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Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

scientificamerican.com

11–20 of 102 posts

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#11
post #6

It is typical human self-centeredness to assume we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond. It is also mathematically silly to assume that of all possible beings over current universe timeline that we are the most technically advanced. We have only existed for a minuscule sliver of that timespan. That’s not to say that we are statistically likely to have been visited,…

Way to come up with reasons you're less "self-centered" than others because you have special insight into extraterrestrials.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#12
The media appears to miss that fact that something that happens in physical reality can become corrupted by the time it gets rendered to a computer screen. The complicated military systems are hallucinating now. Or am I missing something? Did multiple pilots see this thing with their own eyes from different angles without any technology in between?

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#13
post #7

Why is it mostly Navy pilots reporting the phenomena and there are not any data in the visible spectrum? Because the Navy has Project NEMESIS[0] in the works whose goal is to spoof instrumentation. 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secret...

I think Occam's razor leads me to the same conclusion. The only part that still has me questioning are the large number of reported visual sightings by the very same pilots reporting radar contact.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#14
post #7

Why is it mostly Navy pilots reporting the phenomena and there are not any data in the visible spectrum? Because the Navy has Project NEMESIS[0] in the works whose goal is to spoof instrumentation. 0: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29505/the-navys-secret...

Advanced Chinese or Russian sensor spoofing tech seems much more plausible than advanced propulsion tech.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#15
post #6

It is typical human self-centeredness to assume we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond. It is also mathematically silly to assume that of all possible beings over current universe timeline that we are the most technically advanced. We have only existed for a minuscule sliver of that timespan. That’s not to say that we are statistically likely to have been visited,…

But how would anyone find us? If we accept that the max speed in space is lightspeed, then we're basically hidden.

Why?

Most of our communication relies on radiowaves... even communication to/from space. Now looking at history, we've known and used radiowaves for maybe a 100 years, and considering the current enviromental trends, we might be using it for eg. 500 more, before we die out. Or maybe 10.000. Mathematically it doesn't really matter a lot.

Now look at the waves we've been sending out... a if we assume "the world ends" in 500 years, in a million years, there will be a 600 light-year "thin" shell of a 1mio light years sphere travelling away from earth, attenuated by the square law (twice the distance, 1/4 of the power).

What are the chances, that the thin shell of radiowaves hits some other culture, on some other world, in their "600 years of power", that are able to detect those waves, and actually come visit us (if we're still alive, which we're probably not).

Our world might be everything to us, but in a universal scale, our world compared to the universe is like an atom to our body... utterly insignificant.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#16
post #6

It is typical human self-centeredness to assume we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond. It is also mathematically silly to assume that of all possible beings over current universe timeline that we are the most technically advanced. We have only existed for a minuscule sliver of that timespan. That’s not to say that we are statistically likely to have been visited,…

Drake equation

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

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#17
The classified version of the UAPTF (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force) report on government knowledge of real UFO events is being given to select members of the Senate ahead of the unclassified version likely to come next week. The narrative seems to be “soft disclosure” with descriptions of the public report by officials confirming that there are numerous real UFO events, that defy conventional explanations (and sometimes known physics), and do not represent secret US black projects, or even technological leaps from US adversaries. Basically, the ET hypothesis and US involvement with the phenomenon going back decades is being put on the table in a serious manner. The next step after more public pressure and interest will be a potential deeper disclosure and the government justifying its need for secrecy regarding UFOS and ET’s with national security claims in order to win back trust and faith in government and the military. Credible military witnesses, pilots, civil servants, researchers and finally whistleblowers deserve the public’s praise for these new developments.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#18
post #6

It is typical human self-centeredness to assume we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond. It is also mathematically silly to assume that of all possible beings over current universe timeline that we are the most technically advanced. We have only existed for a minuscule sliver of that timespan. That’s not to say that we are statistically likely to have been visited,…

It is typical human self-centeredness to assume we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond.

I don't get the feeling that most educated people believe that "we are the only sentient beings with the ability to move ourselves around a plane or beyond". In fact, I'd wager that a significant portion, if not a majority, of such people believe that there likely is (or was, or will be) other such intelligent / sentient life in the universe.

But... what I think many (maybe most) educated people hold is that it is very unlikely that Earth is being routinely visited by alien intelligences. And I think the basis for that belief structure is rooted in the underlying physical reality of the universe, regarding distances between other worlds, and the speeds that can be attained to travel between worlds.

Simply put, it appears, based on what we know today, that even at light speed, (or a very, very large fraction of light speed), it would take around hundreds of years to travel back and forth to Earth from nearby planets that are suspected of being habitable. So even in the best case, where the aliens can travel at like 0.95 of c, and happen to be located on the very nearest habitable planet, it seems likely that they would have to be both very long-lived, and very tolerant of boredom, to travel back and forth between Earth and their world.

Impossible? No. Likely? Hmm...

OTOH, it seems like we do keep discovering more and more new "possibly habitable worlds" and the "best case" range to such a world keeps shrinking. And there's no particular reason I know of to think that "aliens" might not live dramatically longer lives than us, and maybe they are in fact fine with multiple hundred year jaunts around the universe. Or maybe they've invented the sci-fi trope "suspended animation". So never say never, I guess.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#19
Given that people (and governments/military) have believed in many phenomena that were later found to have a mundane explanation I'd expect reports like this in a world where there aren't aliens flying around.

That, and it making no sense for us to only see evidence for them on earth but not when looking at space, and that there's very few objectives they can be achieving with big ships flying around here for decades (observation can be achieved with tiny machines, communication can be more direct etc.) the mundane explanations are many times more likely from where I sit.

Re: Experts Weigh in on Pentagon UFO Report

#20
The latest episode of the Megyn Kelly Show interviews Lue Elizondo, who headed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification program.[0]

According to the article, the report will say:

"...the assessment has come up short of explaining what UAP are and that it provides no evidence to link them with any putative alien visitation—despite reviewing more than 120 incidents from the past 20 years. The report’s firmest conclusion, it seems, is that the vast majority of UAP happenings and their surprising maneuvers are not caused by any U.S. advanced technology programs."

So what are they? I see skeptics saying these are radar errors etc., but the report apparently doesn't conclude that. I'd love to see a technical analysis of what's been recorded.

0: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/truth-about-ufos-uaps-...

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