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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

#41

Post by byebyetech »

titzer wrote: post #38
reaperducer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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:…

I dunno, I read the article and the "guy a thousand miles away" gave pretty damn good reasoning why it'd be short work to identify and categorize "alien alloys". Or do you have an actual argument as to why these materials couldn't be readily identified and studied by competent physicists using well known technology?

Would a material composed using highly advanced nanotechnology have strange properties purely due to its structure? Does it have to be an alloy?

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

#42

Post by andrewflnr »

yk wrote: post #36
bugs_bunny wrote: post #23

This 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 t…

Quite simply, x-ray diffraction tells you the distribution of electrons in the unit cell of the alloy. So you just put an sample into your spectrometer and it will print out the chemical elements and how they are assembled. And even if there is another island of stability of super heavy elements or something like that, it will still just tell you the charge of the nucleus. So this side of quite literally magic, as in…

You're assuming "unit cell" is a meaningful concept for these materials. Can x-ray diffraction completely characterize, say, a quasicrystalline structure? Moreover, even if you can tell what it's made of, that doesn't necessarily tell you how it was made or how it works.

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

#43

Post by hyperbovine »

anigbrowl wrote: post #40
valuearb wrote: post #19

There 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…

That makes for a great story until you consider the fact that bigelow is rich and $22 million is small change to the billionaire set that Reid has had on speed dial for years. Enormously elaborate schemes to launder relatively small amounts of money are only plausible to people who think $22 million is a vast fortune.

That's the difference between billionaires and you and me: the billionaire thinks $22m is a lot of money.

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

#44

Post by QAPereo »

byebyetech wrote: post #41
titzer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I read the article and the "guy a thousand miles away" gave pretty damn good reasoning why it'd be short work to identify and categorize "alien alloys". Or do you have an actual argument as to why these materials couldn't be readily identified and studied by competent physicists using well known technology?

Would a material composed using highly advanced nanotechnology have strange properties purely due to its structure? Does it have to be an alloy?

That’s the issue, which really comes down to the word “Alloy” in this case. If you believe there’s a chance that the word alloy was used instead of a more accurate and technical term, then your points definitely stand. If they really meant alloy though? I’d tend to side it’s the article. I mean you can imagine some strange and exotic materials maintained by some kind of alien power source, but lose the power and the material should decay in some fashion. For a purely fictional example see things like degenerate matter held in some kind of sci-fi stasis.

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

#45

Post by QAPereo »

hyperbovine wrote: post #43
anigbrowl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes for a great story until you consider the fact that bigelow is rich and $22 million is small change to the billionaire set that Reid has had on speed dial for years. Enormously elaborate schemes to launder relatively small amounts of money are only plausible to people who think $22 million is a vast fortune.

That's the difference between billionaires and you and me: the billionaire thinks $22m is a lot of money.

Worth risking prison over? That sounds like a gambler who loses, not someone who managed to amass and retain wealth.

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

#46

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

gfodor wrote: post #9

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 Penta…

If this was real it would be classified TS and the leakers are subject to imprisonment. The US already has a ban on disclosing ordinary flight camera recordings without approval and getting the black bar treatment so how did this get out?

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

#47

Post by joering2 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #40
valuearb wrote: post #19

There 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…

That makes for a great story until you consider the fact that bigelow is rich and $22 million is small change to the billionaire set that Reid has had on speed dial for years. Enormously elaborate schemes to launder relatively small amounts of money are only plausible to people who think $22 million is a vast fortune.

What an absurd argument that a guy worth $200MM would not spend his time and money on a $22MM deal. Besides, why everyone assumes this is ALL they did? A "businessmen" like those two spent probably 30 minutes on the phone once, and delegate bunch of people to do the work for them. Yes, Reid would not spent his last 5 years on $22MM deal, but he would spent few hours on the phone here and there on 100 deals each worth $22MM. Fact.

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

#48

Post by joering2 »

QAPereo wrote: post #45
hyperbovine wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the difference between billionaires and you and me: the billionaire thinks $22m is a lot of money.

Worth risking prison over? That sounds like a gambler who loses, not someone who managed to amass and retain wealth.

Harry Greed is best at his game and has many years to prove it. Little people get away with little crimes here and there, a big fish like Reed knows what he's doing. Same goes for even bigger fish like Clinton. $300 millions thru foundation happen to be founded by pure luck exactly in the time she was helping them score business deals. Its a very careful game but they know what they doing!

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

#49

Post by Scipio_Afri »

daodedickinson wrote: post #30
valuearb wrote: post #19

There 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.

Wow you're good at connecting dots. I bet you were good at those numbered dot puzzles as a kid.

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

#50

Post by andrewflnr »

For heaven's sake, we're not completely sure how Damascus steel was made, and that was done by humans hundreds of years ago, with thousands of samples lying around the world. And we're just supposed to assume that because we've tried all the combinations of alloys we can think of, there are no other possibilities?

Have some imagination. Think about nano-layering and quasicrystals, to say nothing of stable-island heavy nuclei and other exotic forms of matter not ruled out by physics as we know it. Come lecture me about impossibilities when you've finished solving solid-state physics, mkay?

Those aren't technically "alloys"? Fine, but that's a useless nitpick in the face of the actual question under consideration. Reading through the mistakes of science-illiterate journalists and politicians should be a reflex by now; you don't get any points for proving you have a better technical vocabulary than they do.

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