Skeptoid - Skeptoid #648: Pop Quiz: Aliens and UFOs
Aired: 2018-11-06
Duration: 20:16


=== UFO Quiz: Aliens or Blimp (07:16) ===

[00:00:03]  If you exist in the 21st century, you know that popular belief in UFOs and alien visitation has never been higher.
[00:00:11]  Though I might argue that it's always been high, just more closeted, but that's a separate issue.
[00:00:17]  Do you know the phenomenon as well as you think you do?
[00:00:20]  Well, I'm going to find out because I'm springing a pop quiz on you right now.
[00:00:25]  Pencils ready?
[00:00:27]  Your aliens and UFO pop quiz is up next on Skeptoid.
[00:00:36]  Hi, I'm Alex Goldman.
[00:00:38]  You may know me as the host of Reply All, but I'm done with that.
[00:00:42]  I'm doing something else now.
[00:00:44]  I've started a new podcast called Hyperfixed.
[00:00:46]  On every episode of Hyperfixed, listeners write in with their problems and I try to solve them.
[00:00:51]  Some massive and life-altering, and some so minuscule it'll boggle your mind.
[00:00:55]  No matter the problem, no matter the size, I'm here for you.
[00:00:59]  That's Hyperfixed, the new podcast from Radiotopia.
[00:01:02]  Find it wherever you listen to podcasts or at hyperfixedpod.com.
[00:01:12]  You're listening to Skeptoid.
[00:01:13]  I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
[00:01:17]  Pop Quiz, Aliens and UFOs.
[00:01:22]  Take your seats, class, because it's time for another pop quiz.
[00:01:26]  You seem to all be doing pretty well on these, so this week, we're taking it up a notch and choosing a subject that's a bit more removed, as in physically farther away from your comfort zone.
[00:01:37]  Today's quiz is on aliens and UFOs.
[00:01:41]  How well have you listened to Skeptoid, and how much do you know about these famous urban legends and their solutions?
[00:01:50]  So let's begin.
[00:01:51]  If you want time to think about each of these, just be ready to hit the pause button before I give the answer.
[00:01:56]  And feel free to take as much time as you need.
[00:01:58]  And don't try to look for a pattern because I used a D6 die as a random number generator to place each correct answer.
[00:02:08]  Number one, the Phoenix Lights.
[00:02:11]  1997 brought us perhaps the single most famous mass-witnessed UFO event when a line of super bright lights appeared in the night sky above Phoenix, Arizona.
[00:02:22]  It's now known that the lights were illumination flares jettisoned by A-10 ground attack aircraft of the 104th Fighter Squadron of the Maryland National Guard.
[00:02:32]  But we didn't know that yet.
[00:02:34]  Shortly afterward, news media called Luke Air Force Base to ask if they had any planes flying over Phoenix.
[00:02:42]  What were they told?
[00:02:44]  A. The Air Force acknowledged flight operations over Phoenix.
[00:02:49]  B. The Air Force denied any flights had taken place over Phoenix.
[00:02:54]  Or C.
[00:02:54]  The Air Force refused to comment.
[00:03:00]  The correct answer is B.
[00:03:02]  The Air Force denied that any flights had gone over Phoenix that night.
[00:03:06]  This is true because the A-10s were nowhere near Phoenix.
[00:03:09]  They were some 50 miles southwest of Phoenix, inside the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force range.
[00:03:16]  The witnesses who thought the lights were above the city itself were mainly in the northeast, looking past downtown Phoenix, and it's virtually impossible to judge the distance of an extremely bright light in the sky.
[00:03:30]  Number two, the Hudson Valley UFO.
[00:03:34]  Throughout 1983 and 84, the Hudson River Valley was plagued by a number of UFO sightings, many witnessed by many people, that looked like a large object rimmed with bright lights slowly and quietly passing overhead.
[00:03:49]  It took an intrepid police officer who vowed to follow the object wherever it went to finally realize what people had been seeing.
[00:03:57]  What did he discover?
[00:04:00]  A.
[00:04:00]  An advertising blimp en route between sporting events.
[00:04:04]  B.
[00:04:05]  A group of small aircraft flying in formation.
[00:04:08]  Or C. Various stars and other celestial objects.
[00:04:15]  The correct answer is B, a group of small planes flying in formation.
[00:04:20]  It was a group of local pilots who called themselves the Martians, having fun turning their navigation lights on and off, varying their formations, and reading about themselves in the paper the next day.
[00:04:32]  Police Sergeant Kenneth Speier followed the group to the Stormville Airstrip once and verified that nothing they were doing violated any laws.
[00:04:41]  Air traffic controllers already knew about them anyway, so Speier probably could have saved himself the trouble.
[00:04:48]  Number three, fire in the sky.
[00:04:51]  In 1975, two Arizona brothers, Travis and Dwayne Walton, reported that Travis had spent five days abducted by aliens.
[00:05:01]  It is now commonly believed that they devised the story in order to sell, which they successfully did with a book and a movie.
[00:05:08]  Their first target was a $100,000 prize offered by the National Inquirer tabloid for proof of aliens, and they attempted to provide proof in the form of passing lie detector tests.
[00:05:21]  How did they fare with the prize?
[00:05:24]  A.
[00:05:25]  The Waltons never got any money from the Inquirer.
[00:05:28]  B.
[00:05:29]  The Waltons received the full $100,000 prize.
[00:05:33]  Or C.
[00:05:34]  The Waltons sued for the prize money and eventually reached a confidential settlement.
[00:05:41]  The correct answer is A.
[00:05:43]  The Waltons did not get the prize.
[00:05:45]  Although they passed a number of polygraph tests given by UFO proponents who believed their story rather uncritically, the Inquirer insisted on providing their own polygraph examiner.
[00:05:57]  He gave a lie detector test to the Waltons and reported it was, quote, the plainest case of lying he had seen in 20 years.
[00:06:06]  The Inquirer kept their money.
[00:06:10]  Number 4.
[00:06:11]  The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction Alien abduction first became a pop culture phenomenon in 1961 when lifelong UFO obsessive Betty Hill and her husband Barney claimed to have been taken aboard an alien spaceship after watching it for a time along a highway in New Hampshire.
[00:06:32]  Betty reported that at one dark turnout where they pulled off to watch it, she saw that the ship had a row of windows with creatures peering out.
[00:06:40]  What do modern investigators now believe she actually saw?
[00:06:44]  A.
[00:06:45]  A helicopter.
[00:06:47]  B.
[00:06:47]  A tramway.
[00:06:49]  C.
[00:06:50]  A gift shop.
[00:06:54]  The correct answer is B.
[00:06:56]  The Cannon Mountain Aerial Tramway, built in 1938, was operating at the time and place reported by Betty.
[00:07:03]  Its windowed cars were illuminated and were just about the right distance away from the turnout where she and Barney would have been able to make out the windows.
[00:07:11]  And of course, the tramway flies eerily and silently through the trees, just as she described.

