New details on military UFO sightings(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
New details on military UFO sightings
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/22/us-government-ufo-report-sightings
131 comments
That's anthropomorphism to almost religious levels. I doubt you'd have the same drives and incentives as humans at such level of development.
Yes, it's "anthropomorphism". It's an analogy.
[deleted]
That's my point - I usually see talk of aliens dismissed with "if they're so advanced, why would they bother? Therefore it must be something else." We cast our own human drives and incentives on the aliens in that case.
Similarly, a gorilla may stand on a mountain and look up at a plane, and think "if they're so advanced, why bother bringing that thing to my mountain? It must be an optical illusion." The gorilla doesn't understand the plane's purpose, design, or usage, yet dismisses it anyway based on a limited mental model of the universe.
It's an imperfect analogy, but it's meant to show that while we all dismiss the concept of aliens because we can't fathom why an advanced race would use their technology just to visit a "lower" species, we actually do the same thing all the time - so maybe it's not as far outside the realm of possibility as we think.
Similarly, a gorilla may stand on a mountain and look up at a plane, and think "if they're so advanced, why bother bringing that thing to my mountain? It must be an optical illusion." The gorilla doesn't understand the plane's purpose, design, or usage, yet dismisses it anyway based on a limited mental model of the universe.
It's an imperfect analogy, but it's meant to show that while we all dismiss the concept of aliens because we can't fathom why an advanced race would use their technology just to visit a "lower" species, we actually do the same thing all the time - so maybe it's not as far outside the realm of possibility as we think.
The only reason researchers and documentary makers don't perfectly hide themselves is due to how expensive and limited technology is (in Planet Earth they had to setup a hidden blind and stake out an area for months to get the proper footage undetected which is incredibly expensive to do). I imagine if you're a space-faring race capable of visiting planets on a whim, hiding yourself from rather primitive civilizations is trivial, so why wouldn't they?
Don't we purposely avoid interacting with uncontacted indigenous people, like in the rainforest for example?
No, As a general rule we prefer to build giant strip mines on indigenous peoples land; extract all the wealth and generally destroy it.
If Aliens exist and are here; they are not like us at all.
The more I hear about these the more I'm convinced that this guy[1] was on to something. It may be that someone has become really good at this and can now make distinct shapes instead of just a glowing orb.
[1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
[1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
The particle beam being applicable for radar spoofing seems like it potentially fit nicely with the hard to explain Nimitz carrier group sightings. Specifically the carrier group at the time being out to test it's fancy new integrated targeting and control systems, showing up on several different scopes at the same time with several different targets, and moving to the investigating squad of jets' rally point after being detected. Anecdotally supposedly retired f-117s are flying in a somewhat similar role with the carrier group still in order to test new sensors.[1]
The 76' Tehran UFO incident seems like it potentially fits as well. I'm no physicist but a F-4 flying too close to a mass of protons/plasma sure seems like it could cause failures.
[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33593/f-117s-flew-dire...
The 76' Tehran UFO incident seems like it potentially fits as well. I'm no physicist but a F-4 flying too close to a mass of protons/plasma sure seems like it could cause failures.
[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33593/f-117s-flew-dire...
I miss Tom Mahood. I wonder if he's still around. Last update was on Sept 4, 2019.
He has a number of popular articles and stories about search and rescue. One that comes to mind is the search for missing Germans in Death Valley [0].
[0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
He has a number of popular articles and stories about search and rescue. One that comes to mind is the search for missing Germans in Death Valley [0].
[0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hu...
+1 The Death Valley Germans case was how I found Tom's website. I still think about Bill Ewasko all the time. Hopefully he'll be found some day.
There's some neat info in these blog posts but the guy's writing is insufferably melodramatic, sarcastic, and self-referential. So, a blog, basically. I'm glad that craze is mostly over.
It isn't clear to me what specific observation he's trying to explain. The most important thing to know about bethe bloch is that everyone abuses it and applies it when it isn't really applicable. SRIM is intended for things like calculating penetration depth when implanting ions in materials (maybe a couple MeV energy at most). There will be oodles of physics in play at higher energies that aren't considered by SRIM, especially above pion production threshold near 140 MeV. I can also tell you that a 500 GeV proton beam will be moving nearly the speed of light and so will not look like a tictac or other recent observations. Also, making such a beam would require a huge stable facility, not portable at all. Making such beams is also outrageously energy innefficient. It typically isn't even thought about because it's so low.
You might need to follow some of the older links (e.g. [1]) but there's a very clear and specific statement of what he's explaining: this is what he claims Bob Lazar observed at the so-called Area 51 (Groom Lake). He claims Lazar knew exactly what it was but decided to show his friends and tell them it was UFOs. Now he is stuck with that lie because if he ever tells the truth, he could be prosecuted. That's the theory anyway - I'm not saying any of that is correct but it strikes me as by far the most plausible theory I've heard.
Applying this theory to the tic tac thingy was something I just thought of, not something the author of that website ever claimed (to my knowledge).
The problem I have with statements like "they're too big/expensive/non-portable for that" is that we already know that we're dealing with something that we can't explain. In other words: at least one of our beliefs about the state of some kind of technology is very wrong. One thing I keep hearing about these objects is that they move instantly, as if they have no mass. Well, then, they probably have no mass - that's the simplest explanation.
[1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
Applying this theory to the tic tac thingy was something I just thought of, not something the author of that website ever claimed (to my knowledge).
The problem I have with statements like "they're too big/expensive/non-portable for that" is that we already know that we're dealing with something that we can't explain. In other words: at least one of our beliefs about the state of some kind of technology is very wrong. One thing I keep hearing about these objects is that they move instantly, as if they have no mass. Well, then, they probably have no mass - that's the simplest explanation.
[1] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strang...
just because it hasn't been explained easily does not imply there's a problem with our beliefs about technology. for example, that they are objects at all is already an assumption that could be wrong. what do you make of this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus
>or have been picked up by satellite imagery
>The forthcoming report is to be issued by the defense department and intelligence agencies.
It's 2021. I'm forever done with stories showing low resolution UFOs wobbling about. Will the public actually get defense grade, ultra high-resolution satellite images of UFOs or is this just another "report" saying something was caught on the lens of their 20 year old weather satellite?
>The forthcoming report is to be issued by the defense department and intelligence agencies.
It's 2021. I'm forever done with stories showing low resolution UFOs wobbling about. Will the public actually get defense grade, ultra high-resolution satellite images of UFOs or is this just another "report" saying something was caught on the lens of their 20 year old weather satellite?
Some of the reports are supposed to be from multiple instruments.
Obviously there will not be anything convincing, because if it was this would not be the way to release it.
Obviously there will not be anything convincing, because if it was this would not be the way to release it.
Take it with a grain of salt but one of the soldiers involved in the Nimitz incident says the videos released are of diminished quality compared to the originals.
There are so many natural weird optical phenomena in the atmosphere - rainbows, light pillars, mirages, sundogs, that can create strange sightings.
What makes me think they're not aliens, is that there are so many different types of sightings - cigars, disks, shining light patterns - how many different types of alien craft are there?
What makes me think they're not aliens, is that there are so many different types of sightings - cigars, disks, shining light patterns - how many different types of alien craft are there?
Problem with optical phenomena is they don't get picked up by radar and infrared cameras.
But electromagnetic phenomena(like lightning can) and some LR radio depend on waves being reflected by atmospheric conditions.
The atmosphere is a big understudied and higly complex environment and to claim that we know all and any process that can or do happen in the skies is pretty foolish.
The atmosphere is a big understudied and higly complex environment and to claim that we know all and any process that can or do happen in the skies is pretty foolish.
Good points, but how many atmospheric illusions also show up on radar? There is a subset of UFO sightings that are "multiple sensor" sightings, such as both radar and visual or both visual and infrared.
I tend to dismiss all but the highest quality multiple sensor confirmation sightings for the reason you state, but that leaves a residue of really interesting cases that are probably something. The next thing to rule out is something ours, such as classified weapons technology.
I tend to dismiss all but the highest quality multiple sensor confirmation sightings for the reason you state, but that leaves a residue of really interesting cases that are probably something. The next thing to rule out is something ours, such as classified weapons technology.
Weather balloons! ice and water droplets, dust, birds, drones, asteroids, radio interference, foreign weapons technology - I'm willing to accept that some sightings will always be UFOs and the easiest explanation is alien craft.
But I'm sure shooting stars and the aurora borealis where seen as messengers from the gods.
But I'm sure shooting stars and the aurora borealis where seen as messengers from the gods.
Could you list a couple of examples?
It's not impossible for the observer to be mistaken. For example they see an optical phenomenon while on radar they are seeing a distant commercial aircraft going behind a mountain.
It's not impossible for the observer to be mistaken. For example they see an optical phenomenon while on radar they are seeing a distant commercial aircraft going behind a mountain.
How many different types of human craft are there?
Any 4 year old would identify a car/lorry/plane as such.
They're mostly small or large versions of the same design.
Our spacecraft from Semyorka to Apollo, Spaceshuttle and Falcon 9 all look like 'rockets' as they're constrained by the physics and propulsion systems.
