As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena | Hacker News Reader

As a US Navy fighter pilot, I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

thehill.com

486 pointsgraderjs939 comments

I worked on stealth aircraft that would occasionally cause civilian UFO reports.

It was common for the reports to mention that these UFOs maneuvered unlike any man-made aircraft, which was always a good chuckle because they were usually just flying straight or banking normally.

However when seasoned military pilots like Fravor speak on the matter, I listen. When a bunch of them speak about the same incident, I take them at their word.

What would you say is the most credible incident that everyone should take seriously?

The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?).

Extremely detailed visual and sensor events.

Tons of human witnesses. Tons of activity.

There was a detailed Reddit thread on the incident from a Seaman many, many years ago long before news of the Tic Tac came out.

I’m on mobile but perhaps someone else can paste the thread URL.

Could be an elaborate hoax but that’s one heck of a long con game.

The original appears to have been deleted, but you may be referring to https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encount...

It starts by saying..."...I am relaying information and supporting circumstances, I did not see a UFO personally. However, it is an interesting story."

This one? https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1qyu5i/my_ufo_encount...

Check out Joe Rogan episode 1361 with Commander David Fravor (who witnessed the UFO first-hand). They show the footage and Cmdr. Fravor talks through it around the 24 minute mark. Pretty fascinating stuff.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/16If5PVe6ouxeDwNbtu0iC?si=8...

Weren't there only four witnesses? The pilots were the only ones who saw anything with their own eyes. And there's been no release of sensor data or video, so it's hard to judge its quality. (The 'FLIR1' video was taken later, by different pilots who did not see their object visually, and simply shows a distant hot object slowly moving left, with no inexplicable manoeuvers.) That the ship radar was purportedly bouncing between maximum altitude and reasonable altitude suggests a software or hardware issue, or electronic interference.

> The Nimitz Incident of 2004(?).

The Tic Tac UFO? That's probably one of the best explained events (debunked). Short answer is that there was sense misreading and a gimbal lock. Some people even simulated it[0]. I wouldn't call this an elaborate hoax, but an optical illusion and an event that took some expertise to understand. Expertise that a pilot wouldn't have.

I should add that finding that link was nontrivial. Faster through Google but searching through YouTube just came up with UFO videos and no debunking. This is probably part of the problem.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

And how does a gimbal lock simultaneously show up on multiple sensor systems across warships?

Your retort is phrased poorly, but I don’t understand the downvotes here - the footage from this episode was made by fighter jets who were dispatched to investigate a radar signal, and the pilot said they had visual contact. That’s three distinct records and/or a whole lot of marines fucking with us.

I mean there is no denial that SOMETHING was out there. The debunking refers to the performance of the target which is being shown to be safely within the capabilities of contemporary human technology and not requiring "aliens" or "unknown technology" to achieve.

This is the guy who headed up the AATIP (UAP) task force for the Pentagon.

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

He lists some pretty amazing capabilities around 2:10.

Before speaking authoritatively as a debunker, you should be careful about accuracy. The video you linked is not of the alleged Tic Tac, it is a completely separate incident known as GIMBAL. The only public data on the Tic Tac UFO is the FLIR video.

The Nimitz event is far from “debunked”.

We have multiple naval aviator eye witnesses of the physical object, with testimony (fravor and the female wingman, I forget her name)

We have testimony of the Princeton’s AEGIS radar operator that these things were “popping in at 80k feet and dropping to sea level in a few seconds”, that “they disappear on radar and the sub would get a ping in the same area tracking 200+ knots underwater”

We have the intentionally degraded video of the same object from another intercept (the people who went out after fravor, his jet didn’t have recording capability). This is the video a certain washed up video game developer claims to have debunked by pointing a flashlight at a webcam.

This operation was testing a new version of the navy’s most advanced radar/integrated tracking system at that time (2004) that was substantially more powerful/sensitive than anything that came before it. Make of that what you will.

> the female wingman, I forget her name

Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich

That’s it, thanks!

> The Nimitz event is far from “debunked”.

But he googled $Event + Debunked and watched 2 minutes of the first explanation that came up. Mick West said it's debunked so it must be so, after all, any good skeptic will click the first link and believe any debunk instantly because that's the science way^tm

It is rather ironic

i love military footage debunk videos, where the debunker makes layman assumptions about how a particular highly classified sensor works and the idiot pilots just don't know how to use it properly

Mick West is a layman; a former software engineer. Not sure why you would trust his "expertise" over one of America's top pilots. Also I strongly question West's biases. His whole schtick is saying everything is a hoax and heres why; this leads to confirmation bias when your conclusion is that it is an optical illusion from the onset of the investigation.

The issue with all these reports is that there is a distinct lack of detail surrounding the sighting. At most its visual reports and very blurry IR footage. Zero mention of anything else.

Lets take an example of the Tic Tac from the incident, that was supposedly moving very fast.

If it had a physical presence, ie could interact with the world, it would seem very likely that pilots would describe the resultant shockwave. Depending on the possibilities of the propulsion system, its highly likely that you would get EM interference, possibly even some physical disturbance if the craft came close to the observing plane.

If it didn't have a physical presence, like it was folding space or something and traveling in a bubble, then it seems very, very strange that an advanced civilization can fold space to effectively travel without any impact on the world, but let the EM radiation that is light/heat leak out. You would think they could just be fully invisible.

Maybe they are normally fully invisible, but even alien spaceships can have malfunctions every now and then. Perhaps they didn't realize the cloak system was off.

It’s weird, given the premise of seeing something alien, that you would assume properties of their propulsion or which emmissions they are making.

Sure, if the thing is some new earth tech or natural phenomena there are plenty of assumptions you can make. But in the face of something else?

The point is that you can make any number of stories about aliens trying to explain the phenomenon, and there would be some that would be way more believable then some object breaking pretty well established known physical laws with the only explanation that "aliens have ADVANCED SCIENCE"

For example, Aliens living among us for a while, undetected, and having the ability to place false memories in peoples heads because they mapped out how human brain works down to the neuron level (thanks to their massive compute clusters) is way more believable.

Why does it have to be off world tech? Take a smartphone back enough years and people are going to be similarly blown away.

Also you act like the science and the laws are settled but we all know science doesn't work like that. New discoveries happen all the time its that for the laws of physics those changes don't happen often.

What laws of physics revelations will the next Newton or Einstein offer us?

For a smartphone to be fundamentally unexplainable by relevant experts one would have to go back more than 100-200 years, I think. The first trans Atlantic radio transmission was in 1902, for example. Though I guess even the experts of the day might struggle to believe that the device is practically realizable, since it probably would defy many a conception of what is doable (if not theorically possible). There are some things now that seem impossible, which in 200 years might be commonplace. Idk, maybe residential grade or even portable nuclear power.

> There are some things now that seem impossible, which in 200 years might be commonplace.

Like flying very fast without producing a shockwave and only leaking some residual light and heat?

Man how awesome would a home reactor be.

The most plausible explanation that they could be fully invisible but chose not to be I've heard so far is from Robin Hanson, but there are several parts and that alone lowers its probability. Still, fun to think about, and also addresses things like how they could be here/find us at all, why are they here, what do they want to achieve. I'll risk a summary rather than just linking out... First they would be pan-spermia siblings from our stellar nursery, so they evolved in the same galaxy and could find their stellar siblings among all other stars. They're many years more advanced than us but for some reason they have a strong norm against expanding and rearranging our galaxy and beyond to their desires. We're still around so they don't want to wipe us out without reason, but we can guess that if we get ideas and capabilities of becoming grabby, they're here to nip it in the bud. Being sort of impressive but also mysterious can eventually let us know they are there without revealing too much since we could easily collectively find something out about them to hate and think of them as enemies. If we admire them instead we're more likely to try emulation including adopting a norm against spreading out to the stars as fast as we can before even more matter becomes unreachable or some other aliens from farther away galaxies arrive here in several hundred million years.

One benefit of this explanation is it predicts we'll see more of these strange phenomena even as our technology gets better and the possibility of simply being mistaken is driven way further down. If we stop seeing them suspiciously around the same time as big advances in sensor and sensor integration tech, all the more reason to bet on old observations being mistaken/hoaxes/conspiracies than actually aliens.

To your last point of seeing them less with more advanced sensors, wouldn’t you be able to say otherwise as well? Given that we have the higher capability to detect it would behoove a sufficiently advanced intelligence to stray away from that region. So I don’t think you can conclude with higher probability that it implies a hoax.

> If it didn't have a physical presence, like it was folding space or something and traveling in a bubble, then it seems very, very strange that an advanced civilization can fold space to effectively travel without any impact on the world, but let the EM radiation that is light/heat leak out.

I'm not sure why you're speculating on unknowable alien motives. The only thing that matters is agreeing on whether there is something unusual here that requires an explanation. If it turns out to be aliens, then you can speculate on their motives.

Were they really really big, black and triangular?

The B-2A was.

Some other stuff were stealthy cruise missiles. Not too big but they flew so low that they would cause some “shock and awe”.

Yellow, Black and Rectangular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmNfPkdCRf8

You know how many time zones there are in the Soviet Union?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDmWYVdN8ug

Like the shade of a Star Destroyer?

There are/were also pilots specifically going for that effect...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nox5_QStw&t=1082s

This despite the existence of people like Rendlesham's Colonel Halt, and so on, is, indeed, a very interesting military-UAP venn-ecosystem. I think it's a fascinating combination to study.

Military psychology also naturally disincentivizes "looking into things" (see for example Colonel Halt's thoughts on "what to do about it"[1]) and there's a ping-pong false dichotomy that develops: Did we make it or didn't we; Did we cause it or didn't we. It's the perfect recipe for meaningless distraction from very important questions.

This problem also further isolates important aspects of the military role in potentially damming up exploration & science efforts, especially when we examine its comparatively premium level of day-in, day-out access to what are de facto scientifically-capable exploration & discovery tools.

Is it any wonder, in that light, that the accompanying de facto "scientists", i.e. pilots, radar operators, and privileged officers, are seeing extraordinary things? No. And that's a huge opportunity wrapped up in a problem, because the chartering mindset interferes.

1. “There’s no doubt it was something beyond anything we know or understand. […] I have concerns, but I don’t think we can do anything about it. I think this is beyond us.”

“So: Quit worrying about it.” -- From just after the 8m mark in:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cswsp9

(An example of a rather stunning mindset, given the circumstances, and in comparison to the known-reliable mindset of exploratory effort / scientific learning & exploration)

Fravor admitted to the same kind of pranks on Joe Rogan.

Such pranks are very, very common. But they’re not something that would extend beyond the attention these events are getting now. Or even close to the point of.

None of them would? If they’re very common, over many decades would it really be surprising if a some of them got out of control?

(At correct time): https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ?t=2942

Fravor admitted to UFO pranks in the 90s (gliding over camp fires and then turning on afterburners). Some were found reported on UFO forums at the time.

Yeah, it can undermined his credibility a bit. Maybe a prank from someone else?

I would not say he admitted it. More like told it as a funny anecdote in juxtaposition to what he experienced.

People went back and found UFO reports on 90s forums for the location he said he did it.

Yea I thought it was a hilarious way to debunk UFO reports of the past by civvies on the ground who lack advanced warship and get fighter radar systems.

>seasoned military pilots

You mean dudes who are under constant stress, likely sleep deprived, and likely have some health issues due to the physical demands of the job?

Those probably would be the last people I listen to.

I had assumed this pilot was mostly discussing observations made during non-combat missions. Training and other enforcement activities in times of peace probably make up the majority of a military pilots career flying hours.

Even during non-combat missions, flying a fighter jet isn't exactly your run of the mill job, ESPECIALLY if you are flying for the Navy and landing on carriers.

Pilots are notoriously bad observers of anything outside their training. They see what they expect to see, just like any other humans.

Things that fly seems to be in-scope with their training

Identifying what some aircraft in the distance is by sight, at night, is not in their training. Identifying that it is _something_ so as to avoid it, is, but identifying what it is, is not.

Yes it is? You have to know if it's an enemy aircraft, and which one. You have to study each model so you know what you're up against. WW2 pilots spent a lot of time memorizing enemy aircraft silhouettes and performance details

You're not doing that at night though. The human eye isn't capable of that.

Patently untrue, learning to identify aircraft by shape for both IFF and situational awareness purposes is standard.

But wouldn't that lead to more situations where unidentified reports are made by military pilots than civilians? They are supposed to identify all the things in the air so when they see an unidentified one, they are very attuned to the gap between their knowledge and what they observe (often intermediated with sensors). So if they see something visually that is not on the sensors, that's very weird. Also, something with a weird path - very weird. But these could be meteorites, debris from balloons, satellite parts, drones, projectiles (somebody shooting a gun or a laser at them) ... all sorts of stuff that are uncommon enough to be not part of any training or even known phenomena.

Civilian just sees something and unless it's really weird presumes that it's outside of their knowledge area but that makes sense because their universe of unknowns is large.

So you can pick out the type of an aircraft against a black sky at night only by it's wing lights? I said _by sight_ in my comment and that was important.

Clouds, reflections of the moon, etc are things that happen at night. It doesn't have to be against a black sky.

Are they trained and used to judge things not fitting to the patterns (shape, behaviour, position, ...) of human made objects? Trained in the 'impossible'? I assumed their training has bounds on how human made objects behave. When something is outside this envelope may trigger non-standardised responses rooting in personality affected anchoring to some snippets of prior knowledge. Just like for any other human being out there.

> Are they trained and used to judge things not fitting to the patterns (shape, behaviour, position, ...) of human made objects? Trained in the 'impossible'? I assumed their training has bounds on how human made objects behave.

Presumably they are trained on distinguishing aircraft from birds and weather balloons. If they see something "impossible" given that training, then there's clearly something that needs an explanation.

Please qualify the statement "notoriously bad"

The now debunked sensor recordings were also reported by seasoned military pilots. You can even hear them discussing their observations on some of the recordings. In one of them they are patently misreading the sensor data displayed in the video.

I’m sorry, but if that doesn’t thoroughly and permanently discredit this line of reasoning, I don’t know what will.

As long as there are mysterious 1990s era X-Files/Control like stories to be generated for clicks and attention, nothing will. Why are these stories being released primarily on clickbaity media like The Hill, CNN or Fox News? The "whistleblowers" could just open up to related non-profits, respected security blogs or other outlets which aren't driven to squeeze out every possible ad and sponsorship dollar.

In the end, there is zero accountability or consequences for these kinds of articles and the sparse "unclassified" information is fuzzy enough to inject all kinds of speculation. This is not to dismiss the topic as a whole, it's the framing that I find weird.

I am not leaning in either direction at all. Optical phenomena, sensor artifacts, weather, foreign or compartmentalized tech, or aliens... The point is not to be contrarian - it's important to keep an open mind until proven otherwise. However, this heavy X-Files like framing of mysterious otherworldy tech roaming around military facilities is somewhat over-the-top and doesn't really seem to (!) serve the case.

Also, there are probably also projects that are compartmentalized to a degree where part of the military does not know about other parts of the military doing/building/researching specific stuff. What better way to test your capabilities than exposing them to real world scenarios against the arguably most advanced defense systems on the planet?

The information is just too sparse to reach any meaningful conclusion so it's ideal clickbait media material, even if the topic itself is serious and important.

Are they really debunked tho? Hardly. Not conclusive, unless you want it to be.

See for yourself. This is the most clear case of misidentification. All the data you need is shown in the instrument recording and he takes us through how to interpret it step by step. Of course Mick has the advantage of having plenty of time to work through exactly what all the instrument readings are telling us and perform all the trigonometry to interpret it accurately, and explain it to us step by step, while the pilots just eyeballed it and got their estimates wrong.

On the other hand the Pentagon analysts had all the time they could want to do the same analysis and still got it wrong. But you don't need to take anyone's word for it, look at the footage yourself and you can do all the calculations independently with middle school geometry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLyEO0jNt6M

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. I've heard good things and not good about this dude, but I'll go see for myself.

My priors are (but not limited to): 1)"These 10n Navy folk, who do this all day, and seen this stuff over months, across FLIR, radar, visual, from multiple planes and ships, cannot be wrong, and their sensors cannot be wrong in such a consistent way as to create such an artefact, it just seems extremely low probability."; also, 2)"Reports of UAP/UFO going back 100s of years (or 1000s if you want to include the Bible), but at least far enough back that it's not anomalies in sensor data."; also, 3)"Millions of MUFON reports and abduction reports around the world. All these people can't be lying/insane." etc...

That was a good video! It sounds reasonable, haha :) The other videos...other reports...have not been analysed to insignificance, however. At the same time, it raises the question: why would the DoD permit people to get all in a huff in confusion about this, when it was just (possibly) BS? That sounds really deceptive of them. Shame! To preserve their credibility on this topic and not come across as willingly encouraging public deception (which completely belies the public statements and sentiments of various offices about this about "getting to the bottom of it" and "public transparency"), they should have been unequivocal that this was nothing. Sad that they haven't (that I've seen).

Thank you for informing me of this valuable analysis. I think any serious Navy aviator / navigator who looked at this could easily perform the same simple math. If these folk are not denouncing clearly some of these videos, or at least publicising alternate theories for those where alternate theories reasonably exist...it smells bad for the credibility of the enterprise.

Unless the analyst from that video is completely self-servingly misrepresenting what the radar metrics mean...How to corroborate their interpretation of those numbers? Important question.

>why would the DoD permit people to get all in a huff in confusion about this

I think sometimes we underestimate the power of social media in today's outrage and conspiracy driven culture, which is all but impossible to contain. I've said it what seems like a thousand times now - I believe there would be much more positive than negative as a result of shutting the internet off indefinitely.

I'm not sure I understand the connection, you'll have to state your conclusion explicitly if you don't mind.

>why would the DoD permit people to get all in a huff in confusion about this

"I think sometimes we underestimate the power of social media in today's outrage and conspiracy driven culture, which is all but impossible to contain. I've said it what seems like a thousand times now - I believe there would be much more positive than negative as a result of shutting the internet off indefinitely."

I'm not sure if there is much more I can say explicitly. By people I'm assuming you mean the average person with social media access, which is the prime medium for people to get in a huff on. It doesn't matter what objective facts are presented by the DoD. Social media will run with it to the extremes, just like kids would playing the "Chinese whispers" game.

That being said, I'm making a joke about shutting the internet off, but there is some truth to it.

Ah, I get it now! Thanks. Internet is like a comm medium that contains too much "error rate". So the transmission is imperfect. Plus coupled with that, it's looped back on itself. So you get feedback loops. Couple high errors with feedback and you have a system designed to create chaos. Fuck yeah! What an awesome theory. I never saw such a concise "information theoretic" approach to why the internet is so fucked up and society because of it. Now I get it. Thank you! :) ;P xx ;p. I'm not joking it is a good theory.

This is such a strange response as I was in no way debating or countering your original comment. Quite the opposite really as I agree with most of what you said. If I encounter you again I'll make it known next time.

All of this just sounds like miscalibrated radar/ghost images etc. You've got extremely sensitive instruments for tracking stealthy vehicles, operating on somewhat noisy frequencies, no wonder you might sometimes see things that actually aren't there.

I want a whole group of scientists to investigate the evidence.

I don't trust the military or Congress since they're happy to spend money on ESP or telekinesis studies and still not be able to reach a conclusion.

Military pilots have mistaken Venus as a UAF.

I can't just trust an eyewitness account of something fishy as evidence for exterrestrial beings visiting us with faster than light speed vehicles.

Most of the interviews I've seen have focused on adversaries having new tech rather that ETs

Mick West's breakdowns of the Pentagon UAP videos was the nail in the coffin of this era of UFO hype for me. https://youtu.be/Le7Fqbsrrm8?t=665

These were supposed to be the smoking gun evidence. UFO believers inside the DoD and as high up as US Senators fought for years to get them declassified.

As soon as they were public, they were all quickly identified as sensor glare, bokeh, or mis-understood perspective. More generally this showed how easy it is to misinterpret the information being put out by complex sensors like FLIR, even the operators do it.

That explanation fails to account for the multiple other sensors that picked them up, including several different radar systems and the fact that multiple pilots witnessed them with their eyes. However the other sensor data are classified which makes it impossible to draw any conclusions.

If they release the videos we will know!

If they release the radar data we will know!

If they release ...

The original article cites pilots, Congress-people, and members of the intelligence services saying there are hundreds of credible instances of apparently advanced technology documented by eyewitness testimony, video, radar, infrared, etc. Seems completely different than your parody here.

It really isn’t, it’s what’s happened. The recordings released a couple of years ago were also breathlessly reported to be classified smoking gun evidence, confirmed by analysts, that would change everything. Except when we got to actually see them, what we saw was video of pilots patently misreading the sensor data shown in the same recording, and some fuzzy lens flared blobs that could be anything.

That's exactly what's in the article. I could quote it, but I'd basically just be copying and pasting the whole thing. Every element of my previous comment is in the original article.

Either the pilots, Senators, and intelligence officials are lying (or absurdly incompetent) or it is as they say.

They don’t have to be lying, just mistaken, like the pilots on some if the video we do have. Sometimes people make mistakes, it happens.

The idea of multiple military pilots, radar operators, analysts, etc. being mistaken simultaneously in the same way over the course of extended periods of time on multiple occasions is rather concerning.

Maybe they should build in a third seat on those planes and staff it with some intellectually adequate people from hacker news?

The point isn't pilots and other professionals being perfect, it is about the probability of them being wrong (should be slim). Independent probabilities multiply, making such a confluence of mishaps exceedingly unlikely.

Sure, the fact that we have pilots on recordings clearly and obviously misreading instrument data also shown in the same recordings is concerning, but that's where we are. I don't understand how this can be such a huge surprise though.

Humans make mistakes, we have multiple layers of checks and controls for the management of complex systems like planes because of this. It's why airliners have co-pilots, it's why we like to have multiple confirmations from different systems before making life or death critical decisions. Yet still friendly fire incidents happen, mid-air collisions happen. Accidents like the shooting down of flight 655 by the USS Vincennes happen, in which a whole bridge crew and leadership with access to all the information misinterpreted it at multiple levels of review. Similar full system failures by multiple personnel simultaneously have lead to warship collisions.

It boggles my mind that somehow knowing all of this about the ever present potential for human error, even by highly trained competent people, goes out of the window when it comes to potential "UFO" sightings. All of a suddens military pilots and sensor operators are perfect paragons that never make mistakes and should never be questioned.

This is the crappy part. I am sure some are mistaken, honestly. But then there are some I am sure are just fishing for book deals. Both of these can be true simultaneously. The problem is differentiating who is honestly mistaken and who has other motives.

> or absurdly incompetent

This is your error.

There is no "absurdity" needed, as we didn't evolve for accurately perceiving phenomena seen while manoeuvring in transsonic flight, and we don't develop a perfect "common sense" for them either.

I'm not going to try to come up with something counterintuitive about flight, because I don't even do flight simulators.

But I can say this general category of us doing things we didn't evolve for is also why so many people — even smart people — struggle with the Monty Hall paradox, even though it's fairly simple probability.

Yes they are all incompetent. The process selects for bullshitting ability, pork-barrel manufacturing skill and charisma.

It's not clear how many independent sources this actually reflects. All that we, as members of the general public, have to go by is a low-quality video, and a bunch of "soandso said that soandso said that soandso saw..."-type reports that involve a chain of "soandso"s not selected for critical thinking (news media, congresspeople) and ending in people that all belong to the same command structure (the US military), which could have any number of reasons, some enumerated downthread, to order them to report independently having seen something - or, even more straightforwardly, to have standing orders that prevent individual personnel from coming forward and saying that to their knowledge no such thing happened if whoever the higher-ups tasked with talking to the media pulled the statement that hundreds of members of the crew independently saw the UFO out of their rear end.

Exactly, plus my second-cousin and the neighbor of my father-in-law also swear they saw it.

to my knowledge radar data has not been released and I don't think it ever will be.

How can it be sensor glare when the pilots saw with their own eyes these objects?

Most of these weren't things pilots saw with their physical eyes. You need to pay attention to the accounts. There are some though, to be clear. But these cases aren't like the ones we're seeing videos of. They are often something that flew between the aircraft vertically. This could easily be a bird (lower altitudes) or even part of a weather balloon that is just in free fall (these are launched all the time and have small payloads that frequently fall into the ocean). There are also tons of surveillance drones (foreign and domestic) and a few of these have been seen at night and when people look through night vision optics they'll see triangular shapes. This is something you can replicate, which builds strong evidence.

I don't know if you've ever been in a small private aircraft, but if you have you may have seen another plane crossing your path. It is quite hard to see such an object until it is right on you (thank god for ADS-B). I couldn't imagine the same situation in a fighter jet. Having also seen things like balloons and birds while flying, I can tell you that things don't look the same. Your perspective is really different and optical illusions are abound (people even frequently misinterpret flight paths looking up at planes and birds). Yes, you get training for this, but at the same time that training doesn't break the illusion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY scrub to 7 minutes in.

> New Radar

80kft in a second? Remember that the speed of sound is ~1.1kfps (at atm). But 80 times that? The sonic boom from that would be INSANE. I'm going with new radar new glitch. Per the video, they don't describe seeing this movement except on radar and, from my understanding, not the other object with their physical eyes but the weapons systems (which the 60 minutes video even shows an example of a glitch with Go Fast).

Your original comment was about "Most of these weren't things pilots saw with their physical eyes." - the interview I linked to seems to contradict that statement? Two pilots at the 8 minute mark go into depth about witnessing them.

Hey that's not fair, that comment was supposed to derail the entire conversation!

>But 80 times that? The sonic boom from that would be INSANE.

Why are you being purposefully obtuse?

David Fravor and his peers saw one with their own eyes, and it doesn't seem to be a bird.

Its speculation that it was sensor glare, boke etc. Hardly convincing at all considering its some YouTuber basing his research on grainy video.

Speculation that also does not factor in multi eye witness accounts and radar measurements.

They exhibit all the characteristics of bokeh and sensor glare, and it’s speculation that they are anything else.

As for instrument measurements, the track that turns out to be a bird is identified as such mainly by simply correctly interpreting the instrument data.

So we’re back the square one. All the ‘smoking gun’ evidence turns out to be a damp squib and now we’re just expected to believe unrecorded ‘radar measurements’ and eye witness accounts.

Simon H, your inter-galactical mission has failed!

People of planet earth KNOW, that YOU and your friends are HERE and we will not submit to extraterrestrial leadership!

Your denial of an obvious fact is evidence of you being part of the extraterrestrial gang that tries to stay in the dark - but it is too late, you can hide in Antarctica or in the oceans, we still know that YOU are here!

BTW - would you please like to support us in building better polyphonic analog synthesizers? This technology is stuck in the 80s and we still have limitations in total voice count and number of modulation sources - we need some serious evolutionary jump in this area. Thanks!

Bokeh and sensor glare doesn't automatically discount the observations

It could be a plane (or something else) and reflecting light in a way that causes bokeh/glare

Looks like for every ten "I want to believe" person there's also another 'skeptic' that will discard a video for unrelated reasons

I know of eye witnesses that have seen a pig fly, and I have data that shows pigs can fly. Clearly this means pigs can fly.

If all of our pilots said they saw pigs fly then it wouldn't seem so crazy.

Thanks, that's an excellent link.

Check out the debunk of the debunk :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBt4CNHyAck

Also the debunk of the debunk of the debunk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT1uRf5_dF4

Curious, what does a debunk-turtle look like?

What a poor debunk of the debunk. I had respect for David Fravor but listening an ex F/A-18 pilot say confidently "There is 0% chance that I'm wrong" and keeping using argument from authority convinced me that he's just wrong.

well he literally saw the object with his own eyes. do we have a debunk for fravors mark 1 eyeball sensor?

Maybe listen to the videos?

Do you think human vision is something that is absolutely 100% foolproof?

Why are there thousands of known optical illusions examples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_optical_illusions

Have you heard of spatial disorientation? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_disorientation

Do you think the human eye stereo baseline is large enough to determine the depth of objects more than 15m away?

so any reported anomaly should be discarded as an optical illusion?

Not any no. But the 2 cases that he is describing definitely sound like the perfect description of an optical illusion / situational awareness tunneling effect.

Make a bokeh in the shape of a tic-tac.

So his F-18 radar was lying. His eyes were lying. His wingman's eyes were lying. And the ship 30 miles away that picked it up on radar was also lying.

Interesting conclusion.

> they were all quickly identified as sensor glare, bokeh, or mis-understood perspective

False, congressional report shows not all of them can be attributed to that.

Mick West does good work, but he's not _neccesarily_ right on all accounts. Definitely good armchair expert porn though.

> False, congressional report shows not all of them can be attributed to that.

It says it, but does it actually show it? The videos released by the Pentagon that Mick West analysed were also supposed to have been checked by defence analysts.

Why then do you believe Mick West over those professionals?

Because I watched his review analysis, I saw the instrument readings in the video that the pilots were talking about. I've listened to the explanation of what the instrument readings show, including explanatory diagrams, which has been confirmed by other experts on those systems.

It's perfectly obvious in the bird video that the pilots are mistaken, their recorded statements are obvious misreadings of the instrument data actually shown in the video. You can go and watch it yourself. This material is in the public domain now.

> Because I ...

lack trust in institutions. I think I'm smarter than experts, and know better with 1/1000th the training, and 0 context they have access to. See my other contributions on covid or the war in Ukraine.

(Not targeting you specifically, but the general sentiment)

You can jab at me personally as much as you like. It doesn’t change a data recording of tracking a bird into evidence of UFOs.

but how come the pilots and other experts who use the system daily and have seen hundreds of hours of it in operation (with and without birds present) don't realize its a bird and some random dude on the internet correctly identifies it as a bird from a 90 sec video?

I have addressed this in another comment, apologies to the HN gods for saying again, but your raising a good point that deserves an answer. These are complex systems, they are working in a high stress distracting environment constantly multitasking, and human beings make mistakes.

This not a theory, we know for a fact highly trained people working in these sorts of conditions, even whole teams of them, can get things tragically wrong. It’s how we get blue on blue incidents even when pilots and controllers have plenty of time to review situations and make decisions, mid air collisions happen, it’s how the USS Vincennes command crew collectively at multiple levels of review misread tactical data and shot down flight 655. It’s how several navy crew have managed to fail their way into collisions. Many such incidents have been examined and investigated in meticulous detail. People sometimes simply misread the situation they are in, even collectively. It seems like sometimes one person makes a mistake and everyone else just goes along with it.

I know it seems unlikely, but we have many, many thoroughly documented cases. These are extreme statistical outliers, but there are thousands and thousands of such crews and teams constantly on alert all over the world in US service every day. Every now and then even some very unlikely events are going to turn out.

"Your eyes are lying, don't believe anything that may shatter our worldview" he said.

They gave you a bunch of actual reasons based on evidence and you dismissed everything with an argument based on authority...

Mick West has one major problem. He takes a video, and works to create any sort of elaborate explanation with zero consideration given to probability or externalities. If he can create the same visual effect he then declares his concept as the "truth", and everything else "debunked." Zero effort is made to challenge his own conclusions or assess their probability.

As an example in the Gimbel video [1], he concludes the a pilot is unknowingly locked onto another ship and what's actually showing up is just the exhaust of that ship. Would the military be unable to determine the presence of another ship in their immediate vicinity? The pilots reference a fleet of such ships showing up on instrumentation, as well as implying unusual aerodynamic factors. These factors are all completely ignored. I would put the probability of aliens as something near 0, but I would assess even that probability as higher than 'another ship's exhaust', even if one may be able to create a similar effect through such. I think the best explanation is simply *shrugs*. It's okay to accept uncertainty.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKHg-vnTFsM

---

All that said I'm extremely skeptical of these videos and even testimony for a simple reason. All this stuff started coming out at the same time three other things also happened. There was a leak about a bunch of sci-level research supposedly being done by the military. Shortly thereafter the Navy publicly patented it. Here [2] is a patent on an inertial mass reduction tool. A web crawl for the author's name "Salvatore Pais" is an interesting and utterly bizarre. If we were researching e.g. alien technology, patenting it achieves nothing except advertising it to the world. And that's something you'd actually want to keep secret.

This was (and has been) happening also at the time that the US military has began failing to meet recruitment goals, and the endless absurd failures of technology (Zumwalt class destroyers, F-35, submarines running into rocks, ships running into each other, etc) seems to imply there's been a brain drain in the military. I think this is largely just a covert recruiting campaign to get more higher-brow types interested in the military. Come enlist, and build a Stargate! It sounds a whole lot more fun than "Come join us and push ads on people who don't want them." Unfortunately it's also probably completely fake.

[2] - https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en

It's also one of the rationale to build the Space Force.

I don't think that recruiting UFO chasers is going to raise the intellectual caliber of the military.

I don’t get how you can write something like this, read it, and then tell yourself it makes sense. You think the videos are, in order of probability:

A recruitment advertising campaign, aliens, and then lastly a plausible camera illusion mixed with some unclear or just mistaken testimony?

I deeply hate the laziness that is behind those arguments and the people that follow.

Here are some claims of something extraordinary. We have multiple High End sensors Witness this. Your Government is not even recording this data, let alone give it to you. They don't want you to investigate it, they don't want to investigate it themselves yet multiple independent people on different ships and official documentation all tell the same story: Something extraordinary happened.

The response? Let's google "$event + debunk" and believe the first Result. Mick Wests Explanation has many issues and straight up ignores multiple facets of the event. But it sure had a great chilling effect on actually figuring out what that was. And why? Because the possibility of something extraordinary happening is unpalatable to the reflexive skeptics. Things are a priori declared to be ordinary and any evidence that doesn't fit that get's ignored.

Have you read Carl Sagan's Demon Haunted World book from 1996? Because this kind of crap always turns out to be garbage. We live on a rock circling a star.

The only thing that makes the world more interesting than it really is is our brains that love to make crap up. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.™

When the US Government tells the world that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon than i can neither directly measure that myself nor do I have access to the data where and how the US Government knows that happens. Yet we all collectively believe that to be true.

The Nimitz incident falls under the same category. I don't know what that was but the "debunking" by Mick West simply ignores most of the little evidence we have. And so, at least 3 People (2 Pilots, 1 Radar Operator) have come forward and told a consistent story of what happened. No one has come forward and claimed they were lying (which would be the most likely explanation). The US Government is spending at least a few bucks investigating this as a result and changes their policies on reporting UFOs. During his presidency Obama himself gathered thousands of documents on Ufos[0] and told us straight up there's stuff out there we can't explain[1].

