UFOs

[Khaldun]

So, I don't think this is Politics? Hopefully?

But it's kind of interesting. The evidence at least is not "drunk dude says he was probed on remote rural road" or "frisbee with sparklers filmed in shaky cam by an early video camera".

What is it that various pilots are seeing? What are the plausible technologies of human origin that might be responsible? At what point is some other explanation absolutely required, whatever it might be? Who is thinking clearly about any of this?

[schild]

real talk

every single time I get an alert about any of this it feels fucking great

[MahrinSkel]

So, I don't think this is Politics? Hopefully?

But it's kind of interesting. The evidence at least is not "drunk dude says he was probed on remote rural road" or "frisbee with sparklers filmed in shaky cam by an early video camera".

What is it that various pilots are seeing? What are the plausible technologies of human origin that might be responsible? At what point is some other explanation absolutely required, whatever it might be? Who is thinking clearly about any of this?

A lot of them appear to be floating/slow flying objects between the platform making the video and the background, that appear to be moving at high speeds because the platform is and there's no perspective. A lot of them are just large balloons, some might be drones.

"Some might be drones" is why the Pentagon investigates these things.

--Dave

[schild]

like for real being past the great filter would make all the bullshit worth it

[Sir T]

I read an interesting book once that theorized a lot of them were reverse Mirages, I.E. light refracting off a layer of warm air on top of a layer of cold air, similar to a Mirage on the ground is light refracting off a layer of warm air over the ground.

Anyway I think this sums it up "Calvin: Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."

Oh and the Vatican University says that there probably is extraterrestrial life in the universe, for those that care.

[Sky]

Oh and the Vatican University says that there probably is extraterrestrial life in the universe, for those that care.

We know there is at least one more planet in the universe that has or is evolving intelligent life, religiously speaking. The one God turned to when he turned away from this one after we stuck a spear in Him for giving us a last chance.

[Engels]

Although we know its a near statistical impossibility that there isn't an earth-like planet somewhere in the kabillions of solar systems out there, its also, by our understanding of physics, also super unlikely that any could have made it here. So that leaves two possibilities: they never left and they are the remnants of a past civilization in hiding, or, far more likely, some new flight technology some advanced country has figured out and is keeping under wraps.

[Khaldun]

At the time scales involved, it's plausible that a sapient species that survives their own technological and social dangers into something like a post-scarcity equilibrium might send out self-replicating robot probes to the Oort clouds of every solar system within 50 LY of their own location (or more). Sure, it would take thousands of years or more for subliminal probes to get anywhere, but if they were able to make copies of themselves after arriving, you could have a lot of solar systems like ours that were under observation. Heck, if the probe originators are 50 LY away, the delay in communication would mean it would take 50 years every time they decided after receiving new information to give their probes new orders on engagement or operations.

The idea that the things being observed by USAF are technologies under the control of another nation seems really implausible to me if they're engineered flying drones given what some of them can do--or if they are, the US is playing dumb right now (e.g., we know full well that's what they are and we have them too). I could imagine that they are optical effects rather than physically real manufactured flying drones, though, and have that be a technology that another country has and is fucking around with as a kind of experiment in distraction.

[Sir T]

We know there is at least one more planet in the universe that has or is evolving intelligent life, religiously speaking. The one God turned to when he turned away from this one after we stuck a spear in Him for giving us a last chance.

 

[Sky]

I mean, linking weird shit in the sky to ETs is about on par with linking a cool breeze at midnight with the sentient spirits of departed humans.

Anyway, the whole alien civ thing also has to overlap our (likely brief) period of technology. The timescale to enable contact is probably on par with the space scale for the same. We could be living in the middle of a galactic empire that has yet to rise, or fell millennia before the earth even cooled off. Or one could be in mid-swing on the far end of space, if it is indeed finite at all. Or it's weirder than we've managed to figure out (I lean towards #3).

[01101010]

We have met the aliens, and they are us. 

[Khaldun]

The thing I like about "Von Neumann probes seeded through space over very long time scales" is that the probes could be self-acting as well as self-replicating in a way that's indifferent to the developmental moment of the civilization that sent them out in the first place--they could be everywhere even if the culture that started it is long since gone or has downloaded themselves into a small box or has had a nanotech accident that turned their planet into grey goo. I think the only thing that seems a bit implausible about that is that it's a pretty specific niche for the probe AIs to operate in (e.g., what, they like buzzing around the planet and being seen occasionally but they never do anything more than that?)

