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

#541

Post by TechBro8615 » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:15 AM UTC

mhoad wrote: post #533

TechBro8615 wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government lying to us and manipulating the population with psychological warfare is a much more germane, plausible, and historically aligned proposition than the suggestion that aliens are visiting earth. In fact if you assume aliens are visiting earth, then you must also assume the government has been lying to us about it. So either way, the government is lying. > It’s explicitly illegal Lol. When has this ever…

Obviously nobody is going to convince you that you have a complete crackpot view of the world, that’s kind of the definition of the situation you find yourself in. It’s just incredibly clear that you actually don’t have any kind of meaningful understanding about how the military or intelligence agencies work and you are left yelling about a world that exists in your mind. The entire comment is just Swiss cheese to an…

Wow, very convincing argument, you must be a professional spy with all your more-than-passing familiarity with intelligence agencies, I bow down to your totally rational viewpoint on the world where government agencies follow all laws and aliens routinely crash their flying craft for our venerable government agencies to recover and (legally, of course!) keep secret from us for seven decades.

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

#542

Post by kortilla » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:20 AM UTC

Loquebantur wrote: post #526

tashoecraft wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? I find it really remarkable how far behind the curve HN is on this topic. It's literally the nerdiest, most avant-garde topic of all. Yet here people behave like their own grandfathers. TheHill.com reports on Congress acting on the mounting evidence for ET craft crash retrieval programs illegally hidden from democratic oversight, people on HN discuss whethe…

> Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often?

No, that’s why it’s newsworthy. What’s your point?

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

#543

Post by revscat » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:26 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #472

JohnBooty wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's all people who heard something who heard something People with direct access to such classified materials would not legally be able to divulge details and especially not publicly. It would be a fairly quick trip to prison. This doesn't directly prove the claims of Grusch or anybody else, of course. But it is a decently persausive explanation for why it's always "people who heard something who heard something" an…

It's absolutely true that, if the USG were in possession of extraterrestrial technologic artifacts (ETA's, must credit me for this coinage), it would be illegal for people with firsthand knowledge to disclose them. But lack of firsthand evidence of ETA's does not constitute evidence of the existence of ETA's. It would be illegal for me to disclose the existence of a +4 Wand of Magic Missile, too, if such a thing exis…

False premise.

> It's absolutely true that, if the USG were in possession of extraterrestrial technologic artifacts (ETA's, must credit me for this coinage), it would be illegal for people with firsthand knowledge to disclose them.

This is not true. For people with knowledge of UAP or UAP-related programs Congress has instituted procedures for those people to come forward and be protected in doing so. Those mechanisms are what allowed Grusch to come forward without fear of legal reprisal.

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

#544

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:29 AM UTC

Loquebantur wrote: post #526

tashoecraft wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you assume, US fighter pilots get stumped by birds often? I find it really remarkable how far behind the curve HN is on this topic. It's literally the nerdiest, most avant-garde topic of all. Yet here people behave like their own grandfathers. TheHill.com reports on Congress acting on the mounting evidence for ET craft crash retrieval programs illegally hidden from democratic oversight, people on HN discuss whethe…

The Hill is reporting on the shenanigans of opportunist or dumb as rocks congresspeople who figured out there’s some demographic of marginal voter who cares about this.

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

#545

Post by nobody9999 » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:33 AM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #514

nobody9999 wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think you have it backwards. I think anybody who is remotely interested in this topic would love for proof of aliens to come out. It's just such an extraordinary claim, that their skepticism demands extraordinary proof. Eyewitness reports and low-res grainy videos are just never going to be enough, no matter who they come from. And that's how it should be. If there is real proof of aliens, it will be on the front p…

I believe that there's very likely intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, there are ~300 billion stars in just in our galaxy, and the number of stars in the universe are uncountable, one estimate is 7 x 10^22. Not all have planets, of course, and even fewer have planets in what is believed to be a habitable zone. But still, it's just unfathomable that in billions of years across billions of trillions of star sys…

You won't get much of an argument about that from me. Again, channeling Carl Sagan[0], "if there's no one else out there, that seems like a huge waste of space." That's a paraphrase but captures the essence of what he wrote. But that doesn't mean it's so.

