A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition • Hacker News Board

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#191

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 5:14 AM UTC

areoform wrote: post #186

anigbrowl wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if this thing in the ocean is just a lump of heavy metals ejected from some remote cataclysm, that would still be interesting in its own right. Is it really so terrible that he wants to go and look at an actual physical thing from space instead of finishing his career staring at computer screens? Give him a few million dollars and let him have his field trip.

He deserves way more than that, but the issue isn't that he wants the field trip. The issue is that he's saying that it's to hunt for alien tech. There are missions all the time to recover remains of meteoroids that didn't burn up. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/antarctic-meteorit... But people don't exactly go running around saying that they're trying to find Thor's spaceship from that time O'Neill, Carte…

I honestly don't care if he hypes it for laughs, cold hard cash, or because he believes it; as obsessions go this one strikes me as harmless.

You do make a good point about conspiracy types, but I don't think it's necessarily his responsibility to educate everyone out of that. The best way to let the air out of that particular balloon is to send a small rover to the moon and land it near the original Apollo site, and then just drive it around beaming back pictures of stuff on the moon and attractive hi-res pics of Earth on a daily basis.

Does it break any new scientific ground? Nope. Will it do wonders for public awareness of/engagement with science? Hell yes.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#192

Post by wefarrell » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 5:29 AM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #184

wefarrell wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's an unreasonable hypothesis. At this point we know that the government has been cataloging evidence of advanced craft in the air and ocean that behave intelligently and are far beyond the capabilities of any major world power. A small portion of that evidence has been released to the public and officials with clearance (including elected officials) have stated that the evidence they've seen is signi…

> At this point we know that the government has been cataloging evidence of advanced craft in the air and ocean that behave intelligently and are far beyond the capabilities of any major world power. We do not know this to be true. We know the government has told us these things have been cataloged and observed. We barely know anything outside of (dis?)information that’s been slowly drip fed through small congression…

It's possible that this is government disinformation but that's an extraordinary claim. It requires a conspiracy that's far more elaborate than the theory that the moon landing was faked. The Brazilian[0], Chilean[1], French[2], Soviet[3] and many other governments have or had UFO programs and have disclosed reports and evidence. Additionally there have been mass sightings without clear explanations witnessed by large groups of people, for example the Tuscany football stadium incident witnessed by ~10,000 spectators[4] and the Ariel School UFO incident[5].

That's not to say these are aliens, there are certainly other possible explanations however none of them are very good and they don't dismiss the possibility that these are non human intelligent beings.

[0] https://www.gov.br/en/government-of-brazil/latest-news/2022/...

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/chilean-navy-id-mysterious-aircraft...

[2] https://cnes.fr/en/web/CNES-en/5866-geipan-uap-investigation... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29755919

[3] https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/ufos/C055...

[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#193

Post by wiml » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 5:35 AM UTC

ineptech wrote: post #131

015a wrote: post #11

To not bury the lead: His team studied data the government made available from military missile tracking systems, which conveniently also false-positives on asteroids. There was one in 2014 which slammed into the Pacific Ocean at a speed at least twice that of the speed stars around us move relative to the sun, which makes it likely to be extra-solar. Based on that speed & how much burned upon entry, they concluded i…

I get the "from outside our solar system" part, and it seems believable that sensors designed for missile tracking would get enough telemetry info to establish that. But the "tougher than iron" part? Based just on how much material was lost during atmospheric entry, as reported by sensors not really designed for that purpose? That's a tough pill to swallow. It would be really interesting to hear more about how much t…

I have a dim memory that missile tracking systems pay close attention to how fast an object decelerates when it hits atmosphere, as part of distinguishing real warheads from decoys. Maybe you can use that data to estimate how fast a rock is eroding að it falls.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#194

Post by SavageBeast » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 5:50 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #187

elcritch wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here I didn't even consider the chance that it was an elaborate ruse to grab a punch of rare-earth metals. Apparently my heavy diet of sci-fi and techno thrillers hasn't trained me well enough yet. ;)

I love how this would be the exact inverse of the Project Azorian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer

Theres a great documentary about that by the name 'Azorian - The Raising of The K129 on Amazon' - I think I bought it for $1 - you should give it a watch if you haven't yet.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#195

Post by NoMAD76 » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 6:51 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #191

areoform wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He deserves way more than that, but the issue isn't that he wants the field trip. The issue is that he's saying that it's to hunt for alien tech. There are missions all the time to recover remains of meteoroids that didn't burn up. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/antarctic-meteorit... But people don't exactly go running around saying that they're trying to find Thor's spaceship from that time O'Neill, Carte…

I honestly don't care if he hypes it for laughs, cold hard cash, or because he believes it; as obsessions go this one strikes me as harmless. You do make a good point about conspiracy types, but I don't think it's necessarily his responsibility to educate everyone out of that. The best way to let the air out of that particular balloon is to send a small rover to the moon and land it near the original Apollo site, and…

Sadly they will just yell louder "It's photoshoped!"