[Typhon]

These conversations frustrate me because they immediately veer to, 1) what it could be instead of aliens or 2) it's aliens and here's what I think they are doing, with very little time cataloging what IS known from the incident.  I would love to see that data.  Example; object was initially identified via X, at location lat/long, and was then tracked via IR, visible and radar simultaneously, and dropped 50000 feet in a second, blah blah blah.  Basically put together everything known for a specific event.  Then look holistically at all the data and look for patterns.  Jumping immediately to what it could/couldn't/might be is a level of jerking off that I'm tired of with this subject. 

Side note: I'm not aware of any mirage being able to be tracked in three different EM bands simultaneously (Radar, IR and visible), but that doesn't mean it has to be an aircraft or alien. But it DOES mean it's not a mirage, as mirages are very specific to the observer and the way light (of a given spectrum) is being bent on the way to that observer.  Ship-based radar and aircraft IR seeing the same thing = not a mirage

[01101010]

The thing I like about "Von Neumann probes seeded through space over very long time scales" is that the probes could be self-acting as well as self-replicating in a way that's indifferent to the developmental moment of the civilization that sent them out in the first place--they could be everywhere even if the culture that started it is long since gone or has downloaded themselves into a small box or has had a nanotech accident that turned their planet into grey goo. I think the only thing that seems a bit implausible about that is that it's a pretty specific niche for the probe AIs to operate in (e.g., what, they like buzzing around the planet and being seen occasionally but they never do anything more than that?)

In other words, the borg in alpha testing.

[Khaldun]

Yes to Typhon. I think that's what I'd really love to see now--all the verified, recorded sightings seen as data and then some rigorous analysis on the data. Seems to me the knowable/measurable things should be:

1) Frequency of apparent observation (e.g., some rough estimate of how many flights by USAF, commercial planes, etc. have reported phenomenon in relation to number of total flights)
2) Locations of apparent observation (altitude, geospatial, etc.)
3) Duration of observations
4) Nature of observation (just visual/visual recording? radar also? IR?)
5) Apparent velocity of object
6) Motion of object/observed changes in direction
7) Apparent shapes/physical attributes of object

etc. I keep hearing one-off observations about a single video but nothing systematic about all of them.

[WayAbvPar]

This data release is going to be this generation's Al Capone's Vault.

[Goumindong]

So, I don't think this is Politics? Hopefully?

But it's kind of interesting. The evidence at least is not "drunk dude says he was probed on remote rural road" or "frisbee with sparklers filmed in shaky cam by an early video camera".

What is it that various pilots are seeing? What are the plausible technologies of human origin that might be responsible? At what point is some other explanation absolutely required, whatever it might be? Who is thinking clearly about any of this?

Balloons..

In general people are dumb and don't know what they're seeing and report seeing it incorrectly. They see things over the horizon and then when they dip below the horizon the "flying dutchman" effect kicks in and they think it went under the water at high speed without a splash. They see parallax at high speeds with no background reference and so confuse static objects for objects flying at absurd speeds in the distance. They see two unrelated phenomena and then think they're related because they happened at similar points in time. An object they were seeing (probably a balloon or a reflection of a cloud) disappears and at the same time they pick up an airliner 60 miles away on radar? Must be the same thing!

This is mainly in the news because of politics though

[Sky]

This data release is going to be this generation's Al Capone's Vault.

Aw don't summon sad Geraldo

[BobtheSomething]

Oh and the Vatican University says that there probably is extraterrestrial life in the universe, for those that care.

We know there is at least one more planet in the universe that has or is evolving intelligent life, religiously speaking. The one God turned to when he turned away from this one after we stuck a spear in Him for giving us a last chance.

People also take the book of Genesis beginning with the second Hebrew letter to mean our world is God’s second attempt at creation.  Fun stuff to think about.

[Cyrrex]

Don't recall the mathematical particulars, but best heard it put something like this...it is 100 percent likely that other intelligent life has existed in this universe in numerous forms.  But the odds that it happens in remotely the same general periods of time and within a distance that is reasonable to travel are absurdly unlikely.  I.e. other intelligent life exists or has existed, for sure.  But we will never meet it.

[Khaldun]

Wait, you think the stuff in the USAF videos are balloons?

[Goumindong]

Wait, you think the stuff in the USAF videos are balloons?

Some of them probably are. Some of them probably aren't. "Go Fast" in particular is probably a balloon or other air flotsam. The video makes it look like its going fast as a result of parallax, an incorrect assumption of range, and a low field of view on the camera. Nimitz and Gimbal are almost assuredly passenger airliners. Some of the others are focal anomalies due to triangle shutters for distant lights.

