Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
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Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#2Reaching relativistic speeds in minutes to hours and covering interstellar distances in days to weeks as proposed in the abstract seem to not be compatible - wouldn't a relativistic speed mean we'd need 4ish years to reach another star?
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#3Reaching relativistic speeds in minutes to hours and covering interstellar distances in days to weeks as proposed in the abstract seem to not be compatible - wouldn't a relativistic speed mean we'd need 4ish years to reach another star?
That depends whose clock you're using.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#4Reaching relativistic speeds in minutes to hours and covering interstellar distances in days to weeks as proposed in the abstract seem to not be compatible - wouldn't a relativistic speed mean we'd need 4ish years to reach another star?
The durations are expressed in ‘ship time’, ie the perceived duration from the pov of the ship. This is explicited further in the document.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#5Reaching relativistic speeds in minutes to hours and covering interstellar distances in days to weeks as proposed in the abstract seem to not be compatible - wouldn't a relativistic speed mean we'd need 4ish years to reach another star?
From the body of the paper:
> Such a craft accelerating at a constant 1000g for half of the trip and decelerating at the same rate for the remaining half would reach Proxima Centuri within 5 days’ ship time due to the fact that it would have been traveling at relativistic speeds for most of the trip (Figure 7B). However, for those of us on Earth, or anyone on Proxima Centuri b, the trip would take over four years.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#6Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance.
But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as plane, in "projected" large distance those speeds are enormous. And their agility is amplified in the same way.
The result is that pilots see "planes" doing impossible manoeuvres at impossible speeds.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#7Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance. But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as plane, in "projected" large distance t…
The radar and FLIR aren't as easy to 'trick' though.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#8Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance. But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as plane, in "projected" large distance t…
At least those videos [1] are just birds, see for example this analysis [2]. Skip to the meat of it, if you dislike the style of the video.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#9Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance. But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as plane, in "projected" large distance t…
Even with the video evidence from the Nimitz incident, all the calculations rest on the pilot's estimate of the vehicle size.
Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)
#10Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance. But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as plane, in "projected" large distance t…
The radar and FLIR aren't as easy to 'trick' though.
The analysis in this article is just plain bad; it came up in another UFO discussion about nine months ago. e.g. see here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27355333
The article is published in a journal the subject matter of which has nothing to do with UFOs, or flight dynamics or anything similar. It does so happen that the principal author of the paper is the editor-in-chief of that journal however; and the publisher of the journal has been on-again-off-again the lists of predatory publishers for some years.