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Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#71

Post by gonzo41 »

dylan604 wrote: post #60
stult wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming this is all true, I wonder if this is how wild dolphins feel when they have an encounter with friendly human beings? It almost feels like playful behavior. Like the UAPs are flying alongside the fighters the way we might swim with dolphins. Tweaking our noses a bit too. "Look how much faster than you we are. Look how we know your secret little patrol point." It would be sinister and deeply threatening if pai…

My favorite theory comes from Douglas Adams where the UFO sightings are the alien equivalent of teenagers going for a joy ride making fun of the weird animals.

There's a good twilight zone episode where some alien kids come to earth to go camping. They get discovered, hunted to their death by humans and in their last move they activate a distress beacon. The closing shot is a alien craft dwarfing earth.

The Navy pilots report being jammed by the silver tic tac's, so one day there may be an escalation.

Or it could all be lens flare.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#72

Post by djokkataja »

motohagiography wrote: post #17

Makes me wonder what the psychology and politics of anti-extraterrestrial beliefs and rules are. It's very plausible other beings exist, but what necessary axioms disintegrate if a society comes to believe in aliens, and why is it important to isolate and shame people who suspect it? I can see how our dominant moral systems are rooted in the idea of human primacy and a single One supreme being. Recognition that we ca…

> arrest our own evolutionary development.

There is a sense in which there's not much point in aliens "uplifting" humanity: on our own, without external interference, we might develop in ways that would be hard for them to predict. And over the long term, the novelties of our self-guided evolution might prove useful to them.

For example, imagine if we had the tech to put a human brain in a cat (ethical questions aside). We'd probably then think it wouldn't be much good unless the hybrid had opposable thumbs, too. And then we'd think it'd be better if it walked on two legs. And so on, and so forth, until we have extra-hairy human beings with cat ears, which really wouldn't add much to our society (well, opinions might be mixed on that).

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#73

Post by TooKool4This »

sitkack wrote: post #63
dvh wrote: post #6

Here'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…

These VFX artists have a fun video where they analyze some Pentagon UFO footage, one of the hypothesis they have is that is just parallax. https://youtu.be/jHDlfIaBEqw?t=274

Which leads me to the question: why isn’t the Pentagon/Navy doing basic analyses and arriving at conclusions such as simple optical effects vs. UAP (aliens!?)

If you assume the Pentagon/Navy is not incredibly incompetent and can indeed understand things such as parallax, I’m led to think this entire change in stance around UFOs is some sort of shitty psyops campaign designed to obscure information around secret/next-gen aircraft that are being developed.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#74

Post by dylan604 »

gonzo41 wrote: post #71
dylan604 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite theory comes from Douglas Adams where the UFO sightings are the alien equivalent of teenagers going for a joy ride making fun of the weird animals.

There's a good twilight zone episode where some alien kids come to earth to go camping. They get discovered, hunted to their death by humans and in their last move they activate a distress beacon. The closing shot is a alien craft dwarfing earth. The Navy pilots report being jammed by the silver tic tac's, so one day there may be an escalation. Or it could all be lens flare.

Lens flares are a possibility, but my favorite is swamp gas. If it's not aliens, then it might as well be swamp gas.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#75

Post by api »

jaqalopes wrote: post #33

It was news to me that in the Nimitz event ballistic missile defense radar was actually observing the UAVs in low Earth orbit days before the fighter jet encounter. Truly wild stuff. If I had to hazard a guess, these are unmanned (unaliened?) probes, the same ones that have been here for centuries or more. They may not even know or care what humans are or what we're up to. Maybe they keep dipping to the water to take…

"Unaliened" probes are far more likely than EBEs given the extreme distances between stars. Hundreds to thousands of years flight time is a problem for any biology even close to ours but an AI can just turn itself off during the trip.

It could be programmed to just observe and occasionally sample interesting biology and stream data back to home base.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#76

Post by the_af »

motohagiography wrote: post #48
the_af wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that such a thing as "anti extraterrestrial" belief exists. Here's two beliefs/points of view that are compatible: 1. There's a very high chance there's life out there in the universe. There may even be intelligent life, too. 2. It's unlikely extraterrestrial intelligent life will be able to reach Earth. Most reports of UFOs are either made up bullshit or the human brain finding patterns where there are…

Regarding whether the anti- view exists, two points. The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them. The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias. As an experiment, let'…

> The first is almost every sighting story comes with how their commanding officers and authorities silenced them.