Our spacecraft from Semyorka to Apollo, Spaceshuttle and Falcon 9 all look like 'rockets' as they're constrained by the physics and propulsion systems.
One way for me to rationalize the possibility of some UFOs being alien tech is the possibility that they are drones — unmanned. Popular culture consideration of UFOs as alien craft seem to assume there are sentient beings inside, possibly due to the history of reported abduction experiences with little green or grey beings.
But arguments against alien craft that question why they move so quickly with abrupt unnecessary direction changes, and lack of interaction with humans, to me could be explained by imagining that they are “unmanned” craft. No need for “inertial dampers” or other tech to deal with the hyper fast direction changes if there’s no beings inside.
But arguments against alien craft that question why they move so quickly with abrupt unnecessary direction changes, and lack of interaction with humans, to me could be explained by imagining that they are “unmanned” craft. No need for “inertial dampers” or other tech to deal with the hyper fast direction changes if there’s no beings inside.
To further your point, I like to imagine that whatever shows up on Earth is gonna be something like a von Neumann probe. Self replicating, probably AI.
That would account for the vast distances a biological body couldn't travel, as well as the violent direction changes you're talking about.
That would account for the vast distances a biological body couldn't travel, as well as the violent direction changes you're talking about.
UFOs fascinate me. Originally I thought they were pure crack pottery but a friend got me interested with the following argument:
Whatever is responsible for these government videos has to be interesting:
* Unknown natural phenomenon
* Conspiracy with real tech from a government and a coverup
* Conspiracy with fabricated videos from the US government, press releases, and a coverup
* Aliens
Whatever is responsible for these government videos has to be interesting:
* Unknown natural phenomenon
* Conspiracy with real tech from a government and a coverup
* Conspiracy with fabricated videos from the US government, press releases, and a coverup
* Aliens
Or they are real and nobody including 'the governement' (pls be aware the US is just a small part of the world) has a rational explanation (for now).
The U in UFO is for 'Unidentified'. It does not mean 'Alien'.
The U in UFO is for 'Unidentified'. It does not mean 'Alien'.
Or more precisely, “The A in UFO is for Aliens”.
It just dawned on me that this is the case for the expanded form of that initialism, too.
I edited my post to clarify
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Also:
* birds
* (weather) balloons
* camera artifacts
* other privately owned airborne objects
Not everything is a conspiracy.
* birds
* (weather) balloons
* camera artifacts
* other privately owned airborne objects
Not everything is a conspiracy.
Have you listened to any accounts, especially from the military folks who recorded some of the content?
Birds, balloons, known airborne objects don’t travel at the speeds of military vehicles which were following.
I’d consider camera artifacts to be a phenomenon. It would still be interesting that a previously unknown artifact presents in certain conditions that mainly occur on military equipment.
Birds, balloons, known airborne objects don’t travel at the speeds of military vehicles which were following.
I’d consider camera artifacts to be a phenomenon. It would still be interesting that a previously unknown artifact presents in certain conditions that mainly occur on military equipment.
Knowing what little about humanity I do, what would be the end-game of covering up "aliens". What money or power is there in doing so, and does anyone really think that many governments would agree on such a thing?
Covering up state-secret tech, sure; there's obvious reasons for that.
It is interesting that the shape/manner/physical characteristics of UFOs seem to gel with whatever the current time's zeitgeist is for the time they've been reported. Aliens must have a human fashion sense.
Covering up state-secret tech, sure; there's obvious reasons for that.
It is interesting that the shape/manner/physical characteristics of UFOs seem to gel with whatever the current time's zeitgeist is for the time they've been reported. Aliens must have a human fashion sense.
Again, I don't think this is likely, but here's an angle to argue for the cover up.
The US used to be a much more religious country that it is today. The existence of aliens has a lot of implications for religion. It could be that when the cover up started, the people in power didn't want to deal with those implications and especially didn't want a lot of disaffected formerly religious people (don't forget that part of religion is control over the populace). So they covered it up. Once the cover up starts it has momentum and I can see it continuing past the time the original reason is relevant.
The US used to be a much more religious country that it is today. The existence of aliens has a lot of implications for religion. It could be that when the cover up started, the people in power didn't want to deal with those implications and especially didn't want a lot of disaffected formerly religious people (don't forget that part of religion is control over the populace). So they covered it up. Once the cover up starts it has momentum and I can see it continuing past the time the original reason is relevant.
Sorry to drift off topic, but this comes across as a wildly uninformed description of religion; a strawman.
I disagree. The idea that organized religions exist primarily as a means of societal control is well-supported by even the most basic (let alone thorough) of examinations of world history and contemporary society.
Actually, the opposite is true: an objective examination of both world history and contemporary society produces a pretty favorable view towards religion in terms of net positive effects.
It is certainly true that a lot of bad has been done in the name of religion*, and that there are some number of close-minded religious nutter types that make the news but relative to the totals these are both minorities. And as for the idea about societal control, the notion that it is a 'primary' reason for their existence is unfounded.
* People who seek and wield power will use whatever tool they can get their hands on; if religion plays a large role in a society, then obviously that is a tool that certain people will attempt to use. Removing religion from the equation doesn't make the problem go away - those same people will just find different tools to use. Government suppression of religious freedom/diversity has played a large role in this too.
Edit: a few quick references out of many. Sociologists have long been aware of positive impacts of religion (e.g. https://www.pewforum.org/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-lif...) for individuals and "local" societies, but even at the macroeconomic level there is strong evidence that religion has aided economic development, globalism, etc.:
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/4/1/145/htm http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11... https://www.hoover.org/research/religion-and-economic-develo...
It is certainly true that a lot of bad has been done in the name of religion*, and that there are some number of close-minded religious nutter types that make the news but relative to the totals these are both minorities. And as for the idea about societal control, the notion that it is a 'primary' reason for their existence is unfounded.
* People who seek and wield power will use whatever tool they can get their hands on; if religion plays a large role in a society, then obviously that is a tool that certain people will attempt to use. Removing religion from the equation doesn't make the problem go away - those same people will just find different tools to use. Government suppression of religious freedom/diversity has played a large role in this too.
Edit: a few quick references out of many. Sociologists have long been aware of positive impacts of religion (e.g. https://www.pewforum.org/2016/04/12/religion-in-everyday-lif...) for individuals and "local" societies, but even at the macroeconomic level there is strong evidence that religion has aided economic development, globalism, etc.:
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/4/1/145/htm http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11... https://www.hoover.org/research/religion-and-economic-develo...
> an objective examination of both world history and contemporary society produces a pretty favorable view towards religion in terms of net positive effects.
That is not mutually exclusive with the idea of organized religion being a tool of societal control. Sometimes that societal control happens to have good (or at least less bad) results.
> And as for the idea about societal control, the notion that it is a 'primary' reason for their existence is unfounded.
There's a reason why I'm specifying "organized" in "organized religion". The primary reason to organize a religion - rather than, say, allowing practitioners to autonomously determine for themselves their connection with the universe around them and how to interpret and reason about said connection - is precisely to constrain how practitioners reason about that connection. The very concepts of "blasphemy", "infidelity", "apostasy", "hereticism", etc. all strongly imply a desire for control. And given that the notion of a separation of church and state is pretty recent from a historical standpoint, it's pretty patently obvious where this leads for societies on local, regional, and national stages alike.
That is:
> People who seek and wield power will use whatever tool they can get their hands on; if religion plays a large role in a society, then obviously that is a tool that certain people will attempt to use.
Religion - particularly the organized variety - has historically played a large role in the overwhelmingly vast majority of societes. In the majority of those societies, said role was by government fiat. Consequently:
> Removing religion from the equation doesn't make the problem go away - those same people will just find different tools to use.
Right, but that doesn't change the reality that organized religion is such a tool, by design per its very nature of being organized.
That is not mutually exclusive with the idea of organized religion being a tool of societal control. Sometimes that societal control happens to have good (or at least less bad) results.
> And as for the idea about societal control, the notion that it is a 'primary' reason for their existence is unfounded.
There's a reason why I'm specifying "organized" in "organized religion". The primary reason to organize a religion - rather than, say, allowing practitioners to autonomously determine for themselves their connection with the universe around them and how to interpret and reason about said connection - is precisely to constrain how practitioners reason about that connection. The very concepts of "blasphemy", "infidelity", "apostasy", "hereticism", etc. all strongly imply a desire for control. And given that the notion of a separation of church and state is pretty recent from a historical standpoint, it's pretty patently obvious where this leads for societies on local, regional, and national stages alike.
That is:
> People who seek and wield power will use whatever tool they can get their hands on; if religion plays a large role in a society, then obviously that is a tool that certain people will attempt to use.
Religion - particularly the organized variety - has historically played a large role in the overwhelmingly vast majority of societes. In the majority of those societies, said role was by government fiat. Consequently:
> Removing religion from the equation doesn't make the problem go away - those same people will just find different tools to use.
Right, but that doesn't change the reality that organized religion is such a tool, by design per its very nature of being organized.
