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UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

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Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#141

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

jacknews wrote: post #126
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #14

At first I thought it was a spec of dirt stuck on the window, because it kept its position constant relative to the moving airplane. But then when it twisted, I had to give up that explanation.

Well it looks to me like an insect on the window/camera lens, which then turns. Am I missing something?

Pretty good theory. Although I don't think an insect would be able to hang on to a window/camera lens while traveling supersonic. (Maybe there is a double window and the insect is in-between, which explains why it doesn't get blown away?)

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#142

Post by ansible »

em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #140
ansible wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be fascinated with the UFO reports and such as a kid. However, I grew up, and learned physics. And then later I learned about things like Molecular Nanotechnology. Aliens, as popularly conceived, have not been here, and will not be coming here. Why? I'll explain. Space is big. Like, really big. The distance to the nearest star system is 4 light-years away. Even for a small object, it takes an enormous amoun…

But maybe the UFO are really old machines (like millions of years old) in which case they can take all they time they need to travel and decelerate, such that wouldn't produce drive flairs.

Anything is possible, but that doesn't seem likely.

It is helpful to think of what would aliens want from us that they can't get at home.

Raw material, like in the mini-series V, Oblivion, Uplift War trilogy, etc? It is too expensive to ship matter anywhere. If you need a lot of it for a construction project, you'd be better off heading to the galactic core.

Maybe they want our cultural uniqueness? But they could easily simulate many virtual worlds with different starting conditions, and poke around those without leaving the comfort of home. That would be much easier, especially after they get bored with humans.

And if they have advanced molecular nanotechnology, it isn't just waiting millions of years for results. They are likely running at a much higher "clock rate" than we are now. You can run an uploaded mind much faster than a biological one. So these hypothetical aliens would instead be waiting billions of years of subjective time for their probes to find something interesting.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#143

Post by zimpenfish »

timothevs wrote: post #104
gmisra wrote: post #54

For those interested in other "legitimate" UFO sightings, I'd recommend "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record" by Leslie Kean [1]. The author is an investigative journalist who sets out to interview observers of relatively well-documented UFO encounters, and ends up speaking mostly with military pilots from around the world. It's a good read, and is even-handed and well written, especially…

Thanks for sharing the book. I agree that the releases from the US Gov the last few weeks have been VERY surprising, nearly a 90 degree shift from the "deny everything" policy that they assumed for the last few decades. Going one step further, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I just wonder, what actually has changed to prompt this change in policy of denying everything

> I just wonder, what actually has changed to prompt this change in policy of denying everything

The election of credulous anti-science buffoons.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#144

Post by brango »

corobo wrote: post #106
brango wrote: post #33

I'm sold on the whole UFO cover-up thing. If you peel back the social ridicule (very successfully induced by US government collaboration with Hollywood) and consider the huge number of circumstantial reports from across the military and non-military it seems pretty clear there's stuff in the skies of non-human origin. Historical art suggests they've been flying for centuries. There's also the publicly acknowledged re…

Why though? Why would an alien species just do atmosphere drive-bys? Why wouldn’t they pop down and say hello? Why on earth would NASA, SETI, SpaceX, etc cover up the biggest scoop (biggest FUNDING scoop) of Earth’s history? Why wouldn’t any of the other LEO piercing countries in the world grass it up? Thousands of people working in each of the space-faring countries, all keeping quiet about it. Why would the US, Rus…

But they're not keeping quiet. Literally hundreds of reports have been made, ex-military willing to testify before US Congress (Disclosure Project), cryptic comments from ex-astronauts that hopefully in future "the truth will come out" (Armstrong or Aldrin IIRC). Governments have investigated, but perhaps if an advanced civilisation doesn't want to make contact and just wants to observe us then it's difficult to get conclusive proof? And then what? Tell your populace "Hi everyone, we can't keep our skies safe, but don't worry, it's probably OK".

There's some odd stuff in some NASA footage you can see for yourself. But now with CGI you probably won't accept any videos you can see on youtube as being real.

But this still isn't enough for you because until you actually see one with your own eyes you aren't willing to accept it. That is excellent scepticism. However, we accept a lot of scientific reports without actually running the experiments ourselves... There seems to be a mismatch there.

Healthy scepticism is healthy, but barring a "smoking gun" that is unavoidable (i.e. an "Independence Day"/"District 9" scenario) you probably will never believe it. I suggest that's due to conditioning and how the US Gov directed Hollywood to ridicule this sort of thing in the past.