Is it possible that is all explainable? Sure, for all I know everyone is lying and North Korea doesn't have Nukes. Is it possible that we stumbled upon something extraordinary? Yes. My Argument is simply: Mick Wests "explanations" ignore a lot of the facts out there to give an answer. Any answer. And that answer will do for the people that google $topic+debunk and stop thinking there. The fact that his explanations require you to ignore evidence, believe in really, really weird coincidences and believe that all our modern sensors on f16s and radar boats fail to account for our own planes and pilots can't distinguish our own planes from flying container sized tictacs that they stare at from multiple angles for 5 minutes on a clear day.

Even if there is a very ordinary explanation for what happened, Mick West doesn't have it but his bad explanation is enough for those that don't really care and just want to reflexively debunk anything that doesn't fit their world view. If you really care, you can watch him talk with alex dietrich one of the pilots[2]. She explains to him quite well that his "explanations" for what they saw are complete nonesense. But that doesn't get you the headlines as the great debunker.

[0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgmnqd/obamas-presidential-l... [1] https://youtu.be/u1hNYs55sqs?t=5 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZU6RiTEAw

I wouldn't trust the US Govt to lie straight in bed.

This is why we have multiple confirmations and public databases:

    The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) was set up in 1996 with its headquarters in Vienna, Austria. It is an interim organization tasked with building up the verification regime of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) in preparation for the Treaty's entry into force, as well as promoting the Treaty's universality. 


    All six nuclear tests by North Korea were clearly detected by Australia’s IMS seismic stations,” Zerbo said.

~ https://www.ctbto.org/resources/for-the-media/press-releases...

https://www.ga.gov.au/education/classroom-resources/hazards/...

Making my point for me, all that Data could be trivially faked, in 5 years probably by telling chatGPT10.3 "Make a website proving that North Korea exploded nukes" and I have 0 way to verify any of this.

Yet I believe that those Sensors Measured what they did and north korea did in fact explode a few nukes.

How would chatGPT "trivially fake" paper readouts digitised and signed in real time from multiple sensor sites controlled by multiple independent countries and legal jurisdictions?

> and I have 0 way to verify any of this.

That would be because you haven't joined any geophysical data organisations .. and that'd be on you.

I notice "argument from personal ignorance" is common in "believer" circles (not just of aliens, but of all kinds of conspiracy theories). If you happen to be well educated enough to provide a detailed explanation of why a particular thing they've said doesn't hold water, it's frustratingly common for them to fall back on "well I'm not an expert, I don't know all the details, I'm just asking questions." Somehow it never occurs to them not to make wild assertions when they "don't know all the details".

But that is not my argument. I am not an expert in Seismic Sensors, yet I believe the experts that tell me this happened. The military Experts directly witnessing the Nimitz events and the sensors they are trained on tell me something really extraordinary happened. The best "ordinary event misinterpreted" explanation comes from a game developer turned professional skeptic that ignores a heap of evidence and direct testimony from the experts. I tend to believe the experts with the caveat that the best explanation I can think of is either:

a) they witnessed an alien probe, potentially the equivalent of a mars rover from an advance civilization or

b) this is a big Psyop by the CIA.

I believe North Korea has nukes on the same premise that it's more likely a diverse set of experts saw what they saw and interpreted the sensors they work with every day correctly than that it's all a big psyop by the CIA to fake NK Nukes. Where do you see the difference between both cases?

Hi I said voice. Why haven't you added and called yet?

Oh, a conspiracy theorist keyboard warrior who can't orally defend the BULLCRAP they spew on the internet in real-time voice chat.

Funny how that works.

> Funny how that works.

You forgot to add an address where to send you an invoice for my time. Funny how that works

PROVE you're a real human and not a conspiracy theory astroturfer.

Discord: Painbow#9553. Give me a call in 3 hours from now.

> When the US Government tells the world that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon

We do have the proof that North Korea and nuclear weapons exists. The US government could be lying about the tests like it lied about iraqis WMD but 1/ there are other sources 2/ its in the domain of plausability anyway.

At the reverse, alien origin of UFO relies on unproved and impossible facts: 1/ the existence of life outside earth, 2/ the existence of technology outside earth, 3/ the possibility of FTL travel, 4/ the regulat visit of alien on earth, 5/ having a technology good enough to be almost undetected but not completely 6/ having an irresistible urge to crash in the US

Who said anything about aliens?

all this thread is about aliens

> At the reverse, alien origin of UFO relies on unproved and impossible facts:

Some of them are unproved, none of them are impossible.

> 1/ the existence of life outside earth,

Life spontaneously emerging on earth implies at the very least the possibility that it can happen elsewhere

2/ the existence of technology outside earth,

Same as above, Crows and Apes using tools implies technology is a possible result of life.

3/ the possibility of FTL travel,

Nope, those probes could very well be subluminal, see for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft

4/ the regulat visit of alien on earth,

Not regular, we just have to notice them at least once

5/ having a technology good enough to be almost undetected but not completely

Which is literally what every stealth tech we have made is.

6/ having an irresistible urge to crash in the US

There's probably 10x more UFO reports coming from outside the US, especially south america, than from inside the US and I have made no claim that I have heard any good evidence that any crashed UFO has been retrieved (though we have crashed some mars rovers in our time so it's not out of the realm of possibility that an alien species might crash their stuff on our planet)

Those "high end sensors" can and do fail in more ways than you can even count to.

Which is why the nimitz case is so intresting. Multiple sensors on different ships and planes all saw the same thing and then the pilots got visual confirmation after being lead there by the radar ship.

That just proves they were actually unidentified objects. The flying part was missing since they didn't exist in physical form just glare.

UFO fans are already convinced the events are UFOs which to them always means extraterrestrial aliens they just have to prove their point. Like flat Earthers have to prove how they are not wrong.

> Mick West's breakdowns of the Pentagon UAP videos was the nail in the coffin of this era of UFO hype for me.

I honestly don't know why anyone thinks West has managed to explain everything. These objects were picked up by multiple sensor systems which wouldn't show the same artifacts. Of the hundreds to thousands of reports, the DoD analysis managed to explain all except something like 14. There's still something to left to explain here.

> There's still something to left to explain here.

This is like saying "of the hundreds to thousands of firefox segfaults, the Mozilla programmers managed to explain all except something like 14.

Of course, there's something left to explain and improve. But Occam's razor applies, and we prefer simpler answers (like a sensor quirk).

Occam's razor does not let you dismiss observations just because they don't neatly fit into your boxes. It costs nothing to collect the data for the time when a better explanation arises.

I have two EXTREMELY vivid recollection of UFOs that I saw. One as a child of ~6 years of age which I know is true because another witness said it was a signaling flare before I knew what signaling flares were, and as my grandpa correctly pointed out, it looked NOTHING like a signaling flare.

The second one is much later, from a time I was obsessed with UFOs, and I don't know if I really saw it or it was a dream. It just bothers me so much that I can't recollect if it was all a dream or not and that I've had this memory for so long.

All of them? Lol, okay. Honestly it’s pretty disrespectful to these pilots, who clearly witnessed something that defies mainstream explanation. Not saying it’s aliens, but secret military projects that use highly classified propulsion technology is just as interesting, and far more concerning.

There's compelling evidence that Mick West's assumptions are wrong. https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1598090777950793729

> Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence.

Occams Razor suggests that if these objects appear almost exclusively over US military facilities and US military training ranges, they're most likely operated by the US military.

(Sorry to the Navy pilot whose security clearance is too low to be in on the secret.)

Or they're observed over military facilities because that's the only location with a rigorous surveillance system.

Or that it’s the point of greatest interest for some adversary (alien or terrestrial )

Or from foreign entities wondering what’s up with our military facilities.

The calculus would be very strange because adversaries run the risk of losing the mint if it's shot down.

What mint? A drone? A balloon? These are relatively common for surveillance devices and can be quite small and can self destruct. Even the US does this, just isn't as flashy.

Or because they're sensor artifacts on military systems and those systems tend to be flown over military facilities.

> I have seen for myself on radar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar)

Radar and infrared aren't infallible. The story of the pilot who saw something with his own peepers has my attention but I don't trust what they've only "seen" on instruments.

Have any NATO countries reported these?

The military budget of the rest of NATO combined is much smaller than that of the US. ... Why would aliens be interested?

They still build some stuff and if aliens have come all this way why not check out the whole planet?

No no. The aliens are only interested in the largest military budget obviously. Because the US can definitely stand against a FTL capable alien civ

My guess is if there was aliens they would be so totally disinterested in us they wouldn’t even distinguish between military and civilian. Just zipping around taking their measurements of the mineral deposits.

You have nothing to back that up and your gut goes against the closest thing we have to evidence...

If I was an alien race sending probes far and wide I would absolutely focus my attention on hotspots of military presence rather than the relatively benign nature and civilian existence.

What does an alien military look like?

Minerals are plentiful. If anything is interesting about Earth at all, it's its lifeforms and cultures.

If they were anywhere close to evenly distributed across the US or the globe, one would expect plenty of eyewitness data from commercial airline passengers.

That this phenomenon appears specific to personnel and locations related to US military bases seems like an important piece of data.

There are some historical reports floating about from when the soviets and US were working together after WW2 or something and shared information on these events.

A much simpler explanation than these are objects operated by the US military is that there is a selection bias with public awareness and media reporting on reports regarding the US military. I can think of at least a dozen plausible explanations as to why such selection bias would exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul#Roswell_incident

I'll take the other side of this argument since Occams Razor may not be the tool for the job of understanding or characterizing these phenomena.

Since there are numerous reports spanning decades and even dating to the 19th century, before manned flight, and these reports come from all over the globe and the descriptions involve similar events and very similar observations between widely spaced events then it follows that these "UAPs" are not all likely to be related to a project operated by the US military.

I keep an open mind about everything that I don't understand until I have the data needed to form an opinion. I am not convinced that decades of reports from educated and uneducated people living in widely separated regions that all describe similar situations can all be related to secret operations carried out by one nation's military. I have a hard time branding all these people as delusional or as liars when I have never met them. I am also not qualified to assign any of this to any category except "unexplained and interesting enough to study".

What UFO reports predate the invention of flight?

Start from the top of the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings

>Since there are numerous reports spanning decades and even dating to the 19th century, before manned flight,

Manned flight dates to 1783, and engine-powered flight to 1851. Did you mean heavier-than-air flight?

Yes. Heavier than air flight. Thanks for that correction. Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person. There are several on record. It's a long interesting history that likely will never be explained to anyone's satisfaction since some of the reports from the late 19th century described airships that were operating low enough that observers could plainly see people through the windows of the airship. It seems to me that large, multi-passenger airships would've been loudly announced and advertised by those who built them since people even then were inclined to line up shouting "take my money" for the opportunity to be one of the first to have a ride.

> Basically any report before Kitty Hawk of a vehicle flying under its own power through the air that was witnessed by more than one person.

Remember that the Kitty Hawk flights were done "secretly" with the hired photographer and some locals being the only 3rd parties present. The Wright brothers were back in Ohio flying advanced versions of their plane over farm fields before much publicity came of it, and even then almost nobody believed it. It was only when they took a plane to France and flew it around Le Mans that people truly believed.

EDIT - it was Le Mans, not Paris :)

I didn't know that. I assumed that the flight generated enough publicity that they became instantly famous.

It was reported, but not believed. Even over the course of the few years back in Ohio, the Dayton newspapers wrote stories and reporters witnessed flights, but the rest of the world thought it was all lies.

EDIT - it should probably be pointed out that the Wright brothers didn't think that powered flight, in and of itself, was all the useful without a method to control the aircraft. That's what they really worked on and really their most important contribution. There were a lot of people working on flying machines all over the world, but the Wright brothers had radically different ideas on how to control the aircraft (and ultimately they were correct). So there was a lot of incentive for others in the flying community to discount their success until it was too late to deny it.

In France (5 years after Kitty Hawk), they were flying circles, figure 8s, etc and people were truly shocked by what they saw. And then they took men and women up as passengers to experience it. That's when they became famous.

Yeah - also, if something can travel light years and have no major signs of atmospheric entry and exit then they have definitely mastered cloaking. The f35B is pretty close already. There's way to many holes in the 'Alien Theory', to many technological absurdities. If these's truly are aliens, then they are the steam punk kind with awkward technological leaps.

The easy explaination is they are advanced military craft. Northrop Grumman built the B-2 in the late 80's and that already looks like a UFO to me. The US doesn't even publish it's full TS budget. The unclassiified spend on the f35 is almost $400B. Imagine what else the US been cooking up with it's unlimited checkbook and army of engineers at the big defense contractors.

> if something can travel light years

And for... decades. Even many times the speed of light requires the ship to travel decades (from the perspective of Earth or their home planet).

I definitely buy the US stealth tech. You dogfood your stealth technology with your own systems and own people. Unlikely to fool the enemy if you can't fool yourself. But I do think there are also likely foreign surveillance systems. These could be drones or even balloons (probably smaller than the one that made the news). Combine these two things (along with glitches, optical illusions, and just random shit falling from the sky) and it isn't surprising you see these events.

> The easy explaination is they are advanced military craft.

That's not easy at all given the alleged capabilities of these objects tracked across multiple sensor systems. An easier explanation is actually some kind of active sensor spoofing.

But that would also infer some kind of parapsychology effects to make the pilots see things. Or maybe a better version of the Havana syndrome gun?

All of these sensor systems operate on the electromagnetic spectrum, including our eyes. A device that creates a broad spectrum EM artifact seems conceivable.

Bingo.

One would imagine if someone in the 90s saw a Blackbird aircraft, would assume it's an unidentified body. Yet it is just not unclassified. Imagine the tech the RAF has now that will be unveiled in 20 years

There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better.

Obviously it's unscientific to jump to conclusions and assume that anything that doesn't make sense must be aliens or magic or whatever but at the same time, it's also unscientific to ignore physical observations just because they seem like something that might support what fringe idiots believe.

The close-minded approach is to accept someone’s fantastical claim because you want to, or just because the claim is being made, when the claim is contrary to mountains and centuries of evidence. The open-minded take incorporates all the possible evidence to reach the most likely conclusion. And the conclusion is never, so far, either aliens or magic. It’s just silly to conclude that an observation that has no immediate natural explanation will not be explained naturally and is, instead, the work of aliens or magic. Especially in light of the fact that everything we have explained, thus far, has had a natural explanation.

> The close-minded approach

There are many ways to be close minded.

Whose accepting someone's fantastical claim and what claim is that? Its mostly people speculating and acknowledging that its unexplained.

I don’t think aliens and magic belong in the same category though.

Magic/supernatural by definition is contrary to physical laws and scientific understanding.

But the existence of aliens would in no way contradict any physical laws or scientific consensus. It would be a shock, obviously, just like it was a shock when we discovered that other galaxies exist, or black holes, or that nuclear fission is possible.

If intelligent aliens do exist and are close enough to us to be detected (or to detect us), which is certainly possible and maybe even probable, then we’re likely going to find out about them someday. Is that what’s happening now with these UAP? It seems that we don’t know yet, but it’s as unscientific to throw out the aliens hypothesis a priori as to insist it’s definitely aliens and no other explanation is possible.

Magic that works isn't called magic, so magic not working is basically tautological. Inscribing intricate patterns on crystals to summon non-human intelligence you can converse with? That's not magic, that's computer engineering and science. It's not magic, because it works. Magic is whatever hasn't been demonstrated to work. Transmuting lead into gold? That was magic until we figured out nuclear physics, then it became not magic.

Aliens haven't yet been demonstrated to exist, so they're in the same domain as fantastic claims that haven't yet been demonstrated to work. Magic.

Aliens haven’t been demonstrated to exist, but we have seen that life exists in the only solar system we’re capable of closely observing.

We humans have a long history of erroneously assuming that we’re the special case.

Magic implies we have no idea of how a phenomenon is possible, but we know perfectly well that the existence of aliens is possible. They’re like black holes or gravitational waves before we found physical evidence for them, not magic.

There's a whole lot of seemingly rational and well grounded theorizing about why aliens should exist. But there's no evidence for it, despite many years of looking.

At a certain point, when you can't reconcile observed reality with your beautiful theory, you've got to question the theory. That's the essence of science, discarding theories that cannot be reconciled with observed reality. It may be the case that advanced life capable of sending radio signals or traveling the stars is so exceedingly unlikely to form that even life on earth was a freak fluke of luck. Remember that life on earth got stuck in the mono-cellular stage for billions of years. There was no assurance it would ever get past that stage. And the number of stars in the universe is a weak rebuttal to this line of thinking, since it only takes a handful of independent "one in a million" chances to create a a probability so stupidly small that it makes the number of stars in the entire observable universe seem mundane.

There’s “no evidence” only if you ignore what has been happening on our skies for the past 70+ years. To be sure SETI has found nothing, nor has Hubble, nor JWT, nor Sloan nor Voyager nor Opportunity.

Yet something keeps showing up in our skies, year after year, decade after decade, and that something is widely and roundly ignored.

How is unexplained phenomena 'evidence'?

Because 'aliens might exist' is a theory and 'there is stuff that happens in the sky that has not been formally explained' is a fact, why should we connect the two as evidence of one another?

'Cockroaches taste like jellybeans' is a theory. 'Many people waking up in the middle of the night, having heard a rustling, without being able to see put something in their mouth that tastes like a jellybean, living near and employed at a jellybean factory' is not evidence of this theory.

Let me rephrase it: “Is there evidence of something unexplained going on in our skies?”

Answer that question before moving on. If your answer is “no” then no further discussion is warranted. If yes then further investigation is needed.

Aliens isn't being thrown out a priori, because the hypothesis isn't just "it's aliens".

The hypothesis, to fit the evidence is: "it's aliens, using technology advanced enough that it can do things nothing else on Earth can do, without generating the normally expected physical effects, and are also mostly but not entirely undetectable".

Given what we’ve learned about the challenges of interstellar travel, it’s safe to assume that any civilization capable of visiting us would be thousands of years beyond our current understanding of physics.

If you compare our current understanding of physics to what humans knew thousands of years ago, it’s logical that the technology of an interstellar civilization would be as far beyond our understanding as a nuclear reactor would have been to the ancient Romans.

This is not remotely a safe assumption. We know interstellar travel is resource intensive, but it's within the capabilities of todays technology. It was probably doable with some effort with 1960s technology.

This is the same basic error of reasoning where people say because the moon landing happened, faking the moon landing was also possible (it wasn't: video editing technology of sufficient capability did not exist - space flight and CGI are two entirely separate lines of technical problem solving).

It’s not within today’s technology to actually visit an extrasolar planet. We could possibly do a flyby with a solar sail but we don’t have a way to slow down and enter the planet’s atmosphere. And even that only gets us to the relatively small number of stars that are in our immediate vicinity in any kind of human-civilization-scale timeframe.

Space is 3-dimensional and astronomically, cosmically huge. Getting from a planet to space is trivial compared to getting from space to a planet.

You said you don't think aliens and magic should be the same category, but now argue that they'd be so advanced that, would it even be differentiable from magic?

It would be differentiable in the same way any more advanced technology than what we have now would be. It will have been created through scientific research and engineering, just like our own technology. Not understanding how something works doesn’t make it magic.

> It will have been created through scientific research and engineering, just like our own technology.

It seems a touch hubristic to assume that an advanced civilization with technological capabilities far exceeding our own would have used our processes and techniques to get there.

They’d have their own processes and techniques, but on some level they’d have to be discovering the properties of reality, then using that knowledge to create vessels that could travel between stars, slow down to visit planets, and do various other tricks that seem to defy physics as we know it (based on UAP observations). To me that’s still science and engineering even if it was done in completely different ways.

If I met a wizard, he'd obviously be way better at magic than I am, and it'd be way beyond my understanding of physics. Those safe assumptions don't make magic exist

Magic/ supernatural isn't unscientific by definition. We don't believe in it because there isn't anyone able to do those things for all of us to see. Science is defined by the scientific method and our curiosity to apply it not by our scepticism.

If it was real, it would not be called “supernatural”, by literal definition.

Supernatural (adj): (of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

Something CAN be real and beyond current scientific understanding.

> Something CAN be real and beyond current scientific understanding

I think you're reading that wrong. "Beyond scientific understanding" doesn't mean "beyond current scientific understanding", it actually means, "beyond any possible scientific understanding". So a supernatural phenomenon would defeat any possible attempt at characterizing it scientifically.

Have you considered that you're interpreting it wrong? Go back in time with self-replicating, able to construct themselves to predefined structures, nanobots and you'll have supernatural powers that "violate" scientific understanding of the time. Doesn't mean it can't be explained.

It is true hubris and actually kind of sad to think we know all laws of nature and nothing new could stump us and our cherished laws of nature.

Also, read my other comments. Science is about explaining the previously unexplainable. So nothing, no phenomena you sense with your senses, is beyond science.

The definition of "supernatural" has nothing to do with scientific understanding at any particular time, it's about whether a scientific understanding is possible even in principle. Deities and souls are not amenable to scientific understanding even in principle, that's why they're considered supernatural. Observed phenomena that defy current understanding don't qualify.

Let's look at the root word. "Natural" does not mean "familiar" or "understood". It just means that it's a part of the physical world we inhabit. Conversely, the "supernatural" is what exists beyond the physical world we inhabit: it's not real by definition.

This is all a semantic disagreement and not a question of hubris or overconfidence or of how advanced our knowledge really is.

Quantum effects, like those used by the LEDs on your computer, used to be "supernatural" until someone figured out the physics behind them and invented devices capable of exploiting these effects. If you could bring an LED back in time to the year 1500 and show it to people then (with a power source and current driver of course), they would surely call it "supernatural".

Breaking Special Relativity is not some 15th century "oh, there's some lovely dirt down here" impressionable pleb. We have machines that can confirm SR to within ridiculous level.

They were never supernatural. They were just not known or not understood. Physics is by some definition the study of the natural world. There is a lot we don't know about the natural world, but what we know and don't know aren't what make something "supernatural".

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. - Arthur C. Clarke

LEDs were absolutely supernatural. As I said, go back in time with one and show it to Medieval serfs and see what they say. Supernatural is anything that you can't explain given your understanding of the universe.

Quote from hpmor.com chapter 1.

> The Professor turned and looked down at him, dismissive as usual. "Oh, come now, Harry. Really, magic? I thought you'd know better than to take this seriously, son, even if you're only ten. Magic is just about the most unscientific thing there is!"

...

> "Mum," Harry said. "If you want to win this argument with Dad, look in chapter two of the first book of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. There's a quote there about how philosophers say a great deal about what science absolutely requires, and it is all wrong, because the only rule in science is that the final arbiter is observation - that you just have to look at the world and report what you see. Um... off the top of my head I can't think of where to find something about how it's an ideal of science to settle things by experiment instead of arguments -"

>But the existence of aliens would in no way contradict any physical laws or scientific consensus.

The existence of aliens, sure. But the presence of aliens on Earth pretty much does. There's no reason to think FTL travel is possible, and it's economically unreasonable to think some species is going to invest in generation ships to cross the great interstellar gulfs just so that they can fuck around with pilots and anally probe hayseeds.

That would probably depend on the scale. I'm pretty sure, to the extent they could imagine anything, ants would find it unimaginable and economically absurd for any creature to spend monstrous (to them) amounts of energy just to fuck around with them 10 minutes and then leave.

For us, it's just another 5 years old.

Sure, if we imagine that there are gods, then we can imagine that they would be superior to us in interesting ways. Imagination's neat like that.

We don't have to 'imagine' aliens though. We can deduce from the size of the galaxy/universe and the fact that we ourselves exist that they are at least reasonably likely to exist, and some of them are reasonably likely to be more advanced than us.

There is no similar chain of logical deduction based on empirically observed facts that can lead you to the existence of gods or ghosts or demons.

Aliens are not like 'gods', they are like black holes after we realized they probably exist but before we found physical evidence for them.

There is absolutely zero data on the presence of life in the universe. You are imagining that life out there. Which is fine! I sometimes imagine it too. It's fun to imagine, but we are just filling in gaps with imagination. As an example, note that people imagined life on Mars based on "evidence". Life with canals and everything. [1] But once our telescopes got better, those same alien civilizations got pushed back just out of their range.

A process strikingly similar to what religious people do with gods, angels, etc. There's also no real data on where the universe comes from, so they can imagine that it is due to god(s). God used to be on a high mountain, or just above the sky. But like the Martians, He has had to up sticks and move to loftier realms.

I'll also note that some of the alien-imaginers use exactly your reasoning to derive gods. Statistically, aliens must exist, and they must have existed long before us, and they must therefore be so technologically advanced that UFOs are real and we can't prove it just because they are so superior. Or, alternatively, that those aliens caused us in one way or another, from shaping our evolution to seeding our planet to creating the universe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_canals

According to your reasoning, black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves were also like gods and angels before we found physical evidence for them. This is a weak argument.

You can doubt the existence of intelligent aliens. But they obviously aren’t in the same category as religious beliefs. On the other hand, assuming we are somehow special and must be the only intelligent life is quite in line with religious thinking.

We do have data on life in the universe: earth. Very few natural phenomena occur a single time and never again. Apart from early universe events like the big bang and expansion, I can’t think of an example.

> According to your reasoning, black holes, neutron stars, and gravitational waves were also like gods and angels before we found physical evidence for them. This is a weak argument.

Nah. All of those were things that there were specific reason to believe based on theory and evidence. But it can be a fine line. Look at how quickly quantum mechanics went from abstruse high theory to being used to support absolute woo. [1] Or look at how black holes went from interesting mathematical concept to magic plot device. [2]

Do I grant the theoretical possibility of intelligent life somewhere? Sure, and I never said otherwise. Do I believe it's a lock? Not at all. If we somehow survey the universe and discover we are alone, then our theories will adjust just fine. There is no evidence to the contrary to be overcome.

So yes, in terms of an explanatory device for phenomena observed on earth, aliens and gods are in exactly the same category of "unevidenced anthropomorphic agents that people have been inappropriately using as explanations for millennia". Because people are like that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism

[2] e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Hole_(1979_film)

Again, according to your argument, because some people employ quantum physics in pseudoscience and woo, that makes quantum physics like religion.

Sorry, you’re just wrong. The possibility of intelligent aliens is on firm scientific ground, which is why we have projects like SETI running. Aliens aren’t like gods or angels, regardless of how many times you repeat it. Certain people might treat them that way, just like people abuse all kinds of scientific concepts. That doesn’t merit a categorical dismissal.

You really don't seem to be getting my argument. Indeed, you don't seem to be trying.

I never said the possibility of aliens somewhere in the universe and somewhere in time was scientifically impossible. Indeed, I've said the opposite, something you seem dedicated to missing if you're still acting otherwise.

I am specifically saying that there's no scientific justification for using aliens as an explanatory device for things that are happening right here on earth. That's just fantasy.

I obviously don't think quantum mechanics is like religion when it's in the hands of Paul Dirac. But I do think it's effectively religion in the hands of Deepak Chopra. Similarly, I don't think the SETI folks are religious kooks, but I do think UFO cultists are.

What you are doing is rejecting a valid hypothesis based on emotion and bias rather than evidence. Aliens could be causing the UAP that have been extensively documented by the US military. You have put forth nothing to rule it out. You can’t, because no conclusive evidence has been found so far (or at least made public) that rules it out.

We know intelligent aliens might exist. We know that if they did visit earth, it would mean that they have technology that far exceeds our own. We have extensive documentation of events that, naively, look like some kind of extremely advanced technology that is far beyond human capabilities. So far, we have found no natural explanation, no explanation involving instrument malfunction, and no explanation involving human actors. That doesn’t mean it’s aliens, but it does mean it could be. If you think they should be crossed off the list, you’ll have to do better than making assertions.

Sure. Gods could also be causing the UAP. I can't rule that out either.

But my point is that there is exactly the same level of evidence for gods and aliens being behind these. I'm not saying either one's inconceivable. I'm just saying that I'm going to treat them both with the same level of seriousness. That is, approximately none.

I'm going to treat unexplained, poorly documented phenomena as unexplained, poorly documented phenomena. Does that mean I'm missing out on the Virgin Mary or aliens or ghosts or whatever? Possibly. But as a practical matter, a century's worth of paranormal hoohah shows I could waste my entire life on this stuff and never get anywhere. I am content that there are enough devoted skeptics out there that if any of the paranormal brigade comes up with some clear and repeatable evidence, I'll hear about it. Until then it goes in the bucket with dowsing and spirit guides and whatnot.

"Gods could also be causing the UAP. I can't rule that out either."

You can rule it out because we've never found evidence of gods existing in the universe, and there's never been a scientific theory put forward for how they could exist that is consistent with our understanding of biology, astronomy, and physics. This obviously doesn't apply to intelligent life, but something tells me you aren't going to concede that. Thanks for the discussion.

There is no evidence of aliens existing in the universe either. None!

Indeed, the god-believers have a lot more "evidence" than the alien-believers do, even if I think it's all pretty specious. And I'll note that the god-believers don't have to prove consistency with biology, etc, in that in their view, that's god-created. Plus, there are things that the god hypothesis explains that the alien hypothesis doesn't, like why we have universe at all.

Again, I think it's all claptrap. I get that you're mad that I see them as the same. Most religious people would be insulted in the opposite direction. But from my perspective, religious people are like that. So yes, you're very welcome for the discussion, and I hope you find it helpful down the road.

> There's no reason to think FTL travel is possible

This seems like fairly closed thinking. We’ve observed strange behavior at the quantum level. We have plausible theories of wormholes and multiverses. It’s conceivable that some civilization has assembled FTL travel from these and other natural phenomena yet unknown.

> it's economically unreasonable to think some species is going to invest in generation ships

We’re working on AI and we can sequence DNA. A sufficiently advanced civilization could send a ship that can synthesize its crew upon arrival.

We have observed quantum entanglement. Perhaps information can travel faster than light and all you need to send physically is the equivalent of a quantum modem attached to a Star Trek replicator.

This is exactly how the spiritualists sounded in their day. They had facially plausible theories of the phenomena they claimed to observe with no actual evidence described in ways that fit in with the gaps in understanding of the moment.

I too consume a lot of science fiction, but it's important to remember that it's just writers making shit up. Perhaps FTL is possible. Perhaps angel are real. Both are things people want to believe in, and both have facially plausible literary explanations, but they have equally good scientific evidence at the moment.

The fact that there is no way to know means that at most we should say "no idea". It is also the least knowledge we should pretend to have on the subject.

Well, we do have some idea.

Take gods. Even most theists don't believe in most gods. An atheist, as the saying goes, is just a person who disbelieves in one more god than average.

In theory, everybody has to admit that all gods are possible. Does Zeus exist? No idea. Does Bast exist? No idea. Does Yahweh exist? No idea. It's not like we can prove that they aren't out there somewhere.

But what we do know is that a lot humans have made up a lot of gods. We know that people make up and believe in all sorts of things with no evidence at all. So if something fits the same pattern, then we actually have reasonable evidence that it's just another one of those things.

So in a world of people who will take "no idea" as permission to rant more about their theory of chemtrails or ZOG or how the true Messiah lives in a heavily fortified compound outside of Waco, TX, I think an honest and accurate "no idea" isn't enough. Would that it were.

Did you happen to notice the phrases “it’s conceivable” and “perhaps” in my reply? I’m not making any categorical assertions. I think people who make categorical assertions in the negative regarding other life in the universe and its potential capabilities are engaging in scientism.

Lots of things are conceivable. Gods are conceivable, as are angels and demons. It's conceivable that you are the only sentient being in existence besides me and that I am a vast superintelligence controlling everything you see and hear, posting little reminders of the truth like this just to fuck with you.

However, I doubt you're going to spend much time on that, and I'm not going to spend much time on other things that are merely conceivable.

until there is a theory of everything i don't think its reasonable to rule out the possibility of FTL travel. even physicists got all worked up few years ago when they detected FTL neutrinos at CERN (which turned out to be a sensor malfunction but still)

You're sayihg that not only do aliens exist, but that the second law of thermodynamics is wrong? Or the universe is non local, and these aliens have developed ftl teleportation?

In order to get here, aliens have to have traveled here, and while traveling, and alive, they'll give off heat -- glowing brightly if they have to turn or accelerate to avoid crashing really hard into the earth.

An alien arriving before they traveled breaks a lot of things, and makes them much closer to magic than some single cell equivalents on a distant moon

> Magic/supernatural by definition is contrary to physical laws and scientific understanding.

Many of the "UFO" observations fall into that. As is "under known physics it is impossible explanation"

The observed behaviors do appear to contradict physical laws.

My point is if we’re looking for an explanation, it’s either some natural phenomenon or illusion that we don’t understand, human technology, or alien technology.

In either of the latter two options, we are either talking about new physics or very advanced spoofing tech that looks like new physics but isn’t really.

For human tech, we’ve never seen anything resembling a leap like that being accomplished by a government in total secrecy. It’s hard to imagine. I think this holds even if it’s just crazy advanced spoofing, given the details of the various encounters.

But for alien tech: if intelligent aliens do exist and they did visit us, it would follow that their technology and scientific understanding are far beyond our own. It’s basically impossible that they wouldn’t have knowledge of new physics that we have no current inkling of, just as a scientist from a thousand years ago could have no inkling of relativity or black holes. In this sense, strange inexplicable phenomena that break the laws of physics (as we currently understand them) are consistent with aliens.

So to me, the real question is whether we can figure out a natural phenomenon to explain this. If it is something natural, it seems like it has to be something pretty weird. If it’s not, aliens seem like a valid candidate, pending further evidence.

The reverse of that is assuming our instruments (which eyes totally are) are perfect and therefore if they saw something it must be the first guess and not just an error or misinterpretation.

You're basically saying "alien tech is un-understandable however we can still easily tell it is alien and not measurement error"

Measurement artifacts or malfunction (and mistaken eyewitness accounts from multiple credible observers) are another possibility, but they're difficult to square with the data. There's just too much signal, measured in too many different ways, to handwave it away like that.

The trouble with the aliens is that it’s too good an explanation. Inscrutable beings with tech we don’t don’t understand works as an explanation of just about anything, so if we allow that in our explanatory toolbox we’ll end up crying “aliens” for all sorts of hard-to-explain phenomena. In most of those cases we’d have found a mundane explanation if we looked longer and thought harder. Non-falsifiable, broad spectrum theories like aliens and magic need to go last on the list, down below “we don’t know yet, let’s gather more data,” or we’ll end up fooling ourselves.

If there really are aliens, eventually we should have enough evidence that we can build specific, falsifiable theories about particular, well-defined entities with at least rough bounds on capabilities. But we’re not close to that point yet.

“Conclusions so far” based on what? This is exactly what this is about. Nobody is asking for a leap-of-faith belief in aliens, but allowing science to happen.

