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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

Too bad the aliens stopped visiting so prominently the moment camera phones became ubiquitous.

I keep hearing folks say this in a way that grossly overestimates the capabilities of most modern camera phones. I have to ask, just how clearly does your phone take images of airliners, drones, high-altitude balloons, and satellites? Don't get me wrong, I'm not into claims of extraterrestrial visitations, but I am annoyed by the habits of lazy armchair skeptics, whose snark does more to distance true believers from rationalism than they may realize.

More clearly than not taking a video of it. It'll show a bright dot, but a video will at least show a bright dot zooming unnaturally along the sky.

There are lots of such videos. But the strength of that data is not that strong. Haha! :)

If you have something like, right-angle change of direction, or high-res details it gets better.

Can you link some of these videos?

I think the USS Omaha video is one of the most anomalous videos.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/13in2...

https://thedebrief.org/pentagon-confirms-leaked-video-showin...

https://www.foxnews.com/us/underwater-ufos-display-capabilit...

As an aside note look into Timothy Gallaudet mentioned in the last link.

Here is one of his most comprehensive interviews, watch the first 10 mins (and then the whole thing) quite mind-blowing.

https://www.youtube.com/live/wGHAs10vMso?si=1z-f85-I0fSrpjOZ

Some of the crap ones or some of the good ones?? :) Seriously asking :)

The “lights in the sky” stuff has always had better explanations. I watched a C-5 fly over low at night in the Adirondacks and it was very odd; very UFO-y until just before it passed over us.

It’s the “the spaceship landed next to me in my farm field and aliens came out” claims that have faded away.

Why was a C-5 ufo-y? What made it look like that?

Dark, landing lights, engines on idle at low altitude. (Presumably landing at Fort Drum soon.) Could only see the big light seemingly hanging there silently in the sky for much longer than seemed plausible.

It was only when it flew directly over the lake we were staying at that we saw it was a cargo plane.

I saw a white and red orb slowly rotating high in the sky above me in broad daylight. I was convinced I was looking at a UFO, right up until I faintly made out the "Virgin" logo on what was likely a hot air balloon seen at a 180 degree angle

> The “lights in the sky” stuff has always had better explanations. I watched a C-5 fly over low at night in the Adirondacks and it was very odd; very UFO-y until just before it passed over us.

I've witnessed quite a few odd lights in the night sky, myself! And an equal or greater number of military aircraft flying overhead, between bases, by day. None of which I've ever managed to get a good photo of, even when it's a bomber passing over low and slow, much to my disappointment.

> It’s the “the spaceship landed next to me in my farm field and aliens came out” claims that have faded away.

I recall quite of lot those stories also included electronics behaving weirdly, which would make for quite a convenient excuse. Though I suppose a phone might preserve some evidence of that. But surely enough of those prone to making more outlandish claims aren't thinking of that?

> It’s the “the spaceship landed next to me in my farm field and aliens came out” claims that have faded away.

I've had one of those experiences.

I was very young - maybe 12 or so - and my memory of those events makes little logical sense. I had a friend with me who saw the same things, so I'm sure it's not a completely false memory... but I was also suffering from sleep paralysis at the time.

I don't even recount the story any more. It's counterproductive - why bother analyzing an old memory like that when I know my experiences at the time weren't reliable and none of it makes sense from a scientific perspective? There's nothing to be gained.

There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits.

I personally put zero faith in them, because quite a few are obvious fakes, and the rest are just completely unverifiable, so they are not worth thinking about.

But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...

> There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits.

I don't think you got the point.

Before camera phones were ubiquitous, the bulk of reports were very elaborate and fantastic tales where the so-called witness played a central role in the story.

Once everyone started carrying a camera, all we see is questionable light shows taken from a very long distance.

Strange, isn't it?

Is it strange? I'd say it's fair to assume that potential alien visitors would want their existence to be hidden, or at least not known to the broad population[1]. Working under that assumption, isn't that exactly the behavior you'd expect?

It would be incredibly unlikely for humanity to be the first civilization potential aliens make contact with. They'd probably have a lot of knowledge about interactions with lesser developed civilizations, which would inform the risk they can take based on the developments made. A civilization without broadly available personal cameras would logically allow for much closer interactions.

Let me just add that I don't believe the sightings are real, and I don't believe aliens are visiting earth - I just really dislike using faulty logic to "disprove" this stuff.

[1]: If potential alien visitors wanted their existence to be widely known, it would be easy to do so through conventional news mechanisms (e.g. media or politicians). Since that hasn't happened it leaves two options: there are no alien visitors (the incredibly likely solution), or they exist and want to stay hidden, for whatever reason that may be.

> Is it strange? I'd say it's fair to assume that potential alien visitors (...)

Just because you personally can't provide an explanation for a photo or a video, which I might add can very well be fake and often are, that does not mean you can fill in the explanation field with nonsense. That's what nutjobs and conspiracy loons do.

Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic. That's no better than what nutjobs and conspiracy loons do.

> Sure, but that doesn't mean you should argue with faulty logic.

The faulty logic is undoubtedly jumping to conclusions that just because you personally don't know the origin of something, that automatically means it's a fantastic story. It just means you don't know. That's it.

That's how you get lens flares being described as aliens.

Again, I'm not disagreeing. I thought I repeated "I don't believe aliens are visiting us" in my comment often enough to make that clear.

I am only commenting on your point:

> Before camera phones were ubiquitous, the bulk of reports were very elaborate and fantastic tales where the so-called witness played a central role in the story.

> Once everyone started carrying a camera, all we see is questionable light shows taken from a very long distance.

> Strange, isn't it?

This argument is not based in logic. Don't argue against "aliens" and the like by making points that are not based in logic. Find arguments that are based in logic.

No, I get what you're saying.

To be clear, I don't believe we're being visited by aliens.

If we are, though, they're obviously extremely advanced. To put it mildly. So clearly they would know that relatively high quality cameras are now ubiquitous, and adapt their behaviors accordingly if they preferred to remain unknown to the general public.

If I were the government I'd probably swamp those outlets with fake photos to drown out any real ones and convince people it's all fake.

> But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...

...of things that turn out not to be aliens, which is the OP's point.

I have tried to photograph an aeroplane and also the moon with my iPhone 12 Max. The image quality is dismal.

You need one of those digital cameras that swap in a pre stored high resolution image of the moon .. they're magic!

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/13/23637401/samsung-fake-moo...

To me, that is actually consumer AI done right.

"Our AI noticed you were trying to take a picture of your cat. Here is a better picture of a cat instead."

Yep, phone camera technology has been deliberately held back by Majestic 12 to prevent evidence of their activities being collected.

Here's a pretty decent video of one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBdEeHYDuyc

That's fascinating, I wonder what it is