If we relax things back to "normal" and view the reports (the volume, quality of sources, corroborating evidence like multiple witnesses, radar confirmation, WW1 Foo fighter reports, etc) then the balance of probabilities seems to lie with "yes, they're here and they've been here a long time", at least for me.

I mean the Mahabarata alone does appear to contain an account of nuclear fallout and diagrams of UFOs, and that was written thousands of years ago.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#145

Post by brango »

ansible wrote: post #89
dsacco wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m open minded to what you’re saying, and I agree that dismissing alien contact due to popular zeitgeist is silly. But here’s my problem with what you’re saying: where did they come from then, and how did they get here? Why do we not have any evidence of their planet in any reasonable distance from Earth? Given what we understand about modern physics, we have three conclusions we can arrive at: 1. We fundamentally m…

I used to be fascinated with the UFO reports and such as a kid. However, I grew up, and learned physics. And then later I learned about things like Molecular Nanotechnology. Aliens, as popularly conceived, have not been here, and will not be coming here. Why? I'll explain. Space is big. Like, really big. The distance to the nearest star system is 4 light-years away. Even for a small object, it takes an enormous amoun…

Unknown unknowns mean you don't know if there's a way to make fast, long distance travel feasible.

From a Newtonian perspective quantum physics sounds like a complete joke. There are undoubtedly other discoveries yet to be made. I can certainly countenance that future scientific advancements could make what we think of today as being impossible as being possible without violating the laws we have discovered.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#146

Post by brango »

ansible wrote: post #142
em3rgent0rdr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But maybe the UFO are really old machines (like millions of years old) in which case they can take all they time they need to travel and decelerate, such that wouldn't produce drive flairs.

Anything is possible, but that doesn't seem likely. It is helpful to think of what would aliens want from us that they can't get at home. Raw material, like in the mini-series V, Oblivion, Uplift War trilogy, etc? It is too expensive to ship matter anywhere. If you need a lot of it for a construction project, you'd be better off heading to the galactic core. Maybe they want our cultural uniqueness? But they could eas…

Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it'd be pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents have seeing children grow up.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#147

Post by vorotato »

CaptSpify wrote: post #112
ryandvm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta Answer: HN eschews all modern UI affordances as a form of status signalling. It's like how millionaire startup founders like to wear cargo shorts and hoodies. It's Y Combinator's way of saying, "we're so fucking successful we can afford to have a site that eclipses even Craigslist in un-usability."

Alternative view: "We're successful because we have a site that works simply, without much unneeded complexity, and choose to keep it simple for the sake of our users."

Links are notoriously complex. One time I had a user whose head exploded when they saw a link to a duplicate.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#148

Post by ansible »

brango wrote: post #145
ansible wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be fascinated with the UFO reports and such as a kid. However, I grew up, and learned physics. And then later I learned about things like Molecular Nanotechnology. Aliens, as popularly conceived, have not been here, and will not be coming here. Why? I'll explain. Space is big. Like, really big. The distance to the nearest star system is 4 light-years away. Even for a small object, it takes an enormous amoun…

Unknown unknowns mean you don't know if there's a way to make fast, long distance travel feasible. From a Newtonian perspective quantum physics sounds like a complete joke. There are undoubtedly other discoveries yet to be made. I can certainly countenance that future scientific advancements could make what we think of today as being impossible as being possible without violating the laws we have discovered.

While there are definitely gaps in our understanding, the standard model of physics is one of the best scientific theories... ever.

So we don't yet have a grand unified field theory, but for what we do understand, at reasonably attainable energy levels, there just isn't room to jam in some sort of faster-than-light communication or faster-than-light travel.

If you look at how it all fits together, any sort of magic like that seems highly unlikely.

Nothing we've observed in the sky, dating back billions of years, suggests FTL either. Until I see something that can even hint at FTL, I'm completely discounting it.

Re: UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots

#149

Post by ansible »

brango wrote: post #146
ansible wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything is possible, but that doesn't seem likely. It is helpful to think of what would aliens want from us that they can't get at home. Raw material, like in the mini-series V, Oblivion, Uplift War trilogy, etc? It is too expensive to ship matter anywhere. If you need a lot of it for a construction project, you'd be better off heading to the galactic core. Maybe they want our cultural uniqueness? But they could eas…

Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it'd be pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents have seeing children grow up.

Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it'd be pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents have seeing children grow up.

Maybe, but I find that unlikely.

If they do want to pursue those sorts of activities, then can do much more, much faster while closer to home. Why settle for observing one naturally evolved species, when you can make dozens (or thousands) of your own?

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