Let videos of whatever weird phenomenona be released and studied. Add more sensors or whatever is needed to explain what pilots see. Maybe send a scientist or two up there to figure out what’s going on.

> The open-minded take incorporates all the possible evidence to reach the most likely conclusion.

But that's not what's being done per the article. The evidence isn't even being looked at because of the aforementioned closed mindedness.

The closed-minded approach is to say we know definitely that you're right/wrong.

The open-minded approach is to say: maybe we don't know everything, we shouldn't jump to conclusions, rather we should wait for more evidence so that we understand the situation better.

It doesn't matter whether it's aliens, magic, or new scientific discoveries.

It's US chauvinism that leads people here assume that any advanced tech beyond our capabilities must be magic or aliens. The US isn't the only country with secret military research projects.

To be clear the advanced tech doesn't actually have to be manoeuvering in amazing ways. It could be an electronic warfare system that messes with sensors to make it appear so.

My worst fear is simply an advanced technology that provides a means to remotely trigger action potentials at will. At that point anything is possible.

Like a phone call?

For the longest time we didn't know the lightning event we now call sprites occurred. Pilots had said they saw such things bit without evidence at the time no one had any idea if they were real or not. Probably plenty of other explainable events that we've not captured yet out there.

And when we had the evidence we changed our minds. Just like it should be.

So the question should be why are so many people believing in aliens when there is so little evidence for them?

It is important to be open minded to the possibility of mundane explanations for these observations.

Of course, but at what point does this become a futile exercise tantamount to "gaslighting"?

You know, "you didn't actually see what you think you saw."

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard)

Exactly how many eyewitness accounts, devoid of good physical evidence, constitute "Evidence" with a capital "E"?

If this number is "infinity" for you, that is unreasonable.

It would require an extraordinary number

OK so assuming all the witnesses' accounts are in reasonable concordance (the broad strokes are fairly identical in account), what is that number?

I had a funny showerthought the other day- Imagine that orgasms never existed, but a human had one one day and had to explain to others what it was and that it was real and how it felt. This person would be ENTIRELY not believed. Now let's assume this 1 person became 10, 100, 1000. At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real?

>I had a funny showerthought the other day

Haha. Okay. That's a great lead-in.

>At what point do you reasonably have to start to wonder if orgasms are, in fact, real?

Is your audience male or female? Going by anecdotal tales, for some it could be an experience akin to an alien encounter.

Hah! Unfortunately, yes!

Depends on whether physical evidence is obtainable.

I.e. If you come out of a room and tell me you saw something in there, ok, let's consider it.

If you come out of a room and say you saw something there, but the security camera placed there doesn't show it, you have no photos on the iPhone you had at the ready, nobody else saw it, etc... Yeah the number of such reports needed climbs quite high.

None of them.

My dad did accident investigation for the Air Force for a time. One time there was a crash into the sea, amply witnessed by many on board a Navy ship, including pilots. They all said the wings came off the airplane before it hit the water. (The airplane had a reputation for wings coming off.) These people honestly believed that's what they saw.

Except for one Navy seaman, on his first trip on a boat. He said the wings were on when it hit the water.

So they pulled the airplane up from the bottom, and lo, the wings were on when it hit. One the seaman saw the truth, because he was not predisposed to attribute the crash to a known fault in the airplane.

This is really key. Eyewitness accounts are reliably dismal in evidentiary value, even by people with relevant knowledge. Our brains lie to us all the time.

I remember a case long ago where a woman was cruelly raped. She was face-to-face with her attacker. She identified him in a lineup, he was convicted, and sent to prison.

He always insisted on his innocence, but people just laughed at him. She was face to face with him, and identified him. But decades later, as DNA testing became available, a testing was done and he was not a match! But a known sex offender was a match, and had died in prison some years earlier. They dug up a picture of him, and he looked just like the wrongfully accused man.

The woman apologized to him as best she could, but her mistake was an honest one, and the falsely convicted man did not blame her. The jury did the right thing based on the evidence. It was just a horrible coincidence.

Eyewitness testimony is the gold standard in court. But I'm skeptical of it. I'd like to see hard evidence if I was on a jury. Fortunately, hard evidence is a lot more easily obtained than it used to be.

There was a story about this on a podcast.

This is a case of a single witness during a single traumatizing event.

You're trying to compare this to a situation where we have thousands of witnesses across time across hundreds of events, with a few events having multiple witnesses.

Who are also under no emotional duress.

Sorry, but not remotely comparable.

I'm aware of this, but a sufficient amount of it, almost entirely in concordance, should override this noise.

This is one example using a minor observational discrepancy. Put it this way- All the observers agreed with the reality that the plane did hit the water.

You're basically using this 1 example to prove that 10, 100, 1000 people all saying that the plane hit the water (with or without wings) is not evidence of anything hitting the water (assuming no aircraft was found).

It wasn't minor, it was crucial to determine the cause of the accident. The wings being on or off was not just a "discrepancy".

It's an irrelevant example.

The question in THIS case is not whether "the wings fell off before or after hitting the water, if at all", but whether "there was a plane hitting the water at all" or "whether there even was a plane" (also a plane that was caught on multiple radars).

It's simply not a good comparison. The Navy pilots say they see bogies on radar (not just visually) every day. Watch the "60 Minutes" broadcast I linked elsewhere (which is only 13 minutes long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY). The USG has already admitted these things are real but have an unknown source. To continue to maintain extreme skepticism at this point is to bury one's head in the sand.

Q: What's the most likely explanation?

A: Problems/glitches/bugs with the extremely complex radar system.

Q: What's a likely explanation?

A: We don't really understand everything there is to know about radar.

Q: What's the least likely explanation?

A: Alien craft buzzing around that nobody has ever managed to get a clear picture of.

If the radar system exhibited other types of "steady anomalies identifying nonexistent objects in space" that didn't happen to fit the "UFO expectation", we would be hearing of those too, no? Have we? Since the whole point of a radar system is identifying friend, foe or possible collision courses, it would seem to be extremely important that this basic function of a radar be extremely reliable, no?

Also, what are the chances that both the radar AND the person's eyesight (which saw the object in the first place) are failing in the exact same way and with the exact same concordance? That has to be absolutely astronomical.

So, no. You didn't compute your probabilities correctly in this case. Try again.

It's like when people trivially dismiss eyewitness observers for "seeing things" every single time. I just Googled, and US citizens drive 3.2 trillion miles each year on US roads, which most of the time have two-way traffic with NO divider in between. If observers were as inaccurate as dismissals suggest, we should also be seeing FAR more accidents, head-on collisions etc. The error rate of the human visual system (if not the memory system which is admittedly often faultier) has to be extremely low to see the RELATIVELY low number of accidents we see. It's fundamental to survival for the human visual system to be as precise and accurate as possible.

I've been hearing my whole life about the "it can only be aliens" explanation. Many, many of these have been debunked, but it never dampens the enthusiasm "yeah, but this one must be aliens!"

Why has nobody ever taken a photo of these alleged aliens?

It's up to the proponents to provide convincing evidence. "But I saw it with my own eyes!" is completely unconvincing. Anyone who claims to have never misinterpreted anything they saw is just not credible. Optical illusions affect everyone.

Sane drivers know this and take it into account when driving, that's why it doesn't cause (many) accidents, and is so ordinary nobody bothers to report it.

The human visual system is full of compromises and kludges that just happen to work well enough. Did you know that your eyes have a blind spot that your brain fills in for you? By guessing? That magicians rely on all kinds of errors your brain makes in perception?

But no, it must be aliens!

I hear you on the "it must be aliens!" argument. Really, I do. And until at least the concept of the "Alcubierre drive" came out, one could simply claim "there's no possible way for any being to physically come here from any galactic-level distance because of the amount of time it would take at sub-light speeds" and that would be the end of the story. (Even then, my response was usually "no way that we can think of"...)

I am well aware of all of your other arguments, as I was a Psych major who specialized in perception.

I'm of the government's stance on this currently: I think it's a real phenomenon, I trust most qualified eyewitnesses especially if it is in concordance with radar data, and I refuse to concretely claim anything further. And it is a mystery.

But I AM free to speculate.

I could claim something like "assuming there IS some alien intelligence controlling these hyper-performing craft... if another intelligence was advanced enough to even make it here in the first place, ostensibly they also have fairly full control over all elements of the interactions with us, which includes not showing themselves outside their craft", but this is also the Conspiracy Fallacy. Two thoughts on that though: The Conspiracy Fallacy does not disprove conspiracies (which is why I am openly stating this is speculative). And secondly, this also means that (if this claim is at all true), they are likely voluntarily showing themselves at some "pace" as to not overly upset us. Why that? Well, perhaps you've heard of systematic desensitization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization) as a treatment for phobias? That might be going on here. And it's apparently working, since nothing crazy's happened since the USG openly admitted this is real. This is a far cry from the Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast days.

So, no. I can't say it's aliens, at least rationally. But I do speculate that. ;) And honestly, I think it's fun to think that not only might we be not alone (wouldn't that be amazing??) but that we're kind of in a galactic kindergarten. ;)

No. They are using this example to demonstrate that prior bias can influence eyewitness accounts.

It is the Santa Claus problem

There are mountains of evidence and billions of "eyewitness" accounts of Santa, including "NORAD is tracking him". The iconography, imagery, and tales are ubiquitous to the point of it being nearly an independent religion. Yet exactly 100.000...000% of those observations, photos, images are insubstantial.

I want to believe as much as anyone that there are technically advanced aliens nearby who are could and would help us advance.

But all I've seen so far is a lot of interesting and a bit overly credulous accounts, and some fuzzy evidence. And much of it can be accounted for by observer or instrument error. Maybe the classified material has something clear and unequivocal; that'd be nice.

Until we have something clear and revealing, lets investigate by all means. But until then, let's not jump to conclusions either way.

The number is infinity. There is a reason that data is not the plural of anecdote.

Once scrutinized, these phenomena are almost always explained by humans misinterpreting their instruments (either machine readout, or their own eyes).

Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth).

These people aren't idiots. Their brains evolved to recognize patterns as a survival mechanism. Arguably their pattern recognition is stronger than everybody else's. But when you factor in lack of familiarity with the scientific method, or inclination towards spirituality, or a simple willingness to believe in extraterrestrial life, it's not uncommon to hear stories about ghosts, angels, and aliens.

These stories do not stand up to inquiry. They have been tested time and time again and always fall apart under scrutiny. The reason that Bigfoot photos are always blurry isn't because he's camera shy - it's because when the photos are not blurry, we can clearly see it's not Bigfoot.

NB: I have no problem with believing in alien life in terms of say the Drake equation (statistically, it's probable!). I just find it highly unlikely of such a visitor reaching Earth.

> Honestly, you wouldn't believe how many people report _the moon_ as a UFO because it shows up in an odd place, gets distorted by unique atmospheric conditions, and can appear in different shapes and sizes (moon phase and proximity to Earth).

A disturbing number of people think that the Moon only comes out at night, opposite of the Sun. Probably because cartoons and video games depict it that way, but it's still a real head scratcher how some people never notice the moon in the sky during the day, which it is for roughly half of each and every month.

Also the other essential problem: you never stop being afraid of the dark.

This is evolutionarily sensible: we're a tribal species with a group-collective survival strategy, but few natural defenses: no fur, poor night vision. We're almost entirely dependent on tool-using to exist in the wild, it's our edge but it makes us very vulnerable.

UFO reports disproportionately occur at night, and also from relatively isolated people. It doesn't matter how smart you are, it's almost impossible to turn off those primitive senses which tell you "you're in danger, you need to be aware". Being afraid of something which is not there and avoiding it is a vastly preferable strategy if it also means you're afraid of something which is there.

But if I were an alien trying to monitor earth from space ships, and I had some sort of radar stealth technology, I'd also fly at night to avoid visual detection.

If you were an alien with the technology to cross the vast distances between the stars why in the hell would you need to monitor Earth from within the atmosphere flying your spaceship around? Earth technology exists to read a license plate from orbit. You can somehow build the technology for interstellar travel but can't manage to build telescopes?

For the quarter the cost of Twitter you could build a pretty sweet Earth monitoring station on the surface of the Moon. It makes zero sense that aliens with essentially magic space travel technology couldn't do the same and go completely undetected by people on Earth.

You're assuming that interstellar travel is so difficult that if it can be done, anything else can be done too. It's a fallacy a bit like someone from the 1500s assuming that any civilization that can put a man on the moon must have also cured all disease.

If you can build a spaceship that can effectively travel to another star system you have the exact technology needed to build a fucking telescope when you get there. The very ship you use for the trip likely has a very capable telescope as it would be needed to avoid interstellar debris en route.

The scale and scope of "building a telescope" and "building an interstellar spacecraft" are not just comparable but directly related. I'd also assume such a civilization would have a good handle on diseases, at least have a strong understanding of them.

It turns out that the civilization on Earth that landed on the Moon also had a pretty decent understanding of disease. By the time of the Moon landing many diseases that wracked the world in the 1500s were well under control in the first world. Some were even eliminated.

Telescopes are great but aren't going to tell you much about the exact radar capabilities of a nuclear aircraft carrier, nor what tactics it would use if it did see a craft, nor submarines (one of the incident reports claimed the tictac went underwater). And monitoring Earth is a very general thing, it can even include getting up close with the native wildlife, it isn't restricted as a concept to viewing from a great distance.

Each anecdote is a datum, so a set of them is indeed data.

Data needs to be considered for whether it's reliable or useful. Bad data is still data

Venus is even "worse" than the moon for blowing people's minds. It's less frequent, and gets very bright - the 3rd brightest natural object in the sky- able to cast faint shadows, and even visible in daylight. Reportedly, the US Navy once tried to shoot it down: https://m.facebook.com/NavalInstitute/posts/1015948215350217...

How many eyewitness accounts of mermaids devoid of physical evidence have there been?

I don’t think there’s any amount of eyewitness accounts of aliens that I would consider credible evidence without having something verifiable to corrobate them.

The number is infinity.

Without being taught or gathering evidence, the first conclusion that every human would come to on their own is that they live on a flat plane. Yet this is patently untrue. The human perspective is often fundamentally flawed, and only after conducting actual science can you arrive at something even slightly representing the truth.

Humans do live in a flat plane, since on earth at the human scale, things are pretty flat locally.

You couldn't say that it's an infinite flat plane, but you could say pretty definitively that you don't live on the inside of a cylinder or sphere

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (Sagan Standard)

This response doesn't make sense because there wasn't an extraordinary claim being made.

He just said we don't know what it is and shouldn't assume it's uninteresting.

Have you ever been unable to find your keys? Did you consider it reasonable to explore the possibility that you might have small elves living in your walls who stole them? Why not?

The observed phenomenon is literally being referred to as "possibly aliens or magic". Obviously something was observed, and obviously you can (and people certainly do) analyze them to come to a rational conclusions. But to even mention the possibility of aliens or magic as within the realm of possibilities to be considered is an extraordinary claim.

So we have a handful of barely confirmable observations with no repeatability. I’ll file it under “case open, but nothing to do about it for now.” Happy?

What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights?

I mean, I GN an adult Dungeons and Dragons centered on multiple worlds and I love considering different worlds and how they might work. But the people who extrapolate the unexplained to a claim that there's some fantastical things that science is suppressing seem so starved for "the fantastical" that they're distorting the entire situation. Science isn't there to squash your fun. Science doesn't deny that uncertainty is a constant part of ordinary human experience - scientifically established positions are merely a reliable tip of an iceberg of uncertainty.

> What's "fantastical" about unexplained lights?

The claim in the article is stronger than just "lights". He used the word "objects" which suggests these UAP are being detected on multiple modalities.

Yeah, exactly. Galileo was persecuted for stating the earth revolves around the sun. Anything fantastical is immediately seen as taboo and this still happens today.

I personally find UAPs/UFOs fascinating. There's some unexplained phenomema going on and no one knows what it is. There's a massive taboo around claiming aliens/intelligent life, which makes it a subject few will admit to or investigate seriously. Then you have things like Fermi's paradox, a thought experiment that shows it is unlikely for the universe to only have 1 intelligent species in it.

Most likely there is some natural phenomena behind all of this, but I really hope it's something more interesting.

This is a ridiculous way of looking at things. Galileo was persecuted by The Church not other scientists who supported him.

Fermi's paradox isn't what you've stated.

Listen to the scientists. Not the politicians. Not the military.

Every time one of those fantastic items gets explained, it's always mundane and boring, and never dampens the enthusiasm for the next one.

I recall one about B+W photographs of "wood elves" taken around 1910 or so by a couple girls. The girls insisted it was genuine. Photographic experts declared the photos were genuine and could not have been faked.

When the girls were in their 80's, they finally confessed that the "wood elves" were drawn on paper, cut out, and propped up with sticks. They took photos of it with a brownie camera. They laughed with glee at the credulous people who took it seriously (because they so wanted to believe in wood elves).

Quite a bizarre strawman [1] that doesn't prove your point at all. Here we have multiple professional pilots reporting similar events, with recorded evidence from the tracking systems on their fighter planes. And enough evidence that even Congress has authorised to look into it further. It probably is all some natural thing happening, but it's not some hoax by teenager girls in the 1920s.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

>Here we have multiple professional pilots reporting similar events, with recorded evidence from the tracking systems on their fighter planes.

to be clear : multiple professionals from the same government, similar cultures and professional background, using similar equipment, tactics, sensor arrays, and vehicles, in a similar geographical region.

Maybe i'm jaded, but 'multiple professionals' means absolutely nothing to me if every one of those professionals is a cog in the same propaganda mill.

I'll be more likely to buy into any of these stories once we have agreeing reports from groups of people that aren't coordinated to play-nice with one another.

Professional pilots are not trained observers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34670921

That objection only works because the people on the ship had an expectation of what the fault could be. Presumably fighter pilots have expectations of what other aircraft, balloons and birds could be, and these phenomena defy those characteristics. These just don't seem comparable.

And two more details;

* Arthur Conan Doyle, the inventor of Sherlock Holmes was one of the boosters of the photograph. This sounds weird but there's about an Arthur Conan Doyle book that relates to reality in messy detail. There's generally no deducible explanation of random events, they're just random. And so the method of "excluding all other explanation" is generally worthless in trying to look at single events - actually "shit happens".

* I would claim that virtually anyone looking at the elf/fairy pictures today will see ... cardboard cutouts. Their two dimensionality is obvious when I look at them. But they fooled the people of their day because photography was quite new and people's visual processing had not adjusted to it.

Read Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World with this fairy incident in mind and the character of Professor Challenger will make a lot of sense. tl;dr: man mocked by the scientific majority gets completely vindicated.

> I would claim that virtually anyone looking at the elf/fairy pictures today will see ... cardboard cutouts.

And this is such an important point. The UFO evidence is always the latest thing that can't be easily explained. But our skill at explaining keeps growing. There will always be things we can't explain yet. And some people insist on filling those gaps with aliens, gods, and monsters.

One tell for me here is that the paranormal/supernatural/space alien incidents don't get more confirmed over time. E.g., if there were an artifact like the Antikythera mechanism [1] that continued to become more exotic as science advanced, that'd be interesting to me.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

The Cottingley Fairies

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies

Even Arthur Conan Doyle wrote an article about the Photos.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cottingley_Fairies,_pag...

There’s the novel Photographing Fairies loosely based on that. Also a film based on that novel, but I liked the novel better.

The first 4 photographs look quite obviously like paper cutouts to me, not sure why the examiners believed they must be real.

Also interesting, both of the sisters claimed that they were the one who took the final photograph with Elsie saying it was a fake and Frances claiming that that one was real. Perhaps a false memory?

number of times in the last century weird stuff has been revealed to be aliens: 0

number of times in the last century weird stuff has been revealed to be classified projects: dozens, hundreds?

> There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical.

Two things:

1. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; and

2. The burden of proof belongs to the one making the claim, not on the other side to refute the claim.

Anything in the realm of "new physics" (eg claims such objects defy inertia and accelerate at a rate that would kill any person) or extraterrestial origin is certainly an extraodinary claim.

Extraterrestial origin is the easiest to dismiss because of just how extraorindary such claims are. An awful lot of hand-waving happens when you point out the fundamental problems and timelines with interstellar travel just because people want it to be true. Claims like "we once thought it impossible to go to the Moon" are no argument at all.

I've seen nothing that comes close to the standard of extraordinary evidence.

I am not making any claims about whether or not these phenomena are extraterrestrial, I truly have no idea. But suppose that there is a civilization that is dramatically more advanced than ours. Perhaps they have uncovered deeper laws of physics that allows them to develop technologies orders of magnitude more powerful than our own. To such a civilization, our technology might seem as rudimentary as stone age tools seem to us. We could say less about their technology than our distant ancestors could have said about ours.

This civilization could be so advanced that they have the means to communicate with us without our being able to measure it with our present technologies, but they could nevertheless influence people's thoughts much as the gravitational pull of the moon creates the tides. If this were true, their influence would likely be felt long before we had the technology to detect it. But once we did detect it, we would realize we have been under their influence for a long time (perhaps predating the formation of our civilization). We would also immediately feel silly for having hubristically assumed that we are the peak of intelligence.

We have these fantasies of colonizing mars and beyond and yet we fail to have the imagination to consider that perhaps it's all already been colonized. We could be the children of our interstellar ancestors. Perhaps much like we fantasize about sending some kind of seed of humanity to a terraformable planet, our ancestors already figured this out and we are the fruit of the seeds they sent out from their home eons ago.

I am not claiming that this is the truth (in fact I am sure what I wrote is wrong in some important ways that are beyond me) but it is just as extraordinary to me to assume that there isn't anything out there wildly more intelligent than us (or the most powerful ai we can dream up) as it is to assume that there isn't.

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

I see this quote often in this thread. It is stated as a fact, with attribution to Carl Sagan. Yet I see no supporting reasoning for this conclusion.

I find it ironic that - in a thread with so much emphasis on evidence - this statement is repeated as if it was gospel.

I ask: why? What is an extraordinary claim? What constitutes extraordinary evidence?

I am not. However, I do not accept a closed-minded alien. The alien is interested in particular US military installations but not in me? Okay, maybe not me, but wouldn't the pyramids be more interesting?

This makes it boils down to 1. sensors artifacts, 2. US military program not shared with all pilots or 3. another country collecting data on US.

Pilots promoting what they know to be sensor artifacts as aliens, to prank the public.

> There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical. This includes scientists and other professionals who ought to know better.

The thing is, in science, as Sagan so succinctly put it- Extraordinary Claims require Extraordinary Evidence.

One landing in a public area, now that would be evidence hard to ignore.

>what fringe idiots believe.

You just contradicted the rest of your post.

> There's a real problem with people being close-minded towards anything that seems fantastical.

Is there? I doubt it.

Think about the time and money costs of all the "seems fantastical" stuff that turned out to be bunk. Then compare it with the losses from "seems fantastical" stuff dismissed too soon. I'd bet the former is orders of magnitude larger.

Or just think about it from an individual perspective. People have lives to lead, things to do. I could spend the rest of my life looking at reports of psychic phenomena, for example. Or I could look back at the literal century of people investigating the claims and finding nothing but charlatans and fools, say, "good enough", and get on with my life. If the kooks actually find something good, I say it's their job to demonstrate it clearly, not mine to debunk all their failures.

Should society devote some small fraction of its energies to investigating fringe stuff? Sure. You never know when you'll strike gold. But I'm happy to argue that time and money sucked up by it currently is well over any sort of demonstrable ROI.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof

What do you want people to do.

I see lot of "close minded" people looking at the evidence and concluding that it's not enough evidence to conclude aliens are visiting us.

It looks like these UAPs are everywhere but the evidence is so low level that I wouldn't even conclude they aren't just planes or ducks instead.

The great thing about perception is that "Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities routinely fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence." uses one word (fly) in a way which can be read as implying they are there. Sorry. You saw something. your sensors reported something. Was it there? Good question. it IS a question.

Really what I think a good editor would have done is intrude like this: "Objects demonstrating extreme capabilities are routinely perceived to fly over our military facilities and training ranges. We don’t know what they are, and we are unable to mitigate their presence.

You could add (if any) at the end if you wanted to maintain the skepticism.

There are so many reasons why these things are routinely perceived: CCD errors. Optical in-lens problems. Wind shear effects. Differential lighting and occultation. Mis-attribution of large distant objects to smaller fast moving near objects and vice-versa. Bugs on the windscreen.

Being a "US Navy fighter pilot" doesn't somehow insulate you from perceptual problems in the system, or systemic bias. I would suggest that the certainty of decision making vested in a fighter pilot might very well actually re-inforce the "I know what I saw" aspect here.

Here's an example of receiver bias: Why are they seen flying over the military bases? Let me ask, if this is the predominant place that US Fighter Pilots would expect to see anything: Why yes, it is. Thats their main focus of alertness in take off and landing, performing their job.

What's a CCD error? And how does the CCD know which way you're pointing it to know where to inject the fake UFO?

Remember, the objects display "impossible" nonlinear flight trajectories. So I hardly think "which way is up" matters at this point.

CCDs aren't used much these days. But the principle is the same: if you think any kind of digital sensor behind a camera is an error-free input source, I have a UFO detector to sell you..

I never said it was an error-free input source, I'm asking for an explanation of how the sensor creates the kind of alleged artifact that you see in these videos. It's extremely low-effort to say "well it's probably <random component>", I expect a higher standard on HN.

Excluding otherworldly forms of speculation about why possible aliens are visiting us, this subject really boils down to four tangible questions about how we arrived at this footage and the eyewitness accounts from Fravor et al:

- Is it aliens?

- If not, do these sightings represent real unexplainable technological phenomena (advanced propulsion technology)?

- If not, are the eyewitness accounts credible?

- In any case, why is the DoD letting eyewitnesses go public?

With the answers to these questions we can enumerate several interesting possible explanations:

1) It’s not aliens, sightings do not represent any real unexplainable physical phenomena, the eyewitnesses have collectively deluded themselves somehow and are not credible, the DoD has allowed them to go public seeing the matter as benign (the “lens glare” hypothesis)

2) It’s not aliens or any unexplainable phenomenon, the eyewitnesses are deluded, but the DoD has let them go public for some ulterior motive, possibly to sow confusion and provide cover for real technologies they are working on (the “useful idiots” hypothesis)

3) It’s not aliens or any advanced technology, maybe it’s even completely fabricated, and the eyewitnesses are involved in a PSYOP. Possibly to delude US adversaries into chasing their tails, or to provide cover for real technologies (the “PSYOP” hypothesis)

4) It’s not aliens, but it is an advanced technology being developed in secret by the US, the eyewitnesses are unaware of the providence of said technologies, and the DoD has let them go public as a PSYOP to sow confusion or to signal capabilities to adversaries (the “skunk works” hypothesis)

5) It is aliens, it is known by governments worldwide, and the DoD has let the eyewitnesses go public because they see it as a benign public good or are not willing or capable of stopping the flow of said information (the “UFO whistleblower” hypothesis)

6) It is aliens, it is unknown by some other governments, and the US wants to sound the alarm, possibly to signal other nations to come forward with their own information and start working on a global strategy for managing the situation (the “Earth defence” hypothesis)

> - In any case, why is the DoD letting eyewitnesses go public?

It seems there is a lot of pressure from high-up in the government to release at least old-enough footage of UAP, given the recent releases of UAP footage[0,1].

0: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/216571...

1: https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3491437-watch-n...

Right, I think my reasoning still applies whether it's coming from DoD or the White House. We still need to know why because they could have just continued the coverup, it's only since 2019 that they've changed their policy.

Spoiler. It’s never aliens

It's always aliens because they are alien

It isn't until we rule out 1), 2), 3), and 4)

I don't think people realize how much of our understanding of physics needs to be broken for aliens to be visiting us. Or that these creatures are willing to spend decades or generations away from their planet/home/family. Space is a hell of a lot bigger than people really think. Even several times the speed of light is slow in terms of these interstellar distances.

The UFOs could be autonomous, or they could originate from within our solar system.

I wrote a longer post and linked to the sibling comment. Yes, they could be autonomous. But there are still issues with that, specifically with the time for the communication to get back "home." (see sibling comment) This doesn't make things impossible, but it definitely decreases the likelihood.

As for within our solar system, I'm fairly certain this isn't true. There would be a crazy amount of effort to hide all that. Like you're hiding an entire civilization from x-rays, visible light, infrared, and radio. A civilization that would be constantly monitored (we pay a lot of attention to local objects). Possible, but these aliens clearly spent a lot of energy and resources to undertake this but have also hidden that resource collection (there's a feedback problem here). Combined with that we aren't sure for mechanisms for life. I'm not going to hold my breath.

Autonomous devices wouldn't need to send signals back home. They might be fully autonomous.

Also, I don't think we can rule out aliens within our solar system. An alien civilization beneath the ocean of some moon?

> Autonomous devices wouldn't need to send signals back home. They might be fully autonomous.

To... what? Study a civilization and do nothing with the data?

> Also, I don't think we can rule out aliens within our solar system. An alien civilization beneath the ocean of some moon?

Yeah, we pretty much can. Odds are extremely low. Now, life might exist, but not advanced space fairing life. Those civilizations produce a lot of noise and make drastic changes to their planets (/moons).

And of course it is easy to know in every case what those changes look like and what this noise sounds like. At every point of development.

> To... what? Study a civilization and do nothing with the data?

Arguments like this neglect the relative inscrutability of even human motivations, with which we ought to be intimately familiar, yet can nevertheless perplex us.

Humans undertake spectacular projects as jokes, religious activities, and as art. There's really no speculating about equivalent, befuddling alien motivations, and certainly nothing to rule out autonomous devices that travel unfathomable distances, and then play hide and seek when approached directly.

Can you elaborate on that?

As I see it. Let's say that human civilization does not turn Earth to a nuclear wasteland but rather resolves its social issues and proceeds with colonization of Solar System. We already sent probe out of our Solar System. It does not look for me to be impossible technology to build a probe with AI and robots smart enough to reach another star system, decelerate there, build some factories on asteroids and copy itself sending copies to further star systems. Of course at the same time exploring its "home" star system and transmit information they got to Earth.

So very quickly (in universe scale) our sphere of knowledge will expand limited only by some fuel tanks capacity required to accelerate and decelerate.

Yes, there will be years, decades, centuries and millenniums for this information to reach Earth. That's the nature of cosmos (according to our current knowledge) and we will have to deal with it.

Eventually probe will find planet with life. May be life is more abundant than we imagine now. May be not. Surely there will be protocols for the probe to investigate life. It's hard to imagine what those protocols would be. May be explore freely until certain technology advances are observed and then hide. So may be our ancestors saw alien probes on a regular basis and just didn't care. But now those probes observe that we've got quick airplanes so they hide better.

My point is that developed civilization inevitably will expand its sphere of influence at speed limited by speed of light. Probably slower than that. But billion of years at 0.1c is still huge chunk of universe. Are we sure that no civilization born within this radius billion years ago?

Sure, I actually wrote a longer comment here[0]. My understanding of what you're saying (no FTL) kinda falls under point 2 that I made. While I understand the mechanism you're discussing, is a civilization willing to spend a billion years waiting for the information to travel back home? I'd be under the impression that this would be a pure data collection pov and a quite risky one at that. You can't act on that information in a meaningful way since the life evolves drastically within that billion years (but you can study it!). Even in a thousand things change a lot, but at least not evolutionary. The risk is that if anything goes wrong (glitch, crash, etc) then you've kinda contaminated that life system (this includes the transmission of their data). But maybe they don't care and it is an acceptable risk to them. I'm not an alien, I don't know their ethics. Do also take into account that such a project would be a rather massive undertaking and the idea of mining planets left and right is quite noisy. We're about the at the point where we'd start detecting such stuff since we're looking at exo-planets on the regular now.

I'll bring up another point that I didn't in my longer post though. Maybe these lifeforms solved things like longevity and so such time constraints aren't meaningful to them. What's a few hundred years when you live millions?

> But billion of years at 0.1c is still huge chunk of universe. Are we sure that no civilization born within this radius billion years ago?

That's 1,000,000ly fwiw. That does cover the entire Milkey Way (but doesn't get us half way to Andromeda). But also consider that the Milkey Way is 13.6bn years old and life on Earth is 3.7bn.

I'm not saying that your idea is crazy, it is definitely possible (and has been proposed by others, in quite high detail). I just think there isn't any evidence for this and there's reason to believe that this would be quite difficult to pull off. But we'll see as time goes on.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672241

But what kind of evidence could we have?

Sure, if we would find crashed space ship, that would be good evidence. We don't have that (or it's not public knowledge anyway).

Anything less than that would be hard to consider evidence. Especially if those things are trying to minimize encounters.

As to mining planets. I think that it makes more sense to mine asteroids. You don't need to overcome gravitational well and asteroids are quite rich when it comes to resources. Asteroid belt is huge. You can build lots of stuff there without fear to be noticed. Also it's not really clear how far can you go with minituatirization. We think about big ships but if you can operate on molecular level, may be you can stay small. Think about robots size of bacteria, size of ants and stuff like that. Alien anthill in some asteroid pit might be never noticed.

> But what kind of evidence could we have?

The lack of evidence does not support a claim. Otherwise we'd make arguments about ghosts, invisible unicorns, and flying spaghetti monsters. Just to be clear. You're right that it is hard to consider evidence when it doesn't exist. So my believe of aliens visiting earth is in the probability ranges of these other things.

> We already sent probe out of our Solar System.

To give an idea of the scale involved, Voyager 1 is only 0.058% of the way to the nearest star system, and that took 45 years. Granted it wasn't built for speed but given that the best hypothetical plans for a spaceship we have allow travel at ~.1c it'll take 50 years not counting acceleration / deceleration.

Even assuming that some set of automated probes have been travelling our galaxy for millions of years, and reached earth in the last few thousand years, where are they now? By what mechanism could they even be hiding? Every inch of the planet is being watched by satellites.

> My point is that developed civilization inevitably will expand its sphere of influence at speed limited by speed of light. Probably slower than that. But billion of years at 0.1c is still huge chunk of universe.

As an aside, I'm not sure you could meaningfully have one civilization spanning hundreds of millions of light years, the ends are just too spread out for there to be a single cohesive or web of cultures. Imagine if an email took longer than our entire species existence to reach you.

> Are we sure that no civilization born within this radius billion years ago?

I personally am certain that there are many other forms of life throughout our galaxy, and at least some of them must be technological. As much as would like for it to be false, I also believe there is no realistic mechanism for travel between stars and we are all effectively doomed to stay in our little corner of creation, maybe spying on each other through telescopes, assuming we can even spot a neighbor.

