Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

The way I interpreted the pre-print:

- They optimized the capture for very fast moving objects (and large FOVs? Maybe using a spectrophotometer is not as straightforward as it seems)

- They are making estimates more than precise measurements, using error bars that are "good enough" for them, for the specific domain and taking into consideration the constraints given by the assumptions and the equipment. Not that I see those errors bars, though :D

- Now that I'm re-reading: ...Frames were recorded using the ser format with 14 and 16 bits... (ser is an astronomical file format)

- Paper's exposition could be better

- They are not building the JWST. They are doing something like lambertian reflectance when you are asking for global illumination. Let's wait for (the negative results of) NASA's study. I share your skepticism btw, not a believer.

Just saying that they are not using Photoshop. The paper is lacking in details though, that's uncontroversial.

Been a pleasure talking with you, have a nice day!

"We present a broad range of UAPs. We see them everywhere."

Everywhere? In the cupboard at home? In the local movie theatre?

Nowhere they discuss sources of error - it's a description of their setup, and then a straight dive into here's a taxonomy of all the UAPs. Plus, there's not enough there to reproduce their rig if indeed UAPs are "everywhere".

That's a lot of evolution, considering mammals is barely that old.

That could be anything. Damage to the film negative is a simple explanation!

Any single picture is basically just fan-art. I and many others with a reasonable level of scepticism wouldn't accept anything other than the same UFO or "design" of UFO turning up in many photos, ideally from some sort of scientific sky survey array run by non-UFO-fanatic astronomer types.

In fact, several such survey systems are being built right now, and a few are already operational.

The operational ones have not found anything.

Strange, isn't it that the better the quality of the survey, the less likely UFOs are to turn up in the data?

Where does this idea come from that we are "uninteresting" or less interesting than other places? Also why would these advanced beings not be able to canvas the entire galaxy? What if other places are more interesting, and teaming with alien craft, like Yellowstone is teaming with tourists, and we just see the occasional craft because we are a backwater.

> Even if there aren't more interesting places, what's the probability that an alien being could even breathe the air here? I'm not willing to go full on Signs and speculate that contact with water might be deadly to them, but it's pretty reasonable to guess that aliens would have evolved in places with significantly different atmospheres than Earth has.

Why does that matter? We can't breath in the ocean or space but we explore there.

> And, of course, none of this even touches on the vast distances in interstellar space and the level of technology that it would take to come here. It's certainly conceivable that aliens who are 5 million years ahead of us in societal development might have such technology, but how probable is it?

We have no idea whether it's possible or probable, and thus we also have no idea whether it's impossible or improbable.

> And if they had that level of technology, why not just send a stealthy probe with the alien equivalent of a Really Damn Big Telescope(tm) and park it somewhere out in the asteroid belt if they're that interested in the antics of 7.7 billion primitive bipeds? Nothing really seems to add up for me in the direction of "aliens visit the Earth frequently and UFOs are evidence of those visitations."

Why do we send people in person into the jungle to monitor animals instead of just cameras to record everything remotely? Why do people go to Yellowstone to see the sites instead of just looking at pictures?