Live data from Hacker News

US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

apnews.com

241–250 of 864 posts

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#241

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently. The general premise is this: U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps o…

    The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on 
    purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a 
    response would be flying through the airspace.
It's certainly the most likely explanation.

Accordingly, it seems highly possible that the countries targeted by such incursions (a) realize their response time is being tested (b) fuzz/delay their responses by some certain amount of time in order to frustrate such efforts.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. It's more likely a coordinated event to get people to talk about something other than covid and the last 3 disastrous years. Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid. Now that the covid era appears to…

>Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid at least in the US, I don't think anyone is really interested in covid anymore enough to require any distraction. Maybe that argument makes sense in China.

What? Many want fauci, the pfizer ceo, etc arrested. People want answers to how covid started, the lockdowns, masks, etc. Everyone here is over covid as a pandemic, but that doesn't mean we don't have questions that we want answered.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#244

So we finally have our explanation for all the strange attempts to resurrect UFO interest in the last years. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970609 You could fly a flashing cow in this times and nobody would stop looking down at their phones.

The director of national intelligence explicitly said in a Congressional hearing last may that they want to destigmatize UAP sightings so that pilots will actually report them when they happen. It hasn't really been a big mystery why some people in the government have been trying to change the attitude around UFOs recently - that's why they use the term UAP instead, less cultural baggage

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those UFOs were lens flares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs Turns out we like to spend gobs of money even when we're just chasing our shadow.

That video helps explain one property one of the UFO videos (the rotation) but doesn't explain the rest. Doesn't explain the Tic Tac videos. It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well. While some of the videos have explanation, I would kindly encourage you to look at this with more curiosity.

> Doesn't explain the Tic Tac videos

He covers the "Tic-Tac" and "Go Fast" videos too, just not in that specific video. Like in this one, where he explains how the "Go Fast" video isn't actually even a fast object zipping just above the water, but rather an object flying at roughly wind-speed at about 12000 feet.

https://youtu.be/PLyEO0jNt6M

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#246

I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. "They shoot down our surveillance balloons, giving us precedent to shoot down their high altitude drone planes or satellites in the future."

This is exactly what Larry Johnson (former CIA) at sonar21.com suggested.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#247

Cheap balloon vs expensive missile, seems a good way to bankrupt us by sending continuous balloons.

The US Department of Attack budget for 2023 is $1.9 trillion dollars. A couple of missiles is petty cash.

China will need to send nine million five hundred thousand balloons and then the budget will be all used up.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#248
post #59

So what’s the deal with these balloons? Provocation? Do they think nobody will notice?

It's not like this is new. We know there were 3 during the T administration. Now for some reason we've decided we need to be paranoid about them.

From what I have read these 3 were just recently 'discovered' and weren't known prior to Biden coming into office. How this can be true, I have no clue. Either way, I don't remember people posting balloon pictures a few years ago. I have a feeling that if they had transited during the previous administration, and people knew, they would have nailed this criticism to Trump too.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#249

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently. The general premise is this: U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps o…

Those UFOs were lens flares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs Turns out we like to spend gobs of money even when we're just chasing our shadow.

Mick West's videos are so good, specifically because the analysis are based on what's actually shown in the interface in the videos. There's no big "like, comment, subscribe"-section either. Just a pure explanation of why the object shown isn't as mystical as it appears at first glance.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#250

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently. The general premise is this: U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps o…

Pringles cans have never been observed to move in ways that violate Newton's laws

Given the possibilities of an alien spacecraft observed on Earth violating the known laws of physics, or some error on the part of the observer, I'm going with the latter every time.

First, prove that everything we know about physics is wrong at a fundamental, irreconcilable level. Then explain why our completely wrong models of physics still work as well as they do. Then explain the Fermi Paradox in light of the apparent existence of easy faster than light/antigravity technology and confirmation of the existence of other technologically advanced civilizations in the universe. Then I'll be willing to concede the still practically nil chance of any of those aliens actually being here given the vast size of the observable universe as being likely enough to consider.

Don't get me wrong, I want it to be true. I desperately want it to be true. I've been fascinated by UFOlogy and sightings and the related folklore for decades. I want some fate for humanity other than us slowly choking to death on our own poison, alone on this island in the midst of vast seas of infinity. It's just that the bar for proving any other possibility is higher than a third-hand account of someone seeing a light in the sky that moved really fast.

Post reply on HN