What does it actually mean by "unknown alloy"? All periodic table metal/metalloid elements can be extracted and detected. Even a standard high school chemistry texts include these processes with wet experiments to be done in the labs. Do they mean new element? If that is the case then those elements must be radioactive. Or do they actually mean "known alloy with new electromagnetic/crystalline properties"? Still it does not make any sense.
'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
21–30 of 158 posts
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#22Just to play devils' advocate:
I totally believe that we could identify any normal alloy, but what about more far-out kinds of materials? Humans have already experimented with metamaterials, weird composites made of many different kinds of constituents layered or interposed in various ways, materials with embedded electronic or even "smart" computational capabilities, etc.
Now imagine what a more advanced civilization might be capable of producing. I'm imagining a composite with embedded "smart" programmable behaviors that is 3d printed at the atomic scale. Every single atom is positioned intentionally to yield "smart matter" with incredible strength or other really exotic capabilities.
I can imagine it being difficult to identify or characterize such a thing without destructive testing, and if we did have such a sample we'd probably be very reluctant to do that.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#23This idea that we have a database that covers all possibilities for anything that would qualify as alien is delusional. It's like Neatherandals claiming that they have a complete database for hard things, and it contains exactly two entries: rock and stick. If they somehow stumbled across an iPhone, and ran a few tests, they would decide it is a rock (since it can skip across water - just like other flat rocks). In the very near future we will have complex dynamic alloys that do not fit neatly into any database because their characteristics will be change depending on the surrounding conditions. This is by a species that can't even build a space elevator. Who knows what is possible for a species capable of interstellar travel.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#24There 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 th…
While I don't doubt that Harry Reid is as corrupt a politician and as expert at funneling money to his cronies as, say, the late Robert Byrd was; there are A LOT easier and quieter ways of making it happen.
Especially for a sum as small as $22 million. Even county-level politicians can make that amount of money disappear without a trace and without leaving behind a warehouse and a paper trail.
To play the other side: What we have in the linked article is a couple of people who have never seen the objects in question stating categorically that they don't exist, or are ordinary. I'd believe the skeptics more if they'd at least seen the objects. But it's just a couple of guys several thousand miles away second-guessing some other guys with actual access to the objects.
Thanks, for the clickbait, SI. Next...
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#25I 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 s…
Yeah, if you are willing to buy that they have something stored they can't identify, this is the most logical explanation.
That said, I would still buy that there are probably almost no materials that we couldn't at least get a handle on. If they were truly incomprehensible it would likely be because they were the result of manipulating properties that we don't even know exist yet (higher dimensionality, etc, whatever other sci-fi shit), and I feel like something that sensational and world changing would be incredibly hard to cover up.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#26I 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…
> based on their current understanding rather than testing the claim.
The point is that there is no claim. It is very very straight forward to identify an unknown material (figuring out how it was made, what it's for, etc., is the difficult task). If you want to claim there's an 'unknown' material, show us your XRD patterns, your EELS/XPS/NMR/EDX/PL/SIMS spectra, your AFM surfaces, your electron micrographs, atom probe tomography, any number of a hundred other characterization techniques ... then you'd actually have a claim we could have an intelligent conversation about.
At this point, there isn't even a claim that needs an expert opinion to respond to, it's all just BS.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#27I 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 s…
> 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
A lot stranger things have been found hidden in Vegas buildings than alien artifacts. Just a few weeks ago it started raining cheerleader uniforms in downtown Las Vegas because a demolition crew pulling down a hotel hit a sealed-off room filled with thousands of them.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#28As 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.
Worse, the office had an "I want to believe" poster on the wall.
Fortunately, the one man show had a red-headed skeptic sidekick.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#29I 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?
> Where are these samples?
Las Vegas, like the article states. KLAS showed a picture of the warehouse last night. Shouldn't be hard to track down.
Re: 'Alien Alloys' in The New York Times' UFO Story
#30There 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 th…
There's much discussion about To The Stars between the Blink-182 frontman and John Podesta in the emails leaked by Wikileaks. If their interest isn't genuine, I can only imagine they're working for / are aliens. Podesta got his start in politics by trying to get the US gov to cough up everything it knew about UFOs.