We can be pretty confident that life as we know it has evolved elsewhere, given the chemistry involved, but intelligent, (and more importantly) life that develops technological civilizations is much less certain.

Detecting intelligent non-technological life is likely impossible unless we actually visit such a planet. Consider a world where creatures like dolphins or whales are the dominant species. No fire (okay, sodium reactions, but how do you create and store pure sodium ions?), so no metallurgy.

As I said, I'd need to see some pretty convincing evidence (even with the vast expanses of both space and time in the universe pushing in that direction) to claim that intelligent, technological life exists elsewhere. That doesn't mean such civilizations don't exist, but given we don't really understand how intelligence (as a prerequisite for a technologically advanced civilization) comes about, except in broad evolutionary terms, making such a claim is premature IMHO.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)

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

#546

Post by ickelbawd » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:36 AM UTC

gregw134 wrote: post #209

marcosdumay wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't move a sphere around by spinning it. You can only change your direction. Spinning around, moving uncontrollably inside a storm, with very variable speed are exactly things that lost balloons do.

There are whole ships powered by the magnus effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship

They’re sails in this configuration—nothing more. They harness existing force of wind. They get spun up and if they spin the right way they produce a force perpendicular to the wind.

The magnus effect is a byproduct of laminar flow of fluid/air around a spinning object. Without laminar flow there is no force. So that is to say if you spin a sphere really fast and it’s hovering in air without gravity and without wind it will not move because there will be no laminar flow to produce the magnus effect. So in order for your spherical craft to actually harness the magnus effect you would need a separate means of propulsion to drive you in the primary direction and harness the magnus effect for thrust in a secondary direction, ie turn.

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

#547

Post by jncfhnb » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:39 AM 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…

I find the gimbal one to be… really dumb. The navy releases a video called gimbal and doesn’t say anything. Later experts look at it and say, “looks like gimbal lock”.

And what… people don’t believe that the navy also concluded it was gimbal lock?

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

#548

Post by baja_blast » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 1:57 AM 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…

One thing about the object flying over the ocean people often ignore was the setting was at black hot, meaning the object was significantly colder than the water below. I have some speculate that it could be a bird but I can't see how a bird could be so cold unless it was dead.

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

#549

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #505

throwaway743 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is full of "I don't want to believe and/or can't". If it's legit, could people itt put down their confirmation bias and handle that we're not the smartest around, not top of the food chain, that our governments have lied to us and kept it wrapped sealed through compartmentalization/removed from oversight through third party contractors for decades, have hidden clean energy tech from tax payers so private…

Or alternatively, not. It's not grand conspiracy, don't pucker up, do continue to think about applications of Hanlon's and Occam's razor. A stoicism point of view here is that none of your wishful thinking of change would necessarily be good or bad, it's too early to say. And since this is a fantasy grab-basket of meme food, the most likely stoical outcome is that nothing to see here, move along is actually the best…

[deleted]

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

#550

Post by throwaway743 » Thu, Jun 29, 2023, 2:04 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #505

throwaway743 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is full of "I don't want to believe and/or can't". If it's legit, could people itt put down their confirmation bias and handle that we're not the smartest around, not top of the food chain, that our governments have lied to us and kept it wrapped sealed through compartmentalization/removed from oversight through third party contractors for decades, have hidden clean energy tech from tax payers so private…

Or alternatively, not. It's not grand conspiracy, don't pucker up, do continue to think about applications of Hanlon's and Occam's razor. A stoicism point of view here is that none of your wishful thinking of change would necessarily be good or bad, it's too early to say. And since this is a fantasy grab-basket of meme food, the most likely stoical outcome is that nothing to see here, move along is actually the best…

Let me know what you think after the batch of upcoming congressional hearings, new legislation, and new batch of whistleblowers with firsthand knowledge come forward to the public and congress.

Word of advice, read up and keep an open mind. This is just the beginning of what's coming.