US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs • Hacker News Board

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#401

Post by baja_blast » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

TechBro8615 wrote: post #340

bamfly wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's aliens" is just about the least plausible explanation other than "god did it". I'm pretty sure several other sci-fi bullshit explanations are more likely than "aliens are real, have tech we couldn't dream of that relies on our model of reality being totally broken, give enough of a shit about us to visit but not enough to do anything else, and are extremely hard to detect except, for no good reason, in this one…

I'd even argue that "breakaway human civilization living in underground bunkers on Earth" is more plausible than aliens, just because of the vast travel time required to move between star systems within the currently known laws of physics. Both situations - aliens and breakaway civilizations - are incredibly unlikely bordering on impossible. But at least one of them doesn't require breaking any laws of physics.

Warp drives and wormholes do not necessarily break the laws of physics. Sabine Hossenfelder does a good job explaining why the limits imposed by special relativity are not valid arguments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw

As for a breakaway civilization, don't you think people would notice resources missing or the insane usage of resources by what would have to be a massive civilization be noticed?

If you take the claims at face value, that these things operate as if inertia does not apply already "breaks physics". And if that is the case ET would make more sense than mole people.

But it is also possible there is nothing to this at all. For me it's ET or a Psyop.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#402

Post by fsn4dN69ey » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

1970-01-01 wrote: post #196

fsn4dN69ey wrote: post #179

Let's look at this as rationally as possible: People have been claiming to see UFOs for years, ever since the popularization in mass media with the start of "the war of the worlds". In nearly all cases, even (at the time) credible sightings were advanced weapons programs. Additionally, with the proliferation of everyone having access to relatively high quality cameras, the amount of "legitimate" sightings has dropped…

I would put weight on this if it were to re-occur. The navy has done lots and lots and lots and lots of drills since 2004. Nothing like this has magically re-appeared.

If we only want to go off of verified sources, of course it's all classified since we can only trust the military to provide us information on this as far as veracity goes. Based on the official, released, declassified videos from the Pentagon, it happened in 2004, 2014, and 2015 AT LEAST.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos

I totally understand the skepticism and want to reiterate that I am not nor do I want to be a "UFO guy". It is also especially hard to prove, because there are so many outs. One could ask for photos, and then if photos are provided, they're photoshopped/doctored/not high quality enough (which is the case 99.99999999% of the time), and then if they're provided from the government then it's not real because it's a one-off situation e.g. lone wolf, and if there's multiple then it's a psyop/disinformation, and then if they provide a witness or a whistleblower then they're crazy and a nutjob, but if they provide multiple it's just part of the conspiracy, etc etc.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#403

Post by gpm » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:34 PM UTC

jrumbut wrote: post #233

theptip wrote: post #215

This is a push from Congress to force programs into the open that are secretly capturing Russian/Chinese UAVs right? Folks on the committees are angry that China is trolling US Navy vessels with UAVs and this isn’t being publicized. The “non-earth” origin is the smokescreen, “exotic” covers foreign secret research projects? Something a bit convoluted like this is orders of magnitude more probable in my world model. (…

I'd like to point out a couple of things. One is that, while this is written like a straight news article (until the last paragraph), this is in The Hill's Opinion section. In the past, I have seen this publication allow people of questionable credibility to post in their Opinion section. I have no idea who this writer is, but they are not a news reporter (or they weren't acting as one when they wrote this piece). Th…

It seems like all the author has written about in the past 10 months (at least that muckrack knows about) is UFOs

https://muckrack.com/marik-von-rennenkampff/articles

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#404

Post by dekhn » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

bloopernova wrote: post #351

joshuahedlund wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and neve…

I'd love to look at this solar system panopticon that you apparently have access to. We know vanishingly little about the day to day movements of the largest solar system objects. Anything smaller than a medium city is incredibly difficult to find and track.

we can predict the forward trajectory of nearly every major solar system object using first principles math and experimental observations and it predicts for years into the future; every time we find another object in the solar system, we add its position and mass and the model gets slightyl more accurate.

"""As of DE421, perturbations from 343 asteroids, representing about 90% of the mass of the main asteroid belt, have been included in the dynamical model"""

Using polynomial interpolation you can get more or less 100meter level accuracy for any major object at any time. If there are remaining large masses that we haven't identified, they must be fairly small, far, and very dark.

(this is one of the most important achievements in human history and represents one of the longest scientific/religious activities; people have been predicting orbital paths for thousands of years.)

