Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by subsubzero | Hacker News Reader

There has been some news lately regarding UFO's that have been very strange, regarding government knowledge and disclosures.

Things started in 2017 with TTSA and the Pentagon's acknowledgment of a series of videos regarding craft that showed strange movements of a unknown craft[1]. The fact is there is a pentagon program looking into this phenomenon, whether they are a psyops organization designed to deceive or mislead the public or a genuine org that is fact finding is yet to be revealed.

Couple that with the acknowledgement of a series of fantastic technology patents that show off technologies not known by mainstream science by a engineer in the Navy [2].

Even more interesting is some of the technology in the Navy patents(room temperature superconducting) has recently been shown to be feasible(although with strict environmental controls) by MIT [3].

I am uncertain what is going here, If these craft are indeed genuine my suspicion is the Govt has made a lightspeed advance in technology and these craft being seen are products from a unknown skunkworks, if that is not the case than possibly China has made the leap. If they are not genuine, then the US is running a brazenly deceptive misinformation campaign with the media(and China). The other alternatives which would be a truly unknown source, or a known extraterrestrial source. The last two being least probable.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/insider/secret-pentagon-u...

[2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en [2] - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28729/docs-show-navy-g...

[3] - https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/14/1010370/room-tem...

More like "The Navy and Air Force realized that UFO reporting was being laughed at, which could result in pilots not reporting new Chinese or Russian aircraft (manned or drone) they saw on patrol but could not identify." Not reporting sightings that actually happened could lead to major blind spots for DoD planning.

So the DoD is trying to normalize UFO reporting in hopes of keeping tabs on Chinese and Russian aircraft.

Commander: "What do you mean, you've 'seen those fancy new stealth fighters' before?!? They're flying over our base!!!"

Fighter pilot: "Sorry sir, we thought it was a UFO and it wasn't in the briefings before, so we didn't report it because we'd look dumb."

Intel guy: "Uh, yeah, I've got intelligence photos of these from spy sats, but since none of you had ever seen one, you weren't need-to-know... yet. We've seen them on the tarmac, but we have no idea what they're loaded with."

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/23/us-navy-guidelines...

Has anyone ever seen one of these things with their eyeballs? Or is it all... electronic sensors? US electronic warfare is top shelf sorcery.

The pilots seen them with their Mark I EyeBalls.

Joe Rogan interviewed David Fravor, a retired Navy pilot, alongside a documentary maker who was interested in UFOs. The conversation was cautious but not particularly skeptical.

It sounded like Mr. Fravor saw something in his airspace with his own two eyes. I don't know what it was (blimp, foreign aircraft, whatever), though I doubt it was extraterrestrial. (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence)

I couldn't spot anything obviously wrong with Mr. Fravor's story by itself.

On the other hand, if the DoD wanted to nudge their pilots to report things they see, and had a story like David Fravor's to put out there in order to encourage current pilots to report what they see, that would be a propaganda event to encourage, so to speak, at least by declassifying harmless footage and not squashing the story.

https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ

I saw the Fravor interview with Joe Rogan. Lex Fridman interviewed him as well and that was pretty detailed. Its an interesting case as you had radar data(unsure if that was released) along with pilot eyewitnesses from both Fravor and the other fighter jet pilot that saw it. What Fravor said about the craft was if it was US based why have it be in an active area where fighter jets are training(this could lead to collisions etc).

If you take him at his word then whatever he saw was not something we know how to build. Not unless you have a blimp that can go from hovering over the ocean to matching a Super Hornet in a tight spiral, cut across the middle and accelerate so fast that it’s gone in a blink. He could be lying though.

Yeah, if you had a crazy new electronic warfare technique you'd probably spread as much FUD as you could. You'd also spread FUD if you had nothing, Star Wars style. It's definitely one of those two things.

There is a pretty big misunderstanding in your third point, and the article kind of laid the trap for an uncautious reader to fall into it: room-temperature superconductors, as an idea, are not a new or unusual concept.

The breakthroughs from CFS (the MIT fusion spinoff) are in specific production techniques and uses of known superconductor materials that are "high temperature", but not "room temperature". They are (excitingly) industrializing some well-established science.

