The article was written by Vinicius Lima, showing "how to make a Martian spaceship", and this is the catch, the photo trickery was done by Almiro Baraúna.
Less than four years later, the very same Baraúna allegedly took photos of a real flying saucer while aboard a ship near the Trindade Island, on what would become a classic and to some, one of the best UFO cases ever.
"A stunning survey of the latest evidence for intelligent life on Mars. Mac Tonnies brings a thoughtful, balanced and highly accessible approach to one of the most fascinating enigmas of our time."
--Herbie Brennan, author of Martian Genesis and The Atlantis Enigma
"Tonnies drops all predetermined opinions about Mars, and asks us to do the same."
--Greg Bishop, author of Project Beta
"I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the search for extra-terrestrial artifacts, and the political intrigues that invariably accompany it."
--David Jinks, author of The Monkey and the Tetrahredron
"Mac Tonnies goes where NASA fears to tread and he goes first class."
--Peter Gersten, former Director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy
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(Includes my essay "The Ancients Are Watching.")
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5 comments:
Frankly, virtually ALL the UFO photos I've seen (here and elsewhere) look fake to me. I believe in the UFO EXPERIENCE (including abductions, etc.) I just don't happen to think that this type of experience involves anything that can be readily photographed, especially not something that looks like a couple of plates glued together and then photographed slightly out of focus....
Most photographed UFOs may literally be "flying saucers"!
I think there are *some* instances of authentic UFOs captured on film (or microchip), but would venture to say the overwhelmingly vast majority are either misidentifications or hoaxes.
The Paul Trent case continues to intrigue me, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it collapsed. And if it did -- big deal. UFO photos have never constituted especially persuasive (or useful) evidence.
But they're certainly eye-catching!
Mac -- I suspect we're in basic agreement here. One interesting issue that this raises, though -- how can we ever determine whether a given UFO photograph is authentic or not. One of the rules of scientific theories is that they be "falsifiable." And if the theory is, "this picture is an authentic picture of a UFO" is the theory and especially if it is decades old, it is not falsifiable in principle except by the photographer himself or herself admitting it was a hoax. This seems to happen occasionally but not very often.
Anyway, I googled Paul Trent and hit the freaking mother lode. You almost certainly know about this site (in fact, as I recall, you may have posted this link at some point) but it seems worth pointing to again.
UFO Pix Mother Lode
BTW, I'm convinced the "earliest" UFO photo, the 1870 Mt. Washington pic, is actually of a primitive airship that the government was experimenting with. It's long and narrow and just LOOKS like a dirigible. It is certainly not inconceivable that these formed some kind of secret experimental project back then. Balloons were invented way back in the 18th century (so the caption claim that there was no human flight back in 1870 is simply false) and were used extensively for observation platforms by Union forces during the Civil War.
More thoughts on this...
And even given the fact that a particular UFO pic might be authentic, what exactly does that mean? All it means is that it is a picture of SOMETHING that was not constructed for the occasion by the photographer or persons in cahoots with the photographer for the purpose of gaining publicity.
An authentic UFO photo is therefore not necessarily a photograph of an alien spaceship. It could be, as in my example above, an experimental aircraft of some sort or who knows what. By Occam's Razor and a general appeal to plausibility, I would place "alien spacecraft" LAST on the list of possible explanations of authentic UFO photographs. (But most people now when they're discussing the subject -- present company excepted, of course -- virtually equate the term "UFO" with "alien spacecraft.")
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