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Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

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Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#111

Post by azTzoxotrv »

ak_111 wrote: post #36
vertnerd wrote: post #16

"... Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft." Can you imagine that someone this clear-headed was ever the President of the United States?

To blow your mind even further he also wrote an entire book accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.

Behind the scenes though was just another Pro-Israel US president.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/1979-vela-in...

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#112

Post by smohare »

sandworm101 wrote: post #83
WillAdams wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from: - I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence. to: - I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board. That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an obje…

So many preconceptions. Firstly, what exactly does "speeds with allow interstellar travel" entail? A being that was functionally immortal wouldn't care about travel times. And why assume that interstellar travel is even required? There is no solid reason why extraterrestrials need to huddle around stars. They might live in the void between stars. Heck, there could be millions of truck-sized UFOs dancing around in "ou…

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Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#113

Post by xandrius »

My favourite part:

> In 2016, the hosts of episode #561 of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast read a letter forwarded by a member of the Carter family from Carl G. "Jere" Justus, giving his explanation of Carter's UFO sighting:[12]

    After recently reading the book Georgia Myths & Legends, by Augusta Chronicle columnist Don Rhodes, specifically Chapter 5, "Jimmy Carter and the UFO", I am virtually certain that I have identified the source of what it was that President Carter saw. In the 1960s and early 70s, I worked on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper atmosphere using releases of glowing chemical clouds, produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB rocket range in Florida. Some of these chemical clouds, notably sodium and barium, were visible by the process of resonance scattering of sunlight. Clouds of this type had to be launched not long after sunset or not long before sunrise. This was due to the fact that the cloud had to be in sunlight at high altitude, while it was still dark enough at ground level for the cloud to be visible against the dark sky. In Carter's official 1973 UFO report, as given in the Rhodes book, he stated that he had seen the phenomenon in October, 1969, at 7:15 pm EST. However, it has been determined from Lions Club records that Carter must have seen the "UFO" when he spoke to their Leary, GA Chapter on January 6, 1969. The report "U.S. Space Science Program Report to COSPAR, 1970" (QB504.U54, Appendix I, page 154) documents that there was a barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB (Rocket Number AG7.626) and released on January 6, 1969 at 7:35 pm EST (January 7, 1969, 0035 UTC) [COSPAR stands for Committee on Space Research]. The reported altitude for this cloud was 152 km. With a distance between Leary, GA and Eglin AFB, FL of about 234 km, this cloud would have appeared in the sky at an elevation of 33 degrees (consistent with Carter's estimate of a 30 degree elevation). Carter's report notes that stars were visible, so the night must have been clear. I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO "appeared from West". The direction of Eglin AFB from Leary, GA is approximately WSW. Thus this barium cloud at Eglin is consistent with Carter's reported "UFO" as to time, elevation, and direction. Furthermore, the appearance reported by Carter is totally consistent with a high-altitude barium cloud. His report stated that it was "bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid". A neutral barium cloud would initially glow bluish or greenish, with parts of it taking on a reddish glow as some of the barium becomes ionized in the high altitude sunlight. The size and brightness, reported as being about that of the moon, would also be consistent with a barium cloud at Eglin, as viewed from Leary, GA. Carter has been reported as saying that he never believed that he had seen an alien spacecraft, but that he had no idea exactly what it was. I'm interested in exploring if this information could be relayed to President Carter, so that if he wishes to, he can better understand what it was that he saw back then.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#114

Post by WillAdams »

dahart wrote: post #80
WillAdams wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from: - I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence. to: - I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board. That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an obje…

> the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous Wait, which UFO thing are you referring to? Carter never thought it was anything extraterrestrial, he stated that he assumed it was a natural or man-made event. Are you saying it’s strange that some people believe in aliens?

I think it's strange to believe that a starship could enter the solar system without being noticed due to the requirements of:

- velocity --- it would need to be moving quickly and would have to decelerate (requires energy) to do more than pass through

- life support/technology requirements and attendant heat signature --- interstellar space is _cold_ and not conducive to either, so requires on-going energy output

- size requirements --- basically, an entire ecological system needs to be moved around --- how many trees does one person require to produce sufficient oxygen for them to breathe? (a quick search has an answer from 1--8)

&c. See Kim Stanley Robinson's recent novel _Aurora_ for a well-researched examination of this.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#115

Post by WillAdams »

sandworm101 wrote: post #83
WillAdams wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from: - I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence. to: - I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board. That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an obje…

So many preconceptions. Firstly, what exactly does "speeds with allow interstellar travel" entail? A being that was functionally immortal wouldn't care about travel times. And why assume that interstellar travel is even required? There is no solid reason why extraterrestrials need to huddle around stars. They might live in the void between stars. Heck, there could be millions of truck-sized UFOs dancing around in "ou…