The other 'recent breakthroughs' in room-temperature superconductors are similar to many accomplishments in the past, i.e., they were achieved under extremely high pressures, and do not operate on anything related to the concepts that Pais describes in his navy patents.

The Pais patents and these other works are not related; these new 'breakthroughs' do not grant Pais' work any bonus of credulity -- but lots of reporting out there relies on only briefly noting that fact, and hoping that readers may glaze over it and see connections where there are none.

edit: furthermore, the relationship between the patents and the videos as a concerted campaign has also been left for readers to make -- it's part of what makes this into some 'overall narrative', and what makes reading about these bits fun, but as I suggested in another comment, this background detail from the article on the patent process, I feel, begins to suggest concretely that the timing of all this UFO-ish stuff is (unfortunately!) just coincidence.

Let's add this one to the list...

https://www.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chie...

This one seems very odd.

I don't know if you guys ever had a chance to hear the stories someone with severe mental illness can create.

I had and they seem a lot with what this gentleman is saying.

It's a blend of real and fantastic facts. They give those things names we already now. Think about it: why would a galactic spanning organisation be called "Galactic Federation"?

Why not another name?

Like:

uuuurrrrloooop gleeeick flurrrumpa

Any theoretical galaxy-scale organization welcoming us as a new member is certainly savvy enough to translate things into our language, right?

The moment of first contact with a race of nuclear-armed savages is uh, pretty fraught, I'd imagine.

If I was in charge of that alien delegation, you best believe I'd have a well-rehearsed slide deck translated into the humans' native dialect(s)!

Sincerely, glrorpoepopo pvivinsinoborpo from gleebinimus alpha

Hi glrorpoepopo pvivinsinoborpo,

Are the aliens using PowerPoint, now? Oh goodness, not sure I welcome our new galactic overlords.

"slide deck" seems Apple term, so I think they are more into Keynote

I can't say we enjoy PowerPoint either, but we watched you guys for quite a while and it seemed to be what you prefer!

A federation is a political entity characterized by a union of partially self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a central federal government. A glactic federation is just one that spans the galaxy. It would make sense.

Not that I believe this Israeli guy in any way whatsoever, but:

    Think about it: why would a galactic spanning
    organisation be called "Galactic Federation"?

Seems reasonable. Might even be the only reasonable part of the story!

Imagine you were in charge of such a galaxy-spanning organization, encompassing multiple worlds, species, and cultures. Needless to say, communication in general and naming things in particular would be quite the challenge.

Literal names and clarity are probably the primary things you want to really value there.

Particularly if you're in charge of saying "hello" to a new species (humans, in this case) who are likely to find the experience a bit overwhelming. There's more than enough new information for them to absorb, right? Keep things as simple as possible.

Yeah, "Galactic Federation" sounds about right.

Yeah, but Galactic Federation is a sci-fi term. The aliens could call it Galactic Brains Network, or even Local Cluster Department of Thinking Devices.

Or Very Massive Ensemble of Genetic Transport Devices.

Or anything totally new, which could gives us a notion of a galactic point of view, non-human point of view, outside of earthly concepts.

But anyways, I want to believe!

Perhaps that's merely _the closest translation_ into our language? :)

I mean, if I were trying to translate the idea of a limited liability corporation into non-English, I'd probably come up with a phrasing that ended up being very similar (if not the same) to whatever they use in Dutch or Japanese or Chinese etc. If you had a multi-star-system government that wasn't an empire, it doesn't seem a stretch that you'd call it something similar to a 'federation'.

> why would a galactic spanning organisation be called "Galactic Federation"?

We called the earth beneath our feet "Earth". Our moon "Moon", our star ("our sun" in common language) "Sun". Our military has a force that deals with flying in the air and we called it "Air Force". Our first space force is called "Space Force". Historically, one of the biggest companies that dealt with the east indian area was called "East India Company" despite being British.

So, I'd answer back with "why not"?

Our solar system is called Sol. "The Sol System".

Our residence and office of the leader of our country is The White House.

"Air Force" only sounds more normal than "Space Force" because most of us weren't around when it was the "US Army Air Corp".

Admittedly they could've called it something slightly cooler based off other names, like the US Cyber Command.

It's "Federation" due to pop-cultural osmosis from Star Trek. No other reason.

