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'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

scientificamerican.com

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Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

#3

Post by ChuckMcM »

dpedu wrote: post #2

Hmm, the article has no substance besides speculation from external scientists based on the wording of the release. Not worth reading.

I read it as an extended argument for concluding that there is no such thing as an 'unknown alloy.' I have seen this as a tactic to pressure people to provide more details.

Simply writing "we don't believe them when they say this" doesn't carry as much weight as "we don't believe them because x, y, and z."

Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

#4

Post by notadoc »

My interpretation was that the origin of the material was simply unknown, which doesn't mean much.

If I wake up in the morning and there's an unexpected beer can in my yard that I did not place there, then that would be an object that arrived from an unknown origin. It doesn't make the object itself particularly mysterious, but you could have a lot of fun imagining how it got there or why it was placed there. And you can imagine that getting reported in an interesting way. Did a squirrel carry it into the yard? Did a neighbor drink a beer and toss the can into the yard? Did beer drinking aliens drop it from a space ship into the yard? Well, the latter is a fun story.

Of course it's infinitely more interesting to have a genuinely mysterious alloy or element that is inexplicable or just new and fascinating for whatever reason. I'm sure a lot of people felt that way about vanadium oxide, for example.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/vanadium-oxides/8838...

Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

#6

Post by mortenjorck »

notadoc wrote: post #4

My interpretation was that the origin of the material was simply unknown, which doesn't mean much. If I wake up in the morning and there's an unexpected beer can in my yard that I did not place there, then that would be an object that arrived from an unknown origin. It doesn't make the object itself particularly mysterious, but you could have a lot of fun imagining how it got there or why it was placed there. And you…

There are still plenty of other degrees of interestingness in between "known" and "definitely aliens."

These alloys could very well be mysterious not so much for their composition, but for their condition, or their use at all in aircraft.

Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

#8

Post by Animats »

If it exists, it's probably some facility where broken debris from research aircraft are stored. Edwards is always testing something, and when something breaks, it gets studied.

I once worked in a hydraulics R&D facility which had a scanning electron microscope. Parts which failed were examined to find out why. Their screen usually showed broken edges of something under high magnification.

Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story

#9

Post by gfodor »

As usual, the claim that #2 could possibly be due to pilots misinterpreting visual evidence is tossed out as a hand wavy excuse despite the fact that the cases investigated by the Pentagon are (allegedly) corroborated by targeting systems, radar and satellite images, and possibly more evidence not disclosed. The entire point of the revelations was that after bringing to bear the entire analytical arsenal of the Pentagon there is no obvious explanation remaining for these cases other that these objects indeed exist and have an unknown origin. (This doesn't mean "aliens.")

The entire story hinges on the credibility of the Pentagon officials and pilots interviewed. If they are credible with regards to the narrative around just how many resources were used to generate alternative explanations, then the media should stop building up strawmen that these specific cases were due to pilots being fooled by their visual system.

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