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#196

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 7:34 AM UTC

NoMAD76 wrote: post #195

anigbrowl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't care if he hypes it for laughs, cold hard cash, or because he believes it; as obsessions go this one strikes me as harmless. You do make a good point about conspiracy types, but I don't think it's necessarily his responsibility to educate everyone out of that. The best way to let the air out of that particular balloon is to send a small rover to the moon and land it near the original Apollo site, and…

Sadly they will just yell louder "It's photoshoped!"

Doesn't matter. You just swamp them with volume. The thing about mis/disinformation is that it moves to fill voids, not unlike gas rushing into a vacuum; falsehoods have a first mover advantage because it takes less time to make something up than to report it accurately. But if you're generating interesting content on the regular, conspiracy stuff gets sidelined.

A simpler example again than a rover would just be installing a camera on the Moon that points back at Earth and beaming a high-res whole planet image in real time. The lack of imagination in existing space projects is just deplorable. If you want a bigger science budget, a planetary selfie stick will pay off in spades. Flat earth people will dry up and blow away after a year of people being able to look at the planet they live on and see weather patterns, wildfires etc.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#197

Post by 867-5309 » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 8:49 AM UTC

googlryas wrote: post #37

adamzochowski wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world says "leading news story" and therefore "burying the lead". Lede is an american thing. Parent could have been a british or canadian neighbour with their british colourful spelling.

It's actually more about the lead paragraph, not the leading news story. If you bury the leading news story, that would imply putting it on page 13 or something. Buring the leading paragraph is putting the most important information at the end of the article where fewer people are likely to encounter it.

>To “bury the lede” (sometimes spelled “bury the lead”) means to delay sharing the essential information in a story, and beginning with secondary details instead. The term originated in the news-writing world but is now applied widely in all fields of writing.

"lead" in this context is pronounced led not leed

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#198

Post by LoveMortuus » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #182

LoveMortuus wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ferromagnetic matter is magnetic by nature. If you look at the periodic table you'll see that most of the elements are actually metals. Below Carbon there's a line which parts metals from semi metals and non metals. But with proper equipment you can detect non magnetic conductive materials. Not sure what's it called, but if you pass a magnet near eg. copper the magnetic force from the magnet will induce electricity o…

That's not what they're doing though. There literally going to drag a magnet across the sea floor and examine anything that sticks to it. Which will be largely iron, nickel, and cobalt. Were it to be alien tech, it probably won't have large amounts of those and won't stick to the magnet. At least it seems that way to me. Could you make a magnet that would create a strong enough attraction to pick up a piece of gold?…

Even though I would love to see any non-human technology, I would probably bet that they're just going to find a bunch of dust, rocks and of course, human trash.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#199

Post by klyrs » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

cplusplusfellow wrote: post #157

texasbigdata wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a magnet seems like not a top 5 idea someone would have.

Say you find the asteroid on bottom of ocean. What sort of hoisting apparatus do you propose we use to bring it ashore?

Tractor beam.

Re: A meteor or alien tech: Harvard professor plans UFO expedition

#200

Post by MichaelCollins » Sat, Aug 13, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

wefarrell wrote: post #192

TechBro8615 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point we know that the government has been cataloging evidence of advanced craft in the air and ocean that behave intelligently and are far beyond the capabilities of any major world power. We do not know this to be true. We know the government has told us these things have been cataloged and observed. We barely know anything outside of (dis?)information that’s been slowly drip fed through small congression…

It's possible that this is government disinformation but that's an extraordinary claim. It requires a conspiracy that's far more elaborate than the theory that the moon landing was faked. The Brazilian[0], Chilean[1], French[2], Soviet[3] and many other governments have or had UFO programs and have disclosed reports and evidence. Additionally there have been mass sightings without clear explanations witnessed by larg…

> That's not to say these are aliens,

Yeah no kidding. There's a huge ocean of difference between "We saw something in the sky and don't know what it was" and "We saw space aliens."

Governments are mostly saying the former while alien enthusiasts seem to hear the latter.