> By what mechanism could they even be hiding? Every inch of the planet is being watched by satellites.

As well as ground based cameras, radar systems, infrasonic, particle detectors, scientific instruments, etc. And how would these ships power themselves for so long. To be able to do so while being hidden from xray, visible light, infrared, and radio? Except for maybe a few of these random sightings? Sure, it is possible, but doesn't sound likely.

> Even assuming that some set of automated probes have been travelling our galaxy for millions of years, and reached earth in the last few thousand years, where are they now? By what mechanism could they even be hiding? Every inch of the planet is being watched by satellites.

The most obvious way to hide is stay small. I don't know what physical limits would be to build small robots with advanced technology. Build main base somewhere in asteroid belt. Build some intermediate bases for refilling or something like that in moons. Or may be just rock somewhere in the space with small solar panels which collects electricity and can charge robot of size of sparrow which will travel further to Earth. Can we notice sparrow landing Earth and intelligently hiding e.g. in the sea?

Okay, so they are small and the objects being discussed in this thread aren't those. (there's a lot of complications that come with being small btw, but maybe another user will go into that)

> Eventually probe will find planet with life. May be life is more abundant than we imagine now. May be not. Surely there will be protocols for the probe to investigate life. It's hard to imagine what those protocols would be. May be explore freely until certain technology advances are observed and then hide. So may be our ancestors saw alien probes on a regular basis and just didn't care. But now those probes observe that we've got quick airplanes so they hide better.

Surely the protocol wouldn't be "show a tic tac in the sky and disappear foerver"

The people that believe that these UAP seem to think there is both a Fermi paradox and reverse Fermi Paradox at the same time.

Our understanding of physics has been broken for 100% of humanity's history.

We've greatly increased the amount of things that can be done, but I wouldn't be so confident about the things that can't be done.

> Our understanding of physics has been broken for 100% of humanity's history.

I'll let Asimov speak on this because he says it better than I can. But this is not even remotely accurate. We've become less wrong over time.

https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

Thanks, I'll read it.

I was quite precise in my wording and didn't say what you are responding to.

My opinion (and it's just that, I'm unprepared to defend it) is that we've always been [less and less] wrong on everything.

And since we can't know what the boundaries of knowledge are, and it could easily be some insane unbounded fractal existence, it seems rash to me to decide that we know enough to say that there can't exist civilizations whose technology is magic to us.

A lot of things would be demonstratively broken if Special Relativity is wrong.

It doesn't need to be too wrong, just incomplete. Much like Newton's laws.

See my comment in the sibling subthread.

Problem is that this technology breaks our understanding of causality. So it isn't a "less wrong" type of situation so much as we have to rewrite everything. Specifically it means things that happen in the future can affect things in the past (communication past the light cone). The discoveries of quantum and relativity didn't break classical mechanics so much as extend it. But to rewrite how a sequence of events happens, well that's a big fundamental change. The light from my flashlight turning on at t=1 does not force me to press the button to turn it on at t=0.

The first hit on Google, from a reputable site, suggests that this isn't proven to be impossible to solve by adapting the current frameworks, as we've done before. It's unsettled science, which is imo working as expected:

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-shows-how-the-universe-wo...

> Specifically it means things that happen in the future can affect things in the past (communication past the light cone).

Sure, and that's not a problem so as long as self-consistency is preserved.

> But to rewrite how a sequence of events happens, well that's a big fundamental change.

Depends how you look at it. There are retrocausal explanations of quantum mechanics, for instance.

> Sure, and that's not a problem so as long as self-consistency is preserved.

You break the lightcone...

> Depends how you look at it. There are retrocausal explanations of quantum mechanics, for instance.

Let me save people the time, there's critiques at the bottom but there is no actual evidence for retrocausal explanations: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-retrocausality/

> You break the lightcone...

The point is you can't. Existence would be a static 4D structure. No matter how you tried to change the past, your attempts are already part of your own history and clearly all failed.

> Let me save people the time, there's critiques at the bottom but there is no actual evidence for retrocausal explanations: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-retrocausality

There is no evidence for any interpretation of QM. That's what makes them interpretations and not distinct theories.

The problem is you/we are working with what you know, not with what you don't know. That is why it's hard to conceive of something different.

You never know, when this advanced technology is revealed by the US military it could just be some kind of physics hack that fits in neatly somewhere and doesn't require any rewriting, just a footnote.

Maybe read the Asimov link first.

Our understanding is so incomplete that we have to posit the presence of dark matter and dark energy - comprising the majority of the universe - to explain the parts we think we do understand. With so much we cannot account for, it seems unwise to have firm beliefs like this about what isn’t possible.

Yes exactly its a bit arrogant to think that we know it all or that we can know it all.

There's a big difference between claiming we know it all and that our understanding is incomplete. There's also a big difference between claiming something is incomplete and that something has to be rewritten from the ground up. I believe our knowledge is incomplete, I do not believe there is something out there that requires us to rewrite everything.

The problem here is that to go down this path you need to violate quite a few fundamental aspects of physics that we have. Several of which have stood the test of millennia despite many serious attempts to disprove.

millennia? modern physics goes back a couple hundred years tops. relevant physics that aka prohibits FTL travel is less than a hundred years old (theory of relativity)...

No, relevant physics that prevents FTL is information flow connected with time. This is why people keep referring to the light cone. In other words, something that happens tomorrow is not a causal factor for something that has happened yesterday. The ancients knew that the order of time marched ever forward and that the future does not dictate the past. Even the concept of entropy and disorder was understood at a basic level for quite some time. Probably even before we were humans we understood that an object that has shattered does not spontaneously place itself back together. Or that a log that burns from fire cannot be put back together. Or that the future doesn't influence the past. These are physics concepts so old that they are often forgotten about because they are so obvious.

A quote that stuck with me is; "not only is the universe queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can suppose" - JBS Haldane

Right, absolutely fair comment. I would also add however that people don't realize how much of our understanding of physics needs to be broken for these objects to have a terrestrial technological origin.

Consider the following aspects of the observed phenomena:

- Intelligent characteristics (chasing / following / loitering behaviour)

- Ability to generate and withstand extreme G-forces

- Ability to expend/sustain extreme bursts of energy

- Lack of visible exhaust

- Bizarre aerodynamic characteristics

I'm not an aerospace engineer, but I am a technologist and I took some aerospace-related courses in university. The first two aspects combined seem to rule out control by a human in the cockpit, and given the history of AI I would say autonomous control by a computer as well. Although not altogether the possibility of remote control by a human.

But the last three aspects transcend not only everything I think I know about existing technology, but also my understanding of:

- Newton's Third Law of motion and the rocket equation

- Fluid mechanics/Navier-Stokes equation

- Thermodynamics

i.e., it exceeds our current science by such an enormous margin that I couldn't even begin to approach how to analyze it. Therefore, I think that if we rule out the possibility of a delusion/hoax, it's far more likely that these objects are alien than a secret skunk works project.

I am surprised you haven't proposed the most likely (and sadly boring) for me:

7) They are not aliens or any unexplainable phenomenon, witnesses are all deluded or victims of things like lens glare and the DoD has let them go public (importantly without stigmatising them) to:

  a) Encourage others serving at the frontline to come forward when they see UFO in case it is foreign adversarial tech (such as the spy balloon) without worrying of being stigmatised

  b) satisfy public demand by being as transparent as possible with the situation to prevent further delusion and conspiracy theories in the public.

Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe they have far more time in the air.

It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest in our military capability. Even ignoring the technological implications of interstellar flight or the ability to enter our atmosphere without being detected, these objects are apparently massively more capable than any kind of vehicle we have. To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna.

It seems very likely that fighter pilots and finely-tuned military equipment would be very eager to pick up false signals from background noise and interpret it as vehicles that stretch out understanding of physics.

"To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna."

To play devil's advocate for a moment: they'd have to know the capabilities of these jets to make that determination, and observation of some sort would be required to do so.

"Artifacts" (anomalous errors) appear on flight systems' sensors all the time, and atmospheric distortions can easily appear to the naked eye as flying/moving objects. I don't buy either that other countries have such advanced technology or that extraterrestrial intelligences are visiting us: the simpler explanations I noted cover more or less every published UAP we have seen.

>> To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna

I always find it odd that we ascribe a human understanding of logic to an alien species. Seems to me we wouldn’t know jack shit about motivations, capabilities, approaches to decision making, etc…

well we make some reasonable baze line assumptions for an intelligent life form -- they have self preservation instincts and as such likely operate on some base level of game theory.

From the descriptions, the aliens act like we would with a slightly better tech: they act like rangers in a national forest monitoring suspicious activity of smart beavers, but otherwise don't mess with the wildlife.

That's just the ones we can see.

We call them smart beavers, but the other beavers call them conspiracy theorists.

They do, in fact all the time.

You just don't hear about it because of stigma.

See this NARCAP (civilian flight safety) report https://www.narcap.org/blog/narcaptr20 for a case where a FedEx flight crew documented an encounter with the commonly reported pulsating orb type anomaly. There is a video.

Observed behavior:

> The UAP/Light came from above and stopped/hovered near FL37, about the same altitude as the aircraft, shone a light on the 767 and briefly approached the aircraft. Then it instantly matched the speed, and heading of the aircraft and maintained a consistent separation.

a. The light descended vertically, stopped abruptly, and shone a light on the 767 causing the crew to believe that there was another airliner on a collision heading with its landing lights on.

b. It changed direction from vertical descent to a sudden stop/hover, to approaching the aircraft briefly, to taking the same heading and speed of the aircraft at about the same altitude and an estimated distance of 1-2k ft.

c. It matched the altitude, speed, and heading of the aircraft, 575mph and at 37,000ft for over 32 minutes.

d. The UAP/Light changed colors and turned away from the aircraft on a perpendicular heading, West, just inside the Mexico/US border.

e. The UAP/light did not have wings or running lights. It was a new and unique observation to the experienced air crew.

> It seems very, very unlikely aliens would have any interest in our military capability

And in fact, apparently they do here too. It's been documented these UAPs have an interest in our nuclear capabilities. There has been many testimonies from people in the military these UAPs buzz around nuclear silos and apparently are able to disable them. See this well researched video for information on Robert Hastings https://youtu.be/l4EXL7jgqns

I find the Alaska case to be the most interesting. As the visual report of an object was supported by detections from the Soviet facing long range radar that were state of the art at the time.

The pulsating in the NARCAP video looks like the camera trying and failing to find focus on anything that it's looking at.

Interesting though.

Camera autofocus is commonly brought up but in this case the crewmen were able to attest to the pulsating with their eyeballs, in addition to the other strange behaviour as noted in their testimony.

Good thing human eyes don't have irises that open and close to let in different amounts of light.

I get that same pulsing with my eyeballs when I'm tired and having trouble focusing on things.

Were their eyes failing to auto-focus? Did you watch the video with sound? They're talking about it pulsating as they film it.

They talk about it pulsating on the camera.

Here’s the thing that gets me. A 767 costs hundreds of millions of dollars and yet I’ve filmed better videos with a potato. Why is the pilot filming with his smartphone? Why does the plane not have a sophisticated high-quality purpose-built camera system that can record phenomena like this?

Huh? Are you seriously asking why commercial airliners don’t have 4K GoPros to record UAP/UFOs?

Many commercial airlines at least international (like emirates) have cameras all over. You can even watch it from your seat.

They’re not 4K and they’re not meant to be aimed at UAPs. IME they don’t have long term storage either.

Yes. Why is that unreasonable?

It's unreasonable because installing and maintaining aviation qualified cameras is expensive. You can't just strap a consumer action camera to the wing and expect the FAA to approve. Airlines have no incentive to pay for extra cameras.

Yep. It’s the same reason why a lot of planes still have a “no smoking” light even though smoking hasn’t been allowed on planes for years. If they took them out, they’d have to recertify the electronics. It’s much easier and cheaper to have a useless light that always stays on than to go through that process to remove it.

There are plenty incentives to including imaging as part of black boxes. Nothing unreasonable about it. It would help elucidate several non-UFO normal life kind of incidents.

If there were, they'd do it, but it doesn't help their business, so they don't.

They must be some kind of gods really. Anything they do is because it make perfect sense. If there's something they're not doing it's because of course it's not worth doing!

Yeah, who'd think a business would try and not spend money on something they don't need in a cut-throat industry.

Imaging and storage used to be much more expensive, so if this decision was to be reviewed today, I am pretty sure regulators would start requiring it.

Just because things are as they are, doesn't mean that they couldn't be better.

Nah. External cameras wouldn't do anything significant to improve safety or help with crash investigations so there's no reason for the FAA to impose such a requirement. It's just a silly idea.

But regulators do revisit existing rules all the time. If you really want this then feel free to file a formal petition for rulemaking. If you do that then they'll have to at least look at it.

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/petition

Not to mention creating another source of liability for themselves. "And then the pilot did WHAT?"

Except that's already logged extensively on the black box (which is rm actually red) flight recorder, so that doesn't seem like a good excuse.

I think a pilot could easily suction cup a GoPro on a mount to the back of the cockpit door, facing the whole cockpit.

That would be a policy violation at any major US airline. They don't want random objects in the cockpit which could come loose in severe turbulence or a crash, causing a safety hazard.

It would be pointless for this use case anyway. The field of view through the cockpit windows is very narrow and any UAP would only show up as a few blurry pixels.

I'm wondering why a multi-million dollar aircraft doesn't have a $10k imaging system when I put a $300 imaging system on my $30k car. If I'm willing to spend 1% to understand equipment damage then why would this logic not follow for a billion dollar fleet of aircraft?

Like-minded drivers have caught amazing videos of meteors. Planes could do the same for supposedly legitimate UAP sightings.

Well would you increase the budget of your production grade deliverables for maybe proving to internet forum visitors that your product sometimes is in the presence of weird phenomena?

Are you suggesting NARCAP is an internet forum?

They don't seem to think the camera resolution is a problem in taking these sightings seriously, as opposed to random person here I'm responding to. Seems to indicate something doesn't it?

Oh I dunno. Maybe because that's what people do? We put billions into explaining stuff we don't understand.

Building a particle accelerator is not the same as adding 1% to the cost of an already costly machine for the off chance of proving some marginal phenomena visually.

Considering this goes up to congress and they think it might be a national security threat I don't think it's bad idea. It's also pretty doubtful this will even increase the cost by 1%.

Sure. Random internet forum person demands better evidence to be convinced, when a) we don't even have all data; b) no-one cares what random internet forum person thinks. We are watching from the sidelines jeering for irrelevant changes.

I'm not sure about all of that, but I know a lot of people are paid to count a lot of beans. There are lots of beans saved from diagnostics, especially where insurance is involved.

Have you heard of black boxes? I don't think dashboard cams are a limiting factor for airplanes here...

Indeed I have. It's pretty wild that modern FDRs don't include video. There isn't a good justification other than "it's too much effort to make any change", which is a sign of a dangerous system.

Ok go out there and convince people in charge of that. Must be easier than convincing me, who has no stakes in it either way...

Probably for the same reason nobody thought it was possible to make a plane disappear before MH70 or whatever it was.

What purpose would adding an imaging system serve? The purpose is obvious for your car, cars crash all the time. Planes rarely do and it seems we already get all the data we need when they do crash to fix and prevent that reason from happening again.

More "why don't they have general-purpose dashcam-equivalents", for capturing anything of interest, e.g. the near-miss that was on HN yesterday.

No, that’s not what I’m asking, because a GoPro costs about $400. I’m asking why they don’t have something 10x better than a GoPro.

Two Boeing 737 Max aircraft crashed because they didn't have a backup angle-of-attack sensor. According to a former NTSB director, "this is a fairly simple external device that can get damaged on a regular basis."

https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/boeing-sensor-737-ma...

I'm guessing the reason they didn't put a lifesaving backup sensor on the plane might be sorta similar to the reason they don't add high-definition cameras in case of UFOs.

That is truly mental.

The SLS costs $4B per launch and apparently has very little onboard imaging capability.

That video looks like a distant light / laser that's tracking the airplane, going on and off target.

The "going on and off target" effect seen here is likely the camera's autofocus.

They were referring to that as the pulsing effect?

>Why don't commercial pilots report the same things? I believe they have far more time in the air.

They do. Here's a Forbes article about it[0].

I'm firmly in the "it isn't aliens" camp but there are no shortage of UFO/UAP reports with multiple, credible eyewitnesses.

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2021/06/26...

An autonomous monitoring system for galactic-scale existential risk bearing technologies would def have probes that monitored the technological development of remote civilizations.

I sometimes wonder if these galactic powers (if they exist) will prevent the creation of AGI.

If they don't then is that evidence that AGI is NBD?

To be clear: I don't think this is a good line of thinking from the beginning, so I'm not surprised when the conclusions are not useful.

The point isn’t to derive useful conclusions. The fact that we have no idea about the probability of the existence of extraterrestial intelligence seems to make it inherently impossible to derive any conclusions from a formula where they play a vital part.

Correct - it never ceases to amaze me the degree of certainty of many of the so called “skeptics” when it comes to questions for which we have no way to really generate meaningful priors on.

You mean, another AGI besides them?

They're just being good midwives.

On the navy video I remember one of the guys mentioning they think it is a drone.

It such hubris to believe those are alien craft and not foreign military drones. As if alien craft is the more probable explanation than another country having drones the US Navy does not.

you seriously claim this after we all witnessed russia - the supposed number 2 or 3 military power in the world loose a hundred thousand soldiers to ukraine in less than a year? the reality is that the USA has the most advanced military and no one else comes close... so yes, aliens are far more likely explanation than china having anti-gravity drones

To them a fighter jet might as well be a Cessna.

Maybe not. Even when it all started, a few cases were alledgedly air combat:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantell_UFO_incident

Other incidents crashes, like Roswell. Obviously I cannot vouch for any of those :-) just wanted to point that air fighters at the time were much less sophisticated than today. Maybe people that travels between stars are not so interested in bringing state-of-the-art war machines with them. The technology to maneuver a drone or vehicle at incredible speed or angles might still be vulnerable to bullets or missiles.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight...

I think what bothers us most about incidents like this is that any country or human organization that had massive air superiority over everyone else would inevitably use it to their advantage.

And yet, here are the reports, but no one is coming forward to say "yes, we Canadians actually never cancelled the Avro Arrow and have been decades ahead of the rest of you all this time- now please remove that Danish flag from Hans Island".

It's such a foreign idea that someone might have this advantage and not use it that the best answer we have is "I guess they aren't humans". Maybe that says a lot about us.

If this technology were developed by a private individual, there's incentive to keep it hidden. No businessperson wants to have a military grade target on their back, but I feel like some are paranoid/wealthy enough to want to develop their own tech

This assumes the advancements can give a significant military advantage, through cost of production and overall military effectiveness.

And that the behaviour of other countries could be a problem to the manufacturing country--trade and cooperation etc.

And if the advancements are used for spying then of course they'll be kept quiet for as long as possible.

Showing your cards early, even if you think they're good, may not be the best approach.

They say on the nimitz video there's a whole fleet of them.

This kind of tech could only come from a superpower, and you really think they wouldn't brag about it?

> This kind of tech could only come from a superpower, and you really think they wouldn't brag about it?

They would not. How long were stealth bombers a closely held secret? If these are craft, then they are far beyond even that.

Once you know something is possible, you're halfway to solving it. If other nations knew the US had some fantastical tech, they would up their espionage and research efforts around the specific characteristics they've seen and quickly reproduce it.

antigravity is a civilization changing technology that has unlimited economic value. the idea that the americans would use it exclusively for spying instead of colonizing the solar system and beyond is... improbable to say the least

They demonstrate technology so advanced that it's more plausibly from another more advanced civilization than from a nation or person that lives on the same planet.

The United States *does* have massive air superiority over everyone else and it's not even close. We have three times as many planes as Russia, our next closest "competitor" and we have more than the closest four (China, India and South Korea) combined. This doesn't touch on the fact that we also have the most technologically advanced air force by far and the carrier groups to support them anywhere in the world. It should surprise no one that these sightings almost exclusively happen by military personnel near military installations.

I really wish people would take a look at the extensive analysis some scientists have done to show the 3 navy videos of UAP are showing flight characteristics that defy our laws of physics.

This guy on Twitter has done a fantastic job to show the GIMBAL object performed what we can only describe as a “vertical u-turn” https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1504855791060148224?s=...

This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous acceleration to over 20,000 mph https://www.explorescu.org/post/2004-uss-nimitz-strike-navy-...

Here is a paper from the National Aeronautical Observatory in Ukraine that tracked UAP via their two telescopes in different cities going Mach 15, stopping, and changing directions instantaneously https://arxiv.org/pdf/2211.17085.pdf

What do you want people to get out of those analyses? They quantify the incredible observations, but they don't explain how those observations could be possible, nor rule out other explanations.

At least in terms of the 3 navy video, I would argue that the data purports, with high confidence, that the craft did exhibit flight performance characteristics that we cannot explain with modern technology or physics. And these are just the three videos that got released. Many people with security clearances have come forward and said the AATIP database has hundreds videos (with the classified sensor data) of craft showing advanced flight performance characteristics.

I want people to understand that this phenomenon is real, and it’s happening constantly. So much to the point that it’s affecting military training operations and putting our fighter jet pilots at risk.

We had AATIP and now we have UAPTF. They do stuff and brief Congress about it. Why is that not good enough?

UAPTF is now AARO. But it’s not enough for congress to be briefed. If what we’re seeing is a better understanding of physics, than this would affect everyone’s lives

Then maybe they can mitigate the risk without you knowing about it.

What is that supposed to mean? This is about gaining a further understanding of reality; the universe

> it’s affecting military training operations and putting our fighter jet pilots at risk

I didn’t forget. This issue could be both a security risk for our military members, and also an exciting venture for science.

If it was just a science thing or they didn't care about the security risk, I don't see why they'd keep forming new organizations that are increasingly secretive.

Because it's not just a science thing. It's a potential threat. Threat is defined as capability x intent. We are seeing these things with insane capabilities, but not really any intent (other than maybe observing our technology).

We have AARO for addressing the threat. Why is that not good enough?

The government works for the citizens. We citizens should be able to know what is happening above our heads.

They already responded to FOIA requests, briefed Congress publicly and privately, and announced AARO when they didn't have to. We're pretty well-informed, and Congress has some oversight. It's very ordinary.

This subject is anything but ordinary.

The former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence wrote a blog alleging that there are black projects hidden within DoD contractors that are reverse engineering non-human intelligence craft. He's presented enough evidence to congress for them to add specific legislation to bring these programs to light.

If that's true, then clearly they're doing something about it, so I don't understand why you think they're not doing enough for security. If it is aliens, why would they confirm it and start a race to get alien tech first? You can wait a bit for them to figure it out. If it's not aliens, why would they reveal the details of classified information?

The only thing I'm doing is trying to convince people this is not a waste in effort to track. Many have been hoping for government disclosure for decades, but now the timeline for that to happen seems to be accelerating

Tracking it is your hobby. It's not a waste if you enjoy doing it.

I'm skeptical and so lean pragmatic on the issue.

Fighter pilots at risk? If the military believed that they would already be fully engaged in solving the problem. In which case there is little for me or any other civilian to do.

And you say fighter pilots at risk but, and this will sound callous, an actual incident that caused a loss of aircraft would be more compelling. It does away with the may be at risk proposition. And, again, I suspect the military would be fully engaged in understanding the issue. Doubly so.

I guess I also believe that things leak. There isn't going to be a secret program that is so far advanced that it counters known physical laws.

It sounds as though you are certain that it is military in nature so no need to speculate as to whether it is extraterrestrial in nature.

If you want to understand the stigma of reporting UAPs as a military pilot, see Ryan Graves interview with Lex Fridman:

https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y

> There isn't going to be a secret program that is so far advanced that it counters known physical laws.

I think you've misread this part--parent is not saying these are ours, not at all.

We're all in agreement that if what we're seeing is real, these would be non-human in origin.

> these would be non-human in origin.

So they must be natural in origin. There's no other option.

The direct quote from former DoD officials is that these aircraft are most a likely non-human intelligence.

If they're non-human in origin then the whole thing is even less actionable. We're not going to learn the secrets of hyper drive just because the military acknowledges that these are real phenomena.

I don't know. We would learn that some things are possible which we thought were impossible, which means physics took a wrong turn somewhere and we need to back up and keep looking. Even if it's not the secrets of hyper drive, that's probably going to lead to something interesting.

If they are real and non human maybe we can communicate with them and they can tell us. Highly unlikely based on their interest in our nukes and our obvious penchant for war

> We're all in agreement that if what we're seeing is real, these would be non-human in origin

I don't agree with this at all.

Firstly I suspect it isn't real.

But if it is then I think it's most likely some human group has a technological breakthrough and it using it like this.

Say a US adversary wanted to give a "don't fuck with us" message to the US military. Outperforming state-of-the-art US fighters would be a good way to do it.

And just because the HN forum commentators don't know who it is doesn't mean the US intelligence community doesn't know. It might be broadly known that the Kamerians have access to this tech, and the knowledge is classified "to avoid broad panic".

There might be secret briefing to congress about it, which would explain perfectly why there is an apparent lack of action. All responses are classified.

If a foreign adversary had invented such tech, the West would have sanctioned the country into the ground to stop them producing more.

So it's either the US but they claim it's not them, and they keep doing more investigations, or they're not human. I don't buy the faulty sensor argument given multiple corroborating sources.

It's impossible to say with such certainty what the reaction would be.

What if the country that developed it was a Western-aligned country like Japan, Israel or France?

What if the country was a country like Russia or Cuba, and has had this tech since before the fall of the Berlin wall and the US intelligence community wanted to keep it secret?

What if the country was a country that is under Western sanctions for other reasons but those reasons were a pretext? For example, if the developer was Iran or North Korea how would you tell the difference without access to classified information?

What if the country was able to blackmail the US into not imposing sanctions? How would you distinguish between that an US foreign policy towards a country like Pakistan or Saudi Arabia?

What if the country was a historically neutral mid-power where there is significant downside in sanctioning them (for example Switzerland)?

What if some elements of the US intelligence community support working with the foreign power and others don't?

There are just too many possibilities to judge the veracity of a theory like this by looking at US foreign policy?

I don't think so. These things can disable nukes according to testimony given to Congress. They're the basis of US supremacy.

In the above situations, it'd be imperative for the US to acquire the tech through war, economic pressure or espionage, or if that wasn't possible try to prevent them manufacturing more. If it was a friendly country they'd have to share the tech.

This tech is basically like developing 5th gen fighters in the Stone age. There's simply no way the world's largest superpower wouldn't acquire the tech by any means necessary, since it threatens its very existence

> These things can disable nukes according to testimony given to Congress.

Citation required.

> In the above situations, it'd be imperative for the US to acquire the tech through war, economic pressure or espionage, or if that wasn't possible try to prevent them manufacturing more.

Perhaps this is exactly what the US is doing? Except the US knows it can't go to war because it'd lose.

This is the one that talks about UFOs disabling nukes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64njI0uNvGg

My mistake, the subjects offered to testify under oath to Congress (I'm not sure if they went on to do so, I think they may have but I can't find that video right now).

Regardless, this shows the phenomenon is over 50 years old according to credible witnesses, which makes the foreign adversary scenario unbelievable.

Check out Dr Greer's Disclosure Project.

This Nimitz incident needs to be viewed in the wider context of reports over the years, UFO images in art, and explanations in other sources e.g. the Mahabharata.

I was initially sceptical, but one can be too sceptical - all options need considering.

Putting it altogether, on the balance of probablilties I think aliens are in fact the only plausible explanation.

Robert Salas was the Air Force captain in charge of Nordstrom Air Force Base where he was witness to 10 isolated nuclear ICBMs becoming decommissioned with a UFO hovering above. He's testified to congress before but he's been asked to testify again https://twitter.com/keptycho/status/1608097197857595392?s=46...

There's a really good book "UFOs and Nukes" that goes into great details the correlation between UFO sightings by military members around nuclear facilities / detonation events.

Like the other commenter said, there’s a huge stigma amongst military officials to not report these events because the stigma is a career ended. That’s why the government added legislation mandating the DoD create a channel for these events to be reported.

Diving a little deeper, if the military suspected these aircraft were foreign adversary then this would be big news. But they don’t. They believe it’s something else entirely, which is why it’s not been public headlines until recently.

Same in astronomy and cosmology. Your career will be over if you do not hold a very specific view, or at least hold it publicly.

Exactly. We need this stigma to stop. There should be no reason to not study interesting data, and the data is very interesting.

Three videos is not a preponderance of data. The number of photos taken in the past day exceeds the number of photos taken in the past year exceeds the number of photos taken in the 20th century. We have cameras in space, we have cameras everywhere we have people, so then where is the expected increase in observations? UFO sightings have been relatively steady, with peaks and valleys as the zeitgeist ebbs and flows. If we don't assume UFO presence as constant (ie it might go down when we have more observing capabilities) then there's little information to be learned. At some point it turns into metaphysics.

Case studies are great, but I have not seen convincing, properly skeptical analyses. As they say: it's never aliens. People, unfortunately, are typically willing to see what they want to see.

If the events happen mainly at altitudes, smartphones have a hard time capturing them. There’s also the argument that since these would be super-intelligent beings, they might aim for a level of exposure that they’re confident won’t make the grand public believe in their existence.

LOL! What? Aliens are worried about being exposed? Why? Did you ask them?

Answer: not aliens, just a big PsyOps to give the military more funding.

>There’s also the argument that since these would be super-intelligent beings, they might aim for a level of exposure that they’re confident won’t make the grand public believe in their existence.

The public by and large, more or less, already believes in their existence. There are actual religions built around aliens, this has been been a part of pop culture since the 1940s. If they're trying to obey something like the Prime Directive and prevent cultural contamination then they seem to be doing a terrible job. Picard would be ashamed.

Imagine you're a strong military and you have a potential adversary. You want to control what force capabilities you advertise. Maybe you test an anti-satellite rocket, maybe you decide to not shoot down a spy balloon, etc.

Now imagine you're a galactic force where the minimum ante for any extra-societal interaction is the highest existential stakes possible. You're going to be very careful and methodical with your force projection.

I'm not saying that's what's going on here, but there are many different plausible explanations for behavior that seems strange, unlikely, or convenient at first blush.

Unfortunately most of this data is highly classified and not going to leak. We do have cameras everywhere, but I’m not sure how many civilian devices can capture a good video of something going Mach 15+.

All I can say to you is to look into the last NDAA legislation. These former DoD officials have convinced congress members enough to include legislation to further study UAP and create a system for pilots to report their events properly.

One final note: a true scientist should never rule out a possibility. Blanket saying “it’s never aliens” is wrong, because one day we almost for sure will find alien life in the universe.

Much like any guiding principle in science, "it's never aliens" is a rule of thumb. Obviously no scientist rules out legitimate possibilities, but it's similar to math being riddled with singularities. It's a sign that more work is likely needed.

More work is absolutely needed. But in this case, let me quote the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence with regards to the data he's seen on UAPs: "Currently, the extraterrestrial hypothesis best fits the facts".

From my perspective it doesn't pass muster. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and we simply don't have that evidence. "Trust us, we have the evidence, no you can't see it." is not good enough.

I have looked at the publicly available evidence, read the analyses, and thought long about this (as have many others). In my best estimate there is either a concerted effort by eccentric military leaders to trickle UAP sightings with a sprinkling of psyops. The US military is intentionally very opaque and slow, but that does not make it also all-seeing or wise.

He said “fits the facts”, not “evidence shows.”

I’m copying a comment I made above:

Lue Elizondo did far more than run AATIP. His primary job at the DoD was to prevent leaks from the Special Access Programs that contained the classified technology that would be working on what you claim UFOs are. Here is his performance report that outlined his official duties https://imgur.com/a/y0X1eoo His full IG report which had the performance report above is here https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgqoaeore81lbxs/Luis%20Elizondo%20... I find it hard to believe that the man whose job was to prevent the leaking of US classified technology would not know that these UFOs were just classified tech.

Many of the characteristics of these beings are consistent with Jinns as described in Islamic teachings. Initially described in Quran and further elaborated in Hadith and then by various Sufi masters. Sufi masters engagement with these creatures was through intense meditation. And according to their estimates there may be more than 5 billion of them.

Many of the characteristics of Qui-Gon Jinn are consistent with midi-chloreans as described in Star Wars teachings. Initially described in The Phantom Menace and further elaborated in the Expanded Universe and then by various Jedi masters. Jedi masters engagement with these creatures was through intense meditation. And according to their estimates there may be more than 5 billion of them.

I'm not that familiar with the folklore around Jinn. Do the similarities go beyond those you could draw for other legendary creatures like ghosts or angels?

Jinn are angels (or angels are Jinn) according to Islam.

This seems like strong evidence that the "tic tac" is not a flying object per se, but rather something like the focal point of a high-E-field laser? (Or a crossing point between two such beams?)

If the object in question is not a physical object so much as a light show, it could undergo all sorts of impossible manouevres including instantaneous acceleration and even the appearance of exceeding the speed of light.

Seen through instrumentation, aberrations or artefacts from the sensors, or even active jamming could explain the instantaneous acceleration

That's true, but "abberations or artefacts" are more of a low-effort non-explanation than an explanation, and unlikely to satisfy anyone who isn't already skeptical. Active jamming is... the kind of role that a high-intensity two-photon laser would be being tested for.

What would a "high-intensity two-photon laser" be? A two-photon X-ray laser?

https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma

Ah, I don't mean that the laser outputs only two photons, but that it (might) be designed around 2-photon interactions, so if you have two very-high-intensity IR lasers and the beams meet at a point in space, that crossing point could locally ionize the air as though it consisted of a beam of photons with higher energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-photon_physics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonlinear_optics

It absolutely could be an adversary spoofing our sensor systems. But, I would argue the testimonies of the 4 pilots that saw the object with their own eyes may rule that out (unless it was some kind of hologram).

Whatever it is, we need to further study it because more and more military pilots are seeing them and their military exercises are being disrupted

A ball of super heated plasma would show up visually.

Have you heard Cmdr Dave Fravor’s testimony of the incident? A ball plasma does not exhibit intelligent movement as the way the tic tac began to mirror him as he descended on to it

What if the ball plasma was the product of the end of someone's high-power gimbal-mounted laser, which they were intelligently steering while watching him fly?

Sure it does, this small scale demo can even draw the death star in mid air

https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma

That's certainly no natural phenomenon!

As I said to another commenter, I'm not discounting the possibility of this being human tech. But, wouldn't adversaries need other ships or satellites to launch this holographic plasma from, and wouldn't we have tracked those before seeing the tic-tac (or other unidentified craft) on radar?

