Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019)

>Is this sufficiently extraordinary? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY

I have no idea. I'm not going to watch some random video. Where is the associated published, peer-reviewed paper?

In the absence of hard data to support whatever the above purports to show, it's just as believable as this[0].

>Also, it's already conceptually possible to get around the spacetime problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive (This doesn't imply such a thing would be easy to build; but at least it's theoretically possible, maybe)

Is it? AIUI, the Alcubierre "drive" (it's not a propulsion system per se, but rather a mechanism for manipulating space-time, but that's something of a quibble) requires "negative mass/energy." From the Wikipedia article you linked:

   ...a spacecraft could achieve apparent faster-
   than-light travel if a configurable energy-
   density field lower than that of vacuum (that is, 
   negative mass) could be created.

While the math of General Relativity allows for the creation of such a "warp" field, there isn't any (known) mechanism (or the means for generating the energy concentration required) for creating them.

Creating an Alcubierre drive isn't just a matter of engineering. There's science that needs to be done to confirm that it's possible to create such a mechanism.

The fields required for an Alcubierre drive is (at least for the moment) just as speculative as "white holes" or Einstein-Rosen bridges, which can also be described in the context of General Relativity.

Given the ubiquity of the materials for life (Water, complex organic chemistry, etc.) in the universe, it seems incredibly likely that life does exist elsewhere.

Given the enormity of the universe, it also seems possible that multi-cellular life exists elsewhere too.

That such life could evolve with intelligence and a technological civilization is a much more iffy proposition (we only have n=1 WRT both life, multi-cellular life and intelligence).

There's also the problem of scale. Given the time scales involved (~14 billion years), if (apparent) FTL locomotion (whether via an Alcubierre drive or some other mechanism) is feasible, and there are other, more advanced technological civilizations in our galaxy and/or the larger universe, there should be hordes of aliens everywhere (cf. Von Neumann probes[1]).

Since we don't see that, it points up our ignorance.

All that said, yes it is possible (although unlikely in the extreme given our current understanding) that we have been visited by intelligent, extra-solar aliens.

But in the physics we do understand (almost certainly flawed and incomplete), anything is possible, including time travel into the past (with certain constraints).

But what's possible isn't what actually is.

I would be fascinated and very excited if/when we discover the existence of life (even single-celled organisms or some facsimile thereof) somewhere other than the Earth. I believe that there's is almost certainly life elsewhere in our universe.

But what I believe != what I (or anyone else) can prove.

Unless and until such proof exists, I will remain (random youtube videos notwithstanding) skeptical.

And so I draw your attention back to what I said in the comment to which you replied[2]:

   I'm going to wait for that "Klaatu barada 
   nikto[1]" moment before I buy into any claims of 
   intelligent aliens visiting our little world.

Which is to say that until some actual, provable, evidence exists, I'm going to hold my breath.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(1996_film)

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

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30595469

The study addresses this. If the objects can maintain their observed performance in space, then they could reach relativistic speeds so quickly that shipboard transit time between here and Alpha Centauri would be in the range of days to weeks.

> only the weirdos who don't have much to lose, report that. Survivorship fallacy... You don't know any of the reports non-weirdos would make if they could do it without harming their own reputations

But this is again a non-argument. It proves nothing and adds nothing of value. "Of course you are only hearing from bullshitters, reasonable people are afraid to speak" is indistinguishable from "reasonable people don't believe in this stuff".

CEOs believe in all sort of bizarre stuff and fads, what sort of evidence is that? And in any case you (someone I don't know writing on the internet) claiming a CEO he/she knows that claims to have a funny story about UFOs is meaningless. I hope you understand why.

> it's amazing what people will tell you when they feel you will not judge or shame them!

But that's anecdote. It's the job of science and scientists to judge claims. Especially contentious, extraordinary claims must be examined more closely. Since UFOlogy is a religion that attracts quacks, it must be judged extra super carefully and all non-alien explanations must be carefully considered first. But UFOlogists react defensively to this, they want their claims to be taken at face value, "with an open mind", another telltale sign of conspiracies ("don't be narrow minded!").

> The footage seems to be getting better and there's such a long list of reliable witnesses at this point that to claim otherwise is extremely willfully ignorant.

The footage of the Ghost of Kyiv was convincing, and it turned out to be DCS (a realistic flightsim). What you want is solid scientific evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence visiting us, of which there is none.

Not that there is realistic footage of extraterrestrial life either.

There is no long list of reliable witnesses nor solid scientific evidence, contrary to your claims.

Ya, in fact, I see very interesting formations all the time. One morning while making my coffee I looked out and saw what looked like a perfect flying saucer docked to the peak of the mountain. I snapped a photo and texted it to my BFF. She was cracking up about it. We thought for sure we could get it on that Ancient Aliens program for sure.

I took one frame, frame 384 to be precise, where the system has locked onto the object and tracks it. The frame is 428 pixels wide and high. The AN/ASQ-228 ATFLIR has three selectable fields of view and during the entire video it is set to NAR with zoom 1.0 wich means 0.7°. Dividing this by the frame dimension gives us the angular size of one pixel as 0.0016355°.

The system reports the distance to the object as 4.4 Nm or equivalently 8148.8 m. Here one could argue that the system may report an incorrect distance but for now I will assume that value is correct. Multiplying the tangent of the angular pixel size with this distance to the object gives us the pixel size at this distance as 0.233 m.

Finally we see that the locked objects covers an area 6 pixel wide and 4 pixels high which multiplied with the pixel size at the object distance gives us the camera facing object size as 1.395 m wide and 0.930 m high.

  width  = tan(0.7° / 428 px) * 4.4 Nm * 6 px
  height = tan(0.7° / 428 px) * 4.4 Nm * 4 px

I am not addressing your concerns now because they are not relevant for determining the size of the object. Any objections so far?