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Comment by matthewwiese | Hacker News Reader

Since we don't usually get UFO threads on Hacker News, I may as well brush the dust off my tinfoil hat...

What's always puzzled me about UFO sightings is the preponderance of "bright lights" being what people report seeing. If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too?

One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage. Who needs difficult shit like invisibility when we can just pound the earthlings' pupils with light so they can't see us well! Nevertheless, has always made the skeptic in me raise my eyebrows recursively.

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Even if we assume that "UFO" means "space alien", it doesn't seem puzzling to me.

Answer 1: selection bias. Obviously the only ones that people see at night are those which have lights. We aren't going to hear about the ones that people don't see because they're dark.

Answer 2: alien apathy. You've flown a million light years to spy on some great apes who aren't even sure you exist. Who cares if a few of them get flashed with bright lights, while you're looking around? They don't even have flying saucers yet, so it's not like they could chase you.

You can generalize answer 1 even further. For all you know, there are hundreds of UFOs all around you that just have very advanced cloaking technology and only a few that don't. :)

Yeah, but they're here to watch the ones without cloaking. :-)

They all stop in Wakanda to fuel up and see the sights.

Clearly they don't care much about the prime directive

And 3: the light is a unavoidable side effect of their propulsion system.

You ever see those guys that put neon lights under their Hondas?

What if it's just the cosmic version of that?

Genuinely can't tell which one of us is applying Occam's Razor here...

LOL, you have a point. What kind of individuals would volunteer for a possibly one-way mission that gets them in a stasis pod for a century?

Or small malfunctions of their propulsion or cloaking system, like an engine misfire.

Operating warp drives in atmospheres can cause a lot of Cherenkov radiation at the bubble border. One must be careful not to overheat the external hull.

Sorry. Couldn't resist adding one more speculative cherry to the top of this very tall tale.

From a rational standpoint, I generally subscribe to the selection bias you (and Scriptor in a separate reply) raise as #1. However, for the sake of discussion, let's operate under the assumption these sightings are legitimate/noteworthy.

Personally, I grew out of bothering ant hills when I was about twelve. Nowadays, I pleasantly observe from high above. So why wouldn't aliens do the same?

In this case, your second theory fills in the gaps. But, one would assume some species capable of this technology would also have cultural norms about not interfering with less developed groups. Much the same way we (generally) try not to interfere with primitive tribes around the world.

I suppose, then, that the comparison could be made to the Sentinelese firing arrows at aircraft out of fear and suspicion. The aliens (in my opinion rightly) assume we would do the same to them because they are so foreign to us.

> one would assume some species capable of this technology would also have cultural norms about not interfering with less developed groups

I would assume nothing of the sort. It's not as if humans even really conform to that norm. It's a pretty recent trend, at best. With aliens of unknown evolution/history, all bets are off.

Very faint point which I predicted the keen HN audience would be quick to contend. My reasoning to assume so is a wholly intuitive instinct that all ultra-high technology societies converge in their moral and ethical norms to a common limit. That to have survived the gamble of existence long enough to reach such a point, this civilization almost certainly needed to adopt a set of values wherein the "Prime Directive" incidentally coincides. Though I concede that it betrays my personal beliefs more than any tangible insight.

For example, my hippie confidence does nothing to explain the likes of the Zerg or Tyranids, that's for sure. :)

fair not faint as I hope most readers surmised -- for some reason I did not realize this error until it was too late to edit

Human ethics vary amongst groups and cultures - even highly advanced ones. I don't see any evidence to suggest a convergence on a "one true" moral code. For a brief period western values seemed to take over due to the west's influence, but that is waning today rather than increasing in momentum.

>My reasoning to assume so is a wholly intuitive instinct that all ultra-high technology societies converge in their moral and ethical norms to a common limit.

We don't know that. We also don't know if the prime directive of aliens is the same as ours. By that I mean that whatever aliens may be visiting us may not be competitive whatsoever. Maybe their planet didn't have the same explosion with life that ours did so it's relatively empty of competition. In this case cooperating with others to expand as an instinct would be much more beneficial than competing. There is also no tangible evidence of the cosmos swarming with life, on planets or traveling so it might also be that -given how long it takes for planets to form stable orbits and how long it took on Earth for humans to appear and develop instruments to observe the universe- the universe is for the time being relatively empty of life. Some people revisited the drake equation and approached it as a coin flip: Sure there is a 50/50 chance but it's either/or, so based on their calculations the most likely scenario is for 0-2 times life forming on our galaxy. And FTL is still science fiction so it might be that the only species that can visit us are coming from other galaxies and have evolved to survive for billions of years. At the same time thanks to kepler we now know that planets with the characterists of earth are rather rare as are solar systems like ours. But there are a myriad of other planets with conditions too hard for humans but good enough for life found on Earth. In this case it might have been that some sort of life exists in the cosmos but it evolves much more slowly compared to us and thus needs a few extra billion years to reach space travel. So maybe the universe is experiencing it's first explosion of life and we are one of the first multi-cell organisms or step out of the water. Who knows.

