As Matt O'Dowd from PBS's Spacetime likes to say, it's never aliens.
'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
11–20 of 158 posts
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#12My 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.
I could see them as hyper advanced metamaterials with effects we don't entirely understand. Materials science is still a very empirical field with lots of physical experimentation, trial and error. We can observe with SEM, x-ray etc. without fully connecting the dots to the end result. Sort of like dropping an iPhone X into the hands of a Victorian era scientist, who just dismantles it and sees it's a bunch of metal, without a chance of ever being able to reverse engineer it. It's just too advanced.
But this is probably nothing.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#13This is kind of a ridiculous article. The main point seems to be that some scientists (who have nothing to do with this supposed UFO research) say that all known alloys are known, and that it would be surprising to find one that couldn’t be figured out.
Well, no shit.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#14As 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 Penta…
The problem is there is zero evidence of their credibility. Essentially it's an appeal to authority argument.
And the video itself doesn't show anything of the claimed behavior. No hovering over the ocean, no super fast motion, just a blob or smudge superimposed over a cloudy background as video pans around.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#15I totally buy it that there is no such thing as an "unidentifiable alloy." I also buy it that journalists, not being materials scientists or indeed scientists of any sort, do not know the difference between an "alloy" and "a hunk of some hard material," so at some point they wrote down "alloy" because the word sounds exotic, like something you'd find at Area 51.
This happens in the press /all the time/. Journos get specific terms of art wrong, and nitpickers nitpick and clarify. I know this because I made a career of such nitpicking and clarifying once.
My point here is that nothing put forward in this article means that there's not a building in Vegas with some kinds of materials that have strange properties and we don't know where they're from or who made them or how. It just means that said materials are not properly "alloys" and the journos got that word wrong, as journos often do when they're way outside their area of expertise.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#16The NYT article they are discussing - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-prog...
HN discussion:
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#17As 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 Penta…
> 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 ...
The articles I read seemed to indicate this “office” at the pentagon was basically a one man show and was rediculed by his peers, probably receiving little if any analytical support.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#18I hate articles like this. Someone makes an extraordinary claim, journalist finds some experts to insist that claim must be false based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim. This is ridiculous. Either ignore the claim, or test it. Speculation is information-free and a waste of everyone's time. Same goes for the EM drive. I don't care about hearing some random expert's opinion on why it's impossible. I want them to either ignore the story altogether, or show evidence that the proposed effect or technology doesn't work.
This is the same sort of thinking as flat earthers, except that they happen to have the status quo on their side. Science and truth aren't based on opinion or emotion, but on test results.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#19There is a very simple explanation for why the alloys are so mysterious.
Harry Reid was able to get the program funded, and directed most of the $22M in spending to one of his closest backers, Robert Bigelow so he could build a fancy warehouse. If that fancy warehouse wasn't storing super valuable alien artifacts it just looks like Reid filling the pockets of a close friend with government monies, and people might think Bigelow might be laundering that money to pay back to Reid after his retirement.
Since both of these upstanding citizens are known to have such high ethics that can't be possible, clearly the warehouse was full of priceless alien stuff. We can scientifically examine these alloys right now, except Reid agreed to cancel the program, because of deficits? or Harry's retirement accounts were fully funded.
But we also have an esteemed government director who can corroborate all of this, Luis Elizondo. He has no reason to make up sensationalistic stories, he's too busy helping Tom Delonge convince backers to fund the "To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science" to research alien stuff, and which supposedly is contractually obligated to pay Tom $100,000 a year once funded. What it's going to pay Luis is no-ones business.
Yep, completely on the level. Can't understand why these scientists are so skeptical.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#20I hate articles like this. Someone makes an extraordinary claim, journalist finds some experts to insist that claim must be false based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim. This is ridiculous. Either ignore the claim, or test it. Speculation is information-free and a waste of everyone's time. Same goes for the EM drive. I don't care about hearing some random expert's opinion on why it's impos…
How can you test something that doesn't exist? Where are these samples? Why can't ufo researchers produce anything to from any alien sighting to test that isn't a known alloy/substance?