One of the more famous events from 1948 almost certainly did involve a pilot in a fighter plane buzzing a balloon and, when that balloon performed exactly like what a balloon would perform being utterly shocked and thinking it was a UFO. He misinterpreted the objects speed because he has no background information to relate it to. When it followed in the wake of his plane he thought it had "done a 180" and when it climbed spectacularly as a defense to all of his maneuvers was because it was a fucking lighter than air balloon with a goddamn light on it.

[Trippy]

Wait, you think the stuff in the USAF videos are balloons?

Some of them probably are. Some of them probably aren't. "Go Fast" in particular is probably a balloon or other air flotsam. The video makes it look like its going fast as a result of parallax, an incorrect assumption of range, and a low field of view on the camera. Nimitz and Gimbal are almost assuredly passenger airliners. Some of the others are focal anomalies due to triangle shutters for distant lights.

I'm in the "UFOs are terrestrial in origin" camp too. The triangle shutter reference above was referring to this recent debunking of the Navy UFO videos you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY2ZSUv6pps

The Guardian just published an article today by a UFO video analyst explaining how he debunked other similar type sightings:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/11/i-study-ufos-and-i-dont-believe-the-alien-hype-heres-why

[Samwise]

I just can't get over why aliens would waste their time putting on light shows for fighter pilots instead of being either a lot less visible or a lot more visible.  The idea of alien abductions at least has some internal logic even if it's implausible for various reasons.

[Sir T]

Ya, serious UFO researchers spend most of their time debunking UFO siteings, looking for that 0.1% that could be something interesting.

[Count Nerfedalot]

First of all, I wonder how come a civilization capable of building interstellar craft can't build them well enough to avoid crashing so often?

And then I wonder if that Star Trek episode (sorry, can't even remember which series) with the alien probe with the math test that was going to supernova the star if it was answered correctly, to eliminate any competition, might not be a more likely scenario than the somehow lost in space interstellar tourists/scientists/rednecks trying to land on Earth to get needed supplies/samples/women). 

[Cyrrex]

Why would any alien civilization advanced enough to put ships into our atmosphere not simply try to contact us first?  You have to handwave away so many logical questions in order to believe this stuff, nearly on the level of religion or bigfoot sightings. 

[Teleku]

I mean, I also highly doubt it's actually aliens.  But if it was, you have to kind of assume they are nothing like us, and would not follow our logic.  Variables about how another alien race could develop means they might perceive the entire universe different.  Maybe they aren't even aware of humans being here, and are actually focusing on something else?  Maybe they see us as the equivalent of rats and what kind of crazy person tries to talk to rats?

If there is an alien race out there, we can't possibly guess how they'll think or act.  So that particular issue doesn't bother me.  All the other ones listed further up the thread do though.

[Sir T]

I think a more likely scenario is that "Roadside Picnic" book where the Aliens stop by for a picnic, are so advanced we don't even see them, and they leave a ton of rubbish behind that is so advanced that we cant understand it and has terrible effects on people in the area - to the extent that if those people visit a city there is a mass death event. "Staker Shadow of Chernobyl" was based on it.

https://blindhypnosis.com/roadside-picnic-pdf-arkady-strugatsky.html

Typically Russian in that it's not about "Happy Zen Buddist Aliens."

Honestly, I could see extraterrestrials observing us and not interfering. We really are more horryfing than fiction and that would be facinating.

[rattran]

They're just horrified by all the singing meat, and leave promptly.

[Khaldun]

You know, this idea of "advanced" and "primitive", indexed against technology, is really a bad conceptual framing that is straight out of human history, specifically the self-delusions of Western Europe from 1500 onward--that they were all very advanced, partly due to technology, and the rest of the world was backward or primitive, which meant they couldn't really be dealt with as peers. For one that simply wasn't true in any respect from about 1400-1800 or so: non-Western societies were mostly on par technologically with European societies, and Europeans and non-Westerners generally understood each other perfectly well and interacted in all sorts of ways--they talked, they bargained, they exchanged religious and cultural ideas, they had sex with one another, etc.  There was one moment of striking technological disparity from about 1830 to 1930 or so, basically as a byproduct of the industrial revolution happening in England, then Europe and the US, first. That window closed pretty fast after 1950; what you might think of as technological difference now is not, it's relative poverty v. relative wealth. Folks in rural southern Africa understand most common consumer technologies perfectly well, they just don't have access to them.

