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Why Look at Flying Saucers?

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Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#61

Post by dplavery92 »

jordwest wrote: post #19
ansible wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did used to entertain the idea of aliens visiting this solar system. And then I better understood the stupendous energy requirements for a two-way trip to even the very closest neighboring solar system. And it is just not practical, even for a civilization at the end of the technology development tree. We might see one-way probes, but they are as likely to be a part of hegemonizing swarm, looking to convert all usa…

> even for a civilization at the end of the technology development tree. How do we know what the end of the technology development tree looks like? There are just so many mysteries that remain within our current understanding of science, we can’t say for sure that it’s not easy (for example) to bend space time or some other possibility that makes faster than light travel possible. Quantum entanglement, for example, b…

While I would also not presume to know how different our understanding of the universe may look in hundreds (or thousands!) of years, I do draw some exception to the following comment:

>Quantum entanglement, for example, breaks many of our assumptions about the impossibility of FTL travel.

Quantum entanglement can produce correlated measurements between systems, even when the entangled systems are separated by large distances. In a sense, this can be used to measure the state of an entangled system at great displacement "faster" than it would take light to travel from that distant system to the observer. However, the state of the entangled systems is prepared before the systems are separated from one another (at much less than the speed of light.) Any attempt to change the state of one of the entangled systems (at a distance) breaks the entanglement. Entanglement cannot be used to communicate information from one point to another faster than the speed of light. It certainly doesn't allow FTL transfer of matter/energy.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#62

Post by jordwest »

dplavery92 wrote: post #61
jordwest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even for a civilization at the end of the technology development tree. How do we know what the end of the technology development tree looks like? There are just so many mysteries that remain within our current understanding of science, we can’t say for sure that it’s not easy (for example) to bend space time or some other possibility that makes faster than light travel possible. Quantum entanglement, for example, b…

While I would also not presume to know how different our understanding of the universe may look in hundreds (or thousands!) of years, I do draw some exception to the following comment: >Quantum entanglement, for example, breaks many of our assumptions about the impossibility of FTL travel. Quantum entanglement can produce correlated measurements between systems, even when the entangled systems are separated by large…

> However, the state of the entangled systems is prepared before the systems are separated from one another

Isn’t the state still a probabilistic one at that point though? As in it’s not until it’s observed later that both particles instantaneously collapse into a correlated state. But the precise outcome of the observation isn’t determined before they’re separated.

My understanding of quantum mechanics is far too limited to really dive into this, but my point isn’t that it enables FTL communication or travel directly.

Rather my understanding is that it appears to break our previous assumptions - physicists haven’t yet settled on a way to unify relativity and quantum physics [1] which leaves many possibilities open. We still just don’t know enough to say it’s definitely impossible.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_time

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#63

Post by dplavery92 »

jordwest wrote: post #62
dplavery92 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would also not presume to know how different our understanding of the universe may look in hundreds (or thousands!) of years, I do draw some exception to the following comment: >Quantum entanglement, for example, breaks many of our assumptions about the impossibility of FTL travel. Quantum entanglement can produce correlated measurements between systems, even when the entangled systems are separated by large…

> However, the state of the entangled systems is prepared before the systems are separated from one another Isn’t the state still a probabilistic one at that point though? As in it’s not until it’s observed later that both particles instantaneously collapse into a correlated state. But the precise outcome of the observation isn’t determined before they’re separated. My understanding of quantum mechanics is far too li…

>Isn’t the state still a probabilistic one at that point though? As in it’s not until it’s observed later that both particles instantaneously collapse into a correlated state. But the precise outcome of the observation isn’t determined before they’re separated. This is correct.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#64

Post by withinboredom »

dplavery92 wrote: post #61
jordwest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> even for a civilization at the end of the technology development tree. How do we know what the end of the technology development tree looks like? There are just so many mysteries that remain within our current understanding of science, we can’t say for sure that it’s not easy (for example) to bend space time or some other possibility that makes faster than light travel possible. Quantum entanglement, for example, b…

