Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSA UFO Documents Index

nsa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 167 posts

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#61

Post by subsubzero »

at_a_remove wrote: post #23
anewaccount2021 wrote: post #18

If you say there are civilizations thriving somewhere in the galaxy, you're Carl Sagan. If you say our solar system may have had aliens pass by, you're an eccentric. If you say aliens landed on earth, you're a crank. Why is the sanity of the claimant inversely proportional to the distance of aliens from Earth?

Briefly put: the speed of light. It takes a long, long time to get anywhere, because light moves at a relative crawl compared to the distances between stars, so it would be a long and energy-intensive process to visit another planet, especially given how hard it would be to detect a civilization there before you departed. The Earth didn't emit much of a signal on radio waves until about 1900, so even if the aliens we…

The speed of light is a constant but we are still very behind in terms of understanding the universe and physics, we still do not have a unified theory which bridges general relativity to quantum mechanics. We know next to nothing about dark matter(haven't found any yet), also in terms of energy production we have not achieved - room temperature superconducting and fusion reactors. We can barely get rockets outside of earths orbits, let alone to our closest celestial neighbor the moon. That being said, I think given our current technological shortcomings we are in no position to rule out 100% possibility of life from another world being here.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#62

Post by ryanmercer »

jerf wrote: post #30
mikewarot wrote: post #11

The next to last was the most interesting to me... it's gotta be an old April Fools in the NSA Technical Journal. It flatly states we've received signals from outer space, and posits a decoding of them.... https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/decla...

Intelligence agencies have internal decoding competitions and trainings. This sounds like one of them, simply framed around an alien transmission, and you're just looking at the answer key where it's assumed the reader is familiar with the frame. The entire "transmission" is at the end. To be honest, of all the things we could receive from an alien source, "They transmitted basic set theory and a periodic table at us…

>Intelligence agencies have internal decoding competitions and trainings.

They've done similar as recruitment initiatives as well, I remember one on Twitter.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#63

Post by FillardMillmore »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #17
INTPenis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a wild stab in the dark here but those redactions might have to do with SIGINT. Or in other words, how the UFO report came to be. Because when I saw this headline "NSA UFO Documents Index" hosted on nsa.gov, I realized why I don't care about UFO theories. Because even the NSA has given up. No sane person cares about this stuff. They will readily index it on their website to shut those lunatics up.

Agreed; that said, there's an Ancient Aliens tv series that acts serious but, I think, is mostly recognized for being hilarious...so frivolous I've actually watched it because it's just so laughable.

I was on my honeymoon with my fiancee and at the end of the night, we liked to relax by opening a bottle of champagne and watching Ancient Aliens. Don't get me wrong, both of us believe in the possibility of life in outer space but that show was funnier than most modern sitcoms.

Heck, even Monster Quest was more believable.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#64

Post by Pyramus »

I'm a bit surprised by the loss of nuance in this and the CIA HN thread.

UFOs doesn't mean aliens, and equating the two limits fruitful discussions about the actual phenomena behind them, which in my opinion are much more interesting, and, based on your prior, also much more likely, e.g.

* yet unexplained physical/weather phenomena (see David Fraser et al. evidence)

* secret military technology (see SR-71 sightings)

* ... ?

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#65

Post by Enginerrrd »

mikewarot wrote: post #11

The next to last was the most interesting to me... it's gotta be an old April Fools in the NSA Technical Journal. It flatly states we've received signals from outer space, and posits a decoding of them.... https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/decla...

I know exactly what this is though I can't remember where to find the source. It was an exercise they gave to a bunch of scientists and mathematicians to see if it was plausible that they could even decode the meaning behind an alien message, if one were ever found. (And also probably to provide some credentials for candidate experts to consult in such a scenario.) They did quite well. That said, the code itself was created by a human, so I'm not sure it has the value they think it does. One thing higher education in STEM taught me was that human thinking is actually really easy to spot. We, for the most part, really just use the same tired old tricks again and again in different contexts.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#66

Post by stretchcat »

lolsal wrote: post #52
jerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligence agencies have internal decoding competitions and trainings. This sounds like one of them, simply framed around an alien transmission, and you're just looking at the answer key where it's assumed the reader is familiar with the frame. The entire "transmission" is at the end. To be honest, of all the things we could receive from an alien source, "They transmitted basic set theory and a periodic table at us…

Why would that be the weirdest possible outcome? This provides a demonstration of intelligence, intent and understanding that starting with objective, science-based fundamentals which can be deduced (set theory) and observed (elements) seems like an _awesome_ wide net to cast if you're trying to communicate. It's not like they could compress a JPG and beam it over here in a way that wouldn't look like garbage.

I think "and that's it" would be the weird part. Maybe it's just because I watched Contact, but I would expect the basic demonstration of intelligence/etc to precede a more interesting message. The basic math and science transmission could be used as a Rosetta stone of sorts, to bootstrap that more interesting message. Otherwise what's the point? Maybe the aliens just want somebody else to know they existed I suppose.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#67

Post by marc_io »

Pyramus wrote: post #64

I'm a bit surprised by the loss of nuance in this and the CIA HN thread. UFOs doesn't mean aliens, and equating the two limits fruitful discussions about the actual phenomena behind them, which in my opinion are much more interesting, and, based on your prior, also much more likely, e.g. * yet unexplained physical/weather phenomena (see David Fraser et al. evidence) * secret military technology (see SR-71 sightings)…

Sure, people should at least use the more modern acronym UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), which is less descriptive and broader in scope than UFO.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#68

Post by gnopgnip »

avl999 wrote: post #14

At this point the existence of the UFO phenomenon is undeniable. The fact that congress attached to the covid relief bill that the intelligence services must present a report of everything they know about ufos within a 180 days tells you that something is up and they are trying to force the hand of the intelligence service. I also find it interesting that since retiring Harry Read has openly talked about the existenc…

It wasn't a covid relief bill, it was the yearly appropriations bill that included covid relief. It also included an update to the Intelligence Authorization act.

It doesn't require anyone to provide a report on everything they know about ufos, or report anything previously classified to the public. There is a broad change to reduce duplication and waste by sharing information on unidentified aerial phenomena between intelligence departments, and make a report on how this info is shared to the senate.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#69

Post by xanax »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #24
uhtred wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those planes look like UFOs and they wouldn't move in the same reported ways, either. I don't agree that it makes someone stupid to be open minded.

What does a UFO look like?

The stereotypical description is a circular object that can hover and make sharp directional changes. Usually they're described as having lights and sometimes as having no seams or visible rivets.

Re: NSA UFO Documents Index

#70

Post by fpgaminer »

motohagiography wrote: post #35

Went through the CIA one as well, and it's almost designed to be opaque and vague. UFO's create interesting ethical questions and can be useful thought experiments for contemporary issues. A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any other civilization these recent space arr…

I think this is a bit like us diving into the ocean to observe algae. We don't do it because we're concerned about its imminent sentience and potential to "cause trouble". We just do it because we're curious; we want a better understanding of our world and universe.

We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed "visitors". Us being a threat is unlikely to be even a single virtual particle of thought in their intragalactic quantum brains.

Post reply on HN