A Different Perspective

I thought, given the tenor of the conversation, that I would attempt to establish some common ground. I believe there are some facts on which we all can agree, and I believe there is some analysis that we can make which would provide a jumping off point.

I believe that we can all agree that Lonnie Zamora saw something in the desert on April 24, 1964. We can agree that he described, as accurately as he could, what he had seen at that time. Im not going to talk about apparent changes, additions, deletions from his testimony over time because human memory, being what it is, allows for these adjustments that are neither right nor wrong, but often just different.

We all seem to agree that it was more or less egg-shaped, with a red symbol on it. We all agree that he saw two figures near it, that he described as humanoid, that were dressed in white, and that they disappeared behind the object, whatever it might have been. This object lifted off in short order and disappeared, flying into the strong wind. There were no other reliable or identified witnesses to the sighting (and yes, I know about Opal Grinders tourist and the two men from Dubuque, Iowa who reported they had seen the craft).

There are a limited number of possible explanations for the case. It was a hallucination. It was a illusion. It was a misidentification. It was an experimental craft from White Sands (or somewhere else that is terrestrially based). It was a hoax. It was a craft from another world.

I have tried to think of any other alternatives, but havent come up with anything. By saying this, I hope to draw out someone who might have thought of something different.

Lets look at the solutions. I discount hallucination because of the physical evidence left behind. I see no reason for Opal Grinder to have invented a tourist and am disappointed that this witness, who surely heard about the case, has refused to ever come forward. The two men from Dubuque, if they accurately reported what they had seen also argue against hallucination. Their reliability is another question.

The problem with illusion is that there is no real good source for the illusion. Some, or maybe one, thought, given the time and location, a bright star near the horizon, seen though the dry air, might have given the impression that it was on, or near the ground. There are many factors that argue against it including the markings left on the ground, and given the history since the sighting, it has little viability.

There is a possibility that it was a misidentification and this is the explanation favored by some such as Charles Moore. Arguing against it is the nearly fifty year history since the sighting. Even a topsecret vehicle would now be known and the records for White Sands, easily available now, have been accessed to no avail. If it was a vehicle from another installation, the same applies. The records would now be in a public arena and someone would have found them by now because there have been a number of people looking for that sort of thing. This seems to have little viability.

There was also a discussion that what he saw was a lunar lander being transported under a helicopter in some sort of test. Of course, Zamora never mentioned the noise that would be generated by the helicopter, the clouds of dust that would have been thrown up by the rotor wash, or that what he saw was lifted under something else. Of course the records dont support this explanation. There seems to be little reason to accept this as an answer either.

I should point out here that some have suggested the misidentification of a dust devil, which is a whirling cloud of dust blow up by the wind... or stirred up by the rotors of a helicopter. The same reasoning applies here as it does to the lunar lander and I mention it only because someone suggested it.

There was a suggestion, briefly, that Zamora had seen a hot air balloon. This would have explained the blue flame and the roaring sound, but doesnt explain how the balloon envelop, which would have had to be larger to lift two people, even small ones, could have fooled him or how the balloon would have lifted off into a strong wind. Hot air balloons do not do well in any windy conditions anyway. While the idea is somewhat interesting, given the reported wind conditions, it doesnt seem plausible.

Of all the solutions, only hoax and extraterrestrial seem to have any real viability, and frankly, and offending my pro-extraterrestrial friends, hoax would seem to be more likely. It is a question of logistics more than anything else. You have to come a very long way to reach Earth from another world, so it is easier for it to be hoax than a question of interstellar travel.

Yes, there are many arguments in favor of this explanation and I wont go into them all here. Tony Bragalia and his colleagues have already done that, and they have offered some evidence in support of it. They have latched onto the claim that this was done as revenge against Zamora for his alleged harassment of New Mexico Tech students and that the charred cardboard found on the site is proof.

Well, it is evidence, but Im not sure that it is relevant, given the statements by the man who picked it up, but it is out there. Each person is going to have to decide what significance he or she attaches to this particular and rather isolated evidence.