This is a telltale symptom of quacks and cranks. "My truth is being suppressed". The more normal explanation of superiors telling someone to shut up is either because it's top secret information about military tech or plain old bullshit. Only quacks come to the conclusion that "they want to shut me up". In fact, it's one of the items in the crackpot index.

> The second is I would suggest that if I were a scientist who implied something originated from an extraterrestrial advanced civilization, I would be actively isolated and discredited, which to me implies a very strong anti-ET bias

This has trivial counterexamples: SETI exists and it's a real scientific undertaking, if low priority. There's also the search for extraterrestrial life (either existing or traces of past life) in Mars. None of these are met with scorn.

But also, as a sibling comment mentioned: UFOlogy is the realm of woo. Therefore, before making assertions about ET life you must have really solid evidence and the patience to weather the association with woo and quackery, but this is not an anti-ET stance, but rather an anti-woo one.

Who wants to be associated with some weirdo claiming he was sexually abused by space aliens?

But if you have solid proof of real phenomenon, instead of shaky footage and unreliable witnesses, it would be a major scientific achievement.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#78

Post by the_af »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #50
the_af wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that such a thing as "anti extraterrestrial" belief exists. Here's two beliefs/points of view that are compatible: 1. There's a very high chance there's life out there in the universe. There may even be intelligent life, too. 2. It's unlikely extraterrestrial intelligent life will be able to reach Earth. Most reports of UFOs are either made up bullshit or the human brain finding patterns where there are…

I expect those doing the laughing couldn't possibly be fooling themselves about their motivations. Only other people do that. It's obvious there's a huge amount of woo around all of this, but it's equally obvious there are real phenomena which are unexplained. For example, the Hessdalen Lights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights The scientific approach is to collect data and generate theories which try to…

> I expect those doing the laughing couldn't possibly be fooling themselves about their motivations. Only other people do that.

That's a non-answer.

> but it's equally obvious there are real phenomena which are unexplained.

Yes, that's how the natural world works, and it's science's mission to try to understand it.

There's almost no logical connection or implication from "unexplained phenomena" to "evidence of extraterrestrial life".

> For example, the Hessdalen Lights.

Well, the case for ET life there is really tenuous and the people and organizations jumping to that conclusion are suspect.

> The scientific approach is to collect data and generate theories which try to explain it.

Yes, and UFOlogists really fail to understand this. Or rather, they do not want to, because for various reasons they cling to their need for intelligent ET life visiting us and abducting people or doing flyovers over their houses.

> Meanwhile we have no idea what alien intelligence would be like, or what it would be capable of.

We do have some ideas. The universe of possibilities for intelligent life is finite.

If your ET life is unrecognizable as such, uninterested in meaningful interaction with us, and essentially invisible to our perception, then that's... a not very interesting perspective, is it? By all means it's indistinguishable from the nonexistence of ET life, except maybe in a faith-like sort of manner, which is uninteresting to science.

In many ways UFOlogy is a modern religion.

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#79

Post by viscanti »

zw123456 wrote: post #66

Just to level set, I am NOT saying that ET's do not exist. But, I have personally seen a UFO or Unexplained blah blah, double speak thing. I live near Seattle, with a beautiful view of Lake Washington facing East and a wonderful view of Mt. Rainier, the location of the first documented UFO sighting. One beautiful sunny summer day, I was sitting out on my deck relaxing and I saw a UFO near Mt. Ranier, a bit south of t…

So flying objects remain unidentified until they're identified?

Re: Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

#80

Post by corndoge »

viscanti wrote: post #79
zw123456 wrote: post #66

Just to level set, I am NOT saying that ET's do not exist. But, I have personally seen a UFO or Unexplained blah blah, double speak thing. I live near Seattle, with a beautiful view of Lake Washington facing East and a wonderful view of Mt. Rainier, the location of the first documented UFO sighting. One beautiful sunny summer day, I was sitting out on my deck relaxing and I saw a UFO near Mt. Ranier, a bit south of t…

So flying objects remain unidentified until they're identified?

Yes, convention is to refer to them as unidentified unless they're identified.
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