can't help but to wonder if history would have turned out any different had MK ULTRA not existed

1. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/06/harvard-...

> Anybody who hasn't, do read to see how much they were ready to do. Abductions or just "anal probes" are nothing compared to their actions.

I remember reading declassified documents from MKUltra in Acid Dreams. It was pure fear and paranoia, they were scared that if they don't quickly learn how to use LSD as truth serum or mind control agent, the evil Ruskies are going to figure it out and strike first.

They even had ideas like adding psychotropics to water supplies to alter minds of civilian population, either local or enemy, depending on the exact substance used and expected effects.

I had always somewhat suspected this, that it was a hoax perpetrated by humans in order to manipulate other humans into believing something. I'm surprised more religions don't pull off these kind of stunts, they'd certainly receive a huge influx in believers. ;) Watching "Mirage Men" was enlightening as I never really thought about how maybe the government recognized they made a mistake, they unleashed something into the "hive mind" of the American populace that they couldn't regain control of. From what Doty implies, it seems like they were just trying to convince a handful of people to look somewhere else, and he just kept telling lies until it had spun so far out of his control that he just had to basically drop out and abandon the whole thing. It felt very similar to when undercover cops get really close to the top of some large drug cartel, only to be thwarted at the last minute by someone figuring out who they really are...

>as a way to hide experimental aircraft testing.

even today it looks cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJARrc40imk , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmPiZv4q4Ms

Is there any evidence CIA was responsible for the hoaxes?

There is significant evidence that US Air Force was responsible for the hoaxes. And, of course, Area 51 is an Air Force Base.

The relationship between the two seems acrimonious on this issue. Also "the CIA" sounds more sinister than the US Air Force so it makes the story better.

>There is significant evidence that US Air Force was responsible for the hoaxes. And, of course, Area 51 is an Air Force Base.

Yes, Area 51 is an AF base but CIA has paid for most of the planes that were tested there in 50s, 60s and 70s. U-2 was paid for, in a large part, by a CIA budget [0]. Same goes for Lockheed A-12, a predecessor of SR-71, which too was paid for by the CIA [1]. Then there's Have Blue, a predecessor of F-117 which, too, was paid for by the CIA. CIA also paid for a slew of other planes and prototypes which ended up either destroyed or as other AF planes. So while it was an AF facility, CIA had a large say in what goes on there.

CIA also has a large staff of psychologists and other sociology experts who can pull off various deceptions and spread propaganda to a large part of the population. UFO mythology was probably created by them. AF don't have many experts in this area.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Have_Blue

The CIA didn't exist until several months after the 1947 Roswell crash of a US Air Force "weather balloon".

The CIA doesn't have complete access to Area 51. They fund projects and advise, but there are projects and Special Access Programs that are outside of their mandate and authority.

It is probable that in the 50s, 60s and 70s the CIA advised the Air Force on disinformation or other tactics, but I do not believe UFO mythology was created by them. I am almost certain but, of course, I do not know everything and I have no evidence to support my assertion.

A large part of the UFO-government mythology did originate from a psyop against Paul Bennewitz perpetrated by the Air Force-

http://philipcoppens.com/bennewitz.html

The first time a UFO expert (Bruce Maccabee) spoke at the CIA was in the late 1970s.

Like carrots.

The British promulgated the belief that carrots improve eyesight to explain the effective of their aircraft spotters, instead of radar.

As a matter of fact, I've never seen rabbits wearing glasses.

http://sussex4hnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Monmouth-...

Well, naturally, rabbits don't even eat carrots[0]

[0]-http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/pets/rabbits/diet/m...

Despite Snopes confirming this, I refuse to admit that it's true. Nethack wouldn't lie to me like that.

>>Like carrots.

Poor thing. As a kid I told my cousin(he wore glasses), that carrots were good for the eyes, to a point I exaggerated if he ate enough he could get rid of them altogether at some point.

He would eat kgs of carrots.

Well, carrots are delicious, so no harm done.

Harmless yes, but with carotenosis you might turn orange.

My mom thought so too. At some point she took me to the doctor and asked him why I had orange feet. He told her to stop feeding me so much carrot.

Man, I had no idea my mother had any other children besides me.

You can get orange feet from eating too many carrots?

This is easily the craziest thing I've learned so far in 2016 and why I love reading Hacker News so much

You mean to tell me they are not?!! I remember reading that carrots have some nutrient necessary for good eye sight, beta-catorene I believe. I don't think it improves your current eye sight so much as it keeps it from going bad from a lack of it.

it's got a grain of truth to it, so it's a believable smokescreen

Yup, actually carrots are good source of beta-carotene / Vitamin A which is necessary for good eye health and vision. Obviously carrots aren't the only source though.

"Vitamin A has multiple functions: it is important for growth and development, for the maintenance of the immune system and good vision.[2] Vitamin A is needed by the retina of the eye in the form of retinal, which combines with protein opsin to form rhodopsin, the light-absorbing molecule[3] necessary for both low-light (scotopic vision) and color vision."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A

So getting sufficient vitamin A from carrots or other sources is instrumental in keeping your eyes healthy. That's not the same thing as saying that eating additional carrots will give you super-vision.

UFO's are real. There are thousands of such events reported a bit everywhere around the world every year.

Of course, most of them never remain "unidentified" very long: optical illusions, weather balloons, discarded objects from actual identified flying objects, etc...

Too many people associate the term "UFO" with aliens. The two are completely unrelated.

The review of the film, a shorter useful info:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/mirage-men-film-revi...

For me it was too boring to watch the film. If anybody actually saw it, liked it and remembers something interesting but not mentioned in the review, please tell.

the silence is deafening

The truth is… still out there.

Couldn't they have coordinated with this the lunch of the new X-Files? Fox marketing sucks!

Obligatory xkcd link: https://m.xkcd.com/1235/

"In the past few years, with very little fanfare, we've conclusively settled the questions of flying saucers, lake monsters, ghosts, and bigfoot."

Is that really real?? [1]

Who on Earth would have such aircrafts in 1962 other than aliens??

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/blog/2016/images/UFO2.j...

The second picture looks very much like a reflection from a lamp.

I wonder why those numbers don't add up :>

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