UFO?

More likely a comet.

Paris because she's almost certainly been anal-probed.

it must have been 170ft long...

Or it could have been the size of a pigeon but stationary...

How do some people end up with logic like this...

Stop, because the turbine stopped.

Maybe...

Maybe the craft was of the silver, shape-shifting type and crashed while "checking out some daisies"?

Can I be the Navigator?

Nothing gets in the way of a good story...

Read in the Grauniad that one of their reporters was at a fireworks display in the general vicinity of the turbines on the evening that the strange lights were seen.

Doesn't quite make as good a story as tentacled space beings lighting up the bland Lincolnshire skyline...

Made me laugh

“A large white circle in the sky with a red edge”, so like an unbalanced spinning turbine cessing up with a lot of friction would make?

And another thing you UFO nuts – Just think, seriously think for once. Postulate over how much tech it would takes to cross the stars, with the vast vast distances involved, the massive energy required to go even close to light speed, then enormous obstacles in space from cosmic rays, wandering black holes, stray stars, planets asteroids and things we do not even know about, but having managed to develop crafts that can do and navigate all these dangers safely and reached earth that then upon arriving in Lincolnshire (for a picnic possible) you crash into a wind turbine!

It’s like Appa Sherpa upon returning from Everest dying by falling of a curb.

Get A Grip or at least discover internet porn.

Mines the one with a logic book in it...

Brilliant news!

I'm not actually saying that this is good news, but it made the Today Program fantastic this morning as they had a feature on this mysterious damage to a wind turbine ("caused by something about the size of a cow") followed directly by a feature about a ghost. Charles Fort would have loved it.

Some enterprising listener proposed that it could have been ice from an aircraft that caused the damage.

What a load of crap!!!!

I love the line "Until we have some idea, some plausible explanation that it was not a UFO, I don't think we should rule it out.". In other words "We messed up the install big time and something broke on it, Thank god nobody was near it to see it otherwise we would have to check all the turbines which would cost us a bloody fortune, Least we can now just blame it on little green men instead"

As for the nutters who noticed a UFO, no doubt they are on the same IQ level of the idiots on this area who rang the police reporing a strange object in the sky......It was a bloody street light.

One word........

Well, okay a phrase, ice loading. Nothing to see here move along...........

(...the cynical might say that the last thing wind farm owners want people thinking is that 'natural' causes can cause mechanically violent occurrences to wind turbines).

I for one welcome....

Our new carbon-conscious overlords

Oops !

Bloody (alien) women drivers !

Were was Amanfrommars?

Does he have an alibi? This has his fingerprints all over it?

(Alien for obvious reason)

Sorry to be boring but...

... does nobody remember the KISS principle?

!is it really inconceivable that one of the blades let go (metal fatigue, dodgy joint, etc.) and the next one clobbered it on the way round?

170 feet long?

....or both blades were damaged independently of each other.

What I want to know is what kind of force is required to bend the blades?

Simple explanation

One blade came loose, perhaps in the manner of the Dutch unit, and despite probably being flung by centripetal effect outwards, didn't clear the path of the next blade in time.

This will no doubt be seen by fans of the Carpenters as the official line to cover up the self destruction initiated by the occupants of interplanetary craft.

AAAARGH

"Until we have some idea, some plausible explanation that it was not a UFO, I don't think we should rule it out."

Yes, of course it's an Unidentified Flying Object - because it was flying, an object, and unidentified!

An object is an UFO *until* it is identified. He's got it the wrong way round - it IS a UFO, but once they have an idea, it will no longer be.

/pedant

Hmmm... First cold snap since installation...

...and it fails? Must be the aliens and now't to do with a freeze-thaw on a fractured bolt that slipped through QC. Or ice building up on the blade. Or...

And as for what hit the second blade, my money's on... the first one!

Oh well, why let an embarrassing structural failure that you assured the planning committee could never happen get in the way of a nice UFO story, huh?

Alien because I'm sure it won't be used enough in these comments

They know. . .

Apparently the friendly visitors are welcome. Its the hostile ones we have to careful of.

I'll get my tin foil hat ready . . .

I for one welcome...

Our new turbine hating overlords (although I quite like them - the turbines that is, not the overlords)

easy...

the first blade fell off and caught the second one. Next unsolvable problem please...