And then the extraterrestrial... this too, has viability. Arguing against it are the vast distances in space and the complex technical problems that must be solved to travel interstellar distances. Then there is likelihood they would land on the outskirts of a small city in New Mexico only then take off when approached by a local resident.

To me, this boils down to either a hoax or an alien visitation. I cant see any other explanation, given what we know and the evidence that is available in a variety of sources. The arguments seem to fall into one of those two categories as well. Some believing it to be a hoax and some believing that it was alien visitation.

What is left for us to do is a dispassionate examination of the evidence and that is what has been lacking... not the examination, but the dispassion. It is quite clear to me that those involved in the debate are very passionate about their positions, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem arises when one side or the other refuses to look at all the evidence or begin to call one another names...

That is what we need here, an examination of all the evidence and I have seen both sides picking the evidence that suits them and forgetting some of the rest. I will note that Ockhams razor states that the simplest solution that accounts for the facts is probably the correct answer. But note, it must account for the majority of the facts, not just those that point in one direction or the other.

Now, nearly fifty years later, we have yet to arrive at a point where we can all agree. And yes, I know that well never get to that point because no matter what evidence is provided, there will always be some on the other side who refuse to accept the truth when they see it. We can point to examples throughout history where people have refused to believe the truth even when confronted by it with their own eyes. I have no hope that this will turn out any different.
But by looking at this, somewhat dispassionately, we now know why this case was labeled as unidentified. There simply isnt the evidence necessary to make the proper call. Sometimes, that is the only solution that we can find and it is not a satisfactory one. It leaves us guessing and in a vacuum.

Pareidolia: Why we see faces in hills, the Moon and toasties

31 May 2013 Last updated at 09:59 GMT

Face spotted by Onformative's GoogleFace project near Magadan Oblast in Russia

Faces in the landscape of eastern Russia's Magadan Oblast region

People have long seen faces in the Moon, in oddly-shaped vegetables and even burnt toast, but a Berlin-based group is scouring the planet via satellite imagery for human-like features. What's behind our desire to see faces in our surroundings, asks Lauren Everitt.

Most people have never heard of pareidolia. But nearly everyone has experienced it.

Anyone who has looked at the Moon and spotted two eyes, a nose and a mouth has felt the pull of pareidolia.

It's "the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist", according to the World English Dictionary. It's picking a face out of a knotted tree trunk or finding zoo animals in the clouds.

German design studio Onformative is undertaking perhaps the world's largest and most systematic search for pareidolia. Their Google Faces programme will spend the next few months sniffing out face-like shapes in Google Maps.

Mother Teresa took exception to a Nashville diner selling "nun bun" merchandise

Google Faces will scan the entire globe several times over from different angles. So far the programme has pinpointed an eerie profile in Russia's remote Magadan Oblast region, a fellow with hairy nostrils next to Priory Road in Ashford, Kent, and a mangy creature in the mountains of Alaska, among others.

It's certainly not the first to uncover faces where they don't actually exist.

This week, US department store JC Penney sold out of a kettle thought to look like the leader of the Third Reich after the resemblance was noted on social news site Reddit.

A chicken nugget shaped like US President George Washington earned more than £5,000 ($8,100) on eBay last year.

A decade earlier, some 20,000 Christians travelled to Bangalore to pay homage to a chapatti with the image of Christ burnt on it. Some visitors even offered prayers to the glass-encased flatbread.

In 2011 a Tumblr site that specialises in finding things that look like Hitler posted a photo of a modest terraced house in Swansea. Its angled roof resembles a comb-over, and the moulding over the house's door is said to evoke the dictator's trademark moustache.

Hitler (left, PA photo); house in Swansea (right, photo by Charli Dickenson)

In 2009 the Allen family of Ystrad, Rhondda, spotted the face of Jesus on the underside of a Marmite lid. Instead of the usual mundane brown smears, they found a "comforting" image and saved the top after finishing off the jar.

And American Diana Duyser took a bite out of a cheese toastie in 1994 only to find herself face-to-face with what looked to her like the Virgin Mary. She noticed the Madonna's burnt image on the bread after the first bite and saved the rest of the sandwich for over a decade.