I had not intended my comment as an attack on religion nor was I making a value judgment about the net effect of religion on humanity. Nor did I intend to imply that exerting control over others is the total or even main point behind religion. Finally I wasn't trying to supply a complete description of religion, just referencing one facet of it.
> Knowing what little about humanity I do, what would be the end-game of covering up "aliens".
"My fellow Americans... I'm sure you've heard rumors of what I am about to say, but I am here as your President to set the record straight about what we do and do not know. What we do know is that there are structured technological craft operating in our airspace that we have reason to believe are not of human construction or operation. What we don't know is... everything else. Where are they from? Who is operating them? What is their intention? Are they friendly or hostile? How long have they been here? Are they simply observing or are they interacting with us? Are any of the stories of extraterrestrial abductions or influence of history valid? ... We also do not have control of our airspace, and the technology of the visitors is apparently so advanced that we have no hope of interfering with their activities regardless of what they are..."
Yeah, they're totally gonna give that speech. Better have cops in riot gear deployed ahead of time.
"My fellow Americans... I'm sure you've heard rumors of what I am about to say, but I am here as your President to set the record straight about what we do and do not know. What we do know is that there are structured technological craft operating in our airspace that we have reason to believe are not of human construction or operation. What we don't know is... everything else. Where are they from? Who is operating them? What is their intention? Are they friendly or hostile? How long have they been here? Are they simply observing or are they interacting with us? Are any of the stories of extraterrestrial abductions or influence of history valid? ... We also do not have control of our airspace, and the technology of the visitors is apparently so advanced that we have no hope of interfering with their activities regardless of what they are..."
Yeah, they're totally gonna give that speech. Better have cops in riot gear deployed ahead of time.
And you think every gov't in the world is conspiring to withhold this riot-inducing information? Or that ONLY <whatever country you live in> has been visited by something from another planet?
Neither seems even remotely possible.
Neither seems even remotely possible.
I was just responding in the abstract to the parent's assertion that there'd be no point in keeping such a thing secret. I can see lots of reasons governments would want to keep it secret. Could they? Probably not for very long. They'd eventually be dragged into divulging by someone else divulging or a huge data leak.
> Knowing what little about humanity I do, what would be the end-game of covering up "aliens".
I think it's possible the government practically can't reveal information about extraterrestrials, supernatural phenomenon, or really anything that's within the realm of incredible.
The reason being - there will be a potentially large amount of people that will not believe what the government reveals or that they're being honest about their revelations.
You only have to see something like QAnon or the Russiagate stuff to see that a large segment of people across the political spectrum creates vast narratives founded in distrust of whatever is relatively credible and apparent.
So if the government were to say "we're aware of phenomenon that we cannot explain and it seems to be characteristic of some form of intelligence," you'd have many who would start arguing that the government is colluding with aliens or something. It could be destabilizing to society.
I think it's possible the government practically can't reveal information about extraterrestrials, supernatural phenomenon, or really anything that's within the realm of incredible.
The reason being - there will be a potentially large amount of people that will not believe what the government reveals or that they're being honest about their revelations.
You only have to see something like QAnon or the Russiagate stuff to see that a large segment of people across the political spectrum creates vast narratives founded in distrust of whatever is relatively credible and apparent.
So if the government were to say "we're aware of phenomenon that we cannot explain and it seems to be characteristic of some form of intelligence," you'd have many who would start arguing that the government is colluding with aliens or something. It could be destabilizing to society.
But ALL governments? Does one country have some lock on UFO data?
[deleted]
I don’t know that a government would cover it up if it were aliens. I think the other possibilities are more likely.
If you're studying alien tech for the purposes of weaponizing it, you wouldn't want someone else to know about it let alone study it, thus covering it up makes sense. A good coverup where no information leaks would be best, the second best is to cover it up with a false explanation of "not aliens" and "nothing interesting here" as to dissuade anyone else of investigating/studying the phenomenon.
The "gimbal video" has been plausibly explained several times already. It seems journalists cannot be bothered to actually do a bit of research before writing these articles. First hit on google: https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=29089
Occam's razor.
Develop the technology to travel light years through space, and craft to fly through an alien planet's atmosphere (more dense/less dense/hotter/cooler), and then... flash a few lights, disappear, bend over a bit of corn, and bother a farmer in the middle of nowhere?
Or... mistaken natural phenomena, hoaxes, faulty video equipment, and so on.
Sorry, but alien UFOs do not exist.
Occam's razor.
Develop the technology to travel light years through space, and craft to fly through an alien planet's atmosphere (more dense/less dense/hotter/cooler), and then... flash a few lights, disappear, bend over a bit of corn, and bother a farmer in the middle of nowhere?
Or... mistaken natural phenomena, hoaxes, faulty video equipment, and so on.
Sorry, but alien UFOs do not exist.
They probably do:
- we are fascinating
- theyre likely just probes and not bio aliens
- the last time you looked at an ant hill did you say hi? Did you think they understood you?
- we are fascinating
- theyre likely just probes and not bio aliens
- the last time you looked at an ant hill did you say hi? Did you think they understood you?
I tend to agree...
Why would you go all the way to Earth with your god-like-technology only to get caught by our (to them) dumb-dumb radar systems and airplanes; and not at least say "hello".
I'd think that if you can travel intergalactic distances, you would either
- a) evade our detection
- b) say hello
Unless they have a sick sense of humor, I can't reconcile it and lean towards ETIs aren't currently visiting us.
(edit to change UFO to ETI)
Why would you go all the way to Earth with your god-like-technology only to get caught by our (to them) dumb-dumb radar systems and airplanes; and not at least say "hello".
I'd think that if you can travel intergalactic distances, you would either
- a) evade our detection
- b) say hello
Unless they have a sick sense of humor, I can't reconcile it and lean towards ETIs aren't currently visiting us.
(edit to change UFO to ETI)
A British ship floats up to an uninhabited Pacific atoll in 1750, people get off, grab some coconuts, beach the ship, wait for the tide to go out, make some repairs and are gone the next day and no other ships stop by for the next 100yr because the first ship noted in their logs that the atoll was devoid of anything more useful than the beach.
From the seagull's point of view that may as well be a UFO sighting but with big white men instead of little green men.
If there's a lot of life out there in the universe odds of any one planet (ours) being interesting or low. If aliens show up it's likely for some short lived menial purpose. Like stopping to grab some nitrogen or measure our moon for their survey or whatever.
I agree we probably aren't being visited by aliens. But if we I suspect they wouldn't be all that interested in us.
From the seagull's point of view that may as well be a UFO sighting but with big white men instead of little green men.
If there's a lot of life out there in the universe odds of any one planet (ours) being interesting or low. If aliens show up it's likely for some short lived menial purpose. Like stopping to grab some nitrogen or measure our moon for their survey or whatever.
I agree we probably aren't being visited by aliens. But if we I suspect they wouldn't be all that interested in us.
This line of counterargument is built on the very flimsy assumption that an alien intelligence is just like us with similar thoughts and motivations. There is zero reason to believe that would be the case.
> Why would you go all the way to Earth
Perhaps we just happen to be on the route to somewhere more interesting? It's a pretty big assumption that we are the final destination for visiting alien craft.
Perhaps we just happen to be on the route to somewhere more interesting? It's a pretty big assumption that we are the final destination for visiting alien craft.
Let me preface this with, I don't think it is likely, just playing devil's^W ETIs advocate.
It makes sense to me if the ETIs have a prime-directive-like reason not to engage but have reason to monitor or study humans. Then the behavior seems similar to teen-agers bashing mailboxes from cars or when the Air Force of one country gets a little too close to planes from another country. Your basic low-level alien tweaking the superiors/humans and seeing what it can get away with.
It makes sense to me if the ETIs have a prime-directive-like reason not to engage but have reason to monitor or study humans. Then the behavior seems similar to teen-agers bashing mailboxes from cars or when the Air Force of one country gets a little too close to planes from another country. Your basic low-level alien tweaking the superiors/humans and seeing what it can get away with.
Playing devil's advocate... maybe they are prepping the battlefield and don't want to start the confrontation yet. If you plan on exterminating termites, would you care at all that they noticed your presence beforehand?
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I feel like a challenge so I'm going to play the devil's advocate. It is possible to craft explanations for why UFOs behave this way, if they are in fact aliens. There's a very common fallacy in a lot of alien debunking discussions. It goes like this: if you can travel faster than light then your technological powers are entirely unlimited and you can do whatever you want. There's an implied assumption that FTL travel is a sort of über-technology and the speed of light is a kind of ur-limit. Once you know how to break it, every other physical law becomes breakable too.
There's no logical reason to believe this is the case. It's a social assumption caused by the fame of Einstein and the way pop culture has constantly told us FTL travel is "impossible", putting anything that can do FTL immediately into the realm of "if you can do one impossible thing, why not N impossible things". But C being the universal speed limit is a theory only 115 years old. That's not very long in the grand scheme of things. And now we're seeing respectable and serious physics research that explores the concept of a warp drive. Whilst still in the realm of impossible, it appears there are gradients of impossible and FTL travel may slowly be moving between them.
