Nonsense in the News

There are several amazing stories that are circulating in the UFO subculture this month. All of them are nonsense. Most are being promulgated through Twitter and Facebook, and in a variety of blogs and faux-news sites. Here are my cautions on some of them:

1. A new planet has not been discovered in the Solar System. Niburu still does not exist.
2. Stan Fulham's predictions about UFOs have not been proven true.
3. The Jerusalem UFO videos are not baffling UFO experts. They are fakes.

1. Sorry, no Niburu

As excited as some are getting about the claim that a giant planet four times the size of Jupiter has been found beyond Pluto, it's simply not true. Such a planet has been speculated, but that's a long way to proving it exists. In fact, the researchers who suggested it may exists are doubtful, too.

The original paper about this appeared in November in Icarus, an excellent scientific journal that often deals with spaceflight and SETI (and should be essential reading for ufologists). The authors are John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, both physicists at the University of Louisiana, who have been studying comets and the Oort Cloud for many years. In fact, they've been speculating about a "distant solar companion" since the 1980s! Basically, they have been studying the frequency distribution of the orbits of certain comets and think that a large massive object may exist somewhere out there, giving cometary debris a nudge and sending them inward towards the Sun.

Their most recent paper (available here: http://bit.ly/hrNbCG), simply presents additional evidence that such a large, dark body may exist. It does not say that any planet has been discovered, only that it has been theorized to exist in order to explain the distribution of comets in our Solar System. That's it.

According to those who believe Niburu exists and may hit the Earth in 2012, there is no evidence at all that this large speculated planet (called Tyche by Matese and Whitmire) is going anywhere. In fact, it is so far away from Earth that it would be clearly visible by now if it was heading in our direction, which it's not.

Now, it's possible that a comet perturbed by Tyche could be heading our way for an Earth-crossing event in 2012, but that could happen with or without this new research.

2. Stanley Fulham's "Predictions"

First of all, I read Fulham's book in an early printing several years ago. It's pretty standard contactee literature, and nothing very different from the rest of the genre. Self-published, it didn't stand out to me as anything special. The fact that he was a NORAD staff member is the most interesting aspect.

Secondly, Fulham's book got attention in a later printing, after Randy Kitchur connected with him. I should note that I know Kitchur, as he is from my own town and I have met him numerous times regarding issues related to UFOs.

Last year, Fulham made the prediction about a UFO fleet appearing on October 13, 2010. His original prediction is noted at: http://networkedblogs.com/920Oa

A news release noted:

A newly-published 352-page book by a retired Air Force officer, Stanley A. Fulham, tentatively predicts October 13, 2010 as the date for a massive UFO display over the world’s principal cities.

Where did Fulham get his information from?

For more than a decade, through the services of a world renowned channeler, the author has communicated with an ethereal group of entities known as the Transcendors — 43,000 very old souls who combine their vast experience and knowledge through eons of incarnations, providing advice and information to humans in search of basic realities of mankind’s existence.

And as for the October 2010 event, Fulham hedged a bit:

Fulham clarifies there are no absolutes; the principal of free will and choice that exits with all souls precludes all absolute realities, and the aliens may decide to postpone their intervention — but the Transcendors confirm it will nonetheless occur in 2010. Quoting the author, the event will “occur this year, in what will surely be one of the great dramas of our galaxy, the introduction of their alien civilizations and technologies to mankind.

So, on October 13, 2010, there was supposed to have been a massive UFO display over the world's principal cities. Of course, there was no such thing. Fulham's supporters point to a single UFO sighting over New York on that day that has general been explained as a cluster of balloons but is accepted as a spacecraft visitation by some loyalists. That's not a "massive" UFO display, in any sense of the word. Nor was there any parallel set of events over cities such as (presumably) Paris, Moscow, Tokyo or Beijing.

It should also be noted that Fulham's hedge was that the UFO display was "tentatively" scheduled. In other words, if nothing was seen, it would still have been a valid "prediction."

As for the sightings in 2011 over London and Moscow, which also have been linked to "predictions" by Fulham, any examination of Davenport's NUFORC list will show that UFOs are sighted on a daily basis around the world, and since UFO reports tend to be reported by people in cities, sightings over London or Moscow are not unusual on any day of the year.

It is claimed that a video of a UFO over Moscow on January 7, 2011, represents a "hit" by Fulham. Looking through Youtube, there are videos of sightings over Moscow from January 18 and 25, but the one that is called a "hit" is indeed from January 7, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3lj0jHnV0

The trouble is, there's nothing in this video to distinguish it from any other UFO video posted to Youtube. It;s simply a teeny tiny dot of light moving slowly in the distance. That's a UFO that was manipulated to be there by aliens? Apart from the fact that the case was never actually investigated, so we have no way of knowing if the video is legitimate, there is no reason to assume it is anything remarkable.

As for the predicted London UFO, Kitchur noted:

London was a little different.  London actually started out with what look like a fleet on New Years Day, and ended on January 31st with a single UFO videotaped low over a residential neighbourhood.  In between there was a videotaped event on January 14 over downtown London, the very date Stan predicted if one interprets his prediction for London correctly.  At one point in late-January I thought Stan might have got the order of the Moscow and London displays reversed, but it wasn't until I learned the significance of the January 14th event following the incredible UFO display over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on the 28.  Actually, it wasn't that specific event that provided that understanding, it was the front page story carried by Israel's largest newspaper mentioning Stan in relation to a prior event which took over the Wailing Wall in mid-December just before Stan died, of an orb that was videotaped the looks exactly like the orb in London on January 14th -- the day Stan predicted.

If the video in question is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkgGed8hw40
then this is also doubtful, as the orb zooming quickly away from the camera over Camden looks a lot like something in the air close to the camera lens and nothing alien.

These videos are said to be "3 of 3" in terms of Fulham's predictions, but the reality is more like 0 of 3.

3. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Thou UFO Ever Less

I don't really want to start in on the Jerusalem UFO videos, but really, people. I still am getting tweets and Facebook updates by people who state that "skeptics" are "baffled" by the Jerusalem videos. Uh -nope. I can't think of a single serious UFO researcher who didn't see the videos once and realize they were faked.

Yet UFO proponents hype it this way: http://www.allnewsweb.com/page1199999486.php

Although to counter that, look at a website such as: http://bit.ly/iinE2V

There's so much against the reality of the video. Anonymous poster, lack of numerous witnesses, internal inconsistency of the video itself, and simple directions on how to fake it, showing the "motion tile" effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-27bJdrhhAI

A good try, though.

What's most annoying is that ardent believers are using the Jerusalem UFO video as proof or in support of other cases that may or may not have more support. And that's too bad, because if there is a real phenomenon, this is not the way to prove it.

[4. And don't get me started on chemtrails...]