Comments on the "Meier" UFO photos

In a 25 page tome on the theyfly.com website entitled "UFO Contact from the Pleiades, A Preliminary Investigation Report", Wendelle Stevens - who, coincidentally, runs a UFO photo website and happens to be a convicted pedophile, according to Saucer Smear - provides "photographic analysis" of the Meier UFO photographs.

Without a doubt this the most convoluted assemblage of "tech talk" I've ever seen! It is akin to the "techno-babble" used in sci-fi television shows and movies where they spew all this "scientific" language to make the audience think they are scientists. They use all this techno-language, yet never produce any of the photos they used, or the data they generated or analyzed. Thus, the article is useless to prove anything. Though the language used in this document is sometimes valid, without the details and the data the entire text is useless as "proof" of anything.

All "UFO" images provided on the "theyfly.com" web site look like saucers, pie pans, hub caps, or ornate platters.

Though Mr. Horn goes to great length to "explain away" the attempts to show how the photos could be faked, and none of the photos provided on the site are good enough to assess, the following are the primary problems with such photos which contribute to the impression they are fake:

1. No photo sequences - if anyone was taking photos of a real unknown object in the sky, they would snap repeated photos of the object. With luck, this would allow two or more photos taken within seconds of each other, to be stereoscopically matched (provided the camera was laterally displaced between photos) to truly identify the unknown object's distance form the camera. Curiously, no photo sequences are presented.

2. Lighting and shadows. It comes as no surprise that the "UFOs" in the Meier's photos do not show the same shadowing or illumination as the surrounding terrain and objects in the photo.

3. Lack of motion. If the "UFOs" were moving, and the photographer was attempting to take a snapshot of them, his camera would be moving as it was panned to follow the "UFO" motion, and objects in the foreground would be motion-blurred, not just out of focus. Hence, photos like "Photo 12" (http://www.theyfly.com/newsflash5/tree.htm) are more likely faked since the tree in the foreground is not motion-blurred. (This assessment, of course assumes that the UFOs in the image were moving. If they were not moving, then the tree in the foreground would not be motion-blurred.

4. Clarity of the "UFO". The "UFO" in the photo is often "clearer" or sharper than the other objects in the photo. This could mean several things, but the primary cause of an object that looks clearer is that the image is a composite from 2 or more photos, or the object was far closer to the camera than the other objects and hence did not suffer degradation due to atmospheric haze that tends to degrade the sharpness and color of distant objects.

5. Common objects. The "UFO" look just like common objects found in the universe - but only on Earth.

6. Lack of credible movie footage. The footage provided at this link is clearly a spinning disk held by a string or fishing line, with the suspension point off camera. These "movies" are laughable.

Michael Horn goes to great lengths to try to salvage the "evidence" provided by "Billy" Meier as "fact" and as provided to him (Meier) by the aliens. Let's pick apart just a few of his claims:

From "Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" by Michael Horn:

"115th Contact, October 19, 1978: Meier describes existence of Jupiter's rings, says composed mainly of dust, particles, sulfur ions flung off by volcanoes on Io, describes Io as most volcanically active body in solar system, smooth, level-surfaced, no water; describes Europa as ice-encrusted; Jupiter said to have 17 actual moons (Plejaren don't consider all of Jupiter's satellites meet their standards of moons); describes nature of Jupiter's huge funnelshaped storm" "Corroborated: March 5, 1979, NASA's Voyager 1 probe discovers rings of Jupiter, Io most volcanically active body in solar system, Europa covered in ice…5 months after Meier published information"

On the "prophecy" that Meier knew of the rings of Jupiter in October 1979, before the Voyager Spacecraft in 1979 - the existence of Jovian rings was widely discussed in the planetary community since 1974 when the data of two Pioneer spacecraft suggested the existence of Jovian rings. In fact the photos by the Voyager spacecraft were specifically targeting rings as a result of the Pioneer data, and Voyager is typically credited with the "discovery" of the rings since they actually captured photos of them. So, the fact that "Billy" suggested in 1978 there would be rings, was no "revelation" by aliens. (Some web sites state the existence of rings of Jupiter was "totally unexpected". This is simply not true.) Ref: Icarus 138, 214-223 (1999)

As to the number of Jovian moons, in 1978, Jupiter was known to have 13 (the most recently discovered was in 1974). Interestingly enough, Meier's aliens, the "Plejaren" say there were 17, but as of this date (2006) there are 63 known. Meier's (or Horn's) excuse is that not all "satellites" meet the "Plajaren" criteria.

Also from "Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt":

"1978: In a Wasserman publication Meier foretells launch of telescope at end of 1980s that would make unfathomable discoveries in space, writes that a comet would be discovered in late 1980s to early 1990s that would be named Toutatis, may threaten Earth in September 2004". Corroborated: Hubble telescope launched April 1990 Corroborated: 1989, French astronomers discover comet, named it…Toutatis, predicted to come closest to Earth September 29, 2004

The concept of a large space telescope was openly discussed in the scientific community as early as 1962, and the planning for the Space Telescope that became the Hubble Space Telescope began in 1972, with an expected launch date of 1985! This was widely discussed in the open press, so it is not surprising that Meier would know of it from human beings, not space aliens. See: Scientific American, Volume 247, Number 1, July 1982, pp. 40-51.

Though the "1978 Wasserman" publication is unnamed, it is unlikely that Mr. Meier actually said any such thing, specifically the naming of a yet to be discovered "comet". Toutatis was discovered by the French in 1989, and it is an earth crossing asteroid not a comet. And, yes it passed by the earth in 2004. But it also passed the earth in 1989, 1992, and 2000. It will pass again in 2008. Didn't the "Plejarin" want Mr. Meier to have the complete picture?