What if FTL travel is easier than we think? Then a civilisation that mastered it would not be some unimaginably advanced god-like race about whom we can assume nothing. It would be a civilisation kinda like ours, just with FTL drives. And we could then start to apply everyday reasoning to their behaviour. For example, why would UFOs fly around and yet be detected by radar/cameras/sensors etc? Well, maybe:
• Complete invisibility is not a tech they have. Our stealth tech is not entirely stealthy, just stealthy enough to get close against currently existing radars.
• Their FTL drives are incompatible with the type of ship geometry required for radar invisibility.
• Their knowledge of our own sensor capabilities is old/not entirely accurate, so they can hide from sensors but don't always do so at the right times. E.g. it may have impose some energy or tactical costs to hide so they don't want to do it all the time.
• They don't actually care whether they are detected or not.
• They do in fact have invisibility technology and there are shit-tons of UFOs flying around that we don't detect, but because they're not an uber-race they make mistakes just like we do and occasionally this results in sightings that shouldn't have happened.
Why would they not make contact? Maybe:
• They don't wish to because we have nothing to offer them.
• They don't know / can't agree on which political bloc to make contact with, and are waiting for humanity to unite under one world government (hopefully not).
• They have some rules against making contact unless some galactic federation votes that it should happen and the votes hasn't yet been won, but information is being collected by survey craft to inform the decision making progress.
Why would they apparently rejoice in doing ludicrous or pointless changes in speed or direction?
• Why not? If your FTL drive lets you change direction without needing to worry about gravity, why would you ever turn in a curve?
• Maybe they are frequently retasked and need to go somewhere different to their original goal, especially when they believe they were detected?
And so on. The thing is, if you're willing to make just a slight leap and assume that FTL tech is not as hard as we think, then it's suddenly easy to come up with lots of explanations for UFO behaviours. It's only the social assumption of (FTL->any imaginable tech) that makes us ignore these possibilities.
There's no logical reason to believe this is the case. It's a social assumption caused by the fame of Einstein and the way pop culture has constantly told us FTL travel is "impossible", putting anything that can do FTL immediately into the realm of "if you can do one impossible thing, why not N impossible things". But C being the universal speed limit is a theory only 115 years old. That's not very long in the grand scheme of things. And now we're seeing respectable and serious physics research that explores the concept of a warp drive. Whilst still in the realm of impossible, it appears there are gradients of impossible and FTL travel may slowly be moving between them.
What if FTL travel is easier than we think? Then a civilisation that mastered it would not be some unimaginably advanced god-like race about whom we can assume nothing. It would be a civilisation kinda like ours, just with FTL drives. And we could then start to apply everyday reasoning to their behaviour. For example, why would UFOs fly around and yet be detected by radar/cameras/sensors etc? Well, maybe:
• Complete invisibility is not a tech they have. Our stealth tech is not entirely stealthy, just stealthy enough to get close against currently existing radars.
• Their FTL drives are incompatible with the type of ship geometry required for radar invisibility.
• Their knowledge of our own sensor capabilities is old/not entirely accurate, so they can hide from sensors but don't always do so at the right times. E.g. it may have impose some energy or tactical costs to hide so they don't want to do it all the time.
• They don't actually care whether they are detected or not.
• They do in fact have invisibility technology and there are shit-tons of UFOs flying around that we don't detect, but because they're not an uber-race they make mistakes just like we do and occasionally this results in sightings that shouldn't have happened.
Why would they not make contact? Maybe:
• They don't wish to because we have nothing to offer them.
• They don't know / can't agree on which political bloc to make contact with, and are waiting for humanity to unite under one world government (hopefully not).
• They have some rules against making contact unless some galactic federation votes that it should happen and the votes hasn't yet been won, but information is being collected by survey craft to inform the decision making progress.
Why would they apparently rejoice in doing ludicrous or pointless changes in speed or direction?
• Why not? If your FTL drive lets you change direction without needing to worry about gravity, why would you ever turn in a curve?
• Maybe they are frequently retasked and need to go somewhere different to their original goal, especially when they believe they were detected?
And so on. The thing is, if you're willing to make just a slight leap and assume that FTL tech is not as hard as we think, then it's suddenly easy to come up with lots of explanations for UFO behaviours. It's only the social assumption of (FTL->any imaginable tech) that makes us ignore these possibilities.
> There's no logical reason to believe this is the case. It's a social assumption caused by the fame of Einstein and the way pop culture has constantly told us FTL travel is "impossible", putting anything that can do FTL immediately into the realm of "if you can do one impossible thing, why not N impossible things". But C being the universal speed limit is a theory only 115 years old. That's not very long in the grand scheme of things. And now we're seeing respectable and serious physics research that explores the concept of a warp drive. Whilst still in the realm of impossible, it appears there are gradients of impossible and FTL travel may slowly be moving between them.
This is, in my layman opinion, a very generous interpretation of in favor of the possibility of FTL. C as a fundamental limit is core to one of the most well tested and accurate models in the history of science. The Alcubierre drive variations are essentially just fun math puzzles for physicists to play with in their spare time. Until very recently they required exotic matter and/or ludicrous quantities of negative energy, and the best we've managed to do since then is replace those impossibilities with a ludicrous conventional energy requirement. Even if that was fixed there are still other problems to deal with, like the interior of the bubble being causally separated from the rest of the universe, meaning you couldn't actually control the bubble.
I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I understand how the universe works, so I can't say it is definitely impossible, but it is foolish to believe something is possible that the best evidence in the history of mankind says isn't, until we have evidence that it might be. UFOs can be explained by a lot of things significantly more likely to be real than alien visitation with FTL drives. I mean, if you're willing to believe that, then why not believe they're from Earth's future, or an alternate-timeline Earth, or any other sci-fi explanation that we have roughly equal expectation might be real as FTL.
This is, in my layman opinion, a very generous interpretation of in favor of the possibility of FTL. C as a fundamental limit is core to one of the most well tested and accurate models in the history of science. The Alcubierre drive variations are essentially just fun math puzzles for physicists to play with in their spare time. Until very recently they required exotic matter and/or ludicrous quantities of negative energy, and the best we've managed to do since then is replace those impossibilities with a ludicrous conventional energy requirement. Even if that was fixed there are still other problems to deal with, like the interior of the bubble being causally separated from the rest of the universe, meaning you couldn't actually control the bubble.
I'm not arrogant enough to believe that I understand how the universe works, so I can't say it is definitely impossible, but it is foolish to believe something is possible that the best evidence in the history of mankind says isn't, until we have evidence that it might be. UFOs can be explained by a lot of things significantly more likely to be real than alien visitation with FTL drives. I mean, if you're willing to believe that, then why not believe they're from Earth's future, or an alternate-timeline Earth, or any other sci-fi explanation that we have roughly equal expectation might be real as FTL.
I think you wooshed their point and instead told them what they already know.
Imagine the GP starts off with "So assume FTL travel is easier than we think..." Then the rest of their post follows.
Just like "Assume A Teleporter And a Warp Drive and A Post Money Society" -> All of Star Trek canon follows.
Imagine the GP starts off with "So assume FTL travel is easier than we think..." Then the rest of their post follows.
Just like "Assume A Teleporter And a Warp Drive and A Post Money Society" -> All of Star Trek canon follows.
There is literally no reason to assume that though. You may as well assume that time travel is possible, ghost are real, and Jesus was a reptilian.
Star Trek has the virtue of being unabashed fiction, it doesn't need to have its science make sense, which is good because it doesn't make sense even if you do assume all those things.
Star Trek has the virtue of being unabashed fiction, it doesn't need to have its science make sense, which is good because it doesn't make sense even if you do assume all those things.
The assumption that FTL is impossible is predicated on our understanding of physical laws being complete. But current physical theories are not complete, and in particular have large holes in them related to gravity. We don't actually know what's possible and what's not, only what we believe is possible given our current understanding of the universe. There are known unknowns, in other words, and we don't know what's hiding behind those doors.
Anyway, whether FTL is or isn't possible isn't the point of my post. The point is that if you assume aliens are basically like us except with warp drives then it's easy to come up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour. It's actually the "FTL = flawless beings so far ahead of us we can't reason about them at all" viewpoint that leads to people being baffled, not that the behaviour is itself inherently impossible to explain.
Anyway, whether FTL is or isn't possible isn't the point of my post. The point is that if you assume aliens are basically like us except with warp drives then it's easy to come up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour. It's actually the "FTL = flawless beings so far ahead of us we can't reason about them at all" viewpoint that leads to people being baffled, not that the behaviour is itself inherently impossible to explain.
> The assumption that FTL is impossible is predicated on our understanding of physical laws being complete.
No, the assumption that FTL is impossible is based on it being impossible according to the very best evidence we have. It does not require a complete understanding of physical law to confidently state that the sun will rise in the east and a dropped ball will fall to the ground.
> We don't actually know what's possible and what's not, only what we believe is possible given our current understanding of the universe.
This will always be true. And we cannot say for certain that I am not a Boltzmann brain imagining a conversation with you. It means nothing. We have to work with what we are given because the alternative is to pretend that fantasy is reality.