I was going to but it seemed like it was based on one persons word, regardless of the person involved(high level military individual) for me its labelled folklore and not hard data. The other examples I listed all have paper trails with institutions that have rock solid credentials, in addition to the videos released by the pentagon(video evidence).

In just the past few months there have been VIP assassinations/attempts on highly visible people (Lead Iranian Nuclear Scientist, Alexei Navalny, etc.) are we really expected to believe that intelligence agencies of the nations in question would let these kinds of secrets out in the open and not silence people if they were true? Apparently they are incredibly brazen so why are these people allowed to continue talking?

I don't know, we've known Israel has had Nuclear weapons for decades but they still fail to officially acknowledge it.

Plenty of people were saying the NSA was syphoning tons of US citizens' info but before Snowden offered proof they were just dismissed as conspiracy theorists and lunatics...

Honestly killing or trying to silence people coming out about UFOs and alien races on earth might do more to legitimize their claims and if I was trying to keep this secret I would do my best to continue to let the public ridicule their claims and never do anything that might give some proof that I cared about their revelations.

This is also not the first high-ranking government official to make such claims, see the ex-Canadian Defense minister who made very similar claims in 2015. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3051151/Gove...

It's at least mildly curious/interesting that the stories sound fairly similar to each other.

> “A third group are called 'Nordic Blondes' and Hellyer said that if you meet one you'd probably say, 'I wonder if she's from Denmark or somewhere.'”

I just want to point out to readers here that the gentleman quoted in this article is 87 years old. While I have no reason to think that this gentleman is being dishonest or exaggerating, I have been around family members the same age - 87 is prime age for picking up an assortment of mental issues.

I found a translation of the interview this article was derived from. It became clear to me that this was not an old man with inside information finally agreeing to disclose it (as is kind of implied by the headline) but rather, is just a normal guy who's read some stuff, and believes it. Very different thing.

What's most odd is that the aliens behave just like they are part of a human conspiracy theory.

What's most disturbing is that openness to crackpot theories now extends into high levels of national institutions. How many make the argument, 'these things are unexplained'. Lots of things are unexplained; the difference between crackpot and real is evidence - publicly available evidence - that supports it. And evidence of odd phenomena is not at all evidence that they was caused by aliens - centuries ago, it would have been attributed to a god or demon. Remember that 'I don't know' is a normal human condition - get used to it.

The Israeli general who claimed that Trump would soon reveal an alien presence among us also said

> Eshed explained that the timing was simply due to how much the academic landscape has changed, and how respected he is in academia. / "If I had come up with what I’m saying today five years ago, I would have been hospitalized," he explained to Yediot. / "'today, they’re already talking differently [a bout alients]. I have nothing to lose. I’ve received my degrees and awards; I am respected in universities abroad, where the trend is also changing.'" https://www.jpost.com/omg/former-israeli-space-security-chie...

Really? Is that serious? People need to be really, really troubled. Disinformation is flooding society.

It's not a new phenomenon. Heck, this story even has some of the same players: Hal Puthoff is mentioned in the article because he's still a part of the government research scene. (He's the crackpot who did remote viewing experiments for the CIA in the 70s. He helped promote the fradulent spoon-bending "psychic" Uri Geller.) He was involved in the AATIP, a pet project of Senator Harry Reid, and the source of the Navy UFO videos.

The CIA "remote viewing experiments" were part of a PSY-OPS against the American public, and, incidentally, anybody spying. If he was involved there, that ties it all together.

I.e., there were not ever, actually, any such experiments, or any of the other obvious BS. There was, instead, an operation to convince people that there had been such experiments. The operation was a success: people do believe it, to this day.

"Men Who Stare at Goats" is a terrifying book by Jon Ronson exploring the program. You have to read between the lines to pick up the full consequence.

This stuff has all the hallmarks of such an operation. It is hard to imagine what point it could have. What we know that we don't know is what they are up to, or why. The patent language is spume blown off the top of the wave. The wave itself we have no information about.

Talking about "intergalactic flight" is fundamentally the kookiest bit. What galaxy would you fly to, and why? There are a trillion solar systems a thousand times closer, in our own galaxy. Surely one or two of those would be of some interest? Or a planet, a trillion times closer than that?

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