Many reports are actually happening over the United States airspace. How could the military not track the planes the plasmas are being launched from being over our airspace? And suppose this is Chinese tech over our airspace - HOW IS THAT NOT A HUGE STORY? The blimp is the perfect example - if this stuff was Chinese, it would be a huge story.

It's classified US technology, obviously. That's why it mostly appears near military installations that have significant power production capabilities (things like nuclear aircraft carriers, possible nuclear submarines).

The fact that the military isn't investigating it implies to me that they already know what is it. Now why they're letting pilots talk about it on the Joe Rogan experience I don't know, but whether that was a simple mistake or they just felt like not keeping those pilots in the loop at all was better, well that's not unexplainable.

So yeah, ground based plasma hologram projection is a specific, real, technology that can produce results that match the description of the UFOs. I'm not speculating here, all the data I've seen has matched the description of a ball of plasma and these systems can make balls of plasma appear in mid-air at any location you want, at any speed and with any flight characteristics.

Once you know what technology has been used to make the "UFOs" the rest is pretty easy.

Let's take this hypothesis and run with it. What you're saying is there's a faction of the government that is fucking with our military operations and endangering our pilots. How is this not headline news? How is this not a problem?

I presume if they got to this point they're pretty sure it's not endangering anyone, and there's no reason to believe those pilots immediate CO wasn't informed. Live tests on unaware aircraft are an obvious thing to do with your super cool new sensor blinding technology. I'd presume that there are other pilots or are aware and that this was a limited test with someone not in the know.

Lue Elizondo did far more than run AATIP. His primary job at the DoD was to prevent leaks from the Special Access Programs that contained the classified technology that would be working on what you claim UFOs are. I can link you to his IG complaint where it contains his performance report that outlined his official duties at the DoD if you'd like.

Edit: here it is https://imgur.com/a/y0X1eoo

His full IG report which had the performance report above is here https://www.dropbox.com/s/cgqoaeore81lbxs/Luis%20Elizondo%20...

I find it hard to believe that the man whose job was to prevent the leaking of US classified technology would not know that these UFOs were just classified tech.

If his job was to prevent leaks from the Special Access Programs, wouldn't he absolutely say that these "objects" weren't classified tech? Like, it's literally his job to say it's not us!

He does say exactly that this is not classified US tech. And if you read the DNI paper on UAP, they say that it’s not classified tech as well.

That's the thing! A high-intensity laser (or microwave, etc) can certainly produce a visible phenomenon, through heating or ionization of the air, scattering, etc. It wouldn't necessarily be visible through sensors only.

It totally could be. I have to wonder where the laser would be shot off from though. Either a satellite above, which we should see, or a submarine/ship near by, which should be tracked on sonar.

Whatever it is, we need to find out. I’m not 100% on the ET hypothesis. This could be human tech and just spoofing. But we need to know

Yep, seems like the obvious answer. Especially as these phenomenon are mostly observed near military installations and places with a lot of power generation capability.

ion beam. look at the energy dissipation rate charts for ion beams in matter.

I suppose that works as a weapon, and would be electromagnetically steerable. Not exactly safe but...

We have already existing phenomena - ball lighting. It can spawn in the middle of nowhere, scorch stuff or people, go through walls, disappear, move slowly or relatively fast... my father saw once down their street, with these characteristics (without harming anybody). That it can also jump around at non-trivial speed and doing maneuvers impossible to current technology is not that hard to imagine. And that's just one example I came up just now.

Given how many hoaxes exist, how many people blindly believe basically anything, how many folks happily take advantage of that at any cost, and host of other known facts, very very hard skepticism is in place.

Oh and since its HN, we all know all software has tons of bugs, including military stuff. But no, little green men have nothing else to do just show off mostly to US air force but otherwise be untraceable, and watch us kill each other and whole ecosystem over stupid stuff.

This is what I've been pondering too as a possible terrestrial explanation.

Perhaps some fancy machinery can beam modified waveforms not only with microwaves, but with frequencies high enough to reach infrared and/or visible light.

And perhaps some kind of an elongated blob is the state of the art now.

And later, as the technology matures, one might expect more detailed movie-prop like "UFOs" to appear. Hoping to see a TIE fighter or Jetsons' space car soon.

> This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous acceleration to over 20,000 mph

Would't it mean that the footage doesn't actually show real objects then?

You see a Mona Lisa on the wall in your friends house, before you assume that your friend has the original or that Leonardo Da Vinci painted two of those and this is the other one you will need to go through many many other scenarios because you know a thing or two about the painting and your friend. You don't just throw away all your constructs about the world on the first observed anomaly.

Nobody is throwing away all of the constructs of what we know. This may turn out to be sensor malfunction. But the DoD has over 300 events of unidentified objects that exhibit interesting flight characteristics. At the very least we should not be ignoring this data, but studying it deeply to figure out what it is.

Either it’s a foreign adversary with advanced technology, an adversary that is spoofing our sensor systems, or it’s something else. Whatever it is, We need to find out

Of course it's interesting and worth investigating but there is underlining suggestion, dog whistle if you wish, that these are records of extraterrestrial activity or physics beyond our understanding. It's a new age mysticism.

Do you have any reason to suppose that we are ignoring it? Any reason to suppose that we are not studying it deeply?

Yes. The Chinese blimp being a huge news story, but the 300 unidentified objects over US airspace (some with performance characteristics that we cannot explain) is the biggest reason. Some in the government are studying this for sure, but it's not getting the attention that it needs.

How much attention would be right and how do you know it's not applied? It's all just rambling on your part if you were really concerned you wouldn't be concerned on the internet you would be one of those people looking at it...

There are plenty of explanations for these videos that don't involve alien species traveling multiple light years to troll American air force pilots, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGzJ9dx3n4o.

youtubers can hand waive off a few grainy videos. You can’t waive off corroborating classified data from radar, sonar, satellites, and military pilot testimony.

I'm not sure why I even tried...

I wish the fleet of classified data could be freely available for analysis. I agree the videos alone are not proof. All we have are the testimonies from pilots and other intelligence officers to go on.

Even one that the Navy itself patented.. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en

Sure, why not, what are we looking at though, some kind of microwave propulsion for spacecraft? Was a prototype ever built?

The author, Salvatore Pais, has been on a few podcasts saying so

The patent Summary, "The present invention is directed to a craft using an inertial mass reduction device. The craft includes an inner resonant cavity wall, an outer resonant cavity, and microwave emitters. The outer resonant cavity wall and the inner resonant cavity wall form a resonant cavity. The microwave emitters create high frequency electromagnetic waves throughout the resonant cavity causing the outer resonant cavity wall to vibrate in an accelerated mode and create a local polarized vacuum outside the outer resonant cavity wall. It is a feature of the present invention to provide a craft, using an inertial mass reduction device, that can travel at extreme speeds."

I read that too, that's why I asked. Here is an article about it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/02/08/what-is-b... — this thing is supposed to enable faster than light travel, which needless to say is impossible according to our best understanding of the laws of physics. I suppose that is part as well of the great PSYOP for suppressing the truth.

Actual FTL is impossible according to known physics, but effective FTL is not. Move the space around an object via warp bubble and you can have your cake and eat it too, in theory.

"In theory" is doing a lot of work there -- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive -- you need to apply a type of matter that we're not even sure actually exists, even if the type of matter exists you would need to find a way to harness it, and even if that's possible, we're not sure if this works in an as of yet hypothetical unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

I dove into this guy Pais at one point and came out thinking he’s kind of a marginalized crackpot with pie in the sky theories. Another explanation would be that his patent applications are part of a psyop project.

Honestly the "it's aliens" explanation is so unlikely that I'd put "Wakanda is real" above it in my probability tables.

Cryptoterrestrial is another hypothesis floated by some in the intelligence community

You can update your priors by looking into more cases. A pattern emerges.

See UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean.

I just want to say thanks for your inputs in this thread.

Hey thanks, yours as well!

This topic is a lot deeper than many realize, luckily the shift in perception is occurring and we're starting to take this seriously.

That book by Leslie Keane is honest journalism, a fair treatment, I liked it.

> This paper shows the tic tac video exhibited instantaneous acceleration to over 20,000 mph

Would't it mean that the footage doesn't actually show real objects then?

Maybe, but consider the context: even if the acceleration was more "reasonable", wouldn't you feel something's missing? I mean any indication of a propulsion system, like reaction gases or propellers.

My point is: if we're watching something we have no idea how it works, it doesn't make sense to tell it how it should behave.

How could one vehicle move if not using jets, rockets or other known means? Maybe creating some kind of field? A field gives accelereation instantly and uniformly. So if you can manipulate a field, everything inside it will accelerate as fast as you can gauge it and without feeling G forces. That thing could even have a crew.

Sure it could be a "field" that might as well be described as magic. But where's the craft's interaction with the atmosphere? Normally an object traveling thousands of miles an hour hits a fair amount of atmosphere. An object traveling fast enough actually turns atmospheric gases into a plasma. Plasma is not only hot but will reflect radio waves.

Now you need to invent a second magic technology that explains the lack of plasma trails following the path of this supposedly hypersonic object.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" Arthur C. Clarke

To preface this, I agree with you, per our current scientific understanding, this isn't possible.

That being said, we would be fools to look at our level of technology and think we could grasp everything in the universe. I'm not saying what we saw in the video is real. I just think dismissing something because it doesn't fit our understanding of reality in the current moment, is not in our best interest.

Take almost any piece of advanced tech we use everyday back in time far enough, you will get a similar response.

Maybe seeing an object doing this in real life gives enough information to work backwards and realize we made some mistakes. When we adjust our understanding it not only seems possible but helps explain other things we couldn't before.

Maybe some other country is fucking with us, somehow, advanced hologram tech or something.

Who knows, I think being skeptical, but approaching it with an open mind is the best way to go about it.

> Who knows, I think being skeptical, but approaching it with an open mind is the best way to go about it.

The problem with fantastical explanations for phenomena is they are not testable or falsifiable. You also need to keep adding new fantastical explanations whenever an observation runs into the bounds of the last fantastical explanation. Once you invite in magic you need more magic to explain the other magic. It's asinine and intellectually bankrupt.

Sure it could be a "field" that might as well be described as magic.

Do you believe in magic? That's a pretty good difference for me.

Now you need to invent a second magic technology that explains the lack of plasma trails following the path of this supposedly hypersonic object.

I don't, fields have gradients, but there's a previous question here, at least for me.

If you start with the premise that this kind of phenomenon is impossible, this is a waste of time: pilots are confused, land observers are wrong, radars glitch and the USAF is fooling us to cover for something.

Why even bother to look at videos or listen to what witnesses have to say? That can't be right.

> Do you believe in magic? That's a pretty good difference for me.

I don't believe in magic. If you're going to suggest some super technology that might as well be indistinguishable from magic same incredulity as claiming it was just unicorn farts of dragon blood. Suggesting some craft operates via some "field" without any basis for how such a "field" might operate is just a long way of saying "magic". It's god of the gaps sort of reasoning, seeing a thing that you can't explain and jumping to the least rigorous and fantastical explanation.

> If you start with the premise that this kind of phenomenon is impossible

I'm starting from the premise of the universe and the things in it obeying some fundamental laws. If I see something that appears to break some fundamental law, insofar as I understand it, I'm going to question my perception before questioning some physical law.

Personally, I've got a pretty good understanding of how electronic sensors in cameras work, how cameras themselves work, how optics in cameras interact, how data from cameras is processed, and how that data is then stored. I'm no Fabrice Ballard but I've got a better understanding than the average person on the street. When I see a video of a "UAP" I'm going to think back to all that camera knowledge and think up the thousand different ways mundane things can be misinterpreted by cameras and people viewing the output from cameras.

Just being a skeptical person I'm also going to instantly question "eye witness" accounts. Eye witnesses are extremely unreliable. It's not that people are necessarily untrustworthy it's just everything a person "sees" is filtered through their imperfect senses, natural and unconscious apophenia, natural and unconscious pareidolia, preconceived notions, cultural biases, imperfect memory, and imperfect language. I don't put much weight into appeals to authority like "the observer is a PILOT". An Air Force pilot is as human as the next person with the above listed limitations on their perception or recollection of their perception.

Knowing what I do about how cameras in particular work, I also assume there's aspects of radars that are equally complicated (I do know a little bit about how radars work). So there's a thousand little ways a radar is going to give confusing readings just like an optical camera will. Radars come in different types depending on the intended task. There's air search radars just looking for anything roughly jet or missile sized and targeting radars that have very narrow beam angles to guide a weapon to the target. The way they estimate size, distance, and heading are going to be up to processing software.

If you want to have me even entertain the idea that something is a super high technology craft powered by a "field" you're going to have to at least show your work. Why is this phenomenon not a drone/bird/Piper Cub/Venus? You're also going to need a better explanation than "field", at least some falsifiable hypothesis of how such a "field" could possibly work. That hypothesis also needs to not fall down to any reasonable scrutiny.

It's unscientific and intellectually dishonest to jump to fanciful explanations for things. Even presupposing a phenomenon even exists is unscientific.

All you see here is a video that someone gave you with no other angles and believable corroboration. How does one go and declare this is it, we have tech from outer space here. What you need are clear photos/videos to even start a conversation

In grad school in astronomy, there was a fellow grad student who was extremely excited after a night's observations that he'd discovered something remarkable -- it was a long hoped for distant galaxy that appeared in his images that night, and had all the right spectral signatures because it appeared in different filters, different exposures, and you could see it there in the image files, raw.

Turned out, it was noise / amplifier signal correlated with the adjacent chip dumping overexposed pixels on readout. He was embarrassed after a professor pointed out (after inspecting the files) that it always appeared on the same exact pixel coordinates on the array, but learned his lesson to try to disprove your own observations with independent tests.

I wonder how much some of these unidentified phenomena might be checked for some similar effects. Were the pilots reporting things seen with their eyes, or looking at imaging displays that have been processed. And maybe... were recently illuminated with lasers... hm? There certainly seem to be a pathology of similar reports of "the object never moved in the viewfinder, and would imply the ability to move suddenly at supersonic speeds"

> I wonder how much some of these unidentified phenomena might be checked for some similar effects.

come on, man. at some point, after enough of these reports, toeing the line you're toeing starts to look ludicrous. these are trained observers, pilots who know what to expect in the sky. and do not take lightly that there is still a certain amount of embarrassment (a social cost) to even coming forward, so to even make this claim is still a brave act at this point.

At least watch this 60 Minutes short piece (NOTE: literally only 13 minutes of your time, not "an hour", although admittedly, the show's name might suggest otherwise) about this phenomenon with interviews with real Navy pilots before you assert things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtMbBPzqHY

Darn it, I hate predictability. Why is it always, always, always "just watch this 'short' hour-long video of random people talking with fake authority and undeserved confidence", and never "here just check out this Cochrane meta study and review data & evidence linked"

(I made the mistake of clicking and now YouTube thinks I want to see "this man shows evidence usa possesses exotic matter", "real photos of JFK killer" and "Chilling alien messages encoded in ancient tombs". That's not the bubble I want to be in!! :-D)

Go to your history and delete it. I assume this does little to nothing for ads, but it definitely does affect suggestions.

I like the occasional "cute animal" video, but if you leave one in your history, YouTube becomes a cute animal machine.

Hah this is so true. I always watch stuff like this in an incognito mode browser.

Fascinating! I assumed it wouldn't work - sure they'd take it away from history view, but keep it as a data point regardless of deletion

The name of the show is 60 Minutes, a popular and generally reputable* US news program.

The actual clip is 13 minutes.

*Because I know it's coming, yes, they aren't perfect; but considering they've been going 55 years they're far better than most. I found they were pretty balanced in this clip - skeptical but not dismissive.

> just watch this 'short' hour-long video

it's literally a 13 minute video, man. The SHOW is named "60 Minutes" and it's rather legendary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Minutes and it usually features a number of stories in that timeframe, not just 1. I hate predictability too, such as assuming I'm one of "those people forcing you to watch a whole hour of BS" just because you like being a debunker.

It's also dealing with US Military folks, which are an honorable lot (I served 4 years in the USAF, so I take these people seriously... integrity is HIGHLY HIGHLY encouraged)

Also, when you're dealing with eyewitness testimony in particular, video evidence is natural because the delivery of this type of communication is best done with the entire presentation of the person doing it, because words on paper alone are distorting.

Well said. In another comment thread there are two people slinging links to YouTube videos and criticizing legitimacy of the others’ linked video. I’m looking at both of the videos and I don’t recognize any of the people talking as experts of anything.

Also 60 minutes has a lot of credibility issues. And is not generally looked upon as a rigorous journalism source.

People will downvote because they don’t have any leg to stand on and when someone doesn’t agree with them they feel personally attacked. So they result to downvoting as a way of winning.

Apparently it's extremely hard for most people to land somewhere between "completely accepting" something and "completely dismissing" something. No one's asking you to "completely accept" a claim based only on this 60 Minutes piece, but let's suppose it has pushed the needle a little further away from "completely dismissing" for a bunch of people.

> At least watch this 60 Minutes short piece about this phenomenon with interviews with real Navy pilots before you assert things like this

https://youtu.be/VCH7BWGpl5s

How many experienced sailors once reported seeing mermaids? Until we understand the source of these sightings, it's entirely plausible pilots are all seeing something that doesn't actually exist for some reason or another. We won't know why until the phenomena is no longer mysterious, but there's always a high likelihood a given unknown is mundane, as opposed to fantastical or extraterrestrial.

The article is right we need to destigmatize reporting and collect data: Because whether the origin of the issue is earthly or not, we need to understand it.

How many were ridiculed for telling about their sights of giant squid until the day the first one was caught?

giant squid have a biological premise; they're just bigger squid. Their origin can be strongly guessed. You would be smart to guess that there are bigger copies of nearly any remote species in the ocean.

we have yet to find a plethora of ocean-dwelling smaller mermaids and 'tic-tacs'. In fact, we've yet to discover solid evidence of the existence of either phenomena, regardless of size.

Chances start to diminish in the guessing game when you're trying to forecast the completely novel/unknown/under-witnessed.

'human effects' start to cloud things a lot more when we start talking about religion/ghouls/goblins/time-travelers/bainshees/sirens/etc.

mermaids are just women swimming in the ocean

Giant squid was dismissed as tall tales for hundreds of years.

Would a mermaid creature be something improbable to an ancient mariner, who hadn't even heard of anything like a monkey before he saw them with his own eyes?

> You would be smart to guess that there are bigger copies of nearly any remote species in the ocean.

Would you then say it is probable that species of giant shark exist to this day?

When mariners tell tails of giant squid so huge they can devour ships, they are rightly dismissed as tall tales. When they tell a story about a squid that was "about as big as a person but with really long tentacles", I don't think that ever got nearly as much ridicule.

They are much larger than a man, both in size and weight. And that's using those who have been caught. They are large enough to attack whales and small ships. I think there's more mythical creatures to be found in the ocean, specifically giant sharks.

>You would be smart to guess that there are bigger copies of nearly any remote species in the ocean.

And there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Is it so unreasonable to guess that intelligent life arose more than once?

> Is it so unreasonable to guess that intelligent life arose more than once?

This is absolutely ludicrous. It doesn't matter how many stars are in the sky or how likely life bearing planets are in the galaxy. There's a vast gulf between "life exists on multiple planets in the galaxy" and "that life is flying around Earth in little metal spaceships that defy all known physical laws".

>There's a vast gulf between "life exists on multiple planets in the galaxy" and "that life is flying around Earth in little metal spaceships that defy all known physical laws".

The universe is 13 billion years old. The Milky Way is about 100K lightyears across. Suppose another species could travel at 90% of light speed. Then we're looking at maybe 110,000 years necessary to colonize the galaxy -- only a tiny fraction of 13 billion years.

I've been following this UAP stuff for a while, and as far as I can tell no one is claiming that the UAPs defy all known physical laws (i.e. I've seen no claims of violation of conservation of energy, 2nd law of thermodynamics, FTL travel, etc. -- though, someone should do the math on those transit times to check the FTL travel one). Just that the propulsion & cloaking work in ways we can't explain. Show Aristotle a jet fighter and he'll have a similar reaction.

Supposing that the UAPs arise from a civ that arose when the universe was about 12 billion years old, i.e. 1 billion years ago. That's about 1 billion years of technological development. Can we really put confident bounds on what could be achieved in terms of propulsion and cloaking with 1 billion years of research?

Not to mention, "that life is appearing to deliberately be almost completely elusive for no clear reason, in a way that's eerily similar to other superstitions like mermaids, fairies, Santa Claus, and Big foot."

Do active duty jet pilots report seeing mermaids, fairies, Santa Claus, or Big foot on a regular basis?

> mermaids

Professional sailors do.

> big foot

Professional park rangers do.

They're all full of shit by the way. Self-deluding or purposely tricking the public for laughs.

We've got defense bigwigs backing the jet pilots up. Are there corresponding bigwigs backing up the sailors/rangers?

Were the sailor/ranger claims treated as credible by a source at least as good as 60 Minutes?

Well they are seeing something There is video evidence which makes the mermaid analogue a bad one.

What the huh? Have you never seen Splash? Or the little mermaid? We have all sorts of video evidence. /s

I believe the generally accepted theory is sailors may have seen manatees. Which is to say, they saw something, just not what they thought they saw.

How long did it take until we confrimed ball lightning and the weird things it does? And then how much longer until we have an explanation?

Weird shit exists. Shrug.

However, eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable. We know and have proved this over and over and over.

The "problem" with pilots is that getting marked as "mentally unstable" can get you grounded. So, do you report every strange thing you think you see or not?

> How long did it take until we confrimed ball lightning and the weird things it does?

We still don't have direct evidence of ball lightning, but it's taken seriously nonetheless. The comparison is apt here.

I thought we finally captured real pictures of lightning doing weird "ball lightning-like" things given how many scientific monitoring cameras there now are.

I could be wrong, though, as I don't follow it scientifically.

Perhaps I should have chosen "rogue waves" instead as something weird that we had lots of eyewitness testimony of yet took us ages to finally confirm.

Wikipedia page lists one possible direct detection a few years ago, but that's still being debated. We have lab generated plasma phenomena that are similar to ball lightning but those conditions seem unlikely to exist in our natural environment.

You know what takes literally infinite more courage? Being able to walk it back when absolutely spot on explanations are given by outside sources after you spend years on the conspiracy circut making your experience the central point of your entire identity.

There is no explanation that could ever get this guy to admit he was wrong. He's trapped.

It's worth mentioning also the infamous go fast and swivel videos have been explained.

And both revealed that several pilots we mislead by the same simple phenomena. And it wasn't a pilot who explained it but engineers who actually knew how the sensors worked.

Absolutely they have not, no credible debunking of those videos exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

It's completely disingenuous to just link that video as an authoritative source (when it's not... in any way).

You should also put Ryan Grave's response to that video - https://youtu.be/vNjB3LxBw_0

Except for that the reply doesn't actual counter any of the analysis made in the sceptic video, but instead criticises Mike for taking a sceptic approach and disregarding the audio from the pilots (because they essentially see the same thing as we see in the video). This is the typical approach one sees over and over again from most people invested in some sort of conspiracy theory, they never reply to technical criticism, but instead either switch to some other "evidence" or criticise the sceptic for "not taking an open minded approach".

> because they essentially see the same thing as we see in the video

If the pilots see the same thing with their eyes then that significantly undermines West's theory, because human eyes wouldn't have the same visual artifacts as these sensors. It would have to be an extreme coincidence for this all to line up just right across multiple sensor systems and human eyes as well. No impossible, but very implausible.

But they couldn't the video was incredibly zoomed in, it is too far to see with the naked eye. The video actually explains this.

It could be like a lens flare / bokeh that rotates with the camera, but that doesn't change the fact that it originated from a flying object. A camera artifact doesn't rule out that the camera was still tracking something, even if the remarks about it "rolling" and maneuvering were off base. Just as you'll see lens flare when you film the sun - the sun is real even though the flare streaks on video are artifacts.

You're right, the camera was tracking something: an airplane.

stfu

Interesting. Source?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

It's completely disingenuous to just link that video as an authoritative source (when it's not... in any way).

You should also put Ryan Grave's response to that video - https://youtu.be/vNjB3LxBw_0

And his response is not providing any confidence what so ever, if only he had build simulator to explain what people seen.

That's not the source for the claim though... he said "engineers who actually knew how the sensors worked."

And you linked a video by a video game dev.

Who cares what his credentials are? His arguments are rational and make more sense than any other explanation. It sure is weird how much UFO-ologists suddenly care about credentialism as soon as a video game developer starts shitting on their party.

It is not even verbal argument, he (and others) did the math (open source), so only way to dispute his argument is by math too, irrespective how he is, or even what language he speaks. (aliens probably use math too)

I’m just asking for the source that the original poster referenced. If you don’t want to provide the source referenced, that’s fine… but if you don’t have the source then I don’t know what you’re adding here with this reply.

Please provide references to this analysis. There are plenty of folks here who'd love to read this.

Gofast, FLIR and Gimbal all have very compelling explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8

Mick West has reported on this all over the place.

Interesting, yet I find David Fravor's response to the points that Mick makes (on the Lex Fridman podcast) quite compelling.

It's possible that this entire endeavour (the military witnesses and the release of the videos by the pentagon) is one huge psyop, but given the number of years, the number of individuals involved, that quickly starts getting into conspiracy theory territory itself.

This is untrue.

Not at all. The tic-tac was recorded by radars; infrared from the plane; and seen by two experienced USAF pilots.

The tic tac was seen by naked eye though:

> During a routine training mission in 2004, Dietrich and her then-commanding officer had noticed an unusual "churning" of the ocean surface before seeing "a smooth, white oblong object resembling a large Tic Tac breath mint flying at high speed over the water."

It was seen

- by multiple fighter jet pilots (in different planes)

- picked up by the fighter jet's radar

- picked up by the USS Nimitz's radar.

So yeah...

Fighter jet pilot is a self-avowed prankster and “class clown” (his words). One of the people who wrote the software for that radar system is his good buddy, best man at his wedding, and was on duty nearby on that day.

It could all be a big prank.

Some of the eyewitnesses saw what they saw on, wait for it, a radar screen. Well technically it was another technology not exactly radar but I forget the name. [edit: FLIR, which may or may not be a type of radar… I know as much about this as I know about little green men.] But color me unconvinced.

And sure there are other embellishments to the story but we really don’t know what’s real here and what’s not.

Case dismissed, natch figured it out. Everyone go home and stop asking questions.

Coincidence theory at its finest.

I know, right? Just by coincidence the little green men decided to single out some pranksters to reveal themselves to.

Definitely the most likely explanation. /s

Sure, so the best idea is clearly to just chalk it up to a prank and ignore it rather than try to prove it.

Nor do you that there were any embellishments whatsoever.

Wait, how do the logistics of this prank work? His buddy patched the plane's software on the fly (ha!) without anyone else noticing? Or he inserted some "prank" code into the main codebase, got it past what I'm sure is ton of code review hurdles without anyone noticing, then got it deployed to the plane before his pilot friend took flight that day?

If you build a system, you'll know its flaws. A common flaw with radar systems is them detecting something that's not a plane as a plane - e.g., the sun over the horizon.

If he built the software that automatically rejects such mistaken identifications, he also knows in which situations you'll get a false positive reading, and can tell his friend the perfect timing for the prank.

One might think such an elaborate prankster would keep his benign pranks to himself when going on a podcast tour to protect appearances.

Going on a podcast tour to protect appearances? One would think he went on the podcast tour to seek attention, as pranksters are wont to do.

I meant he probably wouldn't publicly talk about his pranking history on his podcast tour if he wants to con everyone.

I think there’s some subtlety there you’re missing, and that is that there’s is a kind of pleasure and prankster humor in revealing to the more perceptive subset of the audience that you pulled an epic con, while still keeping the con alive for another less perceptive subset.

For an example of this kind of prankster game see Woz’s short videos about how he sources (actually real, but he intentionally does not say that) two dollar bills in pads from a local printer “who gets them from another very high quality printer.” He knows some people get what he’s doing and others don’t, and that’s part of the fun.

And some people transition during the exposition from being people who are being duped, to people who realize they were temporarily duped. That’s another part of the fun.

Frankly, I think the reality is even less interesting than that. US military aviators are trained to be proficient systems operators, but typically (and, I want to stress, very reasonably) have little or no education in EM/EO theory, and don't always understand the assumptions that engineers baked into these systems to optimize them for their primary use cases (which, in the case of targeting pods, is identification and targeting of surface objects--air-to-air capability was something of an afterthought). Knowing a little bit about how these systems work, I think it's pretty obvious why targeting pods wouldn't be able to focus properly in these kinds of circumstances, and how their built-in tracking heuristics could lead to wildly inaccurate conclusions even by well-intentioned operators and analysts.

I can't speak for the radar data, as I've never seen even leaked radar page footage from these events, but for those of you out there who think that what you see on the scope is a perfect analog of the real world, boy do I have some bad news for you...

It's also interesting to me that every single one of these videos I'm aware of has come from what's generally regarded as the least capable and most error-prone targeting pod currently in US service.

I’m reminded of Aeroperú Flight 603.

The pilots suspected their altitude indicator was wrong, so they asked air traffic control to confirm their altitude. They did and it agreed with their own readings so they ignored other indications that they were going to crash into the ocean, which is unfortunately what happened.

Neither the pilots nor air traffic control apparently knew that both readings were supplied by the same faulty source on the plane and sent via the plane’s transponder.

I often think of this when I hear people say that multiple sources indicate something strange. These systems are often intertwined and networked in unintuitive ways and just because something appears on multiple panes of glass does not necessarily mean it’s been independently confirmed.

That's amazing. So ATC didn't have the capability to measure the altitude of any plane themselves?

They can via primary radar, but the default displays secondary radar information (the transponder interrogation) as it tends to be significantly more precise. Surveillance radar has very coarse altitude resolution.

Isn't it a given that if a plane is requesting a read that they want to check their measurement against a different one, though?

ATC probably thought they were giving a different measurement. Especially in older planes, systems aren't particularly well integrated, and most of the time you ask them what they're seeing because you can't check your own Mode C altitude in the cockpit and want to compare it to your barometric altimeter (and yes, they generally do use the same static source, but it isn't atypical for them to read differently).

Thinking about it more, I've never tried asking ATC for an altitude check specifically from primary radar. It may well be that the system isn't set up for it, even if it's technically computable to some degree. When I'm talking coarse, I mean an altitude spread at range that may be measured in miles.

That sounds kind of worrying. It sounds like if a pilot has a malfunctioning altitude meter they can only check it visually or have a completely independent GPS on hand. I don't see what else the crew or the ATC could have done in that instance, given their equipment. I also don't understand why a radar of all things can't give a more precise measurement of altitude. Even a person with binoculars could probably be more precise than +/- 1 mile.

For what it's worth, I'm not particularly worried. My understanding is that the accident was caused by a combination of poor maintenance practices, inadequate preflight procedures, and possibly poor ground procedures by the pilots that led to them taking off with an inoperative pitot-static system. Modern aircraft can also get altitude data from GPS (as you noted), as well as inertial navigation systems and radio altimeters, and generally have redundant pitot-static systems (at least an alternate static air source) for these kinds of contingencies.

Surveillance radars have narrow beam widths in azimuth, but broad in altitude to allow them to quickly survey around them and get good enough awareness of where everyone is. There's always a trade-off between resolution and volume--some military tactical and approach radars have very precise azimuth and altitude capability, at the cost of scan volume/time. Mode C (and now, arguably, ADS-B) was the solution to this problem, allowing ATC radar to have both good position and altitude precision with an acceptable refresh rate, at a non-prohibitive cost.

You'd be surprised--unless your hypothetical binocular observer was really handy with stadiametric ranging, I imagine they'd be nowhere near a mile. They might be able to get a decent azimuth and elevation on a single aircraft, but that's a much different problem than determining position near-simultaneously for a hundred.

Something similar happened with the Hubble telescope's infamous blurry mirror

The manufacturer tried using two instruments to measure the shape of the mirror. One instrument said that the mirror had unacceptable error. The other said it was perfect. The latter instrument was designed to be more precise, so they went with that and ignored the measurements from the other null corrector which disagreed.

The problem was, the more precise null corrector was the same one that was used to help construct the mirror originally. All it could verify was that the mirror was built to the same specs as the null corrector. No one realized that the "better" null corrector itself was off until it was too late.

A barometric altimeter and altitude reporting transponder are self contained units with separate determination of altitude based on pressure. The source in common they share is the static (pressure) system.

In the case of this flight, maintenance tape covered the static ports, rendering all instruments that use the static pressure system, significantly in error. Although there's more than one port, and thus redundancy, the maintenance operation covered all of the ports.

Sensor fusion glitches are high on my personal list of “what could this be explained by”.

There are all the passive system “failure” modes, between optical (and infrared) focusing, sensor noise, radar synthesis, multi system combat data links passing in extra information the system is designed to integrate into targeting/tracking/tasking the sensors. There’s a lot that can go wrong… add active failures like the GP comment mentioned about the astronomical sensor saturation and lasers, and the picture is even messier, a military drone/vehicle could be using active countermeasures like dazzling lasers and phased array RF emitters to try and mess with the pilots, the sensors, and the data links…

At the end of the day I just want the stigma around investigating the root cause of this stuff to go away, it’s like the Hound of the Baskervilles, stuff can genuinely have all the trappings of being supernatural or aliens or whatever… and still turn out to have a mundane explanation when properly investigated. I want the systems engineers and the scientists and the researchers and anyone else who sees stuff like this to log the “bug report” and for people to get to the bottom of things, because as long as we live in a world where weapons like fighter jets and guided missile destroyers are needed and/or in use, I’d like to know the systems and people aiming them at targets are making as few mistakes as humanly possible… which won’t happen if people don’t rigorously investigate and dig out the root causes of stuff like these UAP incidents.

> but for those of you out there who think that what you see on the scope is a perfect analog of the real world, boy do I have some bad news for you...

What about when the radar data, the pilot's own eyes, and the targeting pod data all complement each other? What about when the Navy has a patent for craft that can fly the way these 3 data sources described? What about when the "unidentified" craft is coming from San Clemente Island (a private Navy island near the training theater)? Why did the most compelling event occur during a Navy training mission where the purpose was to test new radar equipment?

I could dismiss any one, maybe even two of these, as a coincidence. But trying to write off all of these simultaneous events as errors and coincidences, that's harder to believe than the conspiracy theory. It seems obvious, that in at least one of these reports, it is an undisclosed Navy craft.

Or an undisclosed radar/laser capability. Plasma can reflect radar and it emits light - a focused phased array could create local plasma somewhere that other craft pick up.

