Explanations Ad Infinitum

Updated 20.12.2013  Here are some of the most common and most ludicrous explanations by outsiders as to what witnesses of UFO sightings must have seen or heard - instead of the real deal. Some of the explanations may hit the point, but most simply don't, but rather are products of fearful and/or closed minds. A UFO sighting is usually such a powerful experience that the person immediately and automatically goes through, while experiencing, an internal checking and double checking before arriving at the definite conclusion: I know what I saw! Hardly any witness takes a sighting - and the analysis of it - lightly, but it is for many a profound and possibly life-changing experience. Thus a later, superficial 'analysis' of it by total outsiders really doesn't have - and should not have - any value. Here are anyway some examples of such 'explanations'. We who do believe/know or have seen/heard/experienced could take these as just something amusing to read if it wasn't for the - triteness...

THE CRAFTS
Roswell crash in 1947 brought this brilliant interpretation of the event: "it was just farm machinery. Maybe a trailer, and the lights and noise were from tractor". Depending upon the shape of the UFO - circular, cigar-shaped, diamond, triangle, rod - a UFO could be instead:
airplane
atmospheric phenonema
balloon
Chinese lantern
drone
flock of birds
helicopter
light aberration
Jupiter
kite
mass hallucination
meteor
model plane
satellite
stars
swamp gas
the Moon
Venus
weather balloon
list continues...

LIGHTS

People have reported seeing white, yellow, red or blue lights, or any mixture of those colors. And the lights can be steady or flickering, and in the shape of beams, or be spreading allover. The lights can seem to emanate from a solid body/craft, or appear as separate from anything solid, and changing in shape and position. No matter what kind, these lights could instead be, according to sceptics:

atmospheric phenonema
Chinese lanterns
Jupiter
light aberration
lighthouse beams
lights of airplane or helicopter
headlights of approaching car
meteor
reflection of other, earthly, lights
reflection of spectacles
stars
Venus
list to be updated...

SOUNDS
Most witnesses say that UFOs don't sound - that they quietly fly or hover in the sky. Still, an argument can be made by the skeptic that what you thought you heard was instead:
airplane
atmospheric phenonema
car
helicopter
trees
wind
list to be updated...

PS. My personal experience started with a sound as there was initially no visual perception of anything unusual going on. Or if no sound was actually heard, it was vibrations in the air that caught my attention. Since sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through some medium (e.g. air), composed of frequencies which are within the range of hearing, the pressure can be sensed as vibrations even if no sound is 'heard'. Wiki:Sound

ALIENS
A somewhat tougher question, and one which perhaps frustrates the most - the inability of most anybody to believe that one really has encountered an extraterrestrial being. But these too can be explained away as:
animals
children
dreams
hallusinations
poor eyesight
shadows
list to be updated....

SCEPTOLOGY

Actually logic is often quite far from the mind of someone ready to dismiss the experiences of another as something less valid or as downright lies. It seems rather that there is a lot of ignorance, fear and intellectual arrogance involved. These are oftentimes people who wouldn't believe themselves if they saw something extraordinary, but would be too easily persuaded to dismiss their own experiences. So how could they respect those of others? Scepticism is a personality trait, not to be confused with logical reasoning.