My inflammatory sexist contribution

boltar said "Yes , maybe it was hit by a UFO - a craft that can traverse light years of space in an instant, travel at hypersonic speeds in our atmosphere, accelerate at 1000s of G , and yet for some reason couldn't spot a 200 foot wind turbine in its path"

Alien was putting on her makeup, maybe ?

@ James

"It’s like Appa Sherpa upon returning from Everest dying by falling of a curb."

It's also like surviving a trip over Niagra Falls in a wooden barrel, only to later slip on a piece of orange peel and die.

http://www.niagarafallslive.com/daredevils_of_niagara_falls.htm

Anyway, my money's on the meteorite theory.

Re: It doesn't take much these days...

"Yes , maybe it was hit by a UFO - a craft that can traverse light years of space in an instant, travel at hypersonic speeds in our atmosphere, accelerate at 1000s of G , and yet for some reason couldn't spot a 200 foot wind turbine in its path."

Why the UFO itself? Why not an extraterrestrial garbage truck dumping its refuse?

Or just simply a sophisticated craft with a dumb pilot?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089622/

Sand Storms

I bet the rogue sand storms in Scotland had something to do with this...

@boltar

Maybe the alien spacecraft SatNav hadn't been updated with the positions of the wind turbines?

@James

So you're saying that after climbing Everest it's physically impossible to fall off a kerb?

Or just because you've come a long way in something high-tech you can't crash (Not to mention that if they had some sort of space-bending tech they'd have moved relatively little distance in a short time, utterly negating your argument)?

Your logic book must be an old edition...

RE AAARGH

I'm with Ian Ferguson on this one. Too many people equate "UFO" with "flying saucer/alien spacecraft" when it is far from it.

A UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object. Since they don't know what it was (i.e. it was Unidentified) and it clearly had to be Flying to damage a turbine blade up in the air, and it must have been some sort of corporeal Object to do any damage at all, it was definitely, 100%, a UFO. No question. Now, let's set about identifying it. At which point it would become an IFO.

Obviously

Hit by a prototype flying car - come on, they have to be out there somewhere!

Well ...

I'm damn glad it's not me who'll be filling in the insurance claim.

Amanfrommars (Shame on you all)

for taking his name in vien and goading him to post in such a way.

Amanfrommars must be summond through deep thought, contemplation and from within the most transcendant meditation possible.

another cover up

and another dodgy mysteries type secret facts revealed thingy book is probably being typed as we speak. All we need now to really put the icing on the blades are the gathering UFO hunters (sorry , investigators) to get really paranoid and start accusing each other of being MIBs.

On the plus side it did happen in a remote area, and the headline "UFO hits Wind turbine" will be forgotten in a week. Had a turbine blade ended up skewering somebodies house I wonder what gem of a headline the tabloids would come up with.

The IT angle.. well one thing is for sure.. If a UFO did hit, then all the data logging for the turbine will have been altered, corrupted, mysteriously erased or lost in the post by now.

Witches.

It has to be.

or Pirate Ninjas.

Cavemen...

Assuming that our anal-probing overlords have similar driving habits to human beings, it was a male little green man who was at the controls - male drivers are 70% more likely to be in a serious crash (even correcting for distance driven).*

/Paris, because the idiots making the sexist "jokes" could only ever hope to score with the, er, less-discriminating females.

*Of course, this may be considered to be a "minor" crash, since there don't appear to be any injuries or fatalities, so in that instance, there is a greater likelihood it was a little green lady instead.

It's the hacks

The local rag, the Louth Leader, is obsessed with dreaming up UFO stories. It's not so long ago that they reported on the release of some Chinese lanterns as unexplained UFOs. I kid you not.

They run these stories for the publicity, and gullible hacks from other news networks pick up on it and add fuel to the fire. There's nothing to see here, except an embarrassing regional newspaper (part of the ailing Johnston Press network) making a desperate attempt to stay afloat.

I blame Tesco

It's to be expected this early after Christmas, the supermarkets have only just ramped up supplies of tin foil after the traditional turkey foil shortages so the crazies are extra susceptible to the mind control rays at this time of year.

Paris, damn, someone else beat me to the anal probing joke...

Guardian claims responsibilty

Emily Bell, the Guardian's director of digital content, had a fireworks party that night, "a mere two miles from the Ecotricity plant". So bang goes the UFO explanation, at least for the strange lights in the sky.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/09/wind-turbine-ufo

But the Guardian goes on to finger a "cow sized piece of ice" falling from a passing aeroplane for the damage to the turbine. Ye gods! Not another falling cow story!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/07/flying_cow_shocker/