Ofc, once you#ve done that you may not want third parties to know. Something as banal as 'we made air glow a few miles away' can expose capabilities of some vital systems that you don't want third parties to know. Edit: I mean, with that information, someone could do some napkin math on what can still be seen and what can't (by e.g. a naval radar suite, focusing on a spot in the air using a phased array).

Anecdotal obviously but I’m in the industry (I’m assuming you are as well from the nature of your comment) and I work with many current and former pilots and I think this characterization is a little unfair. Many military pilots do come from engineering backgrounds since a degree is generally a requirement for pilot training, and an engineering degree is often viewed as a good qualifier for becoming a pilot. Military pilot training is also highly technical in nature and involves rigorous classroom learning on the underlying physics and systems of tactical aircraft. But aside from this, my experience is that technically competent (not necessarily a given) pilots can have a better practical understanding of these sensor systems than the engineers that designed them because the designers very rarely get a comprehensive picture about what it’s actually like to use them in combat scenarios, simulated or otherwise. The problem in my mind with simply writing off the TICTAC and GIMBLE incidents as a bad reading of noise on the scope is that, from multiple pilot testimonies, dozens of tracks were observed via radar, ir/eo, and visually (like just the eyeballs). I’m not saying that these are craft that are violating the known laws of physics, I personally have other theories, but I’m not sure it’s just noisy sensors either.

You’d be hard pressed to be a naval aviator without a degree. Even if you’re prior enlisted, you’re going to go back to school to get some kind of 4 year degree before getting a commission.

Maybe a long time ago you could attend OCS as prior enlisted, but I think we’re way past those days: All service branches have their pick of officers with degrees to send for pilot or navigator/RIO training.

Fair--we've both seen different parts of the elephant. I agree that military flight training is extremely rigorous, but I'd argue that it's so broad it has to gloss over a lot of technical detail in order to focus on developing the skills and instincts that matter in combat.

Based on the videos and reports I've seen, most or all of these cases involve sensor operation outside of typical A/A and A/G workflows, where the type of detailed technical knowledge that the system designers have could be more useful than years of practical experience. I've heard (and told) enough sea stories to be skeptical of eyewitness testimony (not that I think the aircrew who reported seeing this stuff are lying, but I've been humbled often enough by my own fallible recollections), and none of the publicly available footage I've seen of these events strikes me as anything more than a confluence of sensor limitations and (very understandable) human factors.

There are a number of reasons I'm glad the government is running these kinds of reports to ground, but I think wildly credulous reporting (particularly the "I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens" interviews by a handful of aviators, but even presenting advanced adversary technology as the sane middle ground) is blowing this way out of proportion. We're already taking it way more seriously than it deserves, and there are plenty of other alligators closer to the boat.

This comment - interesting though it is - has irked me.

To me it's sometimes amazing the lengths people will go to in order to insist something they can't believe must be because another party is at best mistaken, or at worst lying.

The article states that UAP were likely - in the view of the author who is speaking from personal experience and knowledge of incidents and people involved - witnessed by 50-60 people "every day".

The unclassified material records UAP from multiple sources including naked eye and two completely different sensor technologies - radar and infrared.

And yet, here we are. "Maybe there was just a glitch with the sensors".

No. No glitch. No sensor malfunction. No lone guy on weird meds.

Every day, UAP are being witnessed by credible, trained witnesses from multiple sources, and are not being mitigated because people fail to take them entirely seriously.

The article states that this is a major national security problem for the US. Too true. If these start appearing near a Russian ICBM silo, do we entirely trust - without figuring out what they are - that they aren't going to trigger a nuclear war?

It needs to be taken seriously. Hand-waving it away as mistaken people or flawed equipment despite professional men and women insisting they have already discounted those factors is an embarrassment to their professionalism and candour. It takes guts to talk about this.

And let's just remember these aren't tinfoil hat wearing stoners: they're service people sworn to protect their country screaming out "hey, you need to look at this, because we can't mitigate for this, and it's dangerous".

However, this isn't new, it's been culturally normal for decades.

If I told you that one USAAF officer who had served at Roswell Army Air Field at the time of "the incident" in 1947 had since come forward and said "Look, I was scared about losing my pension so I didn't say anything at the time, but the truth is there was a cover-up, and we couldn't really identify what that thing that crashed was but it wasn't ours and it didn't seem Soviet. People were scared because that base was the largest base for the Strategic Air Command, and admitting that weird unidentified objects could just get into airspace around there and we couldn't do anything about it would have terrified the public", you'd think about it and go "sure, one guy, not buying it entirely".

What if I told you ten individuals had all come forward - some with death bed confessions - and without evidence of collusion and for no payment or reward (not even a TV interview), had said similar things? What if they categorically insisted the updated explanation - not a weather balloon but an early warning radar system - was also not viable, because they were familiar with all those systems and this wasn't that?

What about a hundred ex-service people? A hundred accounts like that, some of them notarised statements to be released after their death? Or made shortly before last rites when they knew the pension couldn't be withdrawn? Would a hundred people doing that make you think "glitch" or "human error"?

The actual number is just over 600 right now. Seriously, _six hundred_ people have insisted that there was a significant security threat that never really got resolved, and about a dozen of them attest to life forms they couldn't really describe as human being present at the site.

Perhaps that's all too much for you, so go look at the "tic-tac" videos again, and wonder why highly trained aviators who are used to seeing weird weather and foreign aircraft and drones all the time are now constantly saying "this is not normal".

It's taken 70 years to get to the point where we can start talking about this a little more openly. Let's not close this debate down again now.

Is any of it ET in origin? Probably not. Tic-tacs might be drone tech. Roswell might have been Soviet after all. But we'll never know if we don't start showing a bit more curiosity rather than reflexing to "probably not real".

Three Men Make a Tiger[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_men_make_a_tiger

I’ll counter this story with the entire foundation of Bayesian statistics.

This isn’t an example of cognitive bias if the information is from independent “readings”, from sources that are not motivated to deceive.

> ...so go look at the "tic-tac" videos again, and wonder why highly trained aviators who are used to seeing weird weather and foreign aircraft and drones all the time are now constantly saying "this is not normal".

Those videos are getting old now. If there was something to this stuff and it were really as commonplace as folks are saying we would be seeing much better imagery (at least) by now. Not to mention the fact that this stuff would not be limited to American military observers.

The fact is these are pilots who observe the things they're trained to observe with the very job-specific tools they've been trained to use. They don't have tools for arbitrary scientific observations. However, if it's sooo common, then yeah, we should expect that someone in some country will start properly taking measurements on these phenomena... but so far it's been crickets.

You do know UAP being reported by military pilots is not a solely US thing, right?

And it being “old” does not mean we should increase or lower our expectations of one explanation or another.

This article is telling you people are trying to properly take and report measurements but there is a stigma to doing so. The whole point of the article is that science is being denied a chance to explain something that could have very serious consequences because of attitudes like, well, frankly, yours.

> If there was something to this stuff and it were really as commonplace as folks are saying we would be seeing much better imagery (at least) by now.

If you don't understand a phenomenon then you have basis upon which to speculate under what conditions you will or will not see it, and thus make any statistical guesses about the probability of detecting it. Ball lightning still has no direct evidence but plenty of indirect evidence.

> Not to mention the fact that this stuff would not be limited to American military observers.

You mean like these:

* https://www.the-sun.com/news/3048770/ufos-china-un-beijing-p...

600? Twice that many people attended my Berenstein Bears convention.

It just seems to be the same guy going on the podcast circuit talking about the Tic Tacs, and all I see is a video with a black blob in the centre. Have you got any links to back up your claims about all these people telling their stories?

Reminds me of the mid 00's "flying rods" that were simply insects being captured in flight by digital cameras. The camera whould capture what looked like a semi-transparent corkscrew zipping through the air.

Throughout my already 20 year IT career, I can't even count how many times I've come across extremely paranoid explanations, often in the verge of insanity, of regular computer behavior like basic non obvious algos or glitches. From people otherwise normal. What is interesting, almost never I could change person's mind, once toxic explanation is in.

Recently, with all that internet marketing and real surveillance tech, this worsened a lot. Some humans are just wired differently.

This speaks to both sides of the problem in getting to the truth.

On the one hand, we sensationalize events farther than the data supports ("My radar showed extremely high velocity, so there must have been a craft moving at those speeds").

On the other hand, we use sensationalism to dismiss accurate reports ("You said your radar showed extremely high velocity, therefore what are you reporting, a UFO?").

The new approach seems best: report, collect, and analyze the data, and see where it goes.

You have to admit, given that resources are finite, the dismissive attitude is warranted. Why is it that alien spaceships (let's call them what people actually think is being discussed, and not just any random flying thing that we don't know what it is) only show up on equipment when you can barely tell what you're looking at, and never clearly and unambiguously from multiple places?

I look at it from the opposite perspective.

If you were a foreign power running things in military ranges that gave odd sensor readings (say, balloons with radar characterization gear), wouldn't it be convenient if your adversary dismissed reports as fanciful?

The fact is that any contact in a military range, where militarily valuable radar and signal emissions abound, is a threat to national security.

Gear is going to malfunction and throw off a non-zero number of false positives. But any contact is important enough that it at least deserves to have a report taken and logged on it.

You're talking about a different interpretation of the word "UFO" than I used above. Ever since those reports came out some years ago of pilots reporting UFOs, the implication has been very strong that "UFO" doesn't just mean "here's something that showed up on the sensors that we don't know what it is".

Yes, the military should investigate all reports of UFOs in the strict sense to see if they've found some new piece of equipment from a foreign nation. I assume they've done that before releasing the footage to the public after figuring out what it is they actually detected.

The current furore, from the more reasonable heads in Congress, is that the military has historically not done that.

They had (a) no centralized collection point or widely used reporting mechanism, (b) no staffed office tasked with investigations (afaik, only the Navy had an office, and it was ~3 bodies with other duties), & (c) no periodic review.

They essentially ignored it as a potential problem. So Indiana Jones, "top men" type stuff.

Unfortunately, a lot of the public debate is "aliens", because media and idiots. But there's a serious underlying problem.

Fair enough. That is pretty dumb and rather a major oversight IMO.

We went from UFO to UAP and it feels like the former has become a dysphemism (forgive me, it’s my first time using the word) or a pejorative. And now here you are going straight for the”A” word :D

In my experience the only people using the word “alien” are people like you: the dismissers. My belief is that there is something strange going on, but we do not know what.

Getting some people to even admit that much is a struggle, even after 70+ years of it happening.

To me, just saying that it's something "strange" would be a hard sell, because I would have to agree that it's definitely nothing mundane shot such that I can't recognize it for what it is. I could agree that we don't know what some of these things are, as long our degree of ignorance is properly bounded. I don't think there's equal chance that they're, say, bigfoots on hoverboards or birds. "Look, this thing here looks like it might be some kind of secret Chinese UAV because it moves like human aircraft move but is too small to fit a person" is something that I think is worth looking into. "This looks like it could be a tear in spacetime" isn't. Nor is "we have no idea whatsoever what this is".

Sorry for the pedantry, but if they are flying around in the earth's atmosphere then they are not "spaceships" even if they are being operated by extraterrestrials. Likewise, NASA's Mars Helicopter is not a spacesheep even though it is operated by extramartians. I think it's good to get that terminology right so as not to confuse naive readers into assuming that the things that are putatively observed as UFOs crossed space to get here: they may have been constructed on earth by aliens that arrived 500 years ago, or whatever.

My personal guess is that there probably are extraterrestrials on the earth observing us but they are competently remaining hidded and have nothing to do with any UFO observation by a human. Of course I don't have any good evidence for that: it's just a hunch.

>Sorry for the pedantry, but if they are flying around in the earth's atmosphere then they are not "spaceships" even if they are being operated by extraterrestrials.

I'll see your pedantry and raise you my own pedantry. The fact that a hypothetical craft flies around in an atmosphere does not imply that it's not a spaceship. A vessel could conceivably be capable of flying through some fluid at one time and through the vacuum of space at another, and would thus be called a spaceship. For example, the Space Shuttle was a spaceship even when it was operating under aerodynamic forces. Since we're talking about alien ships, they would have to be alien spaceships, because otherwise we would have to accept that these aliens have the necessary infrastructure and facilities to land their spaceships somewhere (some kind of alien spaceport on Earth?), disembark, and board their alien aircraft to fly around Earth's atmosphere, which is an even more ridiculous idea.

> You have to admit, given that resources are finite, the dismissive attitude is warranted.

Why? It costs almost nothing to just collect data. How do you know they're not witnessing advanced tech from another nation? Or maybe it's a pervasive flaw in our sensors. Seems like those are both well within the military's mandate. Even if it's just an interesting new physical phenomenon, it would be great to have some evidence.

Yes, good point, this is as much a 'psychological' phenom as anything else.

Particularly in the areas of populism and conspiracy theory.

I would love to hear what some of these explanations were

Mostly "Someone did it on purpose". Usually person they don't like, or rival department, or government, overall situation ranging from light computer illiteracy to full blown X-Files scenario.

The article is alarmist but we have no sign of malevolent (or even intentional) behavior. We need to wait for more information.

> Were the pilots reporting things seen with their eyes, or looking at imaging displays that have been processed

There are cases where multiple pilots are seeing an object with their eyes, while ship radar is picking it up, and also aircraft infra-red is picking it up at the same time. Multiple aircraft, multiple sensors, multiple sets of eyes.

Not only that, there is at least one case where a pilot engaged with the object, and the object responded with evasive maneuvers.

It's incredible that armchair experts can dismiss something as a glitch from corroborated observations from some of the best aerial operators of the most powerful and well funded military on earth.

Yes, glitches exist, but don't yet account for all cases. One can read the congressional reports that say the same.

I thought the whole point of this article is that those reports are uninteresting because so much information is withheld.

I’m also curious to know if there are reports similar to these coming from civilian or commercial pilots. I mean, it doesn’t take a too gun pilot to observe a tic tac shaped flying object but it seems to me that it’s all coming from the us military who share similar technology.

There is one other group of UAP sightings I’m aware of and it’s from civilians and it seems to come almost strictly from civilians in North America.

The tic-tacs in particular are observed around military areas which I presume has a civilian no-fly zone.

But yes, to be fair, there is a selection bias here in a sense.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

For all their powerfullness and funding, I expect something better than 240p imagery. Particularly when it happens all the time in one of the most heavily instrumented naval test ranges on earth.

But that’s just me.

What claim is being made? It's just a matter of taking these observations seriously.

The explainable ones are boring. The unexplainable 1% are the exciting ones.

I saw a UFO maybe 12-13 years ago. It did not look like anything a human would design, even with advanced technology. It looked something like the oblong silver blob in The Flight of the Navigator, just hanging there, "much in the way that a brick doesn't." It must have been 5 km away so it would have been pretty large. It was a breezy overcast day with low clouds, and the moving clouds obscured but never completely revealed it. Its stillness contrasted with the movement of the air, or any aircraft I have ever seen. I stared at it for a few minutes to make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me. I had not been taking drugs. When I came back outside from fetching my camera, it was gone, and I thought, well, this is how it goes, nobody will believe me, so I won't even bother talking about it. I never had more than a passing, pop-culture interest in UFOs.

Aha! You’re the person I’ve been searching for.

A person who has seen something that is incredible (literally) and has a hard time following up because of a complete absence of data/evidence to back up your claim.

Going back to your experience, what tools do you wish we as a society had that would help us document your experience?

Did you try to document your experience? What were the barriers you encountered? If you were to document it, where would you go to document it?

Ultimately, we need a civilian infrastructure of sensors, cameras etc pointing up at the sky to independently verify UAP. The first step in such an effort is some sort of statistical data that shows how often this occurs.

With such data, we can build a realistic null hypothesis: (x number of cameras looking at y area of the sky for z years should find 0 UFOs if the null hypothesis is true)

It’s impossible for a civilian effort to even begin to accumulate the data to make even vague guesses on what x, y and z should be.

And so, identifying the barriers that you encountered to document your experience is actually kinda important.

Can't tell if being sarcastic or not... But the vast majority of us carry an at least 12 megapixel camera in our pocket literally everywhere we go now...

https://xkcd.com/1235/

The mystery of the lack of good footage in the age of smartphones is less mysterious when one considers that perhaps the phenomenon itself is intelligent.

And in fact if one considers witness testimony, that's what it seems to be.

This is my opinion as well but it should be mentioned that wide angle lenses on phones are quite terrible at picking up small things, especially in low light. I tried once 2-3 years ago when I noticed a bright light late at night from my bedroom window. I'm 100% convinced it had a reasonable explanation but it did bother me that I spent several minutes without getting a decent image/video of something my eyes could see clearly. Since then, I'm a bit more understanding that phones doesn't capture everything but with that said - there are still a ton of DSLRs and telescopes. Unfortunately I didn't have the hindsight of fetching mine.

My current phone (Pixel 7 Pro) has a camera so good that I frequently use it to see things at a distance that I can't make out with my eyes, or to see in the dark when I can't.

However, it does have instances where the images it produces are well below what I can see. I assume there's a large amount of AI clean-up going on that makes it do odd things when presented with odd inputs.

To be fair, you can't even get a decent picture of the moon with a camera phone.

Unless it's a Huawei: https://www.androidauthority.com/huawei-p30-pro-moon-mode-co...

Cell phone cameras generally have terrible dynamic range and have very little optical magnification. Even with a 12 megapixel sensor, when you take a picture of a distant object in the sky you typically end up with just a blurry dot.

> But the vast majority of us carry an at least 12 megapixel camera in our pocket literally everywhere we go now

Here’s an experiment for you to try out. The next time you see a regular airplane up in the sky, pull out your phone and click a picture of it.

You’ll discover a couple of things very quickly. First, most of us do not walk around looking up at the sky. Second, 35k feet up in the air is really really far - at a bit over 6 miles away (in the best case when it is directly overhead and is closest to you), things look tiny on your phone. If you try to magnify even 10x using a phone that’s able to, you’ll discover how impossibly hard it is to track a moving object with 10x magnification.

Once you do this experiment, you can reconsider how likely that a UFO will be photographed by a person with a smartphone.

Could it have been a large mylar balloon?

Until we have a positive ID that it was not it will be difficult to rule this out.

Same here it’s always always like that as if the ufo has an earth camera detector, I fathom it may still be technically feasible if they are advanced enough. This would explain why nobody has had a clear picture taken of an UFO.

/sarcasm

I've had this experience more times than i can count. Not with flying saucers, but with all manner of terrestrial things - animals, vehicles passing by, people doing things. You see it, you look at it for a bit, you think you should take a photo, and by the time you have your camera in hand and switched on, it's gone.

That’s what I’m talking about

There's a funny concept called the SEP field (Somebody else's problem) from The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy: https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Somebody_Else%27s_Proble...

We could conceive of a device that would function similarly, like a "Recording device avoidance" or "improbably inconvenient timing" field.

Surely you’re joking, but I had an experience that would line up with that theory. About 6 years ago, well into the iPhone age, I saw a weird looking triangle just kind of floating in the sky. It looked to be the size of an airplane, except it didn’t appear to be using its wings to generate lift. I grabbed my phone to take a photo, but as soon as I had it pointed in the right direction, it shut off! Then it zoomed off.

A bit later I was at lunch, and my phone turned on with 40% of the charge still left.

Realistically, it was some weird drone and a failing battery. But if I allow myself to dream for a moment, that was an alien UFO.

I have wondered if the UFOs specifically exist in a plane that will always be at the edge of our awareness. They aren't so much moving through physical space, but though our collective consciousness. Similar to how a physical person may temporarily exist in your mind, a UFO may temporarily exist in the physical space, and attempting to "capture" them is like trying to control a dream.

- 40,000 to 70,000 Amateur Astronomers, scan the skies every night, with precision instruments capable to distinguish Jupiter atmosphere bands. Hardly any noticed these anomalous phenomena...

- About 500 observatories in the world, most of which are located in the Northern hemisphere study nightly stars, galaxies, planets and other celestial objects. Hardly any noticed these anomalous phenomena...

- By some rough estimate, it's likely that there are anywhere between 6,000 to 8,000 commercial planes in the air on average at any given time. Hardly any noticed these anomalous phenomena...other than the usual meteors, lights and commonly explained images.

- At least 140 Countries in the World have sophisticated Air Forces with optical sensors. Hardly any noticed these anomalous phenomena... What a conspiracy would bring together from Italian to French to Brazilians to Norwegians?

- The military have sensors capable to read a bus ticket on the floor of Moscow streets. We even know the Hubble Space Telescope is a copy of spy satellites pointed at Earth. Not much reported from those teams...

- The F-18 have boxes like the AN/ASQ-228. A multi-sensor, electro-optical targeting pod with thermographic camera, low-light television camera, target laser rangefinder/laser designator, and laser spot tracker with a range of 40 miles. But all images we get from these UFO look they were taken with a cheap grainy amateur camera...

- These UFO seem obsessed with the US military and the United States. Have they heard about the great military capabilities of the Swiss, Luxembourg, North Korean Armies? :-)

These are most likely local US Top Secret Skunk works projects. Maybe the Chinese Balloon was an attempt to trigger them.

> Maybe the Chinese Balloon was an attempt to trigger them.

Now this is the game-behind-the-game “conspiracy” stuff I can get behind. Great idea/thread to pull on there. Much better than aliens. It seems “obvious” to me that the extraterrestrial thing is a coordinated effort. Likely the US is testing its capabilities against itself.

My theory is that the wealthy and secret fraternities who put their men in government and politics always need controversial subjects so that they can push hidden agendas behind them. Orchestration can be easy: just a handful of people know the truth, some execute knowingly, the rest are unknowingly part of the story. It could be useful to think why they need this UFO story to resurface. Better weapons and more funding? The aliens are the masters who ask for peace and a global government? The Overton Window has already widened. Once people accept the idea of UFOs/aliens, they will start accepting more crazy ideas. Not implying there is an evil plan. Maybe there is a good plan for a better world, and the only instruments are these kind of stories that keep us in a state of wonder. They've been cooking this UFO stuff for decades. Curios to see where it ends or what's born out of it.

But it seems there are evidence and trustworthy people talking about these UFO sightings. Maybe they're true. Let's not forget that the Covid story was also true, but way more convincing that it should've been. What did they gain? More money and control. Who benefited? Everybody who joined the dance silently but knowingly: from Pfizer, WHO, to local governments, businessmen, medical staff, politicians, etc, to name a few. The whole Covid story is riddled with corruption, from top to bottom, in every country of this world. But everybody's happy: the elite at the top ruled out their plan, those at the middle executed and made a profit, while those at the bottom paid the price and are glad to be alive. 3 years ago this sounded like a crazy conspiracy, but the reality of today is that they managed to pull it off in public! What's even more perverse is that even those people who feel there is something wrong, now they feel hopeless and will accept whatever life throws at them. Anyway they're always busy working to afford existence or that expensive and instagramable M6 BMW they want so much. Educated, domesticated, but sophisticated cattle.

Today we have deadly viruses, WW3, UFOs, draught and famine, climate change, economic crises. Too many things happening at once, no time to find the needle in the haystack, let's just trust the government and press when they start screaming at us again.

I'd love the truth that aliens are visiting us, that there is more to science than we know, but life taught me that humans are always behind any kind of story. Either fabricate, or use some real truths, but always leverage a backdoor to exploit the human mind. The backdoor is our reaction to fear and the exploit is the story. Fear is primal and many other feelings eventually boil down to fear, even love. Fear of loneliness, of hunger, of failure, of an unfulfilling life, of reject, of pain. Fear of the unknown.

Yep, because fear is the key to control and compliance. It's the oldest trick in the book. There has to be a kernel of truth in order to be effective.

Exactly. [redacted, i was wrong]

Dude. Loosen the tinfoil, it's affecting blood circulation to your brain.

If you spend three seconds looking at the URL, you'll figure out why the CIA hosts it. But here, I'll make it easy: https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index.html

Rather than repeating antisemitic talking points, you can instead point at a weakness in human pattern recognition -- it's bad wrt to false positives. People see patterns that aren't there

What's antisemitic from my words? But you're correct: people see patterns, like me or you, and they're often wrong, but not always. The truth lurks in there somewhere. But that was just my theory based on personal experience and observation. I'm not interested in political, religious or racial discussions.

These are all tropes about (((JEWS)) historically, ((NEW WORLD ORDER) is ((JEWS)).

It's thinly veiled stuff to a lot of people.

Coincidental here I'm sure, but it can raise the hackles.

Especially 'secret fraternities', makes you think freemasons etc often used pejoratively by anti semites.

Just shedding some light here not making any accusations.

NWO is not quite as common as "Globalists", but you are correct.

But he didn‘t use any of these words. It‘s you who reacts to a stereotype here, instantly connecting „secret worldwide control group“ with „of jewish faith“ or something - in your head. Not that I would follow the OPs opinion. Yes to smokescreens, corruption and instilling fear in people to control them. Only I think that we are not yet there, development-wise, for a group that could plan this deliberately. Ideology and power dynamics work by themselves, especially in the lawless secret services of this world (and I mean all of them, there are no good ones).

Some people seem to condemn these theories, while identifying with them and putting themselves at the center. It gives them power. People use this tactic often, but some become boring.

((Jews)) don't like when people say about them they rule the world, but the truth is they like it.

Same goes with Germans. ((Nazism)) is taboo and nobody talks about it, but the truth is they are proud of their history. Not about the killings, but proud of their might and power - they "almost succeeded".

Coming back, i had 0 antisemitic intentions

Huh. I did not think there was a ton of overlap between Freemasons and the Jewish community.

Strawman fallacy that happens all the time. You said globalist, you must be a racist anti-semite! So sad to see such drivel. You want to talk about the real "New World Order" and globalists it can be done, with plenty of citations and sources, but you don't want to hear that (to be fair, most don't) and would rather label any mention of this very real set of conspiracies as something horrible in order to justify ignorance of the subject matter while also attacking it.

Maybe HN is about ready for a more frank discussion on this topic, with the details layed out.

Antisemitic?

It’s unlikely a secret cabal runs the world. Too hard to keep such a thing airtight.

People often imagine secret societies with secret gatherings, doing bizarre rituals. This is why it's hard to imagine such cabals. But they do exist and might be pretty chill: people smoking cigars, drinking and discussing ways of making money from their position of power. We all do that. Happens that some are more rich and powerful

Yeah people can create “cartels” and leverage power cooperatively. But it’s unlikely there’s secret “top cartel” with no leaks and no challengers.

How do you discredit all the AATIP findings, Lt. Ryan Graves, Fravor... Etc.

Don't have to discredit they saw something to say it's not Aliens. And then, here is Fravor admitting on the record to pull off UFO pranks on camping sites:

(At correct time): https://youtu.be/Eco2s3-0zsQ?t=2942

Here is a recent paper by Ukrainian astronomers about UAP caught by their two major telescopes going Mach 15+ and doing an instantaneous u turn https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.17085

Most likely other astronomers have picked up events like this but discarded the data since it wasn’t matching what they were looking for, or the stigma pressured them to ignore it.

Discredited already: https://thedebrief.org/controversial-ukrainian-uap-study-sho...

That article is attempting to discredit the first paper the scientists put out by saying it’s most likely artillery from fighting.

The link I posted is the follow up paper by the same scientists rebuking the discredit. It contains more evidence from a longer timeline (dating back to 2018) and this new paper includes photos they captured of the flight path of the objects.

This paper still needs to be peer reviewed but it’s very interesting nonetheless

And I'd add that in the last 20 years, we have increased by orders of magnitude people's ability to capture photos and video. Billions of people now have smartphones on their persons all the time. Billions!

But the evidence we have is somehow the same quality as before. So it seems that either space aliens have coincidentally gotten orders of magnitude better at avoiding recordings, or the explanation is not about what's out there, but about how people deal with things.

If Aliens can seemingly break all known laws of the physical universe to get to Earth, somehow I think they could probably evade as many mobile phone cameras as they want

I think if UAP's can evade active radars and somehow were caught doing crazy speeds by airforce equipment alone, its quite possible the 2$ phone camera won't capture a thing going at 5 mach.

Sure, but that doesn't explain why they got better at the exact rate our technology did.

It's much easier to blame it on gods or angels or devils or whatever. Which is basically what "aliens" means when they're treated as having extra-magic technology.

Im not really sure what your point is, your measuring Aliens in relation to Humans and our understanding of the universe. If Aliens did get to Earth most theories would imply that they have broken physical laws that we haven’t, so for all intents and purposes, they do have extra-magic technology.

Maybe they also have threat models and can adapt to our rate of change?

I don’t know, but thinking that we are the only part of the equation doesnt seem complete to me

Sure, now substitute "angels" for "Aliens" and you could ring doorbells on Sunday.

Have all the fantasies you like, of course. But don't please don't mistake it for a serious argument about what we are compelled to believe from evidence.

What we have is a long history of humans taking liminal phenomena and using it to justify believe in quasi-anthropomorphic entities that are just out of sight. Fairies, angels, demons, ghosts, aliens, etc. The names change, the "evidence" changes, but the belief is a constant. But after literal centuries, somehow the evidence always melts away, and the angels/aliens always stay conveniently unproven but still somehow believed in despite the ever-expanding range of what we can now observe and prove.

If you were a godbotherer, the theological term for what you're doing is "god of the gaps". But that's both bad theology and bad science.

You made the assumption that our human technology could outpace aliens, you said it yourself. The context of this discussion is based on unidentified aerial phenomena in our sky's as disclosed by the US government and so we are naturally making assumptions based on this evidence. That is all this discussion is about, its not based on some mystical religious gap filler.

My argument is predicated on that if the evidence does hold up, and _if_ Aliens did get to Earth, and _if_ these events are otherworldly then by that token whats to say they couldn't evade our technologies or choose to be detected when they desired?

Ok? And if pigs had wings they'd be pigeons. If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.

I agree you can imagine an alien that continues to neatly fit inside the evidentiary gaps despite the rapid pace which those gaps have evolved over the last couple hundred years. I can do that too. My imaginary aliens are just jerks who like taunting us. They always had the capacity to be unobserved, but have consistently maintained a level of liminal, unconfirmable hints because they are here to fuck with us. Please look for my book, "4chan of the Skies" which will come out in April 2024.

But I don't anybody should take either kind of aliens-of-the-gaps seriously, because I think the much simpler explanation is that it's the same kind of fill-the-gaps-with-boogeymen that humans have been doing since Zeus was dreamed up to explain thunder.

I think you are really missing the point here. I'm not debating with you if aliens exist or not, my original comment was simply a thought experiment about what state of technology aliens would have access to in the hypothetical scenario that they were here, an assumption, and this is based on the idea that they likely have technology that is superior to ours, because they likely traversed millions of light years to get here.

Is it really that hard?

No, I think you're missing the point here. Because one, that's an unevidenced hypothetical that is basically a fantasy. I am not obliged to give it any weight. And two, if I did, it does not explain why UFOs have remained always liminal despite our rapidly advancing technology to track and record things. If shy aliens were vastly superior, we'd never detect them at all. If they were at some lower but constant level of technology, we'd detect them more over time. But for some mysterious reason, they were just as detectable in 1953 as they are in 2023. Your "aliens r smart" theory does not explain that at all, and so it's not helpful. And it's especially not helpful as a reply to my original point, which you do not yet seem to have taken on board.

https://xkcd.com/2572/

Yes, exactly that!

Some of these objections are so broad the exclude the possibility of a legit optical illusion.

Most of the stuff we see in space isn’t there. The day sky isn’t blue, the night sky isn’t black, stars don’t twinkle, etc.

Our military sensors are specifically trained to exclude most phenomena.

Is it so much to believe that optical illusion are common at high altitudes?

And that militaries don’t like their pilots “seeing things?”

Do what now? Those things you listed aren’t actually optical illusions, are they? Pretty sure the sky is actually blue.

Funny you should mention that one... https://www.forbes.com/sites/briankoberlein/2017/01/11/earth...

There’s nothing in the sky that’s actually blue. You won’t get blue stains on an aircraft.

It’s because of weird radiation thing that happens in many contexts. Including the irises of people with “blue” (transparent) eyes.

I think you have a very weird way of thinking about colour. Saying the sky is blue is no different than saying the ocean is blue. Water doesn't look blue when you get something wet either, and yet the ocean is blue.

A "weird radiation thing" is exactly how colour works.

I have a blue blanket that doesn’t leave blue stains on anything either. That’s not a robust definition of what it means for something to be a certain color.

Counterpoint: any civilization advanced enough for interplanetary travel is also smart enough to reveal itself when it WANTS to reveal itself. Cloaking and stealth are reasonably simpler technologies compared to traveling light years.

I mean, sure, but Occam's razor probably applies, no? Seems more likely that people occasionally misidentify something or hallucinate something or similar, than that there are interplanetary travelers who have both FTL travel and perfect cloaking abilities who come to earth, turn them off just long enough to fuck with a couple of people, then turn them back on and fly off.

Do people generally randomly hallucinate things? We don't get reports of flying spaghetti monsters. Only shiny craft in the sky. Perhaps people only hallucinate things that are on a certain level socially-acceptable to hallucinate?

Three stars?

Well, I don't think "lights in the sky" are a particular socially acceptable thing to hallucinate; I'm not sure seeing things that others don't believe were there is ever particularly socially acceptable. But it's still pretty common. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/hallucinations-wha...

As to "why shiny craft in the sky", we get patterns of light in the -vast- majority of situations. We have an optical system trained by millions of years to recognize patterns; throw in any sort of stimuli that doesn't fit the expected patterns, and our minds will still try and categorize it.

What you'll note we're not seeing are detailed craft with any sort of definition to them. As you say, no flying spaghetti monsters, but also not even something more complicated than an orb or a disk. Not even an orb with a decal on it. Not even as described, let alone the photo/videos. Just light and reflections. Even the Chinese surveillance balloon had more texture to it in its images and descriptions, and you'd at least think we'd have seen a spacecraft with some branding or customization, the equivalent of a Spitfire's Roundels or a shark's mouth decal or an identifier a la NCC-1701.

By this logic you can discredit anything people see. People commonly see cows. But, people also hallucinate orbs in the sky, so cows don't necessarily exist, do they?

So, back to my original point, if we focus on the relative number of sightings of two things, and exclude random other things, there's still a huge number of sightings of "shiny metal objects in the sky" compared (relatively) to "flying spaghetti-and-meatballs monster in the sky".

Most of this is out of a need by humans to feel like they're not alone in the universe.

High-performance hobbyist drones are approaching UFO levels of performance.[1] Top speed of that one is well over 400MPH. One of those will cost you maybe US$8000. The triangular craft seen buzzing US Navy ships off the coast of California look a lot like those.