Also we don't know how technology would have evolved should it be that Earth had a different composition. Like for example metals are fairly rare on the crust but yet they are fundamental to our function. Maybe a planet that has a 10% metal crust would have evolved towards electricity much faster than us. Or a planet with lower gravity and lower or no magnetosphere could mean that whatever species developed there could have achieved space travel much faster and easier thus increasing the incentive( in human terms) of developing ftl. Right now ftl is sci-fi for us but remember that yes, it was the military who developed the internet but all the applications and the development of the science behind it came once more people could toy with it.

I take it you don't do a lot of walking. People in cars are routinely assholes to pedestrians, presumably because they feel invulnerable.

Why wouldn't folks on space ships visiting a primitive planet-bound race not be 10,000 times worse about fucking with the locals for kicks?

What a bizarre comparison, albeit a novel rebuttal! I do think your argument rests too much on the typical assumptions/biases a human brings to the table given our experience in this specific time and place. See my reply to andrewflnr for a nuanced response.

Also, I do walk a lot! About 4 miles daily in fact. People in cars also happen to be assholes to each other. And to wildlife. Heck, they can even be assholes to others in the same vehicle!

You seem to assume folks in spaceships would be scientists or part of a Star Trek like organized fleet. But what if some of them are tourists?

Americans in cars aren't part of some elite professional military or scientific service. Most Americans have cars. It's the norm here. And being a driver of a car in no way guarantees they are well educated, sophisticated, civilized types. There are even people driving illegally, without a license or insurance or whatever. That's part of why they can be such dicks to people they perceive as less powerful -- because they don't feel particularly powerful, etc. themselves.

4chan on holiday.

He understands me.

> I grew out of bothering ant hills when I was about twelve. Nowadays, I pleasantly observe from high above. So why wouldn't aliens do the same?

Simple: the aliens that mess with us are delinquent eleven year olds joyriding their parents' saucer

I knew I wasn't the only one who watched Explorers in the 80s.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089114

>Answer 2: alien apathy. You've flown a million light years to spy on some great apes who aren't even sure you exist. Who cares if a few of them get flashed with bright lights, while you're looking around? They don't even have flying saucers yet, so it's not like they could chase you.

I just read your reply and so I deleted mine which was similar, but a bit stronger; its not like we could possibly hurt them.

3. Human cruise ships (and airplanes) have bright lights too. What if it's just an "alien" cruiseship entertaining a bunch of interterrestial holiday makers?

Jack McDewitt's 'ECHO' comes to mind. Let's hope it's not a bunch of ill-behaved interstellar tourists. :)

I could also imagine aliens that might see in different light spectrums and our visible light spectrum is 'dark' to them, like how we would perceive infrared, microwaves, or radio waves without giving a second thought as to whether or not something unknown might be able to sense that random spectrum emissions. Maybe they see in microwave range, maybe they use the light spectrum much like we use our radio spectrum and just blindly broadcast it in mass quantity as line-of-sight communication technology. Maybe it is used as a scanner/detector beam source, like how we might x-ray rock samples or something to determine composition.

But beyond something crazy like that, yeah it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to be spewing light as an alien visitor.

NASA-engineer Paul R. Hill has written about "UFO-illumination":

http://orbwatch.com/paulrhill.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Hill

Probably some sampling bias there. If there wasn't a bright light (whatever caused it), then chances are a person wouldn't have seen it at all.

I don't personally give much thought to what ants think as I tromp around the lawn.

I tend to think a species advanced enough to get here may find us similarly unimportant.

That's a familiar argument, but I just realized that it mistakes scale for evolution. I imagine that if there are aliens, they are closer to the scale of a human than an ant.

But wouldn't an intelligent species capable of inter-galactic travel have some of the Federation style rules to obey? Don't interfere with a less intelligent civilization for fear of disruption or whatever?

I'm not sure they would consider "us" unimportant. There's clearly some sort of "intelligence" with all of the radio energy emanating from this rock. If they sat back and observed for quite a bit of time, they would at some point be curious and want to study. Hence the probing. What's this hole for, let's find out. Plus, you'd want to dissect a couple of specimens to study it. After that, you start messing with the subject to see how it behaves/reacts.

Just like Spain didn’t interfere in South America, or Britain in Africa. Why would there be non interference when even Star Trek doesn’t have it half the time (Borg, dominion, ferengi, etc)

>But wouldn't an intelligent species capable of inter-galactic travel have some of the Federation style rules to obey? Don't interfere with a less intelligent civilization for fear of disruption or whatever?

Even in the fictional universe of Star Trek, most intelligent civilizations couldn't care less about the prime directive, and even the Federation disregards it when it's convenient.

There's no reason to assume that aliens in real life should necessarily conform to a modern human moral ideal about "non-interference with primitive cultures" just because they're intelligent.

For all we know, they subscribe to the Rules of Acquisition rather than the Prime Directive.

