Online: | |
Visits: | |
Stories: |
James Oberg previously worked at NASA mission control in the late 1990s before turning into a space journalist and historian.
A couple of years ago he was bitten by the UFO bug. So what does he have to tell you?
The first folks to be disappointed by his revelations will be alien conspiracy theorists hoping he was about to lift the lid on the supposed cover up by NASA of the existence of ETs.
Rather, Mr Oberg has spent months sifting through popular online UFO cases, debunking them applying science.
His bottom line revolves around something he calls “space dandruff” – or folks misunderstanding what space travel would truly look like.
Mr Oberg states he does not desire to humiliate genuine believers, as that is just like “stomping on dormice.”
Alternatively, he hopes he can work out what really occurred during each popular sighting and why so many people think they are aliens.
He stated: “Our human senses are so used to focusing on relatively slow-moving objects, as well as certain light and atmosphere conditions, that when things change, our brains get confused.
“Our sensory system is functioning absolutely perfectly for Earth conditions.
“But we’re still a local civilization. Moving beyond our neighborhood has been visually confusing.”
Some of the UFO cases held up as the most compelling result from statements by NASA astronauts that they purportedly saw UFOs during a space mission.
But these are almost always followed by claims of a cover up and that NASA forced them to to keep silent about the sighting.
Mr Oberg stated on his website: “I’ve had enough experience with real spaceflight to realize that what’s being seen in many videos is nothing beyond the norm from fully mundane phenomena occurring in unearthly settings.”
Over the past 12 months, there have been a glut of supposed UFO sightings on the live stream of the International Space Station (ISS).
Many were reported, and some already debunked, on Express.co.uk, as lens flares, when light reflected inside the camera is fired back out onto the resulting camera or video image.
Mr Oberg explained many of the other ISS sightings were space dandruff.
These are bits that have fallen off space vehicles during flight, like ice flakes, paint chips, or pieces of insulation.
He stated these tiny pieces of litter are different to space junk, because they don’t present a real threat to any spacecraft.
Our sensory system is functioning absolutely perfectly for Earth conditions. But we’re still a local civilization. Moving beyond our neighborhood has been visually confusing.
Former NASA engineer James Oberg
He stated: “These flecks of dandruff are pretty common, but the reason they look so weird to us is that we’re not used to the way these objects look when they fall while the space station is travelling through space.
“It’s the same reason why people see so many UFOs in the footage filmed by the cameras attached to NASA’s old space shuttle missions.
“In these videos, people usually freak out because the spots seem to dance in and out of view, or suddenly appear and disappear. Which is pretty creepy if you’re sitting at your computer on Earth, but isn’t that weird if you’re on a space shuttle travelling 28,000 km/h (17,500 mph) – nothing’s going to stay in your frame of vision very long.”
He stated that if the spacecraft is in the right position compared to our sun, its shadow can be cast onto the objects making them disappear and reappear- recognized as ‘twilight shadowing’.
One major occurrence, that took the net by storm last year, was a flare of light across a Californian night sky.
In December locals were freaked out when the white streak shot across the night sky.
However, Mr Oberg pointed out it has since surfaced it was a planned, unarmed missile test by the U.S. Navy.
The weird looking trail of light was a plume of particles from the rocket thruster.
He stated it appeared so odd on Earth because: “We’re used to seeing thin vapor trails left by planes, or billowing smoke plumes. But most of us have rarely (if ever) seen anything so big and sharp as this.
“There were thousands of people who were absolutely processing their visual stimuli correctly if [the plume] was a mile away or 10 miles away.
“But it was 300 miles away, up in space and sunlit, which never occurred to them, because this is not something within the normal range of human experience.”
But his evaluation does not mean he is against folks continuing to look for proof of aliens.
He stated: “It’s good to keep scanning space video for possible anomalies and reporting them quickly.
“The reason is, there is always a real chance that it could be a genuine anomaly, either a spacecraft malfunction or other threat, expected or unexpected. In the past, missions have failed because a clue that should have been seen out the window was overlooked.”
Earlier this year Express.co.uk exposed that 2 UFO specialists had separately investigated so many cases, they did not think a single unexplainable UFO had ever been caught on camera.
And last year a YouTube novice effectively debunked the age-old myth of the alleged 13,000-year-old alien black knight satellite in 11 minutes.
Feel free to leave a comment. We would like to know what you think.