There's a huge range of remote controlled aerial vehicles you can buy now.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k

400 mph is way off from 40000mph, which is one of the speed estimates from an encounter.

My pet theory is that the UAP footage we've seen from the last few year is actually sensor warfare, i.e. spoofing

Speed is extremely easy to mistake if you have in your head that you're expecting objects of the size piloted by humans. Further if you're not triangulating the distance, any claims of speed are just pure nonsense.

Riiight, so the US military is unaware of the capabilities of drones, and also can't accurately say that UFOs appear to hit 40,000 MPH

UAPs have been seen since the 80s with the same unbelievable flight characteristics. They're not drones, at least not ours.

I’m also skeptical of these reports, but I think you’re being maybe a little smug here, and you’ve overextended yourself a bit as well in a few places. So I’m going to play devils advocate and nitpick a few points.

> The F-18 have boxes like the AN/ASQ-228. A multi-sensor, electro-optical targeting pod with thermographic camera, low-light television camera, target laser rangefinder/laser designator, and laser spot tracker with a range of 40 miles. But all images we get from these UFO look they were taken with a cheap grainy amateur camera...

Have you ever seen gun camera footage from a fighter jet? Or thermal camera footage in general? That’s what it all looks like, especially at high levels of zoom. Also, I don’t even know how the laser designator is supposed to improve the image quality.

This stuff isn’t designed to capture footage for a Top Gun movie, it’s designed to detect targets, primarily using parts of the spectrum that are invisible to the human eye.

> These UFO seem obsessed with the US military and the United States.

Setting aside the possibility that other countries might be keeping sightings secret….

The US Air Force is the biggest in the world. The second biggest air force in the world is the US Navy. And they are also two of the best trained air forces in the world, measured in flight hours per pilot. Which means the US is overwhelmingly in the lead when it comes to cumulative military flight hours.

As you pointed out, military aircraft tend to have sophisticated targeting sensors that aren’t installed aboard commercial airliners. Specifically, air superiority fighters have targeting sensors that are designed to detect and lock onto other targets that are in the air. Spy satellites are looking at the ground, while observatories and amateur astronomers are gazing into the stars, but fighter jets are uniquely positioned to look for flying objects in the air.

And when it comes to the ocean that covers about 2/3 of the earth’s surface, the US Navy is practically the only group of people flying fighter jets over that area. The US has eleven supercarriers; the most any other country has is one. Some countries have smaller aircraft carriers, but the US has some of those as well.

I don’t know what’s going on here, and I very much doubt that it’s aliens, but there are plenty of reasons that US Navy fighter pilots would notice this sort of thing and report it more than anyone else.

Re: the astronomers not seeing anything

Well one of the storylines is that these things are coming out of the ocean, so in that sense, telescopes pointed at space aren't going to be of much help.

There are meteor detection cameras set up all over the country at various universities that record full sky images 24/7 365 days a year of anything that moves. They're even publicly available.

And telescopes are awful at locating moving targets. Too narrow field of view

> At least 140 Countries in the World have sophisticated Air Forces with optical sensors. Hardly any noticed these anomalous phenomena..

Who says they don't? There's no conspiracy, but maybe national secrecy concerns

> But all images we get from these UFO look they were taken with a cheap grainy amateur camera...

You're getting the images they can declassifiy (and then again, for target tracking you don't need anything more fancy)

> The military have sensors capable to read a bus ticket on the floor of Moscow streets.

Again, the wrong thing to detect it

It's amazing how many people believe that aliens are constantly flitting across our skies. I constantly wonder what the psyche is like of people who believe that kind of thing and what makes them so confident in it despite all the counter-veiling evidence.

It seems to fool some of the most intelligent people the most and I'm not quite sure why.

All of that falls flat when you assume the phenomenon itself is intelligent.

So it's no surprise in the age of smartphones we don't see increased footage.

The evidence is out there. Don't be surprised you don't get it when you don't look into it and evaluate the evidence for yourself.

If you're interested, see UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean.

I had and lost interest years and years ago. It's the same thing it's always been. A bunch of made-for-TV drama nonsense.

The people that believe this stuff are the same types that think 9/11 was an inside job, that we didn't land on the moon, that 5G or wifi cause mental problems, or believe in crystal power. No matter how much you show them they'll continue to believe in their myth. It's a replacement for religion.

Oh and there's a decent amount to be made on talk series sales and book sales if you can cough up an "I saw an alien" story that sounds good and make some good money by selling to the above audience.

If your only engagement with UFOs is that which is perpetuated by popular media, it should come no surprise to you that your understanding of the matter is surface level. For that reason I am entirely sympathetic to your point of view, which is shared by many, but I am here to say that there is evidence of the contrary, and that you should not be so certain this is all "nonsense".

> A bunch of made-for-TV drama nonsense.

When there is opportunity, there are opportunists. The important distinction is to realize the phenomena can be true, and also for grifters to leverage the phenomenon for personal gain.

At this point, I will say that if one endeavors to truly dive deep into the subject matter and arrive to lumping the UFO phenomenon with other conspiracy theories writ large, then it is a failure in epistemic ability.

As a rational, scientific, agnostic person, I am telling you that the UFO phenomenon is grounded, as incredulous it may be.

> But all images we get from these UFO look they were taken with a cheap grainy amateur camera...

And not only that. When they do pick up UFOs, they appear to be malfunctioning just for that specific recording, regardless of corroborating radar and visual confirmation.

I wonder if aliens supplied these sensor systems to make them malfunction whenever they're in the area.

I notice you keep saying "hardly any notice these phenomena", which is a tacit agreement that some do notice these phenomena and that therefore there's some phenomenon to explain. As long as we can all agree that there's something here that needs an explanation then that's fine.

Interestingly, just this week we saw a perfect example of how an actual UFO sighting would play out, namely the Chinese spy balloon.

We saw real, actual photos of it in the sky, instead of grainy radar images and verbal testimony. We had a real acknowledgement of it from our government, and a real response to it, i.e. shoot it down. This is all very rational and satisfactory, and is exactly what would happen if there really was something unidentified in the sky.

This is all to say: purveyors of UFO/UAP theories really need to step up their game. Give us something better than "we can't give you actual photos because of stigma!!"

It was a slow moving object that was visible to the naked eye during the day from many highly populated areas.

ITT:

Multiple fighter pilots (whose sole job is to understand aerial objects by eye and sensors), radar, camera and infrared have seen these.

“It’s a glitch, lens flare and/or the pilots are stupid, but me a programmer is an expert in this.”

Yeah it’s a bit disappointing, but I’m not surprised. Regardless of whatever it turns out to be, it should be earnestly looked in to and documented. And if it turns out to have some national security implication then just acknowledge that you looked at it, made a determination, and won’t be providing further comment at this time. I realize that would “stir the pot” but it’s hard to imagine that being worse, especially if this becomes a major topic in the zeitgeist.

This is most threads on topics outside of the CS sphere

Every once in a while I'll come across threads like this on HN where most posters make enormous assumptions, are confidently incorrect, or refuse to be even slightly open-minded, and it makes me lose faith in this place. It comes off as a red flag, indicative of the rest of the site.

There's a relevant Reddit quote that I don't have access to at the moment, but it goes something like this:

"I'm an expert on X topic. I've seen people talking about my subject of expertise with extreme inaccuracy many times before and its irritating... Immediately afterwards I'll move into another thread and will forget everything I just witnessed and will take reasonably convincing posts as factual (Even though they're of the exact same nature as the post that was entirely wrong but was reasonable and convincing enough that it got hundreds of upvotes)."

That is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect in action: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...

I'm pretty sure it's a fear of looking like an idiot if there turns out to be a rational explanation. I mean, healthy scepticism is healthy, but some people conveniently ignore the context when 'debunking' things they don't want to believe in. Plus, that's a good way to drive traffic and Youtube ad money, so they're not exactly unbiased either.

And yet, like us mere mortals, surely fighter pilots are susceptible to cognitive and perceptual biases and distortions particularly around phenomena at or beyond the edges of their training and experience.

I find this thinking fascinating: "the pilots and the military don't know shit, they are easily fooled by bokeh. mick west, a video game programmer, will now explain how a classified f-18 FLIR targeting pod works and why its showing us a bird"

Glad to see this topic finally discussed here.

With the shift in government posture and establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/310005...) it will only be a matter of time until more service members come forward with their experiences and enough data is gathered to ascertain the inevitable: these craft are real and we've been visited by nonhuman entities since maybe even the beginning of human existence.

I do remember the comment thread on the 2017 time article here on hn. Opinions already have changed considerably in the last 5 years. It also appears as if the process of disseminating information still accelerates (with promis coming out as experiencers and so on). I can only advise everyone to consider C.G. Jung and read Jaques Vallee.

This situation is very complicated, but not at all bad in the end. As far as I can tell, nobody got the real answers, not the pentagon, nor the religions.

I second those recommendations.

Reality may be not as we think.

Could you expand on how Jung is related? I think of him as a researcher in psychology which doesn't seem connected? I may be missing what you are getting at.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691018225/fl...

Plato's Cave, Jungian Archetypes, Valee's Control System all hint at the same insight, that founders of many religions also try to communicate: We live in a symbolic consensus reality, made up of individual dreams, if you will, that is quite malleable if we all agree.

The new AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has a Marcus Aurelius quote in Latin on the proposed Logo, used in the presentation slides by the director: "The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it".

Maybe they understand more than I thought after all?

Edit: added symbolic

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that quote used in the AARO logo too. It's a fun acknowledgement to this pervasive theory, which as you've highlighted, is a unifying theme in UFO encounters and much more.

With UFOs getting as much pushback on HN (though this is improving) I would say crossing over into more of the "woo" and esoterics would give many here an instant dismissal on the topic :)

This is a great reminder that I need to bookmark metabunk.org, where Mick West and others go into enormous detail about the UAP evidence, including simulations and reconstructions.

Mick and others do a great job. But they often leave key details out or selectively choose facts.

For example, with the GIMBAL video, the pilots are on record saying the object is 6-8 nautical miles (NM) away as they saw on their Situation Awareness (SA) Screen. Mick’s attempt to debunk the GIMBAL rotation asserts that the object was 30 NM away, and he refuses to look at other evidence that contradicts the statement.

Other scientists have done extensive efforts to show that the rotation of the gimbal object directly correlates with the flight path, which shows to be a vertical u-turn exactly as described by the pilots who had access to the SA https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1504855791060148224?s=...

Metabunk have debunked a lot of things very well. But they have not debunked the 3 navy videos. I can provide more evidence to the analysis on the other two videos to show that these objects are exhibiting foight characteristics that are unique and defy the laws of physics.

The SA page on the MPCD is very small and cluttered. Is it possible that the pilots made a mistake?

According to one of the pilots, there is a longer, classified video of the incident that shows the SA page and has the distance listed there.

People make mistakes, but data doesn’t. And according to these pilots and the former head of the DoD UAP program, the data shows that there are craft moving in our airspace with impunity.

> People make mistakes, but data doesn’t.

But data collection, storage, retrieval and/or interpretation may contain errors.

That’s why it’s important to look at all the reported cases to get a probabilistic measure. The 3 videos represent 2 cases that occurred. The DoD has over 300 unidentified cases currently. At least 18 exhibit flight characteristics that don’t seem possible.

Wouldn't that be revealing classified info? Probably no punishment if the "classified info" is made up as a prank so he can freely claim it if it isn't real but would be risking punishment if it was.

The sensors are classified but saying the sensors can see 6-8 nm's away is not because that would not be telling our adversaries anything - that technology has been available for decades. Giving away a capability that our adversaries don't know we have would be bad. For example, navy personnel have been saying that submarines go far faster than what the public knows they can (but obviously they cannot say exactly how fast subs go)

It's not an isolated incident. There has been many sightings and direct action (e.g. fighter jets sent to pursue) by members of US military as well as those in other countries.

The Navy incident got the traction it did because the original footage leaked years ago and only now acknowledged.

If you're interested, see here for a documentary on the Colares, Brazil UFO incident that occurred in 1977 https://youtu.be/Mr1NrnsdY5I

>and he refuses to look at other evidence that contradicts the statement.

Hmm I'm doubtful about this. It would be very unlike him. I found his explanation quite illuminating, and the pilot he had a back and forth with was interesting.

It's been a few months since I checked but last I did, I was satisfied that Mick made a good case for why the others are wrong about the distance.

There’s nothing to doubt. It’s all on Twitter. TheCholla has done a fantastic job showing here what f18s look like at different distances on FLIR https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1598090777950793729?s=...

Mick refuses to accept the fact the distance is 6-8nm as the pilots stated it was shown on their SAs. Ryan Graves asked Mick to present his analysis at a coalition of former military pilots for them to debate him, but he said he was “too busy”.

Again, mick does a great job debunking things that should be debunked. But you can’t debunk something by claiming the distance of the object was farther than it actually was

> But you can’t debunk something by claiming the distance of the object was farther than it actually was

... farther than instruments indicated ... Which still beats "it's aliens" by a long shot.

Multiple of the most sophisticated instruments for this purpose on the planet are capturing this data. If the US was flying F18s that misconstrued the range of a foreign adversary by over 20 nautical miles, that would be a huge story in of itself.

You trust the tech way too much to the point of not being able to confidently reject the impossible.

This woderful US military tech tracked a guy in Afghanistan for a day and bombed him thinking that water he was carrying home to his children is explosive and he's a terrorist.

It's not aliens.

I am not rejecting the possibility of this being human technology. to quote the former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Intelligence “The Alien Hypothesis currently best fits the facts”.

Yeah. But that's impossible. So there, on Earth, are just two kinds of intelligence.

Human intelligence and military intelligence. Because there's no alien intelligence here.

Everything is impossible until it is done.

We have been to space. We have theories that FTL travel may be possible (Alcubierre drives, wormholes). The JWST just showed us that galaxies formed as early as 300 million years after the Big Bang. Hell, we didn't know there were planets outside of our solar system until the 1990s. We still don't know what Dark Matter or Dark Energy are. We have far more left to explore and understand.

I despise people like you who try to diminish every important scientific venture because you think you know better.

> Everything is impossible until it is done.

And some things just remain impossible. They laughed at Galileo but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I think there's huge probabiliy that aliens really do exist. But they are nowhere close. And we don't have any resonable theories about FTL. They sound reasonable up to a point of "yeah, but you need negative mass to do that". So basically it's an artefact that equations produce when they are pushed to the domain they are no longer valid in.

Best scientific venture about alien life is SETI and JWST. Not some nonsense of pilots seeing things they believe to be violating the laws of physics. And some recordings of instruments that just show wrong data.

People like you mix science with science-fiction and that really does no good for either.

I would not be so adamant about this if the quality of the individuals telling us the government has significant classified data that shows the ET hypothesis best fits what the pilots are seeing. You are the one being unreasonable and not listening to these individuals.

Pilots are not the only ones seeing this. Ukrainian astronomers have data from their telescopes in two different cities referencing the same objects traveling at Mach 15, stopping on a dime, then turning around immediately https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.17085

As for the negative mass comment, here's a patent by the navy for an inertial mass reduction device https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en

we have theories that is grounded in our current understanding of physics for superluminal travel. it's not insane to think a species 1 million years ahead of us have engineered it

> quality of the individuals

This is just appeal to authority. And wrong authority at that.

When you are debunking a supernatural claim you don't ask a scientist to do it (let alone a general). Because scientists are honest thus easily mislead because they assume honesty. You should ask a magician because they know myriad of ways how it could be done to fool you.

As for the patent ... Do you know how many versions of perpetum mobile are patented? Do you know how many do work? The thing doesn't have to work to be patented.

I honesty have no clue what you're trying to say with your statement from scientists. Science is the way forward with our understanding of phenomenon. Scientists are not so easily fooled, and there are several scientists with pedigrees far higher than you or any magician you'd hire that are studying this subject. Dr. Gary Nolan of Stanford, Dr. Avi Loeb of Harvard, Dr. Eric Davis a theoretical physicist. IMO you are simply stuck in the wrong mindset if you don't think this is a serious subject.

I'm basically saying this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathy.shtml

There's a history of scientists being fooled by supernatural claims.

There are even some Nobel laureates that after success in science as they get older they go straight to cookooland. Heck, even Newton who achieved much in his youth when he got older he went completely bananas.

Being a scientist doesn't guard you against getting fooled and fooling yourself.

This is not a serious subject. It's a form of modern religion and local one at that. Most prominent in USA. Believing that in our lifetime we discovered signs of advanced alien tech on Earth is not very different than believing that in your lifetime you'll experience second coming of Christ. A belief that was shared by a lot of people for last 2 millenia.

Don't get me wrong. I love science fiction. I just don't need to pretend it might be real to enjoy it.

There’s also a history of humans not being able to accept something radically different when being presented evidence of it. In this case, that appears to be happening to you.

Please, just stay out of this conversation. Let the real scientists like Gary Nolan and Avi Loeb continue to investigate this subject as they please. Whatever this phenomenon ends up being, your opinions are not going to help us find that out.

UFOs are not radically different idea with recent evidence. It's literally more than half a century old secular religion which "evidence" for never panned out into anything or were thoroughly debunked.

Gary Nolan and Avi Loeb will die of old age before they can deliver actual proof of alien technology exactly as every scientist and layman did so far. If they explain those artifacts it won't be aliens. That's just my opinion. Please keep it at the back of your mind for the rest of your life.

From now on I'm staying out of this particular conversation.

Just let the damn scientists study the evidence and keep your opinions to yourself, damn. You obviously have a huge bias against studying things that are currently unexplained, so you're not helping the conversation. Keep that in the back of your head.

Solid scientists:

Immunologist that thinks he saw UFO:

https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/garry-nolan

Guy who thought Oumuamua is alien spaceship (gathered evidence gives exactly zero reasons to think that):

https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Avi-Lo...

Theoretical physicist with his head deep in things like Alcubierre drive that appears from Einstein's equations when applied to such things as negative mass (which doesn't exist) without acknowledging that quantum mechanics exists. He was also hired by Pentagon to investigate UFOs. Nothing came of it, but he had every incentive to make stuff up to keep his job. Which he was eventually fired from when it closed, but he claims it wasn't closed and he still works there. He also claimed they got some materials of alien origin they couldn't identify. Claim that has zero backing. And he can't even come clean that he lied because that would mean government could sue him for fraud.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Eric-Davis-16

I see how those three are superbly equipped to validate or falsify claims of some Airforce pilots. /s

Basically 3 believers with some accidental degrees including some with vested interest in continuation of UFO research.

Why am I against it? I just hate bs that poisons minds of so many people giving them some false sense of superiority for "having open minds" and forefront knowledge.

I know it's hard to be confronted with information that undermines your belief. It can be painful. But it's worth it. Freedom from bs waits on the other side of this path. And having accurate model of reality and yourself matters.

All you do is take one point from each of their accomplishments out of context and refute their entire credibility.

Gary Nolan is the one of the premiere immunologists and pathologists in the world. He has created multiple multi-million dollar companies. He was asked by the CIA to perform scans on people who had been encountered UAP and had health effects or death.

Avi Loeb is a renowned Harvard astrophysicist. Yes, he is studying Oumuamua because it was the first object outside our solar system to come by Earth. It also had an extremely odd shape and a trajectory that does not seem natural. He's simply hypothesized that it could be some kind of ET probing device passing Earth, but he's not definitively said so. All he's saying is no other physicist has come up with a proper explanation for what Oumuamua was, and so he wants to study other interstellar objects that come near by.

Eric Davis has been working for DoD for almost 3 decades. He's well known within the defense space to being an incredibly intelligent human being.

You can't just take one piece of their history and dismiss their entire credibility. What are your credentials that make you so important to dismiss these people as insane for just studying this phenomenon?

All of my credentials is that I learned a bit of physics and I read a bit of SF and I can tell one from the other. If it was about existence of leprechauns and effects of meeting them you'd have no problem dismissing it as well regardless of how accomplished people would be interested in the subject. And if it's UFO which has exactly the same amount of confirmed evidence as leprechauns suddenly there's a problem and you need credentials because ufologists made their belief sound sciency.

I know that those 3 scientists are accomplished people in their respective, unassociated fields. For various definitions of the word "accomplished".

But I'd much rather see a psychiatrist and plane surveillance device constructor/tester and possibly a magician or a con artist investigating those documents coming out of DoD first than three avid ufologists. In my opinion it might be way more productive and brilliant immunologist could stick to doing good work in immunology, astrophysicist could research new insights in astrophysics that is actually very promising field, and ex DoD employee very theoretical physicist might continue his mid life crisis or whatever he's doing.

But rest assured, the research is going on. Good news for you:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-try-to...

I'll just be bitter for the waste of research power for the next few years before it goes away. As it always did.

Maybe they'll even get the funding becuse eyes up the sky might be useful:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

You put that so wonderfully. The DoD and other scientists should absolutely stop investing things that are hovering over their naval ships and nuclear silos just because a man on hacker news would rather see other people investigating them. Your credentials having read a bit of physics are so, so helpful. Please, help the rest of the feeble planet with your intellect because you are truly the one person who knows what is worth investigating and what isn't.

> And if it's UFO which has exactly the same amount of confirmed evidence as leprechauns

That is absolutely false. The 3 navy videos have enough evidence behind them to show UAP are real and exhibiting interesting flight characteristics. You are denying hard evidence - for what reason I don't know.

Those 3 videos?

https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/weird-news/2020/04/28/pe...

Third one is a goose:

https://youtu.be/mfhAC2YiYHs

Super solid evidence, no doubt.

Yeah, let's investigate. Tens of millions of dollars won't spend themselves. And we certainly wouldn't want to spend it on boring actual astronomy and astrophysics.

Btw the other video is just of loosing tracking of a plane:

https://youtu.be/3viYcYPRdu4

You are refusing to look at the counter-evidence I provide with regards to people trying to de-bunk the 3 navy videos.

GOFAST: The "goose" would need to be flying 100 knots to account for the wind speed https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1603518927891357696

GIMBAL: If the DoD would confirm the range of the object was 6-8 nautical miles (which has been confirmed by the pilots on the mission) than this object performed a "vertical u-turn" where the rotation directly correlates with the change in direction https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1620220980839993345?s=...

FLIR1: Hasn't been debunked has a plane. https://twitter.com/MvonRen/status/1599796010506924033

All of the attempts to debunk the videos require very specific assumptions that are not proven. The GIMBAL object was not 30 nautical miles away as Mick west says. The GOFAST object is going against 120 knots of wind, West is assuming there is no wind at all. The Tic-Tac is exhibiting instantaneous acceleration and no plane today can do this.

Nothing about these videos has been debunked. The DoD could put this to rest by releasing the additional sensor data, but they won't because the sensors are highly classified.

GOFAST: The plane traveled at half a speed of sound, speed of wind or a goose is insignificant in comparison. This guy claims he found exact trajectory of a goose from a handful of pixels and numbers on the screen that don't have required precission. Did you notice his 'analysis' doesn't have error bars? That's because they would be very large. It's basically a guy who measures one thing to be 3, other to be 7. Divides those values and draws conclusions from the digit at 6th decimal place.

So he really has no idea how fast goose traveled.

His second objection is that the object was cold in IR (compared to water in the background) which is perfecly consistent with a bird travelling at 2.5 km which is well insulated to be able to fly so high because it's obviously colder up there than at sea level.

FLIR: I see no specific objection and no explanation for why this object looks exactly like other IR recordings of planes from behind where hot exahaust washes out the image and why would speeding off at the end should be rather explained by object violating laws of physics than camera loosing tracking.

GIMBAL: No explanation why the object should show any rotation in sync with camera rotation which proves its shape and angle is optical artifact. Again objections are to details which cannot be accurately established. With complete disregard of the main argument.

What people say that DoD says or doesn't say about it is just heresay. Videos are the data. The only actual data we have.

Goose, plane from behind, and posssibly a debris field of space junk are currently best actually scientific explanations of the data that consists of those 3 videos.

I'm not refusing to address anything, but I'm beginning to think I started a discussion about ufos with avid ufologist. So I don't guarantee I'll still find it worthwhile to respond to your next message if it comes.

> The plane traveled at half a speed of sound, speed of wind or a goose is insignificant in comparison

Are you insane? going 100 knots against 30-50 knots of wind requires far more force than a fucking Goose can provide with its wings. Not to mention the object is at 13,000 feet above sea level which would be insanely high for a goose to travel.

You're also discounting the pilot testimony about the GOFAST video. GOFAST and GIMBAL were taken on the same day by the same pilots. There's a longer classified video that shows the object in GOFAST increasing its altitude to meet up with 4 other objects that appear to be of the same kind. Then the GIMBAL object comes into the page which is where the targeting pod locks onto. The 5 objects are in front of the gimbal object, they begin to turn around and that's when the GIMBAL object performs a vertical u-turn as shown on the ASA. Now, I don't disregard that the rotation may have been caused by the camera, but the trajectory of the object itself is interesting in that we don't have a plant that can perform the same kind of vertical u-turn at such slow speeds. They're going less than 1 mach, the object slows to a stop and then turns around going vertically. Any mechanical plane would stop and fall to the Earth, but this thing didn't.

> I see no specific objection and no explanation for why this object looks exactly like other IR recordings of planes from behind where hot exahaust washes

I dare you to ask any military pilot their opinion on what the object in the screen is. According to the pilot, Chad Underwood, who took the video, he was closing in 10-15 miles of the object and at that distance should be able to make out the the wings, the exhaust plumes, the type of aircraft even with the glare from the exhaust. Here's the pilot saying this himself https://youtu.be/7O1SE0IR13o?t=1231

Let's not forget, the Tic-Tac was active jamming (which is an act of war) and the object in the video matches the description of Cmdr Dave Fravor's description of what he saw with his own eyes.

Again, the DoD could shut you up by providing the additional classified data from the mission.

For future reference, you should stay completely out of this conversation because you are not a true scientist. You are an avid skeptic who will one day be ashamed of himself.

You don't need FTL travel to reach Earth from somewhere else in the Milky Way, if you don't mind waiting a long time to arrive. Which unmanned probes would not. Your confidence in your assertions just demonstrates you haven't thought about explanations that are less likely but still coherent with non-human technology being present in Earth's atmosphere.

So those aliens traveled for thousands of years (probably in multigenerational spaceship or deep anabiosis) from a place that close relatively speaking but somehow still undetectable for us despite thousands of years of interstellar technology development there just to be blips on our radars and visual smudge here and there.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and "we don't know what's that" is not an extraordinary evidence.

Why do you assume the UAPs have aliens in them, and why would you anthropomorphize aliens in any case to be anything like humans? Why do you assume the origin of such objects would be detectable? You're jumping to a lot of conclusions here, when the only core question being explored is the plausibility of physical objects in Earth's atmostphere demonstrating superhuman technology not created by humans.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is just a meaningless phrase by the way mostly used in discussions like these to try to signal that the person is somehow more "scientifically minded" than their interlocutor. There's no such thing as "extraordinary evidence", there's just evidence and the explanations which best explain that evidence.

Why do you assume aliens are here (or their tech) ?

The evidence against aliens here is just the entirety of physics and history. I consider it to be extraordinary.

We've only known about quantum mechanics for around 100 years. Why do you think we've discovered everything there is to know about physics? That's just hubris.

The 'entirety of history' is meaningless since we don't really know what happened in the past.

You take the word of few random soldiers and some output of some devices over accumulated effort of generations of scientists who brought us all of technology and you accuse others of hubris?

It's quite a hubris to say that something is evidence of violation of known laws of physics on the basis of personal direct observation and output of devices that you find trustworthy only because known laws of physics do work as formulated.

As for history we know for sure that aliens didn't made their presence know in any undoubtable manner in at least few thousands of years.

Every observation that we ever managed to explain was explained by something else than magic or aliens.

Every new discovery, by definition, begins with new observations.

The word you're clinging to is "known". We've been spectacularly wrong in the past (the sun orbited the earth, which was flat, etc.).

As for history, there's no reason to suspect they would have made their presence known in any undoubtable manner. They may have been here just to observe.

> Every observation that we ever managed to explain was explained by something else than magic or aliens.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke

> They may have been here just to observe.

Ah, so now we don't just assume alien tech on Earth. Now we need to also assume aliens intent? Are you sure you are not adding epicycles to your model of reality?

> “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Clarke

And yet no technology we ever seen actually IS magic or of alien origin.

I'm not sure what's your point is? That alien tech might look like magic? Sure. But we have never observed any magic either in our world. So they both belong squarely in the world of dreams not reality.

> Ah, so now we don't just assume alien tech on Earth.

No one has assumed anything. Credible scientists are just putting this out as a possible explanation. The investigation is still underway.

The majority of scientists thought flight of large mechanical objects was impossible until the Wright brothers did it https://northeastern.digication.com/a_declaration_of_impossi...

It's hilarious how you assume that the summary of the collective ideas of scientists today know everything that is physically possible when there are many examples throughout history where the collective understanding of physics has been wrong and it takes unique individuals to prove them wrong.

There is data to suggest the objects are moving at speeds that defy our current understanding of physics. There's no reason to not keep following the data.

> [...] there are many examples throughout history where the collective understanding of physics has been wrong and it takes unique individuals to prove them wrong.

Yes. And every time the correct solution eventually reached was not 'alien technology at work'.

> There is data to suggest the objects are moving at speeds that defy our current understanding of physics.

That nullifies all the science since Newton, including Newton.

> There's no reason to not keep following the data.

Yes, and in the recent case of registering FTL neutrinos data was followed right up to faulty connection in the measurement device.

> And every time the correct solution eventually reached was not 'alien technology at work'.

Then why not let these scientists reach that conclusion if that ends up being the same.

> That nullifies all the science since Newton, including Newton.

Einstein nullified Newton's science. That's the way science works. We know Newtonian physics and General Relativity are incomplete. There's significant evidence that we are witnessing something that is breaking our current known laws of physics. With more data we can rule out faulty sensors, but we still need to study this.

Why are you so adamant about not studying something interesting? If we were all like you then science would never advance.

I don’t assume anything (nice strawman) other than that there are coherent explanations that would explain the presence of non-human technology in our atmosphere that do not require things like FTL travel. If we are going to weigh “extraordinary” phenomena then things which would require breaking known laws of physics far outclass those which do not, and many people jump to the conclusion that for non-human tech to be here it would have to have violated known physics. (It sounds like you are in this group.)

Could be a projection https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2020/05/11/us-nav...

They even patented it! Yeah that's pretty obviously what this is.

Patents don’t have to work, you don’t even have to provide a demo.

I have 4, I would know.

There are people who have patents for anti-gravity propulsion systems so this is hardly proof of what it is.

Anti-gravity doesn't have working demonstrations available: https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma

To me this sounds like if I was saying "as an owner of a bank account, I witnessed decisions of the French budget that I do not understand. It must be secret money".

He is a pilot, and saw stuff. Since there are not always data driven evidence (we just do not know, it could have been this or that) it is easier to say UFO.

Maybe this is incompetence of the ones who monitor the sky, and they want to hide it. Maybe we cannot explain it because we do not know if this was a bird or a plane.

Saying "UFO" is a bold word, that requires bold evidence. The fact that the super secretive army does not want to show their data just fuels the conspiracy.

What is OVNI? Is this French for UFO?

Yes.

Sorry, yes. Edited to UFO.

Objet volant non identifié

Objet: object

volant: flying

non identifié: Unidentified

On the subject of the term UFO.

The term Unidentified Flying Object is perfectly fine. But then some people say "Aha, you mean aliens, right". No, It is like the SQL NULL, No unidentified object matches any other unidentified object. If I meant aliens I would have said it was an Identified Flying Object(IFO) or perhaps an Extrateresteral Flying Object(EFO), But all I said was that something was flying and I could not identify it. Once you identify it, it is no longer a UFO.

Apparently The military abandoned the term UFO mainly because enough people attached more meaning to the term than it actually has. And it got awkward to use because of that attached meaning.

the Unidentified part is ok. but one plausible explanation of many of these is that they're purely optical/EM, ie there's no Flying Object

so at least until we're able to gather more data, UAP is much better

There is a genuinely terrifying explanation that fits all of the data-points: That something about routine exposure to the physical effects of flying military jets effects a pilot's perceptual accuracy.

This is also definitely something that would be on the hush rota; if your seasoned missile operator just reported overtaking Santa's sleigh at Mach something, it wouldn't inspire much confidence in either the new recruits or the public.

Combine that with targeting systems that likely have a strong false-positive-bias and you have a recipe for Earth having been visited by little green men.

This doesn't do much for the data point of on-video capture of some such phenomena, though: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52457805

It sort of does: Whereas normally the person operating the camera would immediately identify the neighbour's Bombay Black 'Mr. Pickles'; now we have some fuzzy footage being sold to the tabloids that might be a puma roaming the wolds of north Wales... Or the aerial equivalent.

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence etc. We should never underestimate human capacity for self delusion and fighter pilots are certainly not privileged in that regard.

It’s also worth considering why this seems to be a phenomenon that exclusively effects military aircraft. I can certainly imagine that the military would not mind if it was seen as the last line of defense against a mysterious, extremely powerful force, especially when we’re effectively in peacetime. Apparently the aliens didn’t pick up an interest in the tens of thousands of sorties flown over Afghanistan or Iraq. It’s also worth remembering that the CIA was recently extremely vocally concerned about a mysterious “sonic weapon” death ray that turned out to be either frog noises or simply non-existent. The US government has shown that its quite willing to completely fabulate or at least tacitly support bullshit if it serves their purposes.

We spend trillions in military programs. If many pilots are saying they see something crazy in the sky, and are backed by other eye witnesses, on board radar, and supporting ships radars, the only reasonable response is investigations. There shouldn’t even be a discussion about that, it should be an immediate default.

Yeah! It’s only our fear that it is legitimately something revolutionary that causes us to ‘protect ourselves’ by not looking at it… and it’s that same fear that causes us to pretend it is not legitimate, only because we’re afraid that it is. Which then causes us to not just do the rational thing of facing it and investigating it. We’re basically denying our first highly-informative impression because we don’t want it to be true. Humans are wack

It also shows the outstanding success of the psyops in the 60s to discredit anyone reporting UFOs.

Once you remove your socialised biases, it would seem obvious there's something intelligent there worth investigating.

> Once you remove your socialised biases, it would seem obvious there's something intelligent there worth investigating.

Well, yeah, but it's not my socialised biases, I don't have any about this topic!

