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Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#91

Post by mindcrime »

throwawaycities wrote: post #66

People forget these kinds of reports go back to the U2 spy plane in the 1950’s. When military members on Guam saw the U2 - while still top secret - take off at a 45 degree angle, the entire island was baffled and didn’t understand what they saw. It’s hard for anyone to wrap their minds around but once upon a time a plane taking off at a 45 degree angle would be as unimaginable as a craft with no heat signature (thoug…

People forget these kinds of reports go back to the U2 spy plane in the 1950’s.

Further back than that, even. AFAIK, the earliest "UFO" reports by military pilots were the so called "foo fighters"[1] which were reported during WWII.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#92

Post by scott_s »

avl999 wrote: post #43
scott_s wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mick West over at metabunk.org has covered a lot of these. He has a background in video game programming, which he uses when trying to reconstruct three dimensional spatial relationships from two dimensional videos.

Mick West- a game developer is in no position to question observations of trained top gun pilots and the vast infrastructure of the US Navy/Pentagon who analyze this kind of stuff for a living. If they can't explain then I am sure they have considered and debunked trivial explanations that West purports- in the NYTimes article they explicitly debunk the "weather balloon" hypothesis which has been proposed as a "ratio…

In an interview on The Skeptics Guide to the Universe (https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-829), West explains that part of the reason the Defense Department cannot explain these videos is rather pedestrian: the systems in use are classified. Quoting from the transcript (https://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_829):

"The problem is that the military don’t want to talk about this, partly because this is a classified system that these are recorded on. It’s called the Raytheon ATFLIR system. And it’s a fairly advanced targeting pod that straps on underneath the planes. And if you look for example videos shot with this on YouTube, you will find, basically, nothing—like a few really grainy ones, because even though I’m sure there’s tens of thousands of hours that have been shot with it, it’s all classified. So they don’t want to talk about it. And if they do analysis of it, that becomes classified by default. So they’re not going to release it. And they’ve actually explicitly said that they do not plan to release the results of the investigation into these videos."

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#93

Post by krapp »

typeformer wrote: post #61
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how would anyone find us? If we accept that the max speed in space is lightspeed, then we're basically hidden. Why? Most of our communication relies on radiowaves... even communication to/from space. Now looking at history, we've known and used radiowaves for maybe a 100 years, and considering the current enviromental trends, we might be using it for eg. 500 more, before we die out. Or maybe 10.000. Mathematicall…

Say the chance of developing FTL travel is totally minuscule but still inevitable given a long enough time horizon . Once that technology is developed by its very essence it spreads rapidly almost like the development of the wheel.

>Once that technology is developed by its very essence it spreads rapidly almost like the development of the wheel.

And the Fermi Paradox says that if it did, we would see evidence of its effects... but we don't, which imples FTL isn't even remotely possible.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#94

Post by 252452d »

zozbot234 wrote: post #79
throwkeep wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, that's apparently coming, assuming Sam is correct about his source being reliable. If that's the case, what we're seeing now is a slow rollout. Presumably to get the population comfortable with officials talking about UFOs, instead of jumping immediately from denial to confirming alien tech.

That's the point, there's always been "trusted sources" from wherever claiming that exciting disclosures were just around the corner. Like I said, it's the same old. If anything, this official report is evidence to the contrary because what better place to start revealing this stuff if there was anything at all to it? But no, for the benefit of any exobiologists in the audience, it even goes out of its way to argue a…

...you continue to talk after already revealing that you don't even know the basics of the topic.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#95

Post by oblib »

dragonwriter wrote: post #84
oblib wrote: post #82

This got buried too fast. It's not like this is some fringe subject based on bullshit. There is concrete proof of something and it's a current topic of wide interest. Personally I like reading what others here think about this. None of us "know" what's behind this but it's not a leap for me to think I can learn from what others here offer on it, or that someone here gets it right. When I evaluate the places where I m…

> There is concrete proof of something unless you can complete that sentence with something more concrete than “something”, there isn’t concrete proof of anything.

There is concrete proof that trained fighter pilots saw and tracked something, and their ship's radar did too, and our gov says they don't know what it is.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#97

Post by kcplate »

oblib wrote: post #95
dragonwriter wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is concrete proof of something unless you can complete that sentence with something more concrete than “something”, there isn’t concrete proof of anything.

There is concrete proof that trained fighter pilots saw and tracked something, and their ship's radar did too, and our gov says they don't know what it is.

And our government would never lie…

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#98

Post by hshjtychb »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #86
edge17 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably going to get voted down for saying it, but Fox plays a lot of UFO/Bigfoot type of stuff. Clearly it gets rating, and the previous President got a lot of his ratings from the same audience as Fox so maybe there is some strategic play towards the Fox/Trump crowd.

Now that you say it... Yeah there seems to be a lot of "Your government is lying and hiding something from you, you can't trust it!" that they can conveniently extrapolate to cover other subjects, like "election fraud", or "lab leak theory".

The lab leak theory is being investigated by the Biden administration because it hasn't been able to be ruled out. Didn't you read the Vanity Fair article?

You want to hear some conspiracy theories?

Russian collusion was one.

The teargassing of Lafayette Square "by Trump" turned out to be a total lie (an internal investigation found Trump had no knowledge of the clearing of the square)

The death of Brian Sicknick on Jan 7th which was said to be due to an attack by a rioter, this claim was even repeated by House Democrats during the second impeachment, was a complete fabrication by legacy media

So tell me again how Fox promotes conspiracy theories? The ones I see are the ones in the front pages of the New York Times, CNN, WaPo et al

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#99

Post by blunte »

krapp wrote: post #93
typeformer wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say the chance of developing FTL travel is totally minuscule but still inevitable given a long enough time horizon . Once that technology is developed by its very essence it spreads rapidly almost like the development of the wheel.

>Once that technology is developed by its very essence it spreads rapidly almost like the development of the wheel. And the Fermi Paradox says that if it did, we would see evidence of its effects... but we don't, which imples FTL isn't even remotely possible.

But all our assumptions or beliefs about what is possible and what can/would be observable is based on our, well, current understanding of reality.

Since generally speaking, humans know or understand a bit more today than they did yesterday, it seems likely that there are things that today we think we know but do not know or know incorrectly. Thus, our rules about what is observable may be flawed. We may be missing evidence of other civilizations and visitors.

Given the vastness of time and space and the fact that we DO know that there is a lot that we do not know (as opposed to not knowing what we do not know), it seems more reasonable to err on the side of we-probably-don't-know.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#100

Post by oblib »

kcplate wrote: post #97
oblib wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is concrete proof that trained fighter pilots saw and tracked something, and their ship's radar did too, and our gov says they don't know what it is.

And our government would never lie…

Show us the proof that they're lying...
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