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As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

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Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#221

Post by icare_1er »

supernova87a wrote: post #147

In grad school in astronomy, there was a fellow grad student who was extremely excited after a night's observations that he'd discovered something remarkable -- it was a long hoped for distant galaxy that appeared in his images that night, and had all the right spectral signatures because it appeared in different filters, different exposures, and you could see it there in the image files, raw. Turned out, it was nois…

Not at all. The tic-tac was recorded by radars; infrared from the plane; and seen by two experienced USAF pilots.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#222

Post by meindnoch »

hwillis wrote: post #6

Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe they have far more time in the air. It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest in our military capability. Even ignoring the technological implications of interstellar flight or the ability to enter our atmosphere without being detected, these objects are apparently massively more capable than any kind of vehicle we have. To them a fighter…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight...

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#223

Post by toss1 »

pmarreck wrote: post #198
smiley1437 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard)

Exactly how many eyewitness accounts, devoid of good physical evidence, constitute "Evidence" with a capital "E"? If this number is "infinity" for you, that is unreasonable.

It is the Santa Claus problem

There are mountains of evidence and billions of "eyewitness" accounts of Santa, including "NORAD is tracking him". The iconography, imagery, and tales are ubiquitous to the point of it being nearly an independent religion. Yet exactly 100.000...000% of those observations, photos, images are insubstantial.

I want to believe as much as anyone that there are technically advanced aliens nearby who are could and would help us advance.

But all I've seen so far is a lot of interesting and a bit overly credulous accounts, and some fuzzy evidence. And much of it can be accounted for by observer or instrument error. Maybe the classified material has something clear and unequivocal; that'd be nice.

Until we have something clear and revealing, lets investigate by all means. But until then, let's not jump to conclusions either way.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#224

Post by runjake »

cma wrote: post #106
themodelplumber wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are/were also pilots specifically going for that effect... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nox5_QStw&t=1082s This despite the existence of people like Rendlesham's Colonel Halt, and so on, is, indeed, a very interesting military-UAP venn-ecosystem. I think it's a fascinating combination to study. Military psychology also naturally disincentivizes "looking into things" (see for example Colonel Halt's thoughts…

Fravor admitted to the same kind of pranks on Joe Rogan.

Such pranks are very, very common. But they’re not something that would extend beyond the attention these events are getting now. Or even close to the point of.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#225

Post by themanmaran »

driggs wrote: post #214

> Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence. Occams Razor suggests that if these objects appear almost exclusively over US military facilities and US military training ranges, they're most likely operated by the US military. (Sorry to the Navy pilot whose security clearance is too…

Or they're observed over military facilities because that's the only location with a rigorous surveillance system.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#226

Post by likeabbas »

willis936 wrote: post #218
likeabbas wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most of this data is highly classified and not going to leak. We do have cameras everywhere, but I’m not sure how many civilian devices can capture a good video of something going Mach 15+. All I can say to you is to look into the last NDAA legislation. These former DoD officials have convinced congress members enough to include legislation to further study UAP and create a system for pilots to report t…

Much like any guiding principle in science, "it's never aliens" is a rule of thumb. Obviously no scientist rules out legitimate possibilities, but it's similar to math being riddled with singularities. It's a sign that more work is likely needed.

More work is absolutely needed. But in this case, let me quote the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence with regards to the data he's seen on UAPs: "Currently, the extraterrestrial hypothesis best fits the facts".

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#227

Post by nvarsj »

WalterBright wrote: post #210
snickerbockers wrote: post #145

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

Every time one of those fantastic items gets explained, it's always mundane and boring, and never dampens the enthusiasm for the next one. I recall one about B+W photographs of "wood elves" taken around 1910 or so by a couple girls. The girls insisted it was genuine. Photographic experts declared the photos were genuine and could not have been faked. When the girls were in their 80's, they finally confessed that the…

Quite a bizarre strawman [1] that doesn't prove your point at all. Here we have multiple professional pilots reporting similar events, with recorded evidence from the tracking systems on their fighter planes. And enough evidence that even Congress has authorised to look into it further. It probably is all some natural thing happening, but it's not some hoax by teenager girls in the 1920s.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#228

Post by cameronh90 »

suddenclarity wrote: post #170
llamaLord wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't tell if being sarcastic or not... But the vast majority of us carry an at least 12 megapixel camera in our pocket literally everywhere we go now...

This is my opinion as well but it should be mentioned that wide angle lenses on phones are quite terrible at picking up small things, especially in low light. I tried once 2-3 years ago when I noticed a bright light late at night from my bedroom window. I'm 100% convinced it had a reasonable explanation but it did bother me that I spent several minutes without getting a decent image/video of something my eyes could s…

My current phone (Pixel 7 Pro) has a camera so good that I frequently use it to see things at a distance that I can't make out with my eyes, or to see in the dark when I can't.

However, it does have instances where the images it produces are well below what I can see. I assume there's a large amount of AI clean-up going on that makes it do odd things when presented with odd inputs.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#229

Post by joe_the_user »

WalterBright wrote: post #210
snickerbockers wrote: post #145

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better. Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something…

Every time one of those fantastic items gets explained, it's always mundane and boring, and never dampens the enthusiasm for the next one. I recall one about B+W photographs of "wood elves" taken around 1910 or so by a couple girls. The girls insisted it was genuine. Photographic experts declared the photos were genuine and could not have been faked. When the girls were in their 80's, they finally confessed that the…

And two more details;

* Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of Sherlock Holmes was one of the boosters of the photograph. This sounds weird but there's about an Arthur Conan Doyle book that relates to reality in messy detail. There's generally no deducible explanation of random events, they're just random. And so the method of "excluding all other explanation" is generally worthless in trying to look at single events - actually "shit happens".

* I would claim that virtually anyone looking at the elf/fairy pictures today will see ... cardboard cutouts. Their two dimensionality is obvious when I look at them. But they fooled the people of their day because photography was quite new and people's visual processing had not adjusted to it.

Re: As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

#230

Post by SquareWheel »

pmarreck wrote: post #198
smiley1437 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard)

Exactly how many eyewitness accounts, devoid of good physical evidence, constitute "Evidence" with a capital "E"? If this number is "infinity" for you, that is unreasonable.

The number is infinity. There is a reason that data is not the plural of anecdote.

Once scrutinized, these phenomena are almost always explained by humans misinterpreting their instruments (either machine readout, or their own eyes).

Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth).

These people aren't idiots. Their brains evolved to recognize patterns as a survival mechanism. Arguably their pattern recognition is stronger than everybody else's. But when you factor in lack of familiarity with the scientific method, or inclination towards spirituality, or a simple willingness to believe in extraterrestrial life, it's not uncommon to hear stories about ghosts, angels, and aliens.

These stories do not stand up to inquiry. They have been tested time and time again and always fall apart under scrutiny. The reason that Bigfoot photos are always blurry isn't because he's camera shy - it's because when the photos are not blurry, we can clearly see it's not Bigfoot.

NB: I have no problem with believing in alien life in terms of say the Drake equation (statistically, it's probable!). I just find it highly unlikely of such a visitor reaching Earth.

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