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What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

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Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#31

Post by rockinghigh »

Zancarius wrote: post #22
mrob wrote: post #6

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation. I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelli…

> With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality.

Phones have lenses with wide focal lengths and tiny sensors. You need a very different device to capture small objects far away from you with high resolution.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#32

Post by m4x »

criddell wrote: post #15
mrob wrote: post #6

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.

Since the author didn't give many details of the Tic Tac Incident , I googled it and came up with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident

Also see here for a less breathless article on the event: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a...

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#33

Post by crazynick4 »

781 wrote: post #7

If these incidents were aliens, I would expect a lot more reactions from the military, politic, and financial markets. All reactions seem muted. Secondly, why would aliens reveal themselves in such a way? Either land on the White House lawn or stay out of sight. This 50 year UFO appearances, with some but not really a lot of witnesses, don't make sense for me.

You're trying to reason about 'alien' intelligence in terms of human traits. What makes you think they are even interested in us at all? Maybe they just came here to re-up on potassium.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#34

Post by ithkuil »

rockinghigh wrote: post #31
Zancarius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Yet virtually everything available is low quality, grainy rubbish. On the other hand, the accessibility of video editing software makes such claims dubious at best regardless of quality or presentation. I agree with others who've suggested this is either a counter intelli…

> With the proliferation of mobile devices, you'd expect there to be an increase in footage of such sightings with an equivalent increase in quality. Phones have lenses with wide focal lengths and tiny sensors. You need a very different device to capture small objects far away from you with high resolution.

I recently had a wildfire close to home, and had airplanes flying at very low altitude. The sight of the belly of those airplanes flying the whole day on top of my home along with the noise was spectacular so I thought I might capture a snap to share with my remote coworkers. The result was not even mediocre; my phone captured a tiny insignificant object in the sky, not that awe inspiring machine that I just felt grazed my head IRL

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

crazynick4 wrote: post #33
781 wrote: post #7

If these incidents were aliens, I would expect a lot more reactions from the military, politic, and financial markets. All reactions seem muted. Secondly, why would aliens reveal themselves in such a way? Either land on the White House lawn or stay out of sight. This 50 year UFO appearances, with some but not really a lot of witnesses, don't make sense for me.

You're trying to reason about 'alien' intelligence in terms of human traits. What makes you think they are even interested in us at all? Maybe they just came here to re-up on potassium.

[deleted]

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#37

Post by shrimp_emoji »

mrob wrote: post #6

"Let me underline this again for you, the Nimitz encounter with the Tic Tac proved that exotic technology that is widely thought of as the domain of science fiction actually exists. It is real." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A blurry video and some eyewitness reports are not extraordinary evidence. Humans lie all the time, but very rarely discover new physics.

The Tic Tac thing is insane. As far as I understand, its evidence was:

- At least two radar systems (boat and then plane) registering it

- At least two IR/thermal imaging systems (the two planes') registering it

- At least four eye-witnesses registering something when looking for it (two people on each plane, seeing something large near the water's surface with the Tic Tac coming out and flying around)

- The ship radar registering it again, later, at a location it told the planes to go as procedure (but the planes didn't see it when they got there)

That's not bad. But here are the two extremes of interpretation:

1. Alien visitors are real, and it was an alien craft

2. By a probabilistic lottery, all of these systems happened to fail at the same time (the radar was defective; the IR was defective; the humans' brains were defective, sharing a hallucination), and there was absolutely nothing

I actually think #2 is likelier than #1, which is pretty hilarious. #1 is such a fantastic assertion, especially with our not seeing aliens in space (leading to the Fermi paradox), firmly outside the bounds of our experience. Extremely unlikely combinations of ordinary things happening (tech failure, hallucinations) is within our experience though.

And with there being room inbetween for "maybe there was a whale surfacing at the same time", "maybe it's elite government tech", etc., I have to err on the alien visitor-skeptic side.

Re: What Is Going on with UFOs and the Department of Defense?

#39

Post by rl3 »

SteveNuts wrote: post #5

My guess is it's the US military projecting. They've almost certainly got covert flying vehicles cruising around so naturally they'd want to know about any sightings of their own craft, or an enemy doing the same thing in the airspace. What better way to gauge how well the tech is working than by crowdsourcing the sightings?

Nick Cook wrote a book in 2001 entitled The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Antigravity. It's notable because Cook was an editor for Jane's Defense Weekly, a legendary and reputable defense publication of the utmost credibility.

A few years ago in a thread similar to this I discussed[0] and dissected[1] the book. My conclusion was that Cook is mistaken, but given incidents like this, and the fact he later uncovered a black UAV program, I always wonder.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957586

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971548

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