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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

#131

Post by andrewflnr »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #105
andrewflnr wrote: post #50

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 heav…

This is different. Any example of "Damascus steel" that you can point to you can use an XRF device on to figure out the actual alloy composition. That doesn't tell you exactly how to make it, it just tells you what elements it's made out of.

How is it different? You're practically making my point for me: knowing the composition doesn't mean you understand a material in any meaningful way. If the people supposedly running these warehouses are honest, we have to assume they've done all the obvious tests and are still confused.

Just to belabor the point some more, we didn't know until recently that damascus steel contains carbon nanotubes (probably derived from plant material). Was an XRF machine ever going to pick that up? Not in any detail, I'm guessing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

And this is all without using any imagination. If you're dealing with the question of alien technology, that's silly.

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

#132

Post by rob49343234 »

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…

contractually obligated to pay Tom $100,000 a year

A junior developer's salary to a guy who's sold millions of records. There's a lot to criticize here but I don't think that's one of them

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

#133

Post by andrewflnr »

jonstokes wrote: post #15

I 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…

It's even stupider than that. The original quote was "alloys and other materials", but all the "rebuttals" are strictly about alloys in particular. They just ignored half the sentence they were nitpicking and declared the whole thing rebutted.

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

#134

Post by adrianN »

xenophonf wrote: post #127
adrianN wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the government would keep it hidden somewhere where nobody believes it's the real thing to avoid trouble in the UN and threats of violence...

The Bomb was a game changer, everyone working on the Manhattan Project knew it, and they _still_ had spies successfully infiltrating the project and exfiltrating above-top-secret data. Some supposedly alien material wouldn't change human nature. Something that big would leak.

It did leak. Everybody "knows" the government has been experimenting on Aliens and alien technology since at least Roswell. There are even articles in the New York Times about warehouses storing alien artifacts!

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

#136

Post by mherchel »

nabla9 wrote: post #108
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…

Don't mix narrative provided with evidence provided. Not pilots, a pilot. All that project came up with was one pilot (Fravor) describing unusual event and none of the other three pilots involved or ship crewmen backing his story up. Single person can see almost anything even if the observer is trained and trustworthy. As long as no other pilots collaborate the same event, there is little credibility. Three senators…

No, there were multiple F18s. Each with a pilot. Multiple radar contacts, with the associated radar operators.

Also, why do you say, "none of the other three pilots involved or ship crewmen backing his story up." That's not true.

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

#138

Post by jfbourdeau »

Yes I am one of those (saw one) ... JF, Montreal Canada, I am a Techie ( 50 years old) and my life is pretty good( 3 good kids, my own company, been in a couple for 28 years). So I am not seeking celebrity or attention from others neither money for my stories. As it is for me, UFO do exist.. I saw one once when I was young with my brother and the way that thing was moving above the fields ( 1 miles from us) was very impressive. ( happen around 35 years ago )

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

#139

Post by naiyt »

legulere wrote: post #128

One such "alien alloy" we still haven't been fully able to analyze or even reproduce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_steel

After reading that it sounds like they just haven't been able to reproduce the process of making it, not that it's an alloy that they don't understand the composition of.

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

#140

Post by mncolinlee »

Given that we discover new elements[1] from time to time, it's not impossible that we'd discover a new alloy. However, something about this story is fishy and is likely being blown out of proportion.

It's a common trope that there exists a "God of the gaps" where we fill in our lack of understanding with God, ghosts, or aliens. If a door slams in your house, it's seen as a ghost, rather than pressure equalizing between rooms. This feels like an case where we attach our uncertainty to an explanation before we have enough data to form a viable hypothesis.

[1] https://www.lenntech.com/periodic-chart-elements/discovery-y...

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