Has anyone looked at the CIA declassified documents that appeared a few days ago?
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/search/site/ufo%20ph...
It does have pictures of UFO for reference
Edit: added details
Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#32It always seems to involve mastering gravity yet gravity is so incredibly weak compared to magnetism. Plus "alien spacecraft" aka UFOs always seem to output a huge amount of light so maybe gravity and light are linked in the process or mechanism for whatever makes the thing operate. I like the article how it mentions getting the science believable or at least not terrible wrong. But what I dislike as much as that is…
>Plus "alien spacecraft" aka UFOs always seem to output a huge amount of light ...
That aspect in particular is interesting because it's central to most UFO sightings, and subsequently adds to the collective mythology.
For the sake of argument, imagine you operate a joint USAF/CIA psyops program charged with protecting the secrecy of entirely-terrestrial aerospace black programs.
Personally, the first thing I'd do is take existing airframes, coat them in a matte or even light-absorbing material, put a blindingly-bright layer of lights on top of that, and conduct missions at night, in a profile that minimizes noise. The lights serve to draw attention, conceal the airframe's actual shape, and suggest some extraterrestrial origin all at the same time.
At the risk of sounding like a nutter spouting the usual "black helicopters" cliché, it's worth noting that during the Vietnam War, the US operated a modified Hughes 500-series helicopter reconfigured for extremely quiet operation.[0]
Likewise, Bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad was raided in 2011 using stealth helicopters. During interviews, neighbors present at the time of the raid said they weren't able to hear the aircraft until they were almost directly overhead.[1] Compared to a normal helicopter, that's extremely quiet.
The Phoenix Lights[2] was a very famous UFO sighting, and in my opinion was almost certainly man-made. The technology was there to build long-endurance unmanned VTOL aircraft at the time, especially when all you need is some struts, lights, a control system, maybe a balloon, and some propulsion. Complexity comparable to what hobbyists face when building small quadcopter drones today, just scaled up in size.
At further risk of sounding like a complete nutter, I think it's probable that the rash of cattle mutilations[3] throughout the United States were a result of something similar. If you're already tooling around with quiet aircraft lit up like Christmas trees, dissecting cattle in the process for whatever legitimate ancillary reason will only further solidify the belief it's aliens.
The bright light we often associate with UFOs is likely just a terrestrial invention.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_OH-6_Cayuse#.22The_Quie...
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-secret-stealth-helicopter-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_mutilation#Government_o...
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#33It always seems to involve mastering gravity yet gravity is so incredibly weak compared to magnetism. Plus "alien spacecraft" aka UFOs always seem to output a huge amount of light so maybe gravity and light are linked in the process or mechanism for whatever makes the thing operate. I like the article how it mentions getting the science believable or at least not terrible wrong. But what I dislike as much as that is…
There's a short story by Harry Turtledove about aliens that have mastered gravity (because, as it turns out, it isn't that difficult to do) but all of their other technology is pre-industrial revolution level. They try to invade Earth in 2039 - I won't spoil what happens next. It's a fun read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_st...
I loved that story, but couldn't remember what it was called. Thanks!
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no need to do faster than light, or even all that fast. The diameter of the Milky Way is at most 200k light years, with technology we could develop today we could populate the entirety of it with generation ships in the span of less than 100 million years, which isn't all that big in the scale of the universe.
I read this, and about ideas like the Von Neumann probe[0] all the time, and it really fills my head with concrete to try and reconcile those ideas with the fact that we haven't found any signs of extraterrestrial life yet. If it's so feasible in a "short" time relative to the age of the universe, where are all the probes? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
If you read about this all the time, then you're probably also familiar with the Fermi Paradox and the possible explanations for it. 2016 may have given us a clue as to which one of them seems most likely.
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#35The problem with interstellar travel in general is that it is so expensive, in terms of energy usage. I speculate that even for Kardashev type 3 civilizations, shipping matter around will be impractical. The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical metho…
> The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical method.
Sure, but for entities that live purely as software the concept of "being" in a "place" is probably completely unimportant.
There's no reason to assume that software entities would have any reason to want to interact with meatspace, especially when they can conjure every possible world (and every impossible world) out of nothing.
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#36The problem with interstellar travel in general is that it is so expensive, in terms of energy usage. I speculate that even for Kardashev type 3 civilizations, shipping matter around will be impractical. The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical metho…
I just recently learned the term "Bracewell probe" for this kind of device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe Instead of sending radio signals or etching words or pictures in matter, you send a software agent that is reasonably intelligent in a hardware device into space seeking ETIs. The intelligence aboard the probe can have a conversation with the ETIs and communicate back to home the results.
We can't even make bots have a reasonable conversation with us in our own language :)
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's no need to do faster than light, or even all that fast. The diameter of the Milky Way is at most 200k light years, with technology we could develop today we could populate the entirety of it with generation ships in the span of less than 100 million years, which isn't all that big in the scale of the universe.
I read this, and about ideas like the Von Neumann probe[0] all the time, and it really fills my head with concrete to try and reconcile those ideas with the fact that we haven't found any signs of extraterrestrial life yet. If it's so feasible in a "short" time relative to the age of the universe, where are all the probes? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
A great book that explores this topic (and is pretty funny) is "We are Legion, We are Bob" [1].
Well that and Spin [2], which probably addresses your point - maybe they're out there and they're already messing with us?
Ultimately, whenever I think about Fermi's Paradox, I am reminded of xkcd [3]. Maybe we just can't tell they're right in front of us.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Are-Legion-Bob-Bobiverse-Book-ebook/d... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Spin-Robert-Charles-Wilson/dp/0765348... [3] https://xkcd.com/638/
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#38The problem with interstellar travel in general is that it is so expensive, in terms of energy usage. I speculate that even for Kardashev type 3 civilizations, shipping matter around will be impractical. The future is software. For entities that live purely as software, and aren't so picky as us meatbags are about continuity of consciousness, "traveling" from place to place by sending data is the most practical metho…
"...so that means firing off a kilogram (or so) of self-replicating molecular nanotechnology which can build the infrastructure you'd want to live in (compute on) at the destination."
i just got a chill thinking we are living that exact thing in this simulation O_O
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read this, and about ideas like the Von Neumann probe[0] all the time, and it really fills my head with concrete to try and reconcile those ideas with the fact that we haven't found any signs of extraterrestrial life yet. If it's so feasible in a "short" time relative to the age of the universe, where are all the probes? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
If you read about this all the time, then you're probably also familiar with the Fermi Paradox and the possible explanations for it. 2016 may have given us a clue as to which one of them seems most likely.
Please elaborate? What did we learn in 2016?
Re: Quick, How Might the Alien Spacecraft Work?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just recently learned the term "Bracewell probe" for this kind of device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe Instead of sending radio signals or etching words or pictures in matter, you send a software agent that is reasonably intelligent in a hardware device into space seeking ETIs. The intelligence aboard the probe can have a conversation with the ETIs and communicate back to home the results.
We can't even make bots have a reasonable conversation with us in our own language :)
15 yrs ago we were impressed that an apple computer could turn text into audio. Imagine giving us another 10,000yrs (blink of an eye to a blink of an eye in terms of the scale of the galaxy) before deciding how much we're really capable of there