1) "crash" a flying saucer in Roswell, New Mexico

2) secretly cultivate a pop cultural mythology around aliens and alien contact. Buzz around their aircraft and flash lights at them now and then just to keep them interested, but not too interested because you know how humans can get when they're too interested.

3) infiltrate human society with shapeshifting reptoids and own the rights to numerous sci-fi properties like Star Wars, Star Trek and Men in Black, to condition humans to be comfortable with the premise of alien contact and to build brand identity and loyalty.

4) build some Star Wars and Star Trek themed casinos out in deep space.

5) show up one day and offer to loan them a warp drive, but the warp drive just happens to always fail near a casino planet.

?) PROFIT.

Alternative explanation: they're everywhere and all around us, but once in a while, they forget to turn the headlights off

I've seen planes travel long distances above me with their front lights on, then switch them off once they realize they forgot. Same thing.

Devil's advocate: the aliens may simply not care about being seen, or they may be aware that they can operate "in the open" with plausible deniability from a skeptical public and governments being unwilling to admit their existence.

This makes the most sense to me. Do you get worried that the ants will see you and freak out when you're hiking through the woods?

Ants no, but ticks are habitual hitchhikers.

Was it Douglas Adam's theory that said UFO sightings were the equivalent to space teenagers just screwing around with the primitive life forms?

My question, is why do they only buzz the trailer parks and the 'very highly educated folks'?

They’re anti-collision lights. They have to be really bright to be effective at interstellar speeds.

Interstellar speeds certainly must be in excess of the speed of light (or those creatures are chill with cruising for thousands of years), so they wouldn't do much good. :)

There's always time dilation...

Wouldn’t an FTL spacecraft appear to be traveling in reverse and exhibit extreme redshifting to an observer on Earth?

Probably not within the atmosphere.

I can't imagine that a ship traveling faster than light through an atmosphere would do great things for said atmosphere.

Maybe the alien version of anthropomorphism? If they and most galactic species eyesight was in the infra-red red range then the might not think of hiding light in our visible spectrum. Imagine if exhaust from our cars gave off visible light? We'd want to change that pretty quickly.

So long as we're brushing off tinfoil hats, my pet theory is the bright lights are necessary symptoms of whatever is powering those thing. Such immense power would naturally give off lots of light.

> why make itself known?

Do you try to hide your existence from ants? Or flowers?

Can't report the invisible ones if we can't see them

Cosmic radiation have been known to cause bright flashes for astronauts. Maybe this? This could also explain why several people see it too.

Can cameras pick up cosmic radiation?

Most UFOs aren’t don’t turn out to be alien spacecraft, so it stands to reason that most UFO sightings won’t behave like alien spacecraft.

>>If some extraterrestrial being came to visit, why make itself known? And in such an obviously unnatural way, too?

Playing the devils advocate. If the Zoo hypothesis is correct. They are probably thinking the same about us.

Like.

"We get so close to them, and they sometimes see us too. Just imagine how stupid they must be to not notice us or become aware of our presence."

>>One immediate counterargument I can think of is that it's good camouflage.

No one I know who ever went to Safari in Africa wore a camouflage. Why should they do it?

at least two common things fall into this bucket

1. Reflections and other visual phenomenon 2. Space debris burning up on reentry (natural or unnatural)

yeah, why aren't there more sightings of invisible stuff?

Well, if our the earth hasn’t already been irreversibly destroyed already, it will be extremely soon. Now might be a good time to end observation.

Life on earth survived the KT boundary asteroid impact. Life on earth isn't going to end from our activity, it will only end from our inactivity in protecting the earth and the sun from major cosmic impacts. We need to get out shit together and stop feeling guilty about burning all the oil. We need to do whatever it takes to get established in space and the moon, ready to deflect and close call objects. We are natures best design yet to protect itself from the dangers of space, we are one people, one planet, one sun, and we need to stand together against the cosmos, or nature will find a new guardian or perish trying.

> Life on earth isn't going to end from our activity

Although unlikely, I can envision a plausible pessimistic runaway scenario where we turn Earth into a Venus-like world due to sheer collective stupidity over a sufficiently large timescale. Maybe not completely sterile but having only some hardened bacteria survive is hardly a hopeful outcome for "life".

While I agree about a run away scenario, o do not think were anywhere close to that. The more we look, the more redundant systems we find on the earth for maintaining balance. Nature is very resiliant, more so then we think, and it isn't going to go down without a fight. We think our pollution is bad... natures recovered from worse. We think nuclear war would end life... natures recovered from worse.

Fear is the mindkiller, and the powers that are instilling fear into our civilization have another agenda. Eyes open, no fear. Nature needs us to come together and protect the earth and sun from cosmic impacts, we need to act now. Nature can handle the co2, we need to handle the comets and asteroids that are the true threat to life on the planet and in this solar system.

I’m a little less worried about “life” and more worried about “human life”.

> We need to get out shit together and stop feeling guilty about burning all the oil.

It’s the results that concern me.... anyway, this attitude is disgusting. A) there’s no reason our carbon output isn’t manageable and B) there’s no reason we can’t pursue the care of the earth and spreading the human population at the same time.

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