Newsgroups: alt.ufo.reports
From: kymhorsell@gmail.com
Subject: ufos and starlink

[uploaded 32 times; last 25/09/2024]

I note the NUFORC has put up more UFO sightings in the past week, up
to around mid-May 2023.

There was some discussion on their BB about whether or not sightings
had suddenly decreased. Someone said the numbers seemed to show they
had, but someone else pointed out they can take some time to come in.

I had looked at this just recently. Beside the date a sighting is
said to have happened, the NUFORC keep track of when the report was
made.  So you can rummage through the data and see how often reports
were made within 1 wk of the sighting, 2 wks, 3 wks, etc.

It turns out for data after 2006, when web reporting went online, that
people wait an average of around 1m before they either find the web
report form or work up the nerve to report something after ignoring the
titters from their friends for weeks.  But the stddev -- the +- that
captures about 70% of cases -- is around 10 months. So some people
wait a lot longer than average before they report anything.

The pattern over time is clear. Between 2006 and ~2019 everyone seemed
to behave about the same. If someone saw something they were equally
likely to report it an any subsequent week. The average just worked
out to be around 4 wks. But AFTER 2019 people started to clam up.
Despite there being ample time between then and now to make a report,
it seems fewer people than usual have come forward. And given the big
pandemic spike in reports, you have to wonder why people are so reticent.
On the plus side, it seems in the past couple of years the pattern may
have again shifted and people have flipped to becoming more ready to
report odd things they see in the sky. But the data on this last part
falls in the "statistically weak" basket. We need more data. ;)

Which brings me to the ACTUAL point of this post. Toward the end of me
reading all this on the NUFORC web-site, I spotted someone complaining
their sighting had been marked up as "starlink". The NUFORC accept all
reports, leave them pretty much as the witness presented them, but
sometimes add an annotation in "(((...)))" as part of at least the
comment that we can see in the short form of sightings reports.

The person concerned argued they had shone a flashlight at the line of
~20 objects and they disappeared, proving it wasn't a sat train.
Obviously -- possible. But it is at least equally likely it was a
sat train. Other people on the relevant forum said as much.  (And, of
course, I added my 2c worth).

But this in no way whatever should be regarded as a criticism of the
original witness. They saw something they didn't understand and they
reported it. [Insert standing ovation here]. The NUFORC accepted the
report as stated and added the annotation. [Ditto].

And here I will point out such reports are incredibly important to
receive and add to the database because they give a baseline reading
on how witnesses behave.

One of the problems with this kind of witness data -- and why
traditional science typically falls on its face for 70y -- is it's
not easy to dis-entangle the behaviour of the objects reported from the
behaviour of the witnesses. If the sightings reports have some kind of
property -- i.e. one state saw more sightings than another state -- is
that because more objects were in the sky over one state compared with
the other state? Or it it because there are more people in one state
than the other to do the reporting? Or is it that people in one state
are more confident to report something than another state where the
general idea is things in the sky are nothing and should be ignored.

This is where the baseline measures like starlink come in. We can look
at the sightings reports of such things and compare their patterns
against the patterns of other kinds of report. The starlink sightings
presumably have the patterns created by witness behaviour and
starlink behaviour.  And having now 2 different mixtures we can tease
apart all three patterns of behaviour.

As an example let's review an old pattern prev posted. The frequency
of sightings by day of week.

It's an unusual factoid, but NUFORC sightings seem to occur more
frequently as the week progresses. Monday has the lower numbers, Tue
has slightly more, Wed, Thu, Fri sees increasing numbers with Sat the
most common day to see something in the sky (according to reports) and
Sun starting to decline again to return to the next Mon and
another low-point in sightings.

Now. Is this because UFO's behave this way? Or is it because people
behave this way? Or -- of course -- some kind of combination.

Well the baseline data can hint at what is what.