> Anyway, whether FTL is or isn't possible isn't the point of my post. The point is that if you assume aliens are basically like us except with warp drives then it's easy to come up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour.
Fair, but what I'm saying is that that's an assumption on the order of "assume world leaders are actually disguised reptiles".
No, the assumption that FTL is impossible is based on it being impossible according to the very best evidence we have. It does not require a complete understanding of physical law to confidently state that the sun will rise in the east and a dropped ball will fall to the ground.
> We don't actually know what's possible and what's not, only what we believe is possible given our current understanding of the universe.
This will always be true. And we cannot say for certain that I am not a Boltzmann brain imagining a conversation with you. It means nothing. We have to work with what we are given because the alternative is to pretend that fantasy is reality.
> Anyway, whether FTL is or isn't possible isn't the point of my post. The point is that if you assume aliens are basically like us except with warp drives then it's easy to come up with reasonable explanations for their behaviour.
Fair, but what I'm saying is that that's an assumption on the order of "assume world leaders are actually disguised reptiles".
FTL and time travel are the same thing if Einstein is even close to right.
Are you putting a negative connotation on this or using it as an explanation?
If you time travel outside of your light cone with FTL then can you have any paradoxes?
If you time travel outside of your light cone with FTL then can you have any paradoxes?
Whether there is directly a paradox doesn't change the moving through time bit of it.
I mostly don't think that future FTL capable humans would be disciplined, so we'd be talking to them if they existed (in a four dimensional sense).
I mostly don't think that future FTL capable humans would be disciplined, so we'd be talking to them if they existed (in a four dimensional sense).
I think if you're technically time travelling out of your lite cone at 1 second per second it'd be totally fine.
There's a fun short story called 'The Road Not Taken' from the perspective of an alien civilization that stumbled upon agrav tech but is otherwise at a Napoleonic technology level attempting to evade earth. From their perspective a civilization not stumbling upon agrav early on is preposterous.
Personally assuming the objects are actually some kind of non earth craft autonomous drones make the most sense to explain their behavior, particular their seeming interest in nuclear facilities.
Personally assuming the objects are actually some kind of non earth craft autonomous drones make the most sense to explain their behavior, particular their seeming interest in nuclear facilities.
Yes and GoFast looks like a cruise missile. The remaining question for me would be why are multiple pilots seemingly confused by what they are seeing? Is it acting/conspiracy?
None of this means is of extraterrestrial origin of course.
None of this means is of extraterrestrial origin of course.
Why not? You have thousands of pilots, not each and every one is an expert in interpreting the data they see. For example the "gimbal" video is probably out there because they wanted to teach pilots how this effect looks in real life.
Also it's possible some of the videos are showing unknown military aircraft or systems that the pilots are not aware of.
Also it's possible some of the videos are showing unknown military aircraft or systems that the pilots are not aware of.
"Develop the technology to travel light years through space, and craft to fly through an alien planet's atmosphere (more dense/less dense/hotter/cooler), and then... flash a few lights, disappear, bend over a bit of corn, and bother a farmer in the middle of nowhere?"
On the flip side, if you want to interact with a baby animal you've never experienced before and has never experienced you, I don't image one would go in firing on all cinders banging pots and showing off.
On the flip side, if you want to interact with a baby animal you've never experienced before and has never experienced you, I don't image one would go in firing on all cinders banging pots and showing off.
hmm so the entire thing is just an conspiracy to fund some cushy research positions. based on the fact that some random person on youtube is better at image analysis then the US Navy?
This is the problem with the cargo-cult skeptics whether it's directed against UFO's or JFK assassination theories, where the complete lack of any genuine skepticism by the skeptics, tend to reinforce people's belief in non-canonical explanations for data that falls outside of the normal and cannot be easily identified.
The real story might not be aliens but it's likely also not an conspiracy between the us navy and the press to create hype around some low level pentagon positions, and the real story might include genuinely unstudied atmospheric phenomena.
This is the problem with the cargo-cult skeptics whether it's directed against UFO's or JFK assassination theories, where the complete lack of any genuine skepticism by the skeptics, tend to reinforce people's belief in non-canonical explanations for data that falls outside of the normal and cannot be easily identified.
The real story might not be aliens but it's likely also not an conspiracy between the us navy and the press to create hype around some low level pentagon positions, and the real story might include genuinely unstudied atmospheric phenomena.
> “Or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”
Physics noob here so be gentle. I initially thought that the sonic boom is caused by the compression of the sound of the aircraft's own engines, but then realised that couldn't be correct as meteorites can also create sonic booms and they have no engines.
The boom is caused by the air being compressed in front of the object? Is the loudness of the engines irrelevent to the intensity of the boom, it's all due to speed?
So these sonic boom-less aircraft - if they're real - must be doing something to the air in front of it?
Physics noob here so be gentle. I initially thought that the sonic boom is caused by the compression of the sound of the aircraft's own engines, but then realised that couldn't be correct as meteorites can also create sonic booms and they have no engines.
The boom is caused by the air being compressed in front of the object? Is the loudness of the engines irrelevent to the intensity of the boom, it's all due to speed?
So these sonic boom-less aircraft - if they're real - must be doing something to the air in front of it?
> The boom is caused by the air being compressed in front of the object? Is the loudness of the engines irrelevent to the intensity of the boom, it's all due to speed?
Yes, that’s it exactly. The part I would add is that after the air gets compressed, it rebounds, which is a wave. This wave emanates at the speed of sound. Ok fine, but what does that mean?
At subsonic speeds, each new pressure/sound wave emanating from the object is contained within the expanding sphere of the wave that came before it. Think of ripples in a pond, with each new ripple slightly to the left, but still completely “contained” by the one before it. The two ripples expand and never touch. (We’re pretending our pond has no edges here and that the waves don’t reflect.)
At supersonic speeds, the center of a new wave is outside the expanding previous wave. This has significant consequences for how the two waves interact. Subsonically, they didn’t interact at all. But supersonically, each new wave is expanding outside the previous wave, which means that pretty quickly they collide. And when they collide, they interfere. This interference is what goes boom.
Yes, that’s it exactly. The part I would add is that after the air gets compressed, it rebounds, which is a wave. This wave emanates at the speed of sound. Ok fine, but what does that mean?
At subsonic speeds, each new pressure/sound wave emanating from the object is contained within the expanding sphere of the wave that came before it. Think of ripples in a pond, with each new ripple slightly to the left, but still completely “contained” by the one before it. The two ripples expand and never touch. (We’re pretending our pond has no edges here and that the waves don’t reflect.)
At supersonic speeds, the center of a new wave is outside the expanding previous wave. This has significant consequences for how the two waves interact. Subsonically, they didn’t interact at all. But supersonically, each new wave is expanding outside the previous wave, which means that pretty quickly they collide. And when they collide, they interfere. This interference is what goes boom.
Yes, NASA is working on reducing sonic booms, but there is still long way to go. Typically that reduction is achieved through change in aerodynamic shape so that sonic waves created by aircraft are modified/nullified. UFO's from reports typically look very unomptimised aerodynamically.
Yes, for instance they could use magnetohydrodynamic drives[1] to create a bubble of quasi-void around the aircraft. In the 70s Jean-Pierre Petit did some demonstrations of flying-saucer like models.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetohydrodynamic_drive
Yes indeed, Jean-Pierre Petit has a YouTube channel where he talks about multiple subjects. In a 2020 video, he made a small video describing the links between UFO sightings and MHD: https://youtu.be/56fGzcp6bIU?t=65 (Subtitles available).
For people interested, here is a video presentation in English about applications of MHD technology for aircraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVN7qf3DlX0
And here is a conference paper about the same subject: https://januscosmologicalmodel.com/pdf/MHD/2009-Bremen-aeros...
For people interested, here is a video presentation in English about applications of MHD technology for aircraft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVN7qf3DlX0
And here is a conference paper about the same subject: https://januscosmologicalmodel.com/pdf/MHD/2009-Bremen-aeros...
Anything that travels faster than the speed of sound yields a sonic boom. This includes the crack of a whip, for instance. Obviously that one is smaller than what a jet produces.
You can play some games with which direction the energy of the boom goes and build planes that tend to send their boom more upwards than downwards, but you can't eliminate it going in all directions.
I have a loooot of issues with "UFOs are indeed alien crafts!", but certainly one of the bigger ones is the sheer stack of absurdities required to believe them, if you put them all in a pile at once and look at them seriously, and think about what they would mean if true. It isn't just that they have engines capable of absurd accelerations. It's that they also seem to use them in ways that under other circumstances we'd call "lacking purpose", i.e., they're just cruising along in one direction at twice the speed of sound, then all of a sudden go "oh, crap! I'm going the wrong way!" and slam themselves 120 degrees in another direction in a fraction of a second. It's that they also require "inertial dampers" in addition to the pile of other technologies of dubious physical possibility. We have to believe in ships that don't just move in absurd ways but also control the air around them to not be the noisiest damned things on planet Earth. It's that we also have to believe these apparently advanced aliens tend to crash surprisingly often, and that they don't want to be seen but just sort of accidentally get seen a little bit. We also have to believe in aliens that are staggeringly more advanced than humans but don't just, you know, do whatever it is they want to do because they are indeed that much more advanced, but are dicking around for decades at a time, apparently engaging in "negotiations" with our government despite their being so much more advanced that they should have no particular need to "negotiate" about anything.