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#405

Post by tashoecraft » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #376

tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic) When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited? I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an “expert” in the area (having worked on those sensor systems and seen tons of footage in a former life) and I think it’s a legitimate object of some sort [1]. Though I don’t believe it’s extraterrestrial. 1. Eg. The footage of a purported object speeding right ov…

VFX artists react had a pretty good video where they're pretty sure the footage over the ocean is just a bird. The oddness is due to the camera optics and the vessel that's recording it traveling extremely fast.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#406

Post by Nihilartikel » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

bloopernova wrote: post #351

joshuahedlund wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and neve…

I'd love to look at this solar system panopticon that you apparently have access to. We know vanishingly little about the day to day movements of the largest solar system objects. Anything smaller than a medium city is incredibly difficult to find and track.

I've heard from some very well known and credible sources that there is a nice china teapot orbiting somewhere between the asteroid belt and mars. maybe the UFOs are investigating it's provenance.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#407

Post by NotSuspicious » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

heavyset_go wrote: post #346

100721 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this context, it actually makes sense to think in a human-centered way. Consider how many planets are capable of supporting intelligent (as we know it). Now suppose we detect evidence of industrial behavior (certain pollutants, nuclear detonation, etc). Would we not laser focus on that one planet and observe it with everything we have - including sending reconnaissance drones? Furthermore, would we not want to avo…

> Also, it would be trivial to avoid detection in our own solar system. Duck behind a moon or planet, or just quietly float in the blackness of space, and no earthling will ever see you. Feels like we're approaching a God of the gaps scenario here, but with aliens.

Comparing "God-of-the-gaps" to the UAP/UFO Phenomenon only makes sense if there is abundant, first-hand evidence for God that goes back several generations at least, is seen in numerous, opposing human-cultures and only can be ignored by debunking paradigms that vacillate wildly between a smug misunderstanding of pop-epistemology and the deeply, irrationally conspiratorial.

Actually, now that you mention it . . .

https://www.ufohastings.com/

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/

https://www.uaptheory.com/

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#408

Post by pohl » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

shiftpgdn wrote: post #22

bbor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scandal are you referring to…?

The president's son allegedly committed quite a few crimes, including offering access to his father (The US President) for money. He has been charged for some of these crimes recently.

There's no way that could be Watergate-squared. The defining characteristic of Watergate was the audio tapes, so this has to be a reference to the "Bring some Cokes in, please" recording.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#409

Post by madaxe_again » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

joshuahedlund wrote: post #278

simmanian wrote: post #194

I like to entertain myself with the idea that perhaps what's driving the recent spotlight on UFOs is not that we are seeing/detecting them, but that we are detecting more and more of them. Maybe governments around the world have always known about objects flying/floating around. And that was fine because there are many natural causes that could explain these blips on radar. Many weather phenomena or man made objects…

All entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and neve…

“never appearing within clear view of cameras” - the signal to noise ratio is abysmal, but they have and do.

Thing is, accepting the idea of the extraordinary and inexplicable is rather difficult for humans. Doug Adams explained it pretty succinctly with his idea of the “somebody else’s problem” field, whereby you could paint a mountain bright pink, and it would become invisible to a majority of observers through its sheer jarring improbability and discontinuity with core beliefs about the nature of things.

My background is physics. I’m well versed in “weird but explicable stuff”, I don’t take anything on faith, and I have seen, with multiple witnesses, a truly inexplicable thing, without resorting to what a big part of me still regards as mummery. We all saw the same thing. We all talked about it, puzzled over it, frantically checked the news for an explanation.

The thing is, the people who I was with at the time, they all remember the incident, the sonic booms… and seeing a helicopter in distress, which was the story in the press later that day. The shift to “it was a helicopter” was amazingly quick.

It wasn’t a helicopter. I know what I saw - or rather, I know that I saw something that was absolutely not a helicopter, that fighter jets approached to then have disappear in a sudden cloud - and yet, a big, big part of me yearns to believe that I saw a helicopter, as the alternative is… well, posting stuff that you’ll read and will go “this guy is clearly nuts”, and me being inclined to agree, as again, it isn’t comforting in the slightest to hold in your mind the knowledge that things are not quite as they appear.

There’s even footage of the thing, freely available on YouTube, and there’s evidently no point in anyone removing it or so-forth, as anyone who thinks it’s real is clearly crazy.

I haven’t been quite the same since.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#410

Post by drumhead » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

Its gone past the point where people can just brush it off as the rantings of a crank. Congress are troubled about it. If there are organisations gathering alien tech without oversite and covertly, then imagine what they could do with it if they managed to activate or replicate it? They could sell it to enemies, use it for themselves, subvert governments. Congress have probably concluded that as well and are rightly alarmed.