Diana Duyser and her toasted cheese sandwich

Diana Duyser and her holy toastie

Duyser put it up for auction on eBay where it drew 1.7 million hits and eventually sold for about $28,000 (£18,500).

Google Faces designers Cedric Kiefer and Julia Laub were also inspired by pareidolia.

After seeing the famous "Face in Mars" snapped by the Viking 1 Orbiter in 1976 and playing around with facial recognition technology, they became curious about "how the psychological phenomenon of pareidolia could be generated by a machine", Kiefer says.

Face on Mars, photographed in 1976 (left), and a more recent hi-res image

The Face in Mars photo from 1976, and a more recent close-up

They didn't expect their project to be a big deal, but soon their photos of faces in the Russian tundra and rural Britain were spreading across the web.

"It seems like there is something fascinating about pareidolia," Kiefer says.

While some countenances resemble cartoon characters and abstract art, other images appear almost "too real to believe it's just coincidence", he adds.

But why do people see faces in what is quite literally nothing more than a stain, a splotch or a strange rock formation?

Some of that is our evolutionary heritage, says Dr Nouchine Hadjikhani of Harvard University. Humans are "prewired" to detect faces from birth, she says.

"If you take a baby just after a few minutes of life, he will direct his attention toward something that has the general features of a face versus something that has the same elements but in a random order," she says.

Leaf found in Amos LeFebre's garden in 2002, and chocolate at Bodega Chocolates in California, 2006

Mona Lisa or Virgin Mary on a leaf; and the Madonna in chocolate

And the tendency to pick out familiar figures goes back to the first humans, says Christopher French of the British Psychological Society.

"We've evolved brains that think in these quick, dirty ways that are usually right, but at times can lead us to systematically be biased," he explains.

"A classic example is the Stone Age guy standing there, scratching his beard, wondering whether that rustling in the bushes really is a sabre-toothed tiger. You're much more likely to survive if you assume it's a sabre-toothed tiger and get the hell out of there - otherwise you may end up as lunch."

Other experts say pareidolia is a consequence of the brain's information processing systems. The brain is constantly sifting through random lines, shapes, surfaces and colours, says Joel Voss, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University.

It makes sense of these images by assigning meaning to them - usually by matching them to something stored in long-term knowledge. But sometimes things that are slightly "ambiguous" get matched up with things we can name more easily - resulting in pareidolia, he says.

Makeshift shrine to a likeness of Virgin Mary on a baking tray in Houston, Texas, 2007

Guadalupe Rodriguez saw the Virgin on a cafeteria baking tray in Texas

Pareidolia can also be a product of people's expectations, says neuroscientist Sophie Scott, of University College London.

"Being able to see Jesus's face in toast is telling you more about what's happening with your expectations, and how you're interpreting the world based on your expectations, rather than anything that's necessarily in the toast," she says.

And once the Virgin's face or George Washington's profile are spotted, it's virtually impossible to unsee them, says Bruce Hood, author of The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity.

"That's one of the things about illusions, they have this remarkable tendency to formulate in your mind, and it's very difficult to unthink them," he says.

But simply spotting a face in a morsel of food or a fence doesn't explain why some people spend thousands of pounds to buy it or make a pilgrimage to see it.

Pareidolia can be extremely evocative - especially if a person believes in miracles, Scott says.

"It's an incredibly strong demonstration of how powerful these perceptual effects are. We really want to see things like faces, we really want to hear things like voices, and our perceptual system will set out to do that," she adds.

For some, pareidolia stands as evidence of the supernatural, Hood says. "People will seek out these sorts of things for some sort of intervention."

The object itself can also take on special significance, says French. People assume that if it has been divinely produced, then it has been "touched by God" and "will bring good fortune", he says.

But you don't have to be particularly religious to appreciate pareidolia.

"I don't for one minute think there's any kind of religious significance or anything else in them," French says. "But hey, they're pretty neat, aren't they?"

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