While I would also not presume to know how different our understanding of the universe may look in hundreds (or thousands!) of years, I do draw some exception to the following comment: >Quantum entanglement, for example, breaks many of our assumptions about the impossibility of FTL travel. Quantum entanglement can produce correlated measurements between systems, even when the entangled systems are separated by large…

I’ve never looked too deeply into this, but why can’t someone use something like Morse Code to communicate? Say you had 50 buckets of entangled entities, that would get you 50 dots and dashes.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#65

Post by withinboredom »

cletus wrote: post #51
eitland wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this: it is way less than 100 years since we learned to use fission and fusion. Until the two first bombs were dropped it was either unknown or, to those who realized the potential: considered impossible with the technology available at the time. I wonder what is just out of reach for us today, or what scientists are secretly working on today. Also, one step ahead, like you I also think what we are capable…

Ah the "you don't know what's possible" argument. The rationale for the Dyson Swarm future it can be built incrementally, requires tech we basically have and can scale massively. The consequence is that it's not remotely subtle. These things have a distinct signature because the only way to get rid of heat in space is to radiate it away and that has a distinct IR signature. Given all this we can reasonably conclude t…

I think this kind of thinking leaves out some interesting logic.

1. Life, by its very nature, capitalizes on improbability. It cheers when the bouncy ball miraculously ends up somewhere no one expected and had an effectively zero probability of going there. It cheers when someone beats all odds. It cusses when the technology doesn’t work when it’s needed but worked every moment until that point. It sells when a stock unexpectedly goes high.

2. It ignores the fact that life is made up of individuals and some of those individuals will be sentimental. They will fight to the death to keep their night sky and keep things the same. To require the energy of the star is to have either a massive population or some tech (like an Alcubierre drive) that needs it. But if it’s population, then a very large percentage will probably fight very hard to forgo a Dyson swarm/sphere.

For that reason alone, we should be utterly terrified to find one, because to build one requires not only tech, but a culture that doesn’t value sentiment and/or FTL tech. Also for that reason, I expect 99% of civilizations to never build one.

I could be completely wrong. Probably am. But that’s my 2¢ and thank you for your comment. It was my favorite.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#66

Post by eitland »

tejohnso wrote: post #58
eitland wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this tells us is that the research had yeilded such results as Personally, if I was tasked with making sure everyone respected the American Army I'd make sure to hire a magician and keep that hire very very secret. I'm not saying there aren't any serious technical breakthroughs. But I'd still hire the best reliable magician I could get. After all, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from…

If I'm understanding your hypothetical correctly, this would require the American Army to publicly take credit for the "magic", not publicly announce that the "magic" is unidentified.

Actually not, if you fake it you don't want to do that because then people (including high ranking people) will start asking you for demos and it will become impossible to keep the secret.

If this is the case it is way better do like they do today and selectively leak stuff and then let everyone, friends and enemys, fill out the blanks :-)

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#67

Post by dplavery92 »

withinboredom wrote: post #64
dplavery92 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I would also not presume to know how different our understanding of the universe may look in hundreds (or thousands!) of years, I do draw some exception to the following comment: >Quantum entanglement, for example, breaks many of our assumptions about the impossibility of FTL travel. Quantum entanglement can produce correlated measurements between systems, even when the entangled systems are separated by large…

I’ve never looked too deeply into this, but why can’t someone use something like Morse Code to communicate? Say you had 50 buckets of entangled entities, that would get you 50 dots and dashes.