So leaving aside the question of whatever it is that folks are seeing now and just dealing abstractly with aliens, it may be that once you're sapient, you don't become more and more "advanced" in cognitive or social terms in such a way as to become incomprehensible to and so vastly technologically different from more primitive sapients that you'd have no interest in them or ability to interact with them. I kind of think it could be the opposite: the question of how different sapients evolve and think might become continuously more interesting and relevant. It's not at all clear to me that the rapid technological changes of the last 150 years of human history will continue unabated; arguably they're already slowing down substantially. (When's the last game-changing technology you can think of? Seems to me that after computing and the Internet, there's nothing. Compare that with the tumult of fundamentally new technologies from 1830-1930: steam engines, industrial production lines, vulcanized rubber, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, automobiles/internal combustion engines, machine guns, the telegraph and the telephone, the phonograph, cinema, rockets, etc.)

The more pressing problem, I think, is what if sapient aliens simply don't think like us at all--not "advanced" or "primitive" but just really damn different? Maybe they're not tool-users at all, maybe their sapience is put to other ends and purposes. Arguably we share this planet with two, three, maybe four semi-sapient species (dolphins/whales, chimps, gorillas, elephants) and we can sort of barely figure out how to communicate effectively with chimps and gorillas because we're very much like them. We can understand that dolphins and whales are intelligent, possibly sapient, but the environment and fitness landscape that has pushed them towards intelligence is so different that we have no idea how to really interact with them. So if there are aliens out there that make technologies that allow for any kind of extension into space, whether in making probes or otherwise, we might simply be unable to make any real connection with them and vice-versa despite being aware of our mutual sapience.

[Sir T]

Actually the "Sapience " of Dolphins has bee pretty much debunked. They were based on experiments in the 50s where some idiot strung out Dolphins on LSD and then recorded stuff that might have been intelligence and communication. But basically scientists have recently pretty much figured out that Dolphins are dumb/smart as chickens. The "extensive communication" turned out to be "I'm Feeding!" "I'm mating!" a personal identification chirr, and not much else.


https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/justin-gregg/dolphins-intelligence_b_3888794.html

Also, Dolphins are evil fuckers that beat their own kids to death. Flipper!

https://unbelievable-facts.com/2015/08/dolphins-facts.html

[Khaldun]

I understand about Lilly's work with dolphins being problematic, to put it mildly, but it is still very much an active debate among researchers about whether dolphins have language. They pass a lot of other tests associated with sapience, most crucially self-recognition. But this is part of the problem, really. If we define language and sapience with ourselves as the standard measure, we're likely only going to recognize sapience if it exactly conforms to our definition of ourselves.

Animal behavioralists are beginning to recognize that lots of different animals have some of the attributes we used to attribute exclusively to sapience--some have self-recognition, some have what could be called language, some are tool-users to some extent or another, some seem to pass on messages or knowledge between generations. Many primates show evidence of having what we would call a "theory of mind", meaning that they recognize that other individuals have thoughts or motivations that are different than their own. Etc.

A similar discussion among folks working on astrobiology (so far just a theoretical science) is whether there are forms of life even on Earth that we don't recognize as such because they are either in environments completely inaccessible to us or they have biochemistries other than carbon-based.

Until we find life (or technology-using sapients) somewhere other than Earth, we won't know if our ideas are hopelessly deformed by knowing only one case--kind of like thinking the sun revolved around the Earth. Look at how much our understanding of how solar systems evolve has changed since the documentation of exo-planets; we had the basic mechanics right before we started but we had no idea how wide the variations in planetary systems actually were. (We still probably don't considering that our detection techniques still can't pick up on some possible planets that may exist in various solar systems.)

[Goumindong]

First of all, I wonder how come a civilization capable of building interstellar craft can't build them well enough to avoid crashing so often?

And then I wonder if that Star Trek episode (sorry, can't even remember which series) with the alien probe with the math test that was going to supernova the star if it was answered correctly, to eliminate any competition, might not be a more likely scenario than the somehow lost in space interstellar tourists/scientists/rednecks trying to land on Earth to get needed supplies/samples/women). 

Probably not. If you're advanced enough to do that you're advanced enough to not really care about stars. And as such the notion of "competition" in the galaxy becomes a moot issue.

[Khaldun]

You'd think at this point we'd be cured of thinking that technological capability and morality--or even technological capability and pragmatic attention to what is and is not worth your time--have any necessary association.