=== Constables, Sailing, and RAF Mysteries (03:13) ===

[00:07:19]  Number 5.
[00:07:20]  The Rendlesham Forest UFO.
[00:07:23]  In 1980, airmen stationed at the U.S. Air Force Base located at RAF Woodbridge on the eastern coast of England spotted a mysterious pulsing light through the trees.
[00:07:34]  The constables were telephoned, and base security personnel left the base and entered Rendlesham Forest in pursuit of the lights, fearing some accident might have taken place.
[00:07:44]  A lieutenant colonel accompanying them narrated the search with an audio tape recorder.
[00:07:50]  Although television networks still call it the most famous UFO case in England, what was finally determined to be the cause of the lights?
[00:07:59]  A. Patrol car lights belonging to the constables they had summoned.
[00:08:04]  B. Runway lights of RAF Bentwaters nearby.
[00:08:08]  Or C.
[00:08:09]  A lighthouse on the coast visible through the trees.
[00:08:15]  The correct answer is C, the Orfordness Lighthouse, which flashed every five seconds.
[00:08:20]  The constables immediately realized this and wrote it in their report, then left.
[00:08:25]  You can hear the light flashing as a five-second repeated beep that I've added in the Colonel's actual audio recording.
[00:08:52]  Hey everyone, I want to remind you about a truly unique and once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
[00:08:58]  Join me and Mediterranean archaeologist Dr. Flint Dibble for a skeptoid sailing adventure through the Mediterranean Sea aboard the SV Royal Clipper, the world's largest full-rigged sailing ship.
[00:09:11]  This is also the only opportunity you'll have to hear Flint and I talk about our experiences when we both went on Joe Rogan to represent the causes of science and reality against whatever it is that you get when you're thrown into that lion pit.
[00:09:26]  We set sail from Málaga, Spain on April 18th, 2026 and finished the adventure in Nice, France on April 25th.
[00:09:35]  You'll enjoy a fascinating skeptical mini-conference at sea.
[00:09:39]  You'll visit amazing ports along the Spanish and French coasts and Flint will be our exclusive onboard expert sharing the real archaeology and history about every stop.
[00:09:50]  We've got special side quests and extra skeptical content planned at each port.
[00:09:55]  This is a true sailing ship.
[00:09:57]  You can climb the rat lines to the crow's nest, handle the sails.
[00:10:01]  You can even take the helm and steer.
[00:10:03]  This is a real bucket list adventure you don't want to miss.
[00:10:07]  But cabins are selling fast and this ship does always sell out.
[00:10:11]  Act now or you'll miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
[00:10:15]  Get the full details and book your cabin at skeptoid.com slash adventures.
[00:10:21]  Hope to see you on board.
[00:10:23]  That's skeptoid.com slash adventures.