See my reply elsethread --- a truck sized enclosure isn't reasonable for life support and so forth.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#116

Post by galaxyofdoom »

klyrs wrote: post #106
zrn900 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his knowledge of physics... ...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. Us trying to 'inte…

> solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today. No, they wouldn't. Modest progress in engineering and cultural adaptation, would produce generation ships large enough to sustain a human colony capable of traversing the galaxy on the scale of thousands of years. On the other hand, we co…

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Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#117

Post by krapp »

likeabbas wrote: post #88

It's crazy to me how this link gets upvoted in HackerNews but not David Grursch's (former NRO/NGA Intel Officer) claims don't. He testified under oath to the Intelligence Community Inspector Generals, both Senate/House Intel Committees, and a public House Oversight Committee under oath that the USG has recovered crashed/landed non-human intelligence craft. The ICIG referred Grusch's claims to the intel committees as…

At the bottom of the page you can find a search bar with which you can discover that David Grusch's claims and the UAP phenomenon in general have been done to death here.

There is no real discussion to be had on the topic. People choose to believe Grusch and others because of their own faith in the ET/UFO narrative as a first principle. People doubt Grusch and others because none of them ever present compelling evidence, and their claims in aggregate are ridiculous. The former camp mocks the latter camp, the latter camp mocks the former. Eventually the discussion splinters into talk of Von Neumann probes, generation ships and the Fermi Paradox. Lather, rinse repeat.

But here we all are still waiting for the "catastrophic disclosure" that should have happened by now. And for what it's worth the government's own investigations have consistently come to the conclusion that no extraterrestrial or physics-defying technologies are involved, and the vast majority of what's been presented as undeniable proof via video and photographic evidence turns out to have mundane explanations. But of course one can simply write that conclusion off as part of the conspiracy.

So yeah. Let us know when there's a there there.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#118

Post by likeabbas »

krapp wrote: post #117
likeabbas wrote: post #88

It's crazy to me how this link gets upvoted in HackerNews but not David Grursch's (former NRO/NGA Intel Officer) claims don't. He testified under oath to the Intelligence Community Inspector Generals, both Senate/House Intel Committees, and a public House Oversight Committee under oath that the USG has recovered crashed/landed non-human intelligence craft. The ICIG referred Grusch's claims to the intel committees as…

At the bottom of the page you can find a search bar with which you can discover that David Grusch's claims and the UAP phenomenon in general have been done to death here. There is no real discussion to be had on the topic. People choose to believe Grusch and others because of their own faith in the ET/UFO narrative as a first principle. People doubt Grusch and others because none of them ever present compelling evide…

> the government's own investigations have consistently come to the conclusion that no extraterrestrial or physics-defying technologies are involved

I'm not sure if you've looked into the government's self investigations in the 70s regarding claims the CIA was experiment on their own populace where they also found no evidence. But 20 years later the CIA declassified those documents to show the CIA absolutely was dosing cities with LSD in the water supply.

My point being, the Department of Defense investigating itself is like letting a murderer run his own investigation.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#119

Post by likeabbas »

stavros wrote: post #101
likeabbas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a pretty decent video of one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdEeHYDuyc

That's fascinating, I wonder what it is.

I have no clue. But it's hovering without rotors or any jet propulsion engine, and it's rotating in mid air.

Re: Jimmy Carter UFO Incident

#120

Post by Timon3 »

chipdart wrote: post #29
JohnBooty wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits. I personally put zero faith in them, because quite a few are obvious fakes, and the rest are just completely unverifiable, so they are not worth thinking about. But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...

> There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits. I don't think you got the point. Before camera phones were ubiquitous, the bulk of reports were very elaborate and fantastic tales where the so-called witness played a central role in the story. Once everyone started carrying a camera, all we see is questionable light shows taken fr…

Is it strange? I'd say it's fair to assume that potential alien visitors would want their existence to be hidden, or at least not known to the broad population[1]. Working under that assumption, isn't that exactly the behavior you'd expect?

It would be incredibly unlikely for humanity to be the first civilization potential aliens make contact with. They'd probably have a lot of knowledge about interactions with lesser developed civilizations, which would inform the risk they can take based on the developments made. A civilization without broadly available personal cameras would logically allow for much closer interactions.

Let me just add that I don't believe the sightings are real, and I don't believe aliens are visiting earth - I just really dislike using faulty logic to "disprove" this stuff.

[1]: If potential alien visitors wanted their existence to be widely known, it would be easy to do so through conventional news mechanisms (e.g. media or politicians). Since that hasn't happened it leaves two options: there are no alien visitors (the incredibly likely solution), or they exist and want to stay hidden, for whatever reason that may be.

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