UFOs: Plasma, the New Swamp Gas

[snowbird]

Unfortunately, non of the links exist any more, but the article is a good one...

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=9187

UFOs: Plasma, the New Swamp Gas
R. Lee
May 7, 2006

R. Lee lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she paints and indulges her active interest in UFOlogy. Her interests include UFO history and activity in Oregon, folklore, and the paranormal, and, of course, exploring her own UFO sightings.

I recently wrote about the items that crop up every so often about how UFOs are dead and gone. (UFOs: Not Dead Yet.) These items are cyclic in nature, insistent in their thesis: UFOs are no longer with us. These appear despite the fact that at the same time, items appear about the latest sightings, encounters, new UFO book and magazine publications, etc. The creaky debunking machine continues however, churning away, giving us the latest explanation for UFOs, reasons on why UFOs are no longer present, or the self-congratulatory, albeit very late news that a particular case was a hoax. (ie, Santelli film.)

On the heels of the most recent bits that UFOs are no longer, are these items that tell us what UFOs are. They are many things, according to these

[ShardsOfNarsil]

Well, there are always those people who will start with the premise that UFOs don't exist. Then, rather than examine the evidence with an open mind, they will take whatever evidence that exists and explain it away in some way.

Methinks there may be people in high places that want it that way........

[snowbird]

Too true - but that's why we have to keep hammering away with the message, no matter who the messenger is... I'm talking about radio show/host...

snowbird

[Alpha]

"Swamp Gas" has been the derrogatory term to debunk UFO sightings.

Interesting that it got the phrasiology from Dr. J. Allen Hynek, one of the most famous UFO investigators of our time, who arrived on the scene of the sightings, representing the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book.

Hynek first told interested parties that there was something to the sightings, but after making a lengthy phone call to his superiors, he had a different answer to what the objects really were.

A Washtenaw County sheriff by the name of Douglas Harvey states he asked Hynek directly: "What do you think?" Hynek said, "It's swamp gas."

Since that time, the tag of "swamp gas" became a derisive term still used today to quickly debunk any UFO sighting, and gave Hynek an infamous reputation that he labored to erase.

I think it was hard for him to live that phrase down...not sure...anyway that's the story to where that phrase came from.