=== Ice Crystals and Rocket Truths (05:42) ===

[00:10:33]  Number six, the Battle of Los Angeles.
[00:10:36]  Shortly after the United States entered World War II, nervous civil defense gunners in Los Angeles, California opened fire one night with anti-aircraft artillery.
[00:10:47]  Nobody is sure what the first to fire may have seen.
[00:10:50]  It may have been a single meteorological balloon, but everyone else shot at smoke from the AAA bursts illuminated by searchlights.
[00:10:58]  The falling flak did tremendous damage to private property throughout the city.
[00:11:04]  Today, the story goes that they battled a gigantic UFO hovering above the city.
[00:11:10]  When was this element added to the story?
[00:11:13]  A. In the 1980s when the Majestic 12 documents appeared.
[00:11:19]  B. In 2011 with the release of the Hollywood movie of the same title.
[00:11:25]  Or C. In the 1950s when Project Blue Book was underway.
[00:11:33]  The correct answer is A, the late 1980s.
[00:11:37]  Majestic 12 is the name for a set of hoaxed documents that pretend to be declassified government papers discussing our government's relationship with aliens.
[00:11:47]  One of these fake documents, called the Marshall Roosevelt Memo, says that two aircraft that, quote, are in fact not earthly, were recovered after the battle.
[00:11:58]  This was the first time there was any UFO element to the Los Angeles event.
[00:12:04]  Number seven, the Westell 66 UFO.
[00:12:09]  Australia's most famous UFO case happened in 1966 when many students at Westall High School witnessed two events.
[00:12:18]  First was a large silvery disk which silently descended behind a row of trees near the school, and second was a small streak of light being pursued by a small group of light aircraft for some 20 minutes.
[00:12:31]  The first was proven to have been an errant meteorological balloon known to have passed in that exact direction at that exact time.
[00:12:39]  The second object, which, though never proven, was satisfactorily determined to have been what?
[00:12:47]  A.
[00:12:48]  A nylon target drogue towed by an instructor for student pilots to follow.
[00:12:54]  B.
[00:12:55]  A pair of advertising banners towed by small airplanes, one of which was tangled.
[00:13:01]  Or C.
[00:13:02]  A small group of skydivers from Dandenong Airfield.
[00:13:09]  The correct answer is A.
[00:13:11]  A nylon target drogue, complete with a towing tug and a group of some two to four student-piloted aircraft following.
[00:13:19]  Such target drogues were known to be in use by the local Royal Australian Air Force, though of course not using live fire over a populated area.
[00:13:28]  I never found any record of contemporary reporters following up with local RAAF squadrons or flight training schools, so although it remains speculative, it also remains the soundest explanation and ticks all the boxes.
[00:13:43]  Also, I made up Dandenong Airfield.
[00:13:47]  Number eight, the astronauts and the aliens.
[00:13:51]  Alien theorists cite many examples from the NASA space program as evidence that astronauts have interacted with aliens on some missions.
[00:14:01]  The earliest such report is still the most famous, that a cloud of friendly fireflies gathered around John Glenn's capsule Friendship 7 while it was in orbit.
[00:14:12]  Initially, everyone figured these were ice crystals from the hydrogen peroxide attitude control rockets, but Glenn was unable to correlate the use of the rockets with the appearance of the fireflies.
[00:14:23]  What were the fireflies later proven to have been?
[00:14:28]  A. Ice crystals from the attitude control rockets.
[00:14:32]  B. Ice that had frozen on the rocket before liftoff.
[00:14:36]  Or C. Ice from waste ejected from Glenn's capsule.
[00:14:44]  The correct answer is A. Ice crystals from the attitude control rockets, exactly as everyone had initially thought.
[00:14:51]  Spacecraft tend to accumulate clouds of debris and contamination around themselves, and even though Glenn's rockets sprayed jets of crystals away from the capsule, many of the crystals would gather in this contamination cloud, where they reflected sunlight and interacted with other gases in the cloud.
[00:15:12]  Number 9.
[00:15:12]  The Red Rain of India.
[00:15:15]  Newspapers worldwide buzzed with news that a rare blood-red rain that fell in India in the year 2001 had been determined to be an example of panspermia, cells of alien life.
[00:15:30]  What did the final true explanation turn out to be?
[00:15:34]  A. Dust from windstorms in Africa.
[00:15:38]  B. Spores of a red-orange algae.
[00:15:42]  Or C. Acid rain from industrial pollution.
[00:15:48]  The correct answer is B, spores of a red-orange algae called Trentopolia.
[00:15:54]  It was, however, initially reported as alien cells, thanks to some uninformed study done by two physicists who didn't know what an algae cell should look like.
[00:16:05]  Their press release sounded sensational, so it dominated the world news, and the actual identification of the algae by government botanists went virtually unnoticed.

