[paigetheoracle]

Looking at the various reports and films of flying saucers, the question arises in my mind, why do the majority spin? There must be some advantage to it. I even remember film of a cylinder in Soviet airspace, that corkscrewed away, pursued by fighters (See gun rifling for the same effect with bullets i.e. spiralled chamber0. We know from their antics that they have some anti-gravity mechanism that allows them to float in mid-air and various shots that seem to suggest short leap teleportation but nobody as far as I know has asked this obvious question or answered (correct me if I'm wrong). There was a question in The New Scientist's Last Word column about why a bicycle is hard to balance and keep upright when stationary but requires little effort when moving. An engineer from some university came up with a really ludicrously complex and totally erroneous answer in my opinion, missing out the simple fact that forward momentum cancels out gravity as long as you are centrally balanced. The same thing is true with spinning tops, balanced on a point - the pull of gravity is equalized all the way around as long as there is momentum driving the top forward, keeping it in place. This point is easily demonstrated by rolling a coin along the ground - as momentum fades gravity starts to pull it to one side in a spiral as we see with liquids (3-D version of this): See books by various authors on Viktor Schaubergers work for follow ups to this. Gyroscopes come into this as well, not only as glorified spinning tops but because of work by people like Eric Laithwaite and other engineers that pinpointed how this spinning motion could be utilized by flying saucers, even if only accidently by inspiring people like me in the UFO field.

[Boerseun]

One would assume that any species capable of overcoming gravity with their "antigravity devices", would not be in any need of such mundane things as gyroscopic stabilisers.

Nope, the only reason that UFO's in popular media are spinning, is the same as why the "Greys" look like they do. The first artist who came up with his own personal view of what it should look like, the first artist to put his imagination to paper/celluloid, basically dictated to the generations of artists to follow in his wake what a UFO or an alien should look like. If you want to get your message accross quickly, and you depict an alien spaceship as anything other but the commonplace spinning-top thingy, then fewer people will understand what you're on about. Also, if you depict an alien in a popular art media as anything but a "Grey", then people will think you drew a picture of a cucumber with eyeballs, or an octopus with a death ray gun, or whatever, but they will not think of them as aliens!

Popular culture is a nasty thing, and it also limits what we can and can't do, creatively speaking, to an unexpectedly large degree.

But there's no particular scientific reason why their spacecraft will spin. It just looks cool to have all those bright shiny lights flash all over, I guess.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

:Because one to many drunks whilst driving home excessively bombed mistook the Gravitron at the local fair as a flying saucer...besides when you're bombed everything spins:

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by DFINITLYDISTRUBD

:Because one to many drunks whilst driving home excessively bombed mistook the Gravitron at the local fair as a flying saucer...besides when you're bombed everything spins::eswirl

UFO's spin for the same reason that unicorns dance.

[InfiniteNow]

UFOs spin to cause erections in leprechauns? Wow. I swear, you learn something new every day.

[Moontanman]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

UFOs spin to cause erections in leprechauns? Wow. I swear, you learn something new every day.

Hmm, spin, OK, I can think of at least one reason to spin a disk shaped craft. If you propel it from a point source somewhere near the middle of the craft then spin would affect it like a Frisbee and allow the entire craft to be accelerated at once by a force that would just cause it to tumble uncontrollably if the craft wasn't spinning. Of course you would have to make some assumptions, like the existence of spinning disk shaped alien space craft just to start with

Dancing unicorns have that effect on leprechauns too?

[paigetheoracle]

Obviously the majority of people replying to this thread have little or no interest in the subject and haven't studied the subject in any depth. With this in mind I suggest you all go and immerse yourself in H2O, to discover the truth behind USV's (Unidentified Submersible Vehicles)*






* In other words go and stick your head in a bucket!

[wddycus]

I have only seen one UFO it was a very large round disk and it was getting dark. This happen in 1983 where four of us going to Raleigh,NC for a meeting the next day. We were riding on a eight lane highway when this UFO came across the road it was about 300yd high and about 400yd out in front of us before we could get stop. All we could say at the time was look like I said it was large and cover the whole highways I could see the outer shell moving around while the lights stood still while the outside turn. It was moving slow for a few minutes and then it went straight up at a very high speed.We all thought it would be on the local news the next morning but this was 1983 and it was hard for us four to believe what we had seen so it was not on the News. Now why dose a UFO spins it has to be some kind of gravity Field that is one the reason the earth spin.
wddycus

[InfiniteNow]

I really stopped caring about UFOs at the same time I quit smoking pot. That's strange, huh?

[wddycus]

I have never smoke pot but once you stop your brain shuts down, I think if I was you I would conceder start smoking pot again at least you had a open mind.
wddycus