It's not just the nature of the claims themselves... it's that if you take the claims seriously, they imply further absurdities that really don't make a lot of sense. Even if you take the technology claims on faith, the whole "UFOs are aliens!" tend to imply an alien species that has no intelligent motivations. Any two or three of them maybe I could harmonize into a plausible theory, but the whole pile is insane.
("Aliens" also have this really interesting characteristic where they just happen to have capabilities awfully close to what someone in 1950 might have considered to be the apex of possible physical technology, but rather bizarrely don't much resemble what the apex of physical technology looks like in 2021. For instance, the whole "aliens are genetically experimenting on humanity!" is rather silly if you consider an alien race who has computing power on their smallest scout ship exceeding everything humanity has ever possessed. Why the hell would you run around "experimenting" on humans when you can just compute the answer in a few seconds? Why would you "experiment" on humanity when odds are you can simply build any life form you like directly, without even needing to base it on some existing life form? And why would you be dicking around with life at all when you can build AIs thousands of times better for some purpose than any amount of human experimentation will yield? The whole memeset is very suspiciously stuck in a very particular period of time, and not reacting to 70 years of technological progress at all. See also our hand-held drones; increasingly real tech is running beyond what these "aliens" seem to posses, if we ignore all the inertial control and such. Or our existing surveillance tech; why would they need to watch us with crash-prone enormous spacecraft when they could just loft a couple dozen satellites into orbit and watch us at will, centuries before humans could even understand what that means?)
If UFOs are aliens, we have as much evidence that they are dumb as a bag of bricks as we do that they are hyperadvanced superintelligences, honestly.
You can play some games with which direction the energy of the boom goes and build planes that tend to send their boom more upwards than downwards, but you can't eliminate it going in all directions.
I have a loooot of issues with "UFOs are indeed alien crafts!", but certainly one of the bigger ones is the sheer stack of absurdities required to believe them, if you put them all in a pile at once and look at them seriously, and think about what they would mean if true. It isn't just that they have engines capable of absurd accelerations. It's that they also seem to use them in ways that under other circumstances we'd call "lacking purpose", i.e., they're just cruising along in one direction at twice the speed of sound, then all of a sudden go "oh, crap! I'm going the wrong way!" and slam themselves 120 degrees in another direction in a fraction of a second. It's that they also require "inertial dampers" in addition to the pile of other technologies of dubious physical possibility. We have to believe in ships that don't just move in absurd ways but also control the air around them to not be the noisiest damned things on planet Earth. It's that we also have to believe these apparently advanced aliens tend to crash surprisingly often, and that they don't want to be seen but just sort of accidentally get seen a little bit. We also have to believe in aliens that are staggeringly more advanced than humans but don't just, you know, do whatever it is they want to do because they are indeed that much more advanced, but are dicking around for decades at a time, apparently engaging in "negotiations" with our government despite their being so much more advanced that they should have no particular need to "negotiate" about anything.
It's not just the nature of the claims themselves... it's that if you take the claims seriously, they imply further absurdities that really don't make a lot of sense. Even if you take the technology claims on faith, the whole "UFOs are aliens!" tend to imply an alien species that has no intelligent motivations. Any two or three of them maybe I could harmonize into a plausible theory, but the whole pile is insane.
("Aliens" also have this really interesting characteristic where they just happen to have capabilities awfully close to what someone in 1950 might have considered to be the apex of possible physical technology, but rather bizarrely don't much resemble what the apex of physical technology looks like in 2021. For instance, the whole "aliens are genetically experimenting on humanity!" is rather silly if you consider an alien race who has computing power on their smallest scout ship exceeding everything humanity has ever possessed. Why the hell would you run around "experimenting" on humans when you can just compute the answer in a few seconds? Why would you "experiment" on humanity when odds are you can simply build any life form you like directly, without even needing to base it on some existing life form? And why would you be dicking around with life at all when you can build AIs thousands of times better for some purpose than any amount of human experimentation will yield? The whole memeset is very suspiciously stuck in a very particular period of time, and not reacting to 70 years of technological progress at all. See also our hand-held drones; increasingly real tech is running beyond what these "aliens" seem to posses, if we ignore all the inertial control and such. Or our existing surveillance tech; why would they need to watch us with crash-prone enormous spacecraft when they could just loft a couple dozen satellites into orbit and watch us at will, centuries before humans could even understand what that means?)
If UFOs are aliens, we have as much evidence that they are dumb as a bag of bricks as we do that they are hyperadvanced superintelligences, honestly.
If you mash together every claim that has ever been made about UFO's like you're doing here you certainly arrive at an absurd picture. However not all claims are equally credible by a long shot. For example while there are certainly lots of rumors flying around about crash retrievals I have not seen any explicit claim by a credible individual (Bob Lazar certainly doesn't count) of actually having first hand knowledge of such occurrences. I suspect that those rumors have originated due to compartmentalized government secrecy where almost no one is aware of what the other guys are doing. It's basically a game of telephone with extreme secrecy as an added ingredient.
The only claims I'm really interested in are the ones where you have multiple credible, on the record, eyewitnesses claiming multi-modal detection of phenomena exhibiting behavior that is clearly beyond current human capabilities, such as the 2004 Nimitz incidents.
Once you consider the possibility of non-human intelligences being involved it also becomes very hazardous to attempt to understand the motives behind their actions. For all we know our entire reality could be constructed in an alien laboratory designed to measure the development of our individual and collective intelligence by observing our reactions to strange events.
That said I do admit to having a lot of trouble trying to understand why craft that are apparently capable of hypersonic travel would spend hours moseying down the California coast from Catalina to Guadalupe islands. I mean if they were trying not to be noticed why not avoid the Nimitz CSG completely ? And if they wanted to be noticed wouldn't they have done something a little more dramatic than floating along at 100 knots (they didn't exhibit any spectacular behavior until an attempt was made to actually intercept them) ?
The only claims I'm really interested in are the ones where you have multiple credible, on the record, eyewitnesses claiming multi-modal detection of phenomena exhibiting behavior that is clearly beyond current human capabilities, such as the 2004 Nimitz incidents.
Once you consider the possibility of non-human intelligences being involved it also becomes very hazardous to attempt to understand the motives behind their actions. For all we know our entire reality could be constructed in an alien laboratory designed to measure the development of our individual and collective intelligence by observing our reactions to strange events.
That said I do admit to having a lot of trouble trying to understand why craft that are apparently capable of hypersonic travel would spend hours moseying down the California coast from Catalina to Guadalupe islands. I mean if they were trying not to be noticed why not avoid the Nimitz CSG completely ? And if they wanted to be noticed wouldn't they have done something a little more dramatic than floating along at 100 knots (they didn't exhibit any spectacular behavior until an attempt was made to actually intercept them) ?
> > It's that they also seem to use them in ways that under other circumstances we'd call "lacking purpose", i.e., they're just cruising along in one direction at twice the speed of sound, then all of a sudden go "oh, crap! I'm going the wrong way!" and slam themselves 120 degrees in another direction in a fraction of a second.
> > It's that we also have to believe these apparently advanced aliens tend to crash surprisingly often, and that they don't want to be seen but just sort of accidentally get seen a little bit.
> That said I do admit to having a lot of trouble trying to understand why craft that are apparently capable of hypersonic travel would spend hours moseying down the California coast from Catalina to Guadalupe islands. I mean if they were trying not to be noticed why not avoid the Nimitz CSG completely ? And if they wanted to be noticed wouldn't they have done something a little more dramatic than floating along at 100 knots (they didn't exhibit any spectacular behavior until an attempt was made to actually intercept them) ?
These at least are pretty easy to put together: Teenage aliens out for a joyride.
> > It's that we also have to believe these apparently advanced aliens tend to crash surprisingly often, and that they don't want to be seen but just sort of accidentally get seen a little bit.
> That said I do admit to having a lot of trouble trying to understand why craft that are apparently capable of hypersonic travel would spend hours moseying down the California coast from Catalina to Guadalupe islands. I mean if they were trying not to be noticed why not avoid the Nimitz CSG completely ? And if they wanted to be noticed wouldn't they have done something a little more dramatic than floating along at 100 knots (they didn't exhibit any spectacular behavior until an attempt was made to actually intercept them) ?
These at least are pretty easy to put together: Teenage aliens out for a joyride.
"That said I do admit to having a lot of trouble trying to understand why craft that are apparently capable of hypersonic travel would spend hours moseying down the California coast from Catalina to Guadalupe islands."
This is more my point than the true combination of every possible claim. It's more, go beyond arguing about whether something did or did not happen, and consider, what does it imply if it did? People are often too bedazzled by the immediate arguments around what may have happened to consider this argument, but it's a very powerful, simple logical tool that can be useful in resolving those questions.