=== Urban Legends and Skepticism (04:00) ===

[00:16:15]  Even today, searching online for the event will bring up mostly articles parroting the alien claim.
[00:16:24]  Number 10.
[00:16:25]  The alien buried in Texas.
[00:16:28]  A famous story tells that the body of an alien whose spaceship crashed in 1897 is buried in the town cemetery of Aurora, Texas.
[00:16:38]  The reason nobody has dug it up is because it turns out the original newspaper item which gave birth to the urban legend was merely a satire, poking fun at what actual event?
[00:16:51]  A.
[00:16:52]  A famous locomotive race.
[00:16:54]  B.
[00:16:55]  A traveling exhibition of the Cardiff Giant.
[00:16:58]  Or C.
[00:16:59]  A hot air balloon flight.
[00:17:04]  The correct answer is C.
[00:17:06]  A hot air balloon flight.
[00:17:09]  For some reason, newspapers all over Texas were publishing satirical articles about balloon flights, each trying to outdo the other for the more fantastic explanation.
[00:17:19]  The paper that included the article from Aurora included a compilation of 38 such joke stories.
[00:17:26]  But for some reason, modern UFO investigators decided that one of the 38 was a literal true account and not an obvious satire like the others.
[00:17:36]  And thus was born an urban legend.
[00:17:41]  As always, tweet me your score at twitter.com/slash BrianDunning or post it to the Skeptoid podcast page on Facebook.
[00:17:50]  Of course, if you claim to get them all right, but you're lying, then you'll just have to live in shame.
[00:17:56]  You may even choose to stay hidden forever, just like all the aliens seem to.
[00:18:06]  My podcast and film short, Two Simple Proofs of Global Warming, is now being offered as a one-hour live show, and it has quickly become my most in-demand presentation and was even given at my local county board of public health.
[00:18:20]  It teaches how to have the conversation persuasively, how to avoid having it either turn into a fight or fall on deaf ears.
[00:18:28]  Climate change is real, and the effects are already on us, but half of Americans still don't consider it a problem.
[00:18:35]  These two simple proofs are physical smoking guns that prove the case beyond all doubt and don't even have counter-arguments.
[00:18:45]  To find out how to bring this to your company, your group, your school, come to skeptoid.com and click on Live Shows.
[00:18:57]  You're listening to Skeptoid, a listener-supported program.
[00:19:01]  I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
[00:19:10]  Hello everyone, this is Adrienne Hill from Skookam Studios in Calgary, Canada, the land of maple syrup and moose.
[00:19:19]  And I'm here to ask you to consider becoming a premium member of Skeptoid for as little as $5 per month.
[00:19:28]  And that's only the cost of a couple of Tim Horton's double-doubles.
[00:19:32]  And that's Canadian for coffee with double cream and sugar.
[00:19:36]  Why support Skeptoid?
[00:19:38]  If you are like me and don't like ads, but like extended versions of each episode, Premium is for you.
[00:19:45]  If you want to support a worthwhile nonprofit that combats pseudoscience, promotes critical thinking, and provides free access to teachers to use the podcast in the classroom via the Teacher's Toolkit, then sign up today.
[00:19:58]  Remember that skepticism is the best medicine.
[00:20:03]  Next to giggling, of course.
[00:20:05]  Until next time, this is Adrienne Hill.
[00:20:15]  From PRX.