And it's not even generally Westerners, a lot of Indians, Chinese, Brazilians and folks from everywhere have the same fear--despite their history (but you know everyone these days is "modern" and skepticism of the Old Wisdom is trendy, sadly). Some of that fear, sure, is psyops, but less than you think. Probably more than half is simply the terror that our Human Myth is wrong. Ryan Graves (post author) said it well in a podcast (KONCRETE, I think). Paraphrasing:

  Most people don't have the ability to integrate this information into their reality and continue their day to day life immediately. It would require longer contemplation. So instead of doing that, they just block themselves from seeing it.

Further, there is something in various sovereign airspaces that refuses to abide by international flight rules.

These videos just look like optical artifacts of the lenses of the cameras, as discussed here: https://youtu.be/jHDlfIaBEqw

Is there any evidence that there's more to these videos than that?

The countless eye witnesses for one.

Human perception is easily manipulated by peer pressure.

So is human misperception.

That doesn't really make sense. If I show an optical illusion to one person and he gets fooled, showing it to n=1000 people isn't going to suddenly make the optical illusion real.

There’s tons of evidence that Mick West is wrong and these are not artifacts of the lens https://twitter.com/the_cholla/status/1598090753011781634?s=...

What an extremely annoying, pompous video. Doesn't inspire confidence in their ability to be neutral and factual in the slightest, assuming that its what they're actually striving for and not just a "dumb conspiracy theorists" propaganda piece.

I'll admit my bias up front of hoping that alien life does exist. That said, I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument that much of this could be explained with equipment malfunctions given the prevalence of identification from military sources. However, one thing I'm not sure I understand is why it's happening mainly in the U.S. America is a gigantic exporter of weapons systems, especially when it comes to aircraft (much to France's ire). Wouldn't some of those same malfunctions/anomalies be happening in other countries who are using the same equipment?

Well, it happened in Brazil in 1986.

https://pt-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Noite_dos_disco...

I can't believe this meme still works in 2023.

To those that haven't worked it out yet: Stories about UFOs act as a cover for what is a very sensible, ordinary and legitimate activity: maintaining secrecy around capabilities of spy craft. It provides cover by making in-credible any revelation by local residents and so on of actual probably very ordinary and boring aircraft capabilities. It lets their actual capabilities "fly under the radar" so to speak when you play up whimsical capabilities.

The pessimistic part of me thinks that was a top secret black project of either drones or sensor interference.

The optimistic part of me thinks that was part of galactic refugee flights that hide themselves in deep ocean, using the humans as shields and can only be detected by the Empire if close enough. This part of me sincerly believes I will join the resistance by invitation.

I saw one myself when I was at University. Was watching night sky, lying on a beach at Black Sea resort. Basically it looked a regular satellite crossing a night sky of which one can usually see more than enough. Suddenly the "satellite" has made an instant 90 degree turn and kept going before disappearing over the horizon.

You might have seen two satellites. The second one appeared to intersect the path of the first from your perspective just as the first one faded from view.

Total BS. What you described would've been very noticeable. Especially "fading" of visually slow moving satellite.

No, That's not how it works. From the perspective of an observer on the ground, a satellite can seem to suddenly disappear as it passes into the Earth’s shadow. It's entirely possible that you saw two different satellites.

https://www.space.com/6870-spot-satellites.html

>"satellite can seem to suddenly disappear"

And another one conveniently appears at the same point and same time just going 90 degrees different course? Sure.

Yes, that can sure happen. Some satellites are in low-inclination orbits and others are in polar orbits. There are many such satellites and their paths will occasionally appear to intersect. Seeing that is just a matter of luck.

a lot of weird stuff is happening all around us all the time

maybe 20 yrs ago I was walking with 3 more friends down a poorly lit alley, it was already pitch dark night, when completely out of the sudden - it became bright as it would be mid-day, all 4 of us where just standing there completely awe struct trying to understand wtf is going on, I remember looking at the sky, it was blue the whole sky was blue with white clouds, perfect visibility, the whole thing lasted maybe 5 but not more than 10 seconds and then it just "switched off" to pitch dark night again, interesting was that there was no fade-in / fade-out the switch-on / off was instantaneous

a few hundred meters further down the road we met some people that we asked if they saw some flash or bright light or smth like that and they were like no, nothing like that, we checked all the media / news / weather reports - no indication of anything that could have cause this

i saw a lot of meteorites / exploding in the atmosphere but those create flashes that are very brief, this phenomenon took order of magnitude longer

even though a ton of statistically improbable things happened to me during my lifetime, this one weirds me out to this day, and yes i consider myself to be sceptic, with engineering / physics formal education (phd) working in science all my life

i believe weird stuff like this happens to a lot of people, they just don't like to talk about it because they are afraid of sounding "stupid" ... but if we want to seriously research such phenomena - we have to gather all the evidence there might be

one thing i am looking forward to is the network as a sensor 6G vision, mobile networks are omnipresent and now (2030+) they will be able to function as "omnipresent radars" thus in some not so distant future we should be able to sense our environment in a multitude of ways continuously, thus trying to figure out wtf just happened should become easier :D

All these UFO photographs, all of which are fuzzy smears. With the ubiquity of excellent cameras, why aren't there any in-focus, sharp photos of them?

We all know the answer.

The Chinese balloon was as big as a 7-storey building, in broad daylight, drifting very slowly.

Where are the excellent high-resolution photos?

There you go https://twitter.com/airlivenet/status/1621954241572257792

All over the news. There are tons of high quality, high resolution photos of the balloon.

The easy answer is that they are all piloted by Bigfoot who is himself surrounded by a blurry cloud like Pigpen in Charlie Brown land thus blurring everything in his vicinity.

The hard but most correct answer is that though many people routinely carry devices with cameras with them everywhere they go, when an event like many described occurs it takes time for someone to get the device into camera mode, focus the camera onto an object or event that could be in motion towards or away from them creating significant issues for the sensors in tracking and focusing past things like window screens, leaves on trees in the foreground, infrastructure in the near field hampering focusing on smaller objects in the farfield, etc.

I have a device that I carry with me that purportedly has a great camera. Yet, in spite of the technological marvel that I have in my pocket, I have on many occasions attempted to take photos of simple everyday objects like birds migrating over my property, insects in my garden, etc that should be easy. Instead I have an impressive collection of out-of-focused photos because it turns out that even with the best sensors and excellent optics it is not trivial to get the sensor to understand which element in the field of view it is supposed to focus on without making some effort to assist it.

I am willing to wager that most people who have these devices, like myself, are not trained photographers and that this fact explains why most photos are poorly focused and have no cultural data that allows one to estimate size or other physical characteristics.

I photograph air shows when they have them at the nearby airbase because planes are cool and I grew up near a large military installation where the air was filled with the sounds of helicopters, jets, and artillery practice way back when the Vietnam War was still a thing. As a kid it was cool to see all this and as an adult it is still cool. The last time the Blue Angels came to town I took hundreds of photos using an fairly ordinary digital camera with lots of megapixels and great digital zoom that works well for shots that are easy to compose. Of the photos that I took from a vantage point less than half a mile horizontally and with the jets passing a few hundred above the terrain I ended up with a handful that are truly well focused and worth showing off. I blame the photographer, not the camera. I also suspect that most of the other people in the crowd that day also have a similar uncomfortably large collection of slightly out of focus photos of objects flying past them on a clear, cloudless day.

To me, the absence of clear photos of any of this is explained by the context that the photographer was operating in at the moment - attempting to take a photo of something they considered strange, exciting, or extraordinary while keeping it in the field of view of the camera, adjusting focus and zoom, etc.

My own bias, since we all have biases or we would not offer and defend opinions so freely, many times with very little supporting evidence, is to believe that something has been happening globally for a long time that is worth studying so that we can all understand why it is happening. I will keep the popcorn popping and enjoy reading any updates or debates and if I get lucky to live long enough to see a clear photo and a definite answer then I will consider that bucket list item crossed out.

And yet, we have many sharp photos and videos of airplanes in the act of crashing, and meteors about to hit, etc. All taken by someone who was coincidentally carrying a camera.

Then maybe I should just accept that the easy answer is the correct answer.

So UFOs are now UAPs, but at least we're sliiiiighly further on the path to admiting that they're either Chinese, Russians, Americans, or very surprising.

And I agree it's something to be monitored, and we must not assume any sighting is a joke - but it does not mean we have to assume any sighting is extraordinary either.

It makes sense to slow roll UAP/ET phenomena anyway, as they probably understand that beings of an emerging intelligence tend to align to whatever they percieve as powerful (just as other animals become dependent on human garbage dumps) and adapt to the dependency instead of evolving and developing themselves freely according to their natures.

The dependency arrests their development, and ethically, who wants to be around just another bunch of pets? I could see there being some distinction between domestication and actualization, where the former stunts an evolution and the latter develops and accelerates it. The more interesting question around UAPs for me is under what conditions would we elevate a species on earth to participate as peers in our own civilizations, and what would the analogous criteria be for us to level up in the same way.

This conversation is going to happen pretty soon me thinks, just about computers running AI models rather then animals.

FWIW, the guy who wrote this article, Ryan Graves, is one of the aviators who flew and witnessed these, in addition to David Frevor (also mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Ryan was interviewed by Lex Fridman, a very good talk I think that felt balanced on the subject.

For convenience, here's a link:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=qLDp-aYnR1Y

p.s.: l33tman, including a link to referenced materials will add greater value to your comments and often be appreciated by others.

The press and politicians started hyping up the UFO issue last year when it was clear that we were headed for cold war 2.0.

It is a great narrative to get more funding, get people interested in space and the MIC, etc.

The timing is suspect, it seems like just another manufactured crisis.

That doesn't actually make sense, though. UFO believers were losing their minds thinking "disclosure" had finally come, but most politicians never even mentioned it and the press never presented it as a crisis.

If the government wanted to create fear and panic in order to justify funding, they had numerous real-world scenarios to draw on. Manufacturing a meme about UFOs is a stupid way to do that, assuming "it was clear that we were headed for cold war 2.0."

The report itself didn't even manufacture a crisis. It was lackluster at best, failing to reach a definite conclusion, much less hype up an imminent threat that presumably needs funding.

Truthfully, it can be both.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, etc.

For example with project bluebook, UFO sightings have been discredited through ridicule and served double duty as smokescreen for legitimate secret military development such as the U2 spy plane.

that doesn't make any sense though. UFOs dont get people interested in "space". if its aerospace then rockets and spacecraft do that just fine, and if its hard sciences then there are a billion other cool, real things. the MIC? yeah UFO people are famously pro-government and pro-military. the most well known media featuring UFOs/aliens, the X-Files, is full of government-related conspiracy theories.

I'm really surprised by fascination with mystery that many HN users display here.

After all software developers and systems administrators of all people should be the first to doubt veracity of output of various devices and what their users believe about them and their output.

Besides, US military has a history of intentionally misleading the public about what they are developing, with cover stories of aliens. Is it that hard to believe that they managed to convince some of their own? Does presence of alien intelligence on Earth really seem more plausible given interstellar distances and how much we know about our own solar system?

Topic aside, people have blind spots when it aligns with their beliefs.

Well, if you distill it, it's perfect for HN: Imaging/artifacting/tech issues (interesting), some country has technology that is beyond next level (interesting), Aliens (interesting).

That's not nearly as fun.

If civilian claims he saw UFOs, I assume they are in a different set of mind.

If a military aviator claims he saw UFOs, I assume they're helping cover TS stuff

If I witness a UFO myself among countless others with no doubt about our sanity, I will more readily believe that C.S Lewis' "space trilogy" daemons have been sent by Lucifer himself than I'll believe in super-luminous travel.

So you’re saying there’s a chance?

Sure. Except for something that is mathematically proven, never assign 1 or 0 probability.

I just don't believe aliens are likely generally given the universe's density vs the speed of light

Michio Kaku said something in an interview a while ago that struck me: to think about the universe being billions of years old, there is no reason there aren't planets out there millions of years of advancement ahead of us. And just imagine what we might be capable of (aside disaster of course) with another few million years of progress?...

Well, there is more to it. That is one of the many interpretations of Fermi Paradox.

But there may also be a great filter that might be preventing any civilization from reaching a certain tech level.

Call me a cynic, but the most likely explanation for all of this is the Military-Industrial Complex looking for small ways to keep obscene tax money flowing into it.

The rebranding of "UFO" to "UAP" is a dead giveaway, just as it was for changing the "Department of War" to the "Department of Defense".

I don't understand why people jump straight from "this is real" to "this is alien tech"?

To me, the public apathy shown by policy makers is exactly the reaction I'd expect to see if there was some top-secret program going on that either has access to the tech or was attempting to replicate tech a non-US country had.

In both cases politicians and policy makers would be told by the intelligence community "don't worry, we've got this" and be given additional access depending on their clearance.

There are numerous examples of this type of behavior that we know about: Manhattan project, the invention of public key encryption at GCHQ at least by the early 70's (at least 3 years before its public invention) and US Stealth technology are three that jump to mind.

Surely a much simpler explanations for these observations is another similar program?

Anything here that wouldn't be consistent with a tangible plasma hologram being broadcast from a nearby military installation?

https://www.google.com/search?q=tangible+holographic+plasma

> However, just this past week, a Chinese surveillance balloon shut down air traffic across the United States.

Untrue. The shutdown of air traffic was due to a glitch in FAA's NOTAM system.

It's when events get conflated like this that Chinese allegations of a coordinated media attack gain cred.

Stopped reading there.

Imagine a civilization, long dead, leaving a gravestone. A laser in orbit of there homeworld, beaming short "candles" aka datapulses to the projected locations of worlds in other habittable star systems.

We can see these worlds, we could beam a message there, even a short story how we failed with warnings.

So what could be seen at the endpoint? A flickering light disk traversing a cloud cover, with the speed of planetary rotation. (400 m/s)

I do want to believe, that this is whats out there. Lots of failed societies trying to warn us, the message encoded in math.

Exponential Series.. for 100 years. Zero forever.

I wrote a bit about Lt. Graves and other military sources here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/uap-evidence-summary-skepti...

As much as I'm thankful for Graves' work, I'd been hoping another pilot had come forward with new information, or even just more validation of his stories.

https://www.uap.guide/ is a great compilation of all official/verified evidence of UAP activity.

Maybe it should say something about a subject when talking about it requires courage and « debunking » it just requires an anonymous account on social media and the same set of blanket « arguments ».

> Congress must reveal the truth to the American people

the military and intelligence communities have no idea what to do with this information, they've probably shared a lot of it with defense contractors who are scratching their heads, and congress and the administration have no idea what to do with this information, and it serves absolutely no purpose sharing it with the American people. We don't even know if it is information. It's a nothing burger.

hey, there might be aliens out there in the vastness of space. do you feel better now?

Trying to rename UFOs to UAPs seems like a waste of effort to me. I don't think anyone that's already convinced they're made by aliens are suddenly going to be convinced that they're not.

If anything, this will fuel their speculations of cover ups, and they'll probably even think this name change was ordered by little green men.

I don't think anyone getting emails and letters about this stuff are going to see a drop in their volume about this stuff.

Ever get the feeling this is how cats feel about laser pointers?

Are there reports of UAP by other countries around the world?

Reports of strange things in the sky have been around for decades and are not confined to the US. It has been a global phenomena but it has recently gained a lot of air time in the US due to release of at least one video.

I think there UAPs are either

* Atmospheric effects

* Debris from space launches, or other kind of debris in the atmosphere

* Artefacts in optics/radars

* Human illusions

* Secret flying devices from various countries

* Aliens

I think the top 4-5 possibilities are very likely. Realistically there are a plenty of cases where it's impossible to refute more interesting hypotheses, but since they are much less likely and there is no strong direct evidence for them, I personally don't consider those too seriously.

On the one hand, there are those whom favour the phenomenal over the mundane. On the other, there are those too quick to dismiss the phenomenal for the comforting familiarity of the mundane. Yet, the truth cannot be found unless both are dismissed out of hand until the root cause is known. I think the military should take these scenarios seriously and investigate them objectively.

If there is sensor data it’s a glitch.

If there are eye witnesses they’re unreliable.

I guess to nail this down it’s going to take something like wreckage.

But then how would we authenticate wreckage?

This pilot and another, commander David Fravor, have both given separate accounts that there are very technologically advanced craft well beyond US capabilities in US airspace (detected by multiple radars/instruments) on Joe Rogan's podcast. It's very interesting and would love to hear honest reports from the government on how much the level of activity is increasing.

There's a pretty compelling set of amateur analysis of the US Navy reports on https://www.metabunk.org/forums/ufo-videos-and-reports-from-... if you care to read a skeptical take on the topic.

Maybe a dumb question:

Is it more probable that the UAP are extraterrestrials OR is it more probable they are an ancient civilization with advanced technology like Atlantis or Wakanda.

The latter doesn't have to find earth or violate the known laws of physics.

I think its a camera flare fwiw; but as I read through the comments it was an interesting thought that occurred...

Or is it possible they are future humans. Perhaps time travel is only possible backwards with no return trip forwards.

The Gettier Problem: True Justified Belief without Knowledge: https://academy4sc.org/video/the-gettier-problem-true-justif...

Flying saucers appear throughout art of basically all times, the most obvious being [1]. World War 2 pilots reported foo fighters which could be a natural phenomenon but may be related to UAPs.

But let's assume they are human. Why would a country keep this tech secret instead of shouting about it to demonstrate their total superiority? If China had it they'd have invaded Taiwan by now. If Russia, they'd have Ukraine. If the US it must be such a deep black project that those running it haven't called Biden and said "Joe, it's us. We're trying to keep it secret. Can you shut up about it?" But none of those things have happened.

Now imagine there wasn't a sigma around aliens. We all know that statistically we can't be alone, but "where is everyone?" Maybe they've been here all along which is why SETI missed them. Or their tech makes ours look like matchsticks and we'd never detect them because they're so far advanced.

I'd say we're either looking at sensors that malfunction so significantly so as to make artists from a few hundred years ago paint UFOs, or they aren't us.

This stuff should be investigated with an open mind, even the possibility of aliens.

[1] https://www.cantab.net/users/michael.behrend/repubs/j_geoman...

https://petapixel.com/2022/03/14/famous-navy-ufo-video-was-a...

Sure, have FTL travel technology, master deadly space travel, but waste time and effort buzzing around a planet instead of parking in orbit and scanning everything while the world spins on its own energy.

Or even send anything other than drones at first with all the unknown.

If you are interested in this new angle on UAP, check out the Merged Podcast (https://youtube.com/channel/UCHN8Do9rEyOTVNjL2I38yiA).

The real question is how many of you want to hang out with these guys. They are probably a bunch of nerds. Secondly, once they start empregnating your hot brunnettes you'll be like, why didn't we listen to the fighter pilot.

People would rather believe that hundreds of military personnel are misreading equipment or swamp gas is messing with their sensors than there's some phenomenon we can't explain.

Johnny Harris just made a good video on this last week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQSxY7TR6mI

I felt like he should've been more clear that the government declaring "we don't know" is down to "we can't immediately identify" and not "there is no explanation". The night vision triangles shown being one example of this since they were declared "we don't know" and then immediately explained by the public.

So let’s see, over the course of centuries, you can see these things but they have had zero material effect on anyone on earth except the pilots that saw them.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IZ091JnsDAs

> I witnessed unidentified anomalous phenomena

This is more a "you" thing than a "phenomena" one, methinks.

The clever aliens always make the evidence they leave ambiguous enough, and then they enjoy themselves reading the threads.

If a ufo came they either come super sized that half the population on earth can see at any given moment or they’d come invisible.

Every few weeks there appear some article about UFO. Is it propaganda for justify investment to military technology?

If you haven't listened to it yet, highly recommend the Ryan Graves episode on the Joe Rogan Experience.

Or the one with Lex Fridman.

https://youtu.be/qLDp-aYnR1Y

If the places to learn this info are JR and Lex Friedman, it can't possibly be true.

Podcasts are just a form of easily digestible popular media.

If you're actually interested in learning see UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean.

There are many such books with independent accounts of those who have experienced strange phenomena, that are all consistent with each other. These books are well researched and highly sourced with credible witnesses.

I suggest you reserve judgement on what is possible or not if you haven't engaged with the available evidence.

Oh I have. I also read all the legal documents for To The Stars; I thought it was notable that the marketing all sort-of kind-of offers to release alien hyperspace drives but none of the SEC documents do and their startup valuation doesn't include any.

Yeah TTSA is a mystery, and people in UFOlogy don't really know what to think about it. On one hand they've done a lot to further the dialogue, but the weird spin they put into it makes what they do put out harder to take seriously.

I used to occasionally watch JRE and at the time found some of the episodes to be interesting thought experiments. But then I watched one episode where the guest expert was talking about a topic in which I had enough familiarity to recognize that they were completely bullshitting their way through the interview and attempting to sound mysterious in order to avoid providing any factual information. Recalling the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [0], I concluded that every previous episode I had watched was equivalent BS and I haven't watched another one since.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...

That doesn't seem to make much sense. Even if one guest is 100% bullshitting, why would that mean the next guest is too? I mean, it'd be fair to conclude that Joe is full of shit since he's always there, but with all of the people who have been on the podcast I can't imagine all of them are frauds who have no idea what they're talking about.

Stay skeptical, by all means, and don't count on the show to fact check everything for you, but why automatically dismiss them all as BS without evidence and without even hearing them out? If you found the show interesting before, you're probably missing out.

A good reason to not read the papers either.

What's the consensus on the most plausible rationale interpretation for these sightings?

The most rational statement would be that we don't know what they are so we should take some time and effort to find out.

Let's say UFOs exist. What are you gonna do about it? Develop more advanced weapons to try and kill them?

Until we have physical evidence, these reports are just distractions with no useful purpose.

I don't get it. In recent years a number of people who I know and I view to be very intelligent have started talk to me about how they believe reports of aliens trolling US fighter pilots and that the US government is covering this up. And I'm aware that "trolling" might be viewed as an uncharitable way of looking at it, but I actually think that's the most accurate description of what's being reported in these sightings...

Before I say anymore though, I think I'm someone who could easily believe in UFO sightings. I have had reoccurring nightmares for the last decade of my life involving alien invasions of Earth. They're always slightly different, but in general I have no idea how to protect those I love and no matter what I do everyone dies. I'm certain the reason I have these nightmares is because I view the risk of an ET encounter in my lifetime to be reasonably high given how rapidly our technology is improving. And I suspect that encounter, should it happen, won't end well.

But despite these predispositions I still think these reports reek of BS...

The descriptions of these sightings would imply that the aliens have highly advanced technology - far beyond anything we're capable of. And if they can move with the flexibility and speed described, and are aware of the presence of the US fighter jets as is claimed, then they probably don't need to make themselves visible, but are choosing to.

So then you have to ask why they want to be seen and if they're trying to send us a message? But if that was the case then what message are they even sending by occasionally trolling fighter pilots with their superior manoeuvrability? Maybe it's a threat? But if they wanted to say, "we're here and we're far more advanced than you - don't piss us off", then presumably there would be better ways to do that? I mean if a large portion of the people you're trying to send a message isn't even certain about your presence, let alone your message, then you're not exactly doing a great job.

And then on top of this you have to ask why is the government would even cover this up? This clip sums up why I don't really get the narrative that the US has an interest in covering up such undisputable evidence of UFOs, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTHB8iC1C0E

The only explanation that makes sense to me is that we're being routinely visited by intergalactic trolls. And while the US government are aware that weird things are being reported it's not really clear if these sightings are accurate, if they're even aliens, and if they are aliens what the message could be.

If you believe these are UFOs and have an alternative explanation that makes sense, then please help me out. I'll probably have nightmares for the next year, but I would still like to understand why I'm wrong.

One hypothesis for why keep it hidden: if true it's existentially terrifying and we can't do shit about it anyway, so why worry everyone? Even if you don't agree with the logic, it's not a difficult viewpoint to imagine.

> Even if you don't agree with the logic, it's not a difficult viewpoint to imagine.

So is it a secret all governments and all fighter pilots worldwide are keeping? And if so why are they still keeping this secret when there are seemingly no consequences in leaking top secret information about the most significant discovery in human history to the media?

Of course, the alternative here is that just a select few US fighter pilots have experienced sightings like this. And that might make sense because if that's was case then presumably the US government doesn't have indisputable proof that these sightings are extra terrestrial in nature at all, so there is no top secret UFO reports. That would explain why these pilots are free to share their BS about aliens to the press, but it would be unproven BS, and not some top secret government cover up.

But seeing as you believe it is a government cover up, do you believe SETI and other orgs looking for ET life are a psyops or just extremely incompetent compared to fighter pilots?

And why is it always US fighter jet pilots making these claims anyway? Has any passenger onboard all of the commercial Boeing 747 flights ever made a tictac observation? And for that matter has any Boeing 747 pilot ever made these observations? Has any air traffic control operator ever seen anything suspicious on their monitoring systems, or do the aliens just like trolling the US military specifically?

Am I crazy, or do you honestly not see how none of this makes sense if you're thinking about it from a reasonable standpoint? I understand there could potentially be an explanation for all of this but you really have to do mental gymnastics for any of it to make sense.

I didn't say I believe any of that, I just said it's pretty easy to come up with a motive for keeping it a secret. You read much, much more into my comment than was actually said.

I'm one of the people that believes we're being visited and that the government knows and is covering it up.

There are rational explanations I can come up with for why the government would want to cover it up. You do not want the public to panic, nor do you want the public to know that we cannot control access to our own airspace. There's also an element of this where you want to study a potential enemy without them being aware that you are aware of their presence. In other words I think it's possible that those who made this decision did not want to induce a change in their behavior by it becoming clear that we are aware that they are here. I think you also do not want your geopolitical competitors to be aware of their existence, because that starts a potential arms race in which competing nations reverse engineer their technology before we have successfully done so.

Some of these justifications fade with time. For instance, I think the chance of public panic decreases as people become less religious + more people become aware and acclimate to the possibility that we are not alone thanks to the introduction of aliens in our pop-culture / media like TV shows and books.

As for why the aliens do not explicitly and unambiguously inform us of their presence, my thinking is along the lines of this comment further up in the thread

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665738&p=2#34667035

> It makes sense to slow roll UAP/ET phenomena anyway, as they probably understand that beings of an emerging intelligence tend to align to whatever they percieve as powerful (just as other animals become dependent on human garbage dumps) and adapt to the dependency instead of evolving and developing themselves freely according to their natures.

> The dependency arrests their development, and ethically, who wants to be around just another bunch of pets? I could see there being some distinction between domestication and actualization, where the former stunts an evolution and the latter develops and accelerates it. The more interesting question around UAPs for me is under what conditions would we elevate a species on earth to participate as peers in our own civilizations, and what would the analogous criteria be for us to level up in the same way.

There may be a philosophy that we need to develop naturally in order to not arrest our development technologically and culturally. I strongly believe that mankind has to experience the consequences of our actions in order for us to have lasting change on our belief systems, ethical views, and behavior. I believe that, hypothetically, them allowing an event like WW2 to occur or even allowing the use of nuclear weapons at the end of the war in a context that wasn't an existential threat to the survival of the species serves to decrease existential risk in the future. I think even with something like climate change which they could presumably help us to avert, they do not do so because mankind likely needs to experience the consequences of not caring about the natural world before we collectively come to our senses.

I would otherwise think that they are studying us scientifically and simply do not want to contaminate the experiment, but their apparent lack of care about being observed by military fighter craft makes me think that this isn't the case.

One of the more believable encounters (due to the sheer number of witnesses + none ever changing their story) I've read about involves an alleged landing near a school in South Africa in 1984, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident. A few of the children claim that the aliens in this encounter communicated with them telepathetically, sending them mental images of environmental disaster and climate collapse. The whole thing has the air of some unintended and unauthorized encounter.

The intergalactic troll thing sounds ridiculous, but everything I've typed sounds ridiculous. Trolling does seem to be supported by the evidence though. I don't remember which video it was, but one of the fighter pilots from one of the Pentagon confirmed videos indicated that after encountering one of the craft, it shot off to the destination that the pilots were headed which was something like 100 miles away in 60 seconds iirc. Our alien visitors seem to have a sense of humor, which I suppose all things considered is better than them not having one.

I don't think you should have nightmares about any of this. Even though I believe that we are being observed, it is not proven and even if it were, we can only wildly speculate what their intentions are. I take solace in the fact that they have likely been here for a very long time and our development has been unimpeded. Similarly, I suspect that to develop the technology that they have you require a stable society for a long period of time. You don't get stability if you are a particularly warlike and malevolent people. It seems likely too that the trajectory of intelligent civilization is to grow more moral and caring over time with less violence. It seems to be the trajectory mankind imo.

The trolling hypothesis makes the most sense to me. If these are non-terrestrial that means that getting here is relatively simple given the sheer number and variety that are reported. If that's the case and these things have no interest in colonization, resource extraction, or elimination of a competitor i.e. we are thoroughly beneath them in every way that makes me think the zoo hypothesis is the most likely, though I would rename it the natural park hypothesis. There's probably a big hyperspace sign above us that says "Don't feed the humans, please remain in your vehicle at all times, this area supervised for unauthorized contact attempts" and the trolling we see is the occasional harebrained tourist who wanted to tease the monkeys.

Hm, I mean I would agree this is the most reasonable explanation assuming the sightings are accurate, but you still have to question why none of them make more effort to communicate...

Something I and others like to do when visiting monkeys at a zoo is try to interact with them. You might not be able to have a full conversation with them, but they're still curious and interested in looking at objects and things you might have on you.

Why doesn't one of these trolls ever show us something really cool and definitively make their presence known? I just think if I were visiting the Earth zoo and I wanted to troll I'd probably do more, like put on a cool light show above NYC or something. It seems annoying fighter jets is probably one of the more stupid things an intergalactic troll could do - unless they're trying to provoke international conflicts or something...

You can always start believing some of the abduction and contact stories. A few of them are hard to dismiss, the ones of particular interest are unfortunately the ones where people have been physically harmed by the experience. There are also a small number of recovered material cases but most of them wind up with the material going missing at some point.

If you want a reason to believe in cover ups and the governments actively hiding this stuff just imagine what it was like for the native Americans to come in contact with Europeans for the first time. There might be a good reason for there to be efforts on both sides to prevent contact.

Let's talk about aliens visiting Earth. There seems to be this issue that isn't brought up frequently in favor of discussing things like the Great Filter (which is unlikely). This is a less fun story.

Space is big. No, bigger than that. A LOT bigger than even that! Your brain can't really grasp these distances. Our closest star is still over 4 light years away. There's 41 stars <15 light years away (approx our stellar neighborhood). Within 50ly there are 1800 stars, but most of these are red dwarfs. There are ~150 stars that are similar to ours[0]. Most of our assumptions about Drake style estimates say the likelihood is not high that we'd find life from a set of 150 stars. (here's binning up to 5kly[1])

Let's suppose that an alien civilization is able to travel faster than the speed of light. How long is it going to take them to travel here even if they're 50ly away?[2] Even at 10c that's 5 years. Even at 50c that's still a year! (a year is probably reasonable time, but the speed is unreasonable).

So to find alien life on Earth we'd have to have one of a few things happen:

1) Luck. Even if probability is low, there's no reason we couldn't just be lucky in having a relatively close neighbor and that they are significantly more advanced than us.

2) Alien life is extremely common. Far more common than our guesses. Not just life, but life more advanced than us! They're also good at being hidden (we can't find their radio signals despite looking specifically at these stars first. They could have just advanced way earlier and be past radio (why abandon radio?)). They would also have to either a) have pretty fast space drives (mind you >= 1c breaks our understanding of physics. See point 3) and/or b) be pretty willing to travel vast distances/spend a long time traveling (decades to generations). To travel to Proxima Centauri (4.2ly) at 0.5c you would track >3.5yrs onboard and >8 from Earth/"off ship" (~2/~4.5 at 0.9c).[3] Remember that the time "off ship" is still seen by the civilization sending the ship, so beings doing this would likely be giving up their lives at home. c) Aliens can send remote ships that either have extremely advanced AI (willing to wait years to recover that data) and/or the ability to communicate with said ship faster than the speed of light (we still have no physics mechanism for an ansible and this would break our understanding of causality).

3) There's ways to travel SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the speed of light. At these distances even 100c can be slow. This _shatters_ our understanding of physics, causality, and the universe[4]. They are ALSO able to drop out of warp being undetected (even our hypothetical FTL drives and wormholes have huge gamma signatures. That energy has to go somewhere and it is a lot of energy).

So I'm not saying that it isn't aliens, but consider that space is a lot bigger than you even thought. I don't think many people consider this aspect of space travel when they are imagining aliens. Probably because this makes for extremely boring Sci-Fis (a few do consider this, like Ender's Game, but it is not common). These distances are so far beyond what our brains were designed to understand that even our wildest imaginations don't give us a reasonably okay intuition.

[0] https://www.icc.dur.ac.uk/~tt/Lectures/Galaxies/LocalGroup/B...

[1] https://lovethenightsky.com/stars-within-100-light-years/

[2] 50ly is fairly arbitrary, but near an estimate of civilizations that would be capable of picking up our radio emissions under the assumption that they had amazing detection capabilities and could detect a very weak signal with a lot of noise (the sun produces pretty strong radio emissions)

[3] https://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/ (for our 50ly example at 0.9998c will get you to Earth in ~1yr on board time. Still 50 years "off-ship")

[4] https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

I'll believe aliens exist when little green men walk up to me, shake my hand, and start discussing the engineering particulars of faster than light travel. Until then...

UFOs are only spotted in USA. Either Americans are liars or the rest of the world is blind

Also UFOs are only seen in poor conditions by those with poor quality cameras.

It's never in the middle of the day, ground level, bright sunlight with a DSLR.

I shouldn't reply to an obvious troll account, but just because I've seen this claim come up several times now, and because it gives me an excuse to drop some high strangeness - UFOs have been spotted all over the world. It isn't just a US thing, although one could always argue the effect of the influence of US cultural hegemony on sightings elsewhere.

Some entertainingly noteworthy examples:

Japan Airlines Cargo Flight 1628 (1986)[0]

Warminster, England (1964)[1]

Tuscany (1954)[2]

Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England (1980)[3]

Varginha, Brazil (1966)[4]

Voronezh, Soviet Union (1989)[5]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Cargo_Flight_1...

[1]https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/638338/warminster-thing-...

[2]https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_incident

[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident

[5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronezh_UFO_incident

They do make a decent point tho. I don't see articles in the BBC, CBC or NHK every couple months about these things, since I've been following (recent history), it's mostly been the Americans who frequently talk about/spot this stuff.

Troll account? damm it so many snow flakes who cant have others voice out their opinions/observations.

It is very fascinating that it is not discussed in other democratic countrise.

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