You tend to get rather silly answers for a lot of this stuff if you take it seriously. Especially when you consider what tech looks like in 2021 and what feasible tech looks like in another 50-100 years, to say nothing of thousands. Aliens with interstellar travel tech but apparently no computers to speak of, no internet, no protein folding projects, no awareness of how useful satellites can be rather than literally flying down, apparent ignorance of how much of the universe isn't on planet earth (there is almost no conceivable resource-based argument for them to be here because everything is more abundant out there with no crazy animals running around bothering you) etc. the whole thing just comes off very silly.
One of the things you don't get crazy answers for is classified, but fully human craft. It just there are humans (military or whatever) with capabilities we don't know. That is not a terribly crazy theory; if you look at the past at how long things stayed classified and extrapolate into the present time, it isn't completely out of the question that the military may have some things that are fully 20-30 years ahead of civilian tech, in very particular branches of development. (I don't think it's plausible that they are uniformly ahead of civilian development by that amount, but it's very plausible to have spikes in very certain areas. We have very significant evidence of the NSA having similar spikes in crypto math.) Combine the possibility of real sightings, with a real experiment to see how people react (we have the entire term "trial balloon" for that, because it's a thing we know humans do), and just a bit of misinterpretation of what's happening by the people watching it, and it's not hard to see this as a very significant possibility.
(In fact, if you study what the military has done to its own people at times, it's not even slightly hard to believe this was a deliberate test of something. Even ignoring the unproveable rumors or what other militaries have done, and skipping the unethical stuff, we know militaries will test and trial things on their own people on a routine basis. Even things as simply as the drills not really labelled "drills" until later are examples.)
And I think people lean way too hard on "but aliens could be incomprehensible!". They are bounded by living in the same universe as us, needing to survive to accomplish any other goal, needing energy and mass resources which are exclusionary (if X is using them Y doesn't get to, and all the subsequent game theory that implies), etc. That doesn't mean that we'll understand them to the n'th degree but it does put some bounds on how "cloud cuckoo land" they can be before it's just absurd.
This is more my point than the true combination of every possible claim. It's more, go beyond arguing about whether something did or did not happen, and consider, what does it imply if it did? People are often too bedazzled by the immediate arguments around what may have happened to consider this argument, but it's a very powerful, simple logical tool that can be useful in resolving those questions.
You tend to get rather silly answers for a lot of this stuff if you take it seriously. Especially when you consider what tech looks like in 2021 and what feasible tech looks like in another 50-100 years, to say nothing of thousands. Aliens with interstellar travel tech but apparently no computers to speak of, no internet, no protein folding projects, no awareness of how useful satellites can be rather than literally flying down, apparent ignorance of how much of the universe isn't on planet earth (there is almost no conceivable resource-based argument for them to be here because everything is more abundant out there with no crazy animals running around bothering you) etc. the whole thing just comes off very silly.
One of the things you don't get crazy answers for is classified, but fully human craft. It just there are humans (military or whatever) with capabilities we don't know. That is not a terribly crazy theory; if you look at the past at how long things stayed classified and extrapolate into the present time, it isn't completely out of the question that the military may have some things that are fully 20-30 years ahead of civilian tech, in very particular branches of development. (I don't think it's plausible that they are uniformly ahead of civilian development by that amount, but it's very plausible to have spikes in very certain areas. We have very significant evidence of the NSA having similar spikes in crypto math.) Combine the possibility of real sightings, with a real experiment to see how people react (we have the entire term "trial balloon" for that, because it's a thing we know humans do), and just a bit of misinterpretation of what's happening by the people watching it, and it's not hard to see this as a very significant possibility.
(In fact, if you study what the military has done to its own people at times, it's not even slightly hard to believe this was a deliberate test of something. Even ignoring the unproveable rumors or what other militaries have done, and skipping the unethical stuff, we know militaries will test and trial things on their own people on a routine basis. Even things as simply as the drills not really labelled "drills" until later are examples.)
And I think people lean way too hard on "but aliens could be incomprehensible!". They are bounded by living in the same universe as us, needing to survive to accomplish any other goal, needing energy and mass resources which are exclusionary (if X is using them Y doesn't get to, and all the subsequent game theory that implies), etc. That doesn't mean that we'll understand them to the n'th degree but it does put some bounds on how "cloud cuckoo land" they can be before it's just absurd.
> One of the things you don't get crazy answers for is classified, but fully human craft.
If the craft involved in the Nimitz incident were human then I would be even more puzzled by their behavior because I think I have a pretty good idea of human motivations and behavior. If they're "alien" (by which I don't necessarily mean extraterrestrial, just unknown non-human entities) then at least I can fall back on the argument that I may not be able to understand their motivations and behavior.
Also there are many obstacles to explaining them as secret US technology. For one thing a number of knowledgeable people have indicated that no the US military doesn't test secret technology on completely uninformed participants. That's just not the way it's done. Also if it was secret US technology why did they let it leak ? Surely they would have made sure that people like Fravor and Day signed NDA's. On the other hand if the leak was intentional (ie. to send some kind of message to adversaries) then why wait 13 years before making it public ? Basically it just doesn't add up.
> That doesn't mean that we'll understand them to the n'th degree but it does put some bounds on how "cloud cuckoo land" they can be before it's just absurd.
I think here you're vastly underestimating the potential weirdness of things we don't know about.
If the craft involved in the Nimitz incident were human then I would be even more puzzled by their behavior because I think I have a pretty good idea of human motivations and behavior. If they're "alien" (by which I don't necessarily mean extraterrestrial, just unknown non-human entities) then at least I can fall back on the argument that I may not be able to understand their motivations and behavior.
Also there are many obstacles to explaining them as secret US technology. For one thing a number of knowledgeable people have indicated that no the US military doesn't test secret technology on completely uninformed participants. That's just not the way it's done. Also if it was secret US technology why did they let it leak ? Surely they would have made sure that people like Fravor and Day signed NDA's. On the other hand if the leak was intentional (ie. to send some kind of message to adversaries) then why wait 13 years before making it public ? Basically it just doesn't add up.
> That doesn't mean that we'll understand them to the n'th degree but it does put some bounds on how "cloud cuckoo land" they can be before it's just absurd.
I think here you're vastly underestimating the potential weirdness of things we don't know about.
[deleted]
It's something I've taken to calling the "Illuminati DMV". Various conspiracy theories depend on huge, massively coordinated world organizations working in concert on a scale we've never seen before. But somehow can't manage to work Outlook.
> But somehow can't manage to work Outlook.
Or that's what they want you to think. (/s)
Or that's what they want you to think. (/s)
Outlook is from those people to keep us from developing technologies so we could detect them.
> sonic boom-less aircraft
Here’s a theoretical example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busemann_biplane
Here’s a theoretical example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busemann_biplane
What are the chances that these aircrafts are not really traveling at the speed of light instead creating their own small holes and traveling through them?
I think you basically have the right idea. An aircraft in flight is continually emitting sound (and remember that sound is air compression) - the sound of the engines, but also the sound generated just by moving through air; open your car window while on a highway for an demonstration of that, and yes as you say, the volume increases with speed relative to the air. At low speeds, engine noise will dominate, while presumably there will be a speed above which 'wind noise' is louder; this is certainly true on a motorbike for example.
These sound waves interfere with each other and if they're travelling at the same speed as (or slower than) the emitter, a lot of constructive interference occurs - i.e. the sound gets louder. Note this effect still occurs beyond Mach 1.0 - there's a nice animation here[0] that shows why.
As you say - a sonic boom-less aircraft has to somehow move the air out of the way quietly.
[0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/176446
These sound waves interfere with each other and if they're travelling at the same speed as (or slower than) the emitter, a lot of constructive interference occurs - i.e. the sound gets louder. Note this effect still occurs beyond Mach 1.0 - there's a nice animation here[0] that shows why.
As you say - a sonic boom-less aircraft has to somehow move the air out of the way quietly.
[0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/176446
This is purely anecdotal, but I once saw a UFO that didn't seem to move like a plane. It was a good distance away so I couldn't see much of the craft's detail. I wanted some sort of proof that it was intelligent, so I said 'Prove yourself' to the craft, and it proceeded to do a blunt 90 degree right angle turn at high speed (without slowing down). It was as if the craft operators knew they were spotted and wanted to say 'hello' in this peculiar way by doing an impossible maneuver.
If these are hyper-intelligent beings, I would imagine they made some sort of digital clone of themselves so they could explore space without carrying around a biological body through space which would die faster than a digital clone. With a robotic digital self you could live for millions of years exploring, and then when ready, bring lots of data back home from your travels and recon of other planets.
If these are hyper-intelligent beings, I would imagine they made some sort of digital clone of themselves so they could explore space without carrying around a biological body through space which would die faster than a digital clone. With a robotic digital self you could live for millions of years exploring, and then when ready, bring lots of data back home from your travels and recon of other planets.
I've seen them too, I believe you. I think we're being visited and watched from a distance.
Skepticism is normal and understandable but I'm surprised at the amount of uninformed skepticism on this topic here. It seems like a lot of people still don't know what's going on.