There are presently an incredible 1400+ reports of objects the NUFORC
suspects are starlink trains. If we break them down by D.O.W. we find:

Dow(Sun==1) Reports marked "(((starlink)))"
1           246
2           206
3           182
4           167
5           273
6           216
7           197

If we compare these with sightings that are NOT starlink and also I
filter out reports that are made long after the sighting, that might
result in someone mis-remembering what the date of the sighting
(and therefore dow) really was, we find:

Dow     Non-starlink reports within a few weeks of sighting
1       11778
2       9980
3       10208
4       10845
5       11044
6       11929
7       15280

Which the stats assures us is much different from the starlink pattern.

Whatever the reason for Mon being a minimum sighting day it does not
seem to be because fewer people are looking at the sky.  It is likely
to be a property of the UFOs.

In a prev post we had a look at this with some Machine Learning model
that suggested -- based on another baseline kind of sighting that
mentioned an interaction between a UFO and a jet or other conventional
aircraft -- that UFO's flying across the US may be trying to avoid
military aircraft that may be less common on Saturday and suddenly
much more common and refreshed and alert on Monday.

So thank-you all those 1400+ people that saw something and reported it
no matter whether it might be a starlink train or not.  You did not
waste your time. You did not waste our time in reading the reports.
We figured something out from it. Another brick in the long long road
to understanding what (whatever the plural of what is) we are dealing with.

--
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
- Marie Curie

World Oil Statistics
The world consumes 35,442,913,090 barrels of oil as of the year 2016,
equivalent to 97,103,871 barrels per day. · Global oil consumption per
capita is 5 barrels ...
Oil Reserves: 1,650,585,140,000
Oil Consumption: 35,442,913,090
Reserves/Consumption: 47	<== years left i.e. 2016+47 == 2063
-- Worldometer

Section 8. Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) Reports
Persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity
should contact a ... data collection center, such as the National UFO
Reporting Center, etc.
-- www.faa.gov, as at 30 Nov 2022

"[F]or the few cases in all domains--space, air, and sea--that do
demonstrate potentially anomalous characteristics, AARO exists to help the
DOD, IC, and interagency resolve those anomalous cases. In doing so, AARO is
approaching these cases with the highest level of objectivity and analytic
rigor. This includes physically testing and employing modeling and
simulation to validate our analyses and underlying theories, and
peer-reviewing those results within the U.S. government, industry partners,
and appropriately cleared academic institutions before reaching any
conclusions."
-- Dr Sean Kirkpatrick, Senate Hearings on UFOs, 19 Apr 2023.

Unidentified aerial phenomena I. Observations of events
B.E. Zhilyaev, V. N. Petukhov, V. M. Reshetnyk
Main Astronomical Observatory, NAS of Ukraine,
Zabalotnoho 27, 03680, Kyiv, Ukraine
[...] We present a broad range of UAPs. We see them everywhere. We observe a
significant number of objects whose nature is not clear. Flights of single,
group and squadrons of the ships were detected, moving at speeds from 3 to
15 degrees per second. Some bright objects exhibit regular brightness
variability in the range of 10 - 20 Hz.  Two-site observations of UAPs at a
base of 120 km with two synchronised cameras allowed the detection of
a variable object, at an altitude of 1170 km. It flashes for one hundredth
of a second at an average of 20 Hz. [...]
An object contrast makes it possible to estimate the distance using
colourimetric methods.  [Objects with 0 albedo] are observed in the
troposphere at distances up to 10-12 km. We estimate their size from 3 to 12
meters and speeds up to 15 km/s. [...]
[Astronomers in Ukraine have undertaken their own independent survey
of objects they see flying over the Kyiv region at speeds around 15
km/sec.  They are watching the daytime sky at the zenith and in front
of the moon.  They see many objects -- some bright and some dark,
different sizes.  They travel often singly but sometimes in large
groups.  They report brightness is linked with speed. The spectrum
of bright objects is reportedly not reflected sunlight.  Objects
have been spotted inside the atm upto ~10 km but also out to ~1000 km
above the earth, travelling up to ~1000 km/sec.  They are not likely
anything sent by Russia or any other country].