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

American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

viewfromthewing.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 299 posts

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#211

Post by awb »

noetic_techy wrote: post #187

Why poo poo this? This is what really irks me when people laugh this stuff off and spout off something about Fermi's paradox without even understanding it. Fermi's paradox only asks simply "if statistics say they are everywhere, well then where are they?" What if the answer is simply: "Zooming all around us and we occasionally see one". Period. The rest is assumption. Fermi's paradox does NOT presuppose contact. That…

We know that the government kept the SR71 secret in the 50s and 60s and the stealth bomber secret in the 80s and 90s. There’s a great book called Skunk Works that details how massive military aviation advances were kept secret for decades.

Now, we’re 60 years on from the Blackbird and 40 years on from the stealth bomber. We know the military has operated drones for decades and that Russia has hypersonic missiles.

I find it much more plausible that these are top secret man made UFOs. In 10-20 years when this technology is outdated we’ll probably find out what it really was.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#212

Post by snypher »

blhack wrote: post #168
soheil wrote: post #139

I'm so sick of the term UFO being applied to stuff like this. Even the pilot said it looked like a cruise missile but lo and behold the first conjecture in the article by the journalist is that it could be extraterrestrial and only at the end they say oh yeah it could also just be a military thing since you know there are a trillion military bases right under where it was flying over. I think we need a new term, mayb…

>the pilot said it looked like a cruise missile What percentage of commercial airline pilots do you think have ever seen a cruise missile?

I'd guess at least half. Anyone who was alive during Desert Storm could describe one, they were all over TV at the time.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#213

Post by mike_d »

bluesnowmonkey wrote: post #129
mike_d wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is absolutely zero chance a cruise missile would be fired without closing the airspace to civilian aircraft. The pilot was at 37,000 feet and said the object was above them. Commercial planes top out at about 42k feet and would have shown up on ADS-B. A U-2 flying at 60k would look like a long cylindrical object about the size of a cruise missile (in the same way a 747 looks small from the ground), and not show…

A320 and U-2 go the same speed. Also the U-2 has big wings and a big radar signature. Basically this makes no sense.

They go the same speed, but the U-2 is at twice the altitude.

Due to retinal persistence you will see the part of an aircraft that is longest in the direction of travel (the body) more clearly than the wings. Only military aircraft carry radar, commercial planes depend on TCAS which requires the other object to be transmitting a beacon signal.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#214

Post by slg »

akouri wrote: post #206
slg wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because "right over the top" can be a 2D descriptor of 3D space. We therefore have no idea how close this object was to the plane. It is entirely possible it was directly above the plane but high enough that it actually wasn't in commercial airspace.

There is no such thing as "commercial airspace." I think you're confusing Class A with commercial, as that's primarily where commercial airliners fly, but there's nothing saying that military operations can't happen there too, so long as they are IFR

I was simply using the terminology OP was using and explaining why "right over the top" doesn't mean there was potential for collision.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#215

Post by TheBlight »

oceanplexian wrote: post #123

I won’t be able to provide information that other people haven’t already but I have encountered one of these “aircraft”. I own a small light sport airplane and was flying between UT and CA at 12.5k ft and saw one of these pass 1,000ft below me not far outside of Reno. ATC didn’t call it so presumably they didn’t see it on radar. It was exactly as described, small, shiny, cylindrical, no wings, and fast. If I could gu…

What would you guess the dimensions were? Color(s)? Was there any vertical component to its trajectory?

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#216

Post by nanonan »

thomasjudge wrote: post #144

Aren't there other possibilities besides military (domestic or foreign)or alien? What about a civilian/hobbyist drone? Wasn't there a to-my-knowledge-unexplained "drone swarm" in Colorado recently?

One idea that I've entertained is that they are terrestrial biological entities, like maybe a blue whale or giant squid but more rare and possibly of a shadow biome.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#218

Post by trustdragon »

oceanplexian wrote: post #123

I won’t be able to provide information that other people haven’t already but I have encountered one of these “aircraft”. I own a small light sport airplane and was flying between UT and CA at 12.5k ft and saw one of these pass 1,000ft below me not far outside of Reno. ATC didn’t call it so presumably they didn’t see it on radar. It was exactly as described, small, shiny, cylindrical, no wings, and fast. If I could gu…

Is it possible this thing is like a cigar with a propeller rotates around the cigar so that you don't actually see there being a propeller because it's rotating? And somehow computer control maintains level flight, or maybe it's multiple propellers around the axis of the cigar.

Alternate theory: Boeing wheels one of these things out to buzz commercial aircraft and airports every time they have some sort of mishap as a PR diversion.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#219

Post by trustdragon »

It shouldn't be too hard for an interested private citizen of means to set up a grid og drones that automatically land and recharge and constantly record everything, passing it to a computer system that looks for these enormous objects.

I'm sure if it was real and if we wanted to we could obtain decisive visual proof in a way where the public was convinced that was not fraudulent.

Like why should we be spending millions of dollars on seti when the corresponding search for these kind of things on earth should be a lot cheaper and easier.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#220

Post by nabla9 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #183
scotth wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely things have changed between then and now. We're talking about visual phenomena, and we capture video constantly.

I'm a pilot (recreational, and my license is not current). Although I've never personally seen a UFO, I've heard enough stories to believe it (not implying alien but nobody seems to know what they are). I've never once recorded anything while flying, ever. And I don't know anybody who ever records while flying (I don't mean for long periods of time, I mean at all). Why would I ever think to do that? By the time I see…

Many private pilots have GoPro's mounted on their cockpits or even on their wings.

A380 has camera on it's tail, aerodynamic external camera system mounts are can be installed in almost all Airbus and Boeing models. Passengers have cameras.

There are satellites with radar, IR and visual range looking downwards.

Post reply on HN