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

271–280 of 299 posts

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

#271

Post by thu2111 »

koheripbal wrote: post #264
hirundo wrote: post #5

> it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing – moving really fast right over the top of us. Vaguely Identified Flying Object

The article really jumps to conclusions. This missile shaped and moving like a cruise missile in a part of the US where they test missiles, was probably... a test missile. Especially given all of the hypersonic missile development going on right now.

I really hope nobody is testing cruise missiles by flying them close to civilian flight paths.

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

#272

Post by thu2111 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #46
geocrasher wrote: post #8

I think the proper term here is "Unidentified Flying Object" for a reason. The pilot clearly said it looked like a cruise missile. The notion that "Unidentified = Alien" is rather far fetched. The acronym should be more accurately called "Undisclosed Flying Object".

The way that "Unidentified Flying Object" and "Alien Spacecraft" have become synonymous is a remarkable pernicious evolution of language. It's a strange thing - I don't think there's any conspiracy to create a cult, just a certain bias in the use of symbols makes "I couldn't explain what that was" become "intelligent creatures from other worlds created this effect".

It's because UFO is never used to mean "plane of unknown precise identity or origin country". Other terms are used for those, like "plane with its transponder disabled" or whatever.

The problem is, when UFO reports occur they invariably seem to objects that cannot fly by any sort of conventional aircraft physics:

a) There are no wings. Ever.

b) They are often reported as moving slowly or even hovering, which missiles cannot/would not do.

Thus UFO has come to be synonymous not with its literal meaning of a flying object that doesn't light up with proper ID codes on radar, but a flying object that is not merely unidentified but unexplainable. Unexplainable Flying Object would be a more accurate expansion given how it's used. That doesn't automatically imply aliens, but the whole "secret military breakthrough" angle is no more falsifiable than aliens are.

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

#273

Post by reaperducer »

johnohara wrote: post #239
reaperducer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw all that, too (I even took a picture of it and make a joke about living on a missile range), and I think you're reading too much into this. Those contrails do not indicate more aircraft. They indicate favorable conditions for the formation of contrails. And I wouldn't call it "very" unusual. It happens about every month or so, and more often at this time of year.

One contrail in particular took a sharp turn from the southeast and headed directly for Vegas. Its shape is what made me look up to discover everything else going on. It has been very windy for many months, along with drought conditions, so the skies here have been clear. No monsoon to speak of either. I found it unusual given what seems to be the new "normal" of clear skies the past couple of years.

Yeah, the monsoon failure was a disappointment this year. But it happens.

I check the humidity every day, and it's been elevated on and off for the last few weeks. But that's here at the surface. What happens at the level that jets fly is entirely different weather.

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

#274

Post by AtlasBarfed »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #263
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are aliens, we are in deep shit. There are two poles: Either the aliens are extremely rapacious, or very enlightened. If they're rapacious, we are weak annoying ants to be crushed. If they're enlightened, a cursory examination of our history and treatment of the world would show that we are extremely rapacious, and need to be contained or destroyed. So no matter where on that continuum, we are either destroy…

Do you worry about how rapacious a cockroach is on a distant island in the middle of the ocean? Even if, one day, you decided to visit that island and see what this distant place was like, would you feel compelled to seek out the cockroach and destroy it? Would you worry about the possibility that a million years from now the cockroach might develop the technology to escape its island and challenge you?

A million years?

Again, they'd know the future tech path forward better than we, but I'd see a "cockroach" that went from basic agriculture to nuclear weapons and launching rockets into space within 100 years.

We've had the tech to be a significant solar system race for 60 years now. If the military budget were allocated to space development we'd have a full fledged space civilization and manufacturing base by now.

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

#275

Post by kelnos »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #262
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…

>Why poo poo it? That's what I don't understand. I think many people take a certain comfort in the assumption that we basically have the universe and the nature of reality figured out. They can accept the possibility that there may be some microbes buried deep on Mars, because it doesn't disrupt their world view or understanding of the nature of reality. But to consider the possibility that there are actually "alien"…

> I think many people take a certain comfort in the assumption that we basically have the universe and the nature of reality figured out.

People have that assumption? That's... a pretty terrible assumption, and even a cursory read of some pop-sci articles is enough to tell you there's a ton we don't know. I'm just not convinced that most people assume we know these things.

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

#276

Post by StanislavPetrov »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #274
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you worry about how rapacious a cockroach is on a distant island in the middle of the ocean? Even if, one day, you decided to visit that island and see what this distant place was like, would you feel compelled to seek out the cockroach and destroy it? Would you worry about the possibility that a million years from now the cockroach might develop the technology to escape its island and challenge you?

A million years? Again, they'd know the future tech path forward better than we, but I'd see a "cockroach" that went from basic agriculture to nuclear weapons and launching rockets into space within 100 years. We've had the tech to be a significant solar system race for 60 years now. If the military budget were allocated to space development we'd have a full fledged space civilization and manufacturing base by now.

If you were a civilization that was a million years (or tens of millions of years) farther down the tech road from us, perhaps you wouldn't view a small outpost of intelligent apes that are barely able to visit their own nearby moon as a threat. The larger point is that its far from certain that alien beings would see us only as either a threat or a useful commodity. Both are possibilities but both are from from the only possibilities.

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

#277

Post by therealdrag0 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #243
therealdrag0 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Although I've never personally seen a UFO, I've heard enough stories to believe it. Reminds me of growing up in fundamentalist religious communities where it was commonplace to hear of physical miracles. All sorts of people had stories of God healing people for example. And yet it never happened around me or on film, despite me spending over a thousand hours at religious services as the like. Eventually I realized…

But do you believe in evolution? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgk8UdV7GQ0

LOL thanks for the clip.

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

#278

Post by ASalazarMX »

LinuxBender wrote: post #252
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…

In the off chance you pass one again, would you consider mounting go-pro's on your plane, or one of those fancier ones that gets 360 degrees some bush-plane youtubers are using? I don't have a link handy to the model of camera.

There are dirt cheap HD dash cameras that would work nearly as well.

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

#279

Post by ASalazarMX »

nabla9 wrote: post #153
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…

(a) They are common, lots of stories. (b) Completely impossible to get good video about them. a & b => bs

Well, if these were high altitude drones designed to be hard to see, the lack of good video is expected.

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

#280

Post by ASalazarMX »

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…

> 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?

The joys of having radio control. As a driver, I find a dash camera very valuable for the rare occasions I've needed it, but maybe pilots think "radio control knows where everyone is flying, and even if there's any accident, the black box will survive. That's all I need".

Post reply on HN