So many credible, high-ranking people in military and government have come forward over the years. Edgar Mitchell had a PHD and walked on the moon and tried to tell us about UFOs.
Skepticism is normal and understandable but I'm surprised at the amount of uninformed skepticism on this topic here. It seems like a lot of people still don't know what's going on.
So many credible, high-ranking people in military and government have come forward over the years. Edgar Mitchell had a PHD and walked on the moon and tried to tell us about UFOs.
Humans are not reliable narrators. We have been fooled about observed phenomena so badly so many times before.
Aliens are exciting so people want to believe. It’s boring to conclude that your brain spazzed out and you saw something that wasn’t real. Or that you saw some strange looking natural phenomena that you don’t understand. But this happens all the time. Not to mention hallucinations, altered mental stages, optical illusions, exotic atmospheric phenomena, and so on...
I would need the most compelling evidence humanly imaginable to seriously consider the idea.
Aliens are exciting so people want to believe. It’s boring to conclude that your brain spazzed out and you saw something that wasn’t real. Or that you saw some strange looking natural phenomena that you don’t understand. But this happens all the time. Not to mention hallucinations, altered mental stages, optical illusions, exotic atmospheric phenomena, and so on...
I would need the most compelling evidence humanly imaginable to seriously consider the idea.
UFOs exist. Jumping to the conclusion that they must be controlled by sentinel beings from someplace else in the universe is a rather giant leap though. Sometimes they are simply "unidentified" flying objects.
The level of technology required to react to the words or perhaps thoughts of any animals observing you as you fly past; is more interesting than whatever propulsion technology they use.
Also this kind of interaction suggests they have a personality.
why is the video quality of UFO sightings always so terrible, in a world increasingly filled with high quality cameras?
It's simple, far away objects are hard to video even with modern tech to untrained people. You can zoom in on your iPhone now but holding a steady position would be hard and still even with the zoom the level of detail wouldn't be great to something in the sky.
The same reason loud speakers in trains and airports sound like loudspeakers were just invented five years ago.
Loudspeakers in trains and airports are typically constant voltage systems. This allows for long cable runs with minimal power loss, but there's a separate transformer at each speaker which introduces a lot of distortion.
Thanks for the explanation.
Glad my Spotify+Sonos is not constant voltage with long cables from Sweden but works with fiber/Wifi.
Glad my Spotify+Sonos is not constant voltage with long cables from Sweden but works with fiber/Wifi.
This has become quite the meme [1] but that doesn't make it true. We do have indeed very little (arguably no) evidence for extraterrestrial UFOs but we do have high-quality data on UFOs in general.
Most of them are explained by simple physical phenomena. Some of them, however, actually do relate to unexplained phenomena or projects by state level actors.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374167754404630528?s=20
Most of them are explained by simple physical phenomena. Some of them, however, actually do relate to unexplained phenomena or projects by state level actors.
[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1374167754404630528?s=20
CCTV material of criminals is similarly atrocious.
+ zhe objects are far away.
+ zhe objects are far away.
I'm guessing it's because it comes from lipstick cameras inside the cockpit, recorded on an analog VCR behind the pilot's seat.
Cellphone cameras are good, but not great at taking pictures of objects in a distance. I live in a flight path for a landing approach of an airport. Planes get low enough where I can sometimes read writing on them, but taking clear pictures of them with my iPhone 11 is still not great.
A year or two ago the President came to my city and leading up to and on the day of his visit there were V-22 Ospreys flying this path regularly. Seeing it in person was very cool, but the pictures I took look like I caught a picture of a neighborhoods kid toy helicopter from 100 yards away; tons of noise, artifacting, and lost detail.
A year or two ago the President came to my city and leading up to and on the day of his visit there were V-22 Ospreys flying this path regularly. Seeing it in person was very cool, but the pictures I took look like I caught a picture of a neighborhoods kid toy helicopter from 100 yards away; tons of noise, artifacting, and lost detail.
100% smart phone's cameras are designed to photos of people at a close distance. Any "Zoom" on a smartphone is just digital, it does not have the ability to take clear photos from a distance due to it's lack of optical zoom.
Because videos of good quality quickly go from UFO to IFO and only the worst are left. Wheat from the chaff.
Sometimes I get the impression that people who spend most of their day staring at screens seem significantly more sceptical of the idea on average than people who spend a lot of their time in aircraft traversing the skies.
I think there's two options for UFO sightings:
A) there are real, ET or machine intelligence piloted UFOs actually visiting us - or -
B) this whole thing has been a long, slow burn disinformation campaign to reduce the risk of nuclear war by scaring nuclear weapon powers into believing there is something with greater power out there capable of quickly eradicating nations that move to aggressively use nuclear weapons
I'm leaning towards B, personally. Just makes more sense to me - make people afraid, unsure of what's out there - give leaders just enough doubt to second guess pressing the nuclear button.
A) there are real, ET or machine intelligence piloted UFOs actually visiting us - or -
B) this whole thing has been a long, slow burn disinformation campaign to reduce the risk of nuclear war by scaring nuclear weapon powers into believing there is something with greater power out there capable of quickly eradicating nations that move to aggressively use nuclear weapons
I'm leaning towards B, personally. Just makes more sense to me - make people afraid, unsure of what's out there - give leaders just enough doubt to second guess pressing the nuclear button.
Use of nuclear weapons already guarantees mutual annihilation. I'm pretty sure the US government isn't trying to scare dictators with alien activity - I doubt anyone would change policy without a real alien coming and talking to us.
It doesn't guarantee mutual annihilation at all. We've already used nuclear weapons, and there's certainly the possibility they will be used again in future conflicts in a limited scale that doesn't end civilization.
My point is: if you do a good enough job pretending that an alien has already come and gave us a stern warning, you can potentially influence your adversary's thinking.
My point is: if you do a good enough job pretending that an alien has already come and gave us a stern warning, you can potentially influence your adversary's thinking.
"It doesn't guarantee mutual annihilation at all. We've already used nuclear weapons"
That's a weird thing to say.
When was the last time we used them, during a war?
Back before any other power had them. Literally the US was the only country with those bombs. That's obviously not mutually assured anything.
Now, almost everyone has at least one, and the US and Russia have many more.
That's a weird thing to say.
When was the last time we used them, during a war?
Back before any other power had them. Literally the US was the only country with those bombs. That's obviously not mutually assured anything.
Now, almost everyone has at least one, and the US and Russia have many more.
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Please scientists, investigate and stop laughing at UFOs cos one day history is going to laugh at you.
Lex (Fridman) has been trying for a while in his latest podcasts to invite scientists to investigate the phenomenon. Treat it like any other scientific exploration, with an open mind and led by data and evidence. Evidence of UFOs does not equate necessarily to alien life. This could be a unique natural phenomenon.
I would go further and argue that we have no evidence that aliens are behind UFOs, however, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so we cannot disprove it either (if 'they' exist, so you have a prior that is > 0).
The most likely explanation (not saying I'm right) most likely as far as I can see is aliens, by a mile. Have you seen what these objects do? How they move. Verified by multiple sources and electronic equipment. Ima stick my neck out and say "wow that looks like aliens!" becuase it does and I don't really care if I turn out to be wrong. Something real, amazing, and not understood is going on. I simply don't understand why everyone hasn't got their jaw on the floor.
Humans have a history of concocting supernatural phenomenon (ghosts, witchcraft, mediums, remote viewing, etc.).
Unfortunately, we’re 0 for X in scientifically proving any of these other worldly claims.
However, in every one of those instances we’ve been presented with a misinterpretation or a lack of information and filled in the blanks with quite fanciful stories that were relevant to the culture of the time period.
Unfortunately, we’re 0 for X in scientifically proving any of these other worldly claims.
However, in every one of those instances we’ve been presented with a misinterpretation or a lack of information and filled in the blanks with quite fanciful stories that were relevant to the culture of the time period.
Why do you think the idea of aliens is supernatural?
You should have seen their jaws by the sight of the first lightbulb.
I'll let the scientists of the world know that "jonnypotty" on the internet scoffs at their hubris.
I didn't mean it to come across like that. I just think the disinformation has worked. Power told us that the "UFO phenomenon" is a ridiculous conspiracy, humans have little to no defence against something like this and virtually everyone bought it. I'm just desperate for serious science to look at it, that's all. I'm not scoffing at anyone - I understand why this is so difficult to take seriously.
Consider the mountain gorillas in central Africa - we'll send a person out there to sit in the trees and take pictures, and if they catch a glimpse of the human, who cares? Meanwhile, the way we travel to the gorillas home, our cities, our whole way of life are totally unknown and even incomprehensible to the gorillas. What does a gorilla know of internal combustion, or tranquilizer darts, or digital cameras?
If there are aliens visiting us, I imagine it's similar. Maybe they're just coming to take pictures and check out what the local tech-apes are up to for a research paper, and if one of the humans catches a glimpse of your spaceship, who cares? Even if they get a clear look at your ship, they have only a vague idea of how it works and what it's for.
Maybe there's no aliens, but the universe is a big place and we barely understand it. Our comprehension of what's even physically and technologically possible changes every century. We're just apes who saw a land rover in the distance.