What about the craft itself? Hundreds of people said it was clearly one solid object because as it passed, it blocked out the stars. Besides, it's strange that two years later, Luke air force base dropped flairs at the same time of day around the same time of the year, hoping to make the public think the previous sighting was flairs after all. Instead they compared the two incidents and realized how different the first sighting was from the rest. And Wikipedia isn't the best sight to get information from.
Let me show you some pictures. Here's a picture of what the lights and aircraft apparently looked like, according to witnesses: Here's a little something the USAF has a lot of: That's a B-2 stealth bomber, they are often painted black because of the paint they use absorbs radar waves. Same with her smaller, fighter-bomber cousin, the F-117:
@Annihilation : The term "Phoenix Lights" cover two events : 1) moving V shaped lights with the apparent size comparable to the Moon's size (~ 0.5 - 1 degree of the sky). A guy with an astronomical telescope (47x magnification) said that the lights were clearly individual aircrafts, not one large object. I can fully accept this, as it sounds reasonable. Some other people say that it was a solid object as it covered the stars behind itself. Imagine an area of the sky about the size of the full moon. How many stars can you see there from a city with considerable amount of light pollution? Only a few. Now imagine that five bright lights arrive to that area. Will you still see the faint stars? 2) a large arc of lights hovering over Phoenix. Some witnesses said it was a mile wide and moved slowly. This second event is much better documented than the first one so I have watched several videos on Youtube, some of them were claimed to be "original footage". All of these show a bunch of lights appearing and then disappearing one by one. No aircraft, no movement, nothing that opposes the explanation of the air force explanation : the lights are flares dropped by military aircrafts. Some guys even collected wind data and found that the speed and direction of the wind correlated well with the witnessed slow movement of the lights. You are right, Wikipedia is not a 100% trustworthy information source, but in a similar manner all UFO fanatic pages could be ruled out and we are left with the info from the military Just to make this thread a bit less specific : what do you guys think would happen if A) friendly or B) unfriendly aliens were arriving to Earth?
The problem with the UFO phenomenon is the distinct lack of qualified observation. People see a something strange in the sky and proclaim it to be a spaceship or flying saucer. How do they know? Well...they don't. They also don't know, for example, that in certain conditions part of a plane (IE: a wing) can be reflected on a cloud. This can look very strange. To people unfamiliar with atmospheric phenomena, it might even look like a UFO. That's the main problem. People are sincere about what they're describing, but not necessarily qualified to make a determination that's accurate. But what about aliens? Well let's face it. Flying half way across the galaxy (or whatever) to swoop down and pick up some random nobodies and subject them to unethical experiments doesn't indicate intelligence. Not an alien intelligence anyway. Human beings would do that, but I don't think aliens would be sheer virtue of their being more advanced than us. In fact, they wouldn't even need to come within our atmosphere. Why? They'd be able to pick a good general impression of what we're like from our transmissions. They can do that from space. If they're in a spaceship, they probably have equipment for seeing planets surfaces that are far more sensitive and advanced than our modern spy satellites.
Okay, well I still think it's some kind of innovative government project. And let me see, if there was a real alien visit, of course the government will be involved. But as for me, I'll just have to re think my logics and opinions about life and existence. I'll have a new mind state.
