Hard to believe the sort of junk that gets printed in the newspaper these days. Here's a CanWest MediaWorks outlet trying hard to resurrect the cheesy X-Files cult:
Brian Vike, who runs HBCC UFO Research from Houston, B.C, records Canadian incidents with the help of a British website.
They reported about 150 Ontario sightings so far this year up to the end of August out of a rough total of 300 in Canada.
Compare that with 188 Ontario sightings in all of 2006, according to another count that also includes Mr. Vike's numbers, the Canadian UFO Survey, and the results could be surprising, he said.
"You're going to have a record-breaking year, no doubt about it," he said.
-- William Lin, "Ontario is the new hotspot for UFO sightings: investigator". Ottawa Citizen, September 16th, 2007.
It amazes me that in the 21st century, somebody's still out there waiting for benevolent aliens to land and give us a Star Trek-style speech along the lines of "Humans are primitive barbarians who suck, but we won't destroy you because you have goodness and compassion." This is prime time stuff, all right. Not like we have something more newsworthy, say men and women fighting actual barbarism on another continent.
Mr. Friedman once worked as a nuclear physicist for engineering giants like General Electric, General Motors and McDonnell Douglas. He now calls New Brunswick home.
"I'm convinced the evidence is overwhelming that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extra-terrestrial spacecraft," said Mr. Friedman, who was a guest speaker at the Edmonton conference. "We have sightings by scientist and by astronomers. There's a tremendous amount of evidence out there." Sometimes, the UFOs can be explained as the International Space Station, planes, even stars, Mr. Vike said.
"Let me tell you, we get hoaxes, lots of them. But you try to sort it out the best you can," he said.
Okay, so where's the evidence? Anecdotes and inconclusive blurry photographs? Wait, wait. I have an idea. Let's mass produce visual recording devices (like say digital cameras) and even jam them into everyday objects that the average person is likely to carry around (like say cell phones). So when one of these things shows up and surprises us with an astounding multi-coloured display, we can whip out the recording device and voila, instant proof. No?
How about comprehensive tracking of every orbital object surrounding the planet Earth? Not unlike, say, NORAD and SPACECOM do today. And let's not even think about what sort of flight profile a spacecraft would have to take in order to evade radar/thermal/visual detection, enter the atmosphere, slip through our ADIZ and finally park itself somewhere in Ontario to conduct observations.
B.C. used to be the UFO magnet of Canada. According to last year's survey, B.C. beat Ontario in sightings despite having a smaller population.
In 2002, B.C. logged 176 sightings. Ontario had 128. And the next year, it was even more lopsided: 304 to 150.
But, so far his year, up to the end of August, B.C. only has half of Ontario's numbers, at 81 sightings, according to Mr. Vike.
Mr. Vike said he's at a loss to explain it. He said several sightings were spotted near the Pickering nuclear plant.
"Is it something that's attracting them? Is it something like the great bodies of water that you have?"
I'm not pooh-poohing the idea of aliens in entirety. It's possible that in a universe as vast as ours, there may be other sentient life out there. Until we start visiting and examining a large number of other worlds for ourselves, we won't really know what the odds are.
But I do find it entirely risible that notional species who have mastered interstellar flight are going to be interested in water and nuclear fission. And yet they are stupid enough to give away their presence by visual signalling.
Yes, I know there are squids and other marine life who communicate via bioluminescence. Show me a squid capable of building and controlling interstellar craft. How advanced do you have to be before the concept of "camouflage" or "cover and concealment" enters your tactical doctrine? We must be light years ahead of the other guys already.
That or our UFOlogists are idiots.
