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UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
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Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#22Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat... What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too? One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who nee…
Even if we assume that "UFO" means "space alien", it doesn't seem puzzling to me.
Answer 1: selection bias. Obviously the only ones that people see at night are those which have lights. We aren't going to hear about the ones that people don't see because they're dark.
Answer 2: alien apathy. You've flown a million light years to spy on some great apes who aren't even sure you exist. Who cares if a few of them get flashed with bright lights, while you're looking around? They don't even have flying saucers yet, so it's not like they could chase you.
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#23I'll also put my tinfoil hat on, since I've had a long fascination with anamolous phenomenon. I still think the jury's out on what exactly is going on, but one thing that's consistent worldwide is that balls of light are associated with UFOs, bigfoot, poltergeists, etc.
My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously. Jacques Vallee is an astronomer and computer scientist (involved in early ARPANET) who's studied the phenomenon since at least the 70s. Here's a fun paper:
https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/4/jse_04_1_vallee...
He essentially argues that the UFO phenomenon is neither extra terrestrials nor merely misidentified aerial craft. It's something even stranger!
Also, if you find that paper interesting, here's one of this books (one of the most well-known in the anomalous phenomenon field):
https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Flying-Sauc...
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#24Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat... What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too? One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who nee…
They’re anti-collision lights. They have to be really bright to be effective at interstellar speeds.
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#25Do any airlines have high-def video cameras on planes? Seems like something that would be financially feasible with modern technology and would provide very useful data for unexplained phenomena like this. I imagine I'm not the only one who would pay to subscribe for a streaming service for airline footage, even when there aren't UFO sightings to examine.
Can you imagine that it is very boring most of the time?
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#26Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat... What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too? One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who nee…
Even if we assume that "UFO" means "space alien", it doesn't seem puzzling to me. Answer 1: selection bias. Obviously the only ones that people see at night are those which have lights. We aren't going to hear about the ones that people don't see because they're dark. Answer 2: alien apathy. You've flown a million light years to spy on some great apes who aren't even sure you exist. Who cares if a few of them get fla…
You can generalize answer 1 even further. For all you know, there are hundreds of UFOs all around you that just have very advanced cloaking technology and only a few that don't. :)
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#27For anyone fascinated with the hype around UFO sightings, "The Resonance of Unseen Things" [1] is an interesting read focusing on the structure of the stories and their connection to people's social and economic lives. It approaches the UFO believers subculture from a sympathetic viewpoint and tries to understand. Great ethnography.
[1]https://www.press.umich.edu/8373560/resonance_of_unseen_thin...
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#28Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat... What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too? One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who nee…
They’re anti-collision lights. They have to be really bright to be effective at interstellar speeds.
Interstellar speeds certainly must be in excess of the speed of light (or those creatures are chill with cruising for thousands of years), so they wouldn't do much good. :)
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#29Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat... What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too? One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who nee…
Even if we assume that "UFO" means "space alien", it doesn't seem puzzling to me. Answer 1: selection bias. Obviously the only ones that people see at night are those which have lights. We aren't going to hear about the ones that people don't see because they're dark. Answer 2: alien apathy. You've flown a million light years to spy on some great apes who aren't even sure you exist. Who cares if a few of them get fla…
Clearly they don't care much about the prime directive
Re: UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation
#30A few months ago I was walking alone in the park when I saw a bright light moving in strange patterns in the sky. It scared the pants off of me.
For about a day my mind was nothing but paranoid thoughts. I had fear that I had seen something that I shouldn't have. That not only extraterrestrial life was real, but that they knew of my existence and would be coming for me. Or perhaps they were coming for all of us. I was a mess.
And sure, it was probably a drone. Or a plane. Or a shooting star, etc. But was it? I couldn't shake the thought that it wasn't.
It sounds hilariously silly now, but at the time it really screwed with my mental state.