Because if you attempt to influence the state of the entangled bits--say, to set a bit to up/down (dot/dash or zero/one) state to form your message--you will break the entanglement. You can measure the states of the unperturbed entangled bits, and therefore know about the states of their distant entangled partners, but the message will be random. You could also influence the states of the bits while you create the entangled pairs, but then you have to carry them far away from one another (at less than the speed of light), so you won't be able to communicate FTL; you would just have a pair of messages in a bottle, so to speak.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#68

Post by jerf »

eloff wrote: post #60
jerf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to break the conversation clearly into two parts: Here's what could be true about aliens if we're largely correct about physics, and here's what could be true ignoring that constraint. The problem is people want to have really muddled conversations about that. The people having the second kind of conversation yelling at the people having the first kind of conversation is probably the most frust…

You're probably not addressing me specifically, but there is no yelling in my comment. I do think we have to ground any interesting discussion by what is possible within the limits of science. Otherwise we're just talking fantasy. For the most part, I do not think we should discuss the limits of engineering, that is what's practical or not, because we're nobody to say what is practical to a type II or type III civili…

"You're probably not addressing me specifically, but there is no yelling in my comment."

Yes, my apologies for the implication. I deliberately wanted to pick a more sensible comment to post under.

"For the most part, I do not think we should discuss the limits of engineering, that is what's practical or not, because we're nobody to say what is practical to a type II or type III civilization."

There's two aspects to engineering we can talk about; fundamental limits, and whether we can attain those fundamental limits.

If you look up the concept of computronium, you'll find a discussion of the fundamental limits of data storage in our universe, for instance. Proposing an alien civilization that exceeds those is stepping into fantasy. We can sensibly discuss what just isn't possible.

On the other hand, given that the "fundamental limit" is "the number of bits you can encode on the event horizon of a black hole", it's at least plausible to consider that no possible engineering project could ever create such a storage device. It's hard to talk about the "what is possible" side.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#69

Post by eloff »

jerf wrote: post #68
eloff wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably not addressing me specifically, but there is no yelling in my comment. I do think we have to ground any interesting discussion by what is possible within the limits of science. Otherwise we're just talking fantasy. For the most part, I do not think we should discuss the limits of engineering, that is what's practical or not, because we're nobody to say what is practical to a type II or type III civili…

"You're probably not addressing me specifically, but there is no yelling in my comment." Yes, my apologies for the implication. I deliberately wanted to pick a more sensible comment to post under. "For the most part, I do not think we should discuss the limits of engineering, that is what's practical or not, because we're nobody to say what is practical to a type II or type III civilization." There's two aspects to e…

Yes, I agree. We're probably not going to exceed fundamental limits.

However, some number of fundamental limits might turn out not to be fundamental or there might be a way around rather than through them. We can't be 100% sure of what's impossible, but it is stepping into the realm of the extremely unlikely, at least from our current understanding of the universe.

Re: Why Look at Flying Saucers?

#70

Post by shadowprofile77 »

cbgonz wrote: post #57
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. After seeing the declassified Navy videos [0] I'm not sure how much more extraordinary evidence we can get. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/28/pentagon-declassifies-ufo-vi...

Well... it really depends on how you look [0] at it [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M

I truly don't understand why everybody keeps referencing the Mick West debunking video of the UFO footage. I actually corresponded on the guy about inconsistencies in his own debunking claims and he gave no satisfactory justification for his extremely superficial arguments, which essentially focus on his own perceptions of inconsistencies in the footage itself and simply disregard weeks of repeated sightings, radar tracking and up-close eye-witness encounters between trained, professional pilots and the objects themselves in the air. These are pilots who on at least a couple of these occasions observed the objects from fairly close range, in broad daylight and had their observations at least partially confirmed at the same time by also professional operators of sophisticated tracking systems (radar etc) onboard the Navy's ships. In the case of the Nimitz "tic-tac" UFO events from late 2014 this happened especially, during weeks leading up to the brief video that was finally captured.

Mick West simply disregards all of this and in an email I wrote to him even claims that the weeks of incidents previous to the video being captured were "separate" events from the video because they didn't concretely, confirmably show the same thing.... What? An absurd conclusion.

Debunking with a critical eye is good and necessary but sometimes one gets the feeling that certain internet debunkers feel a need to debunk at all costs because that's their label, even if their own "rational" interpretations make leaps of logic much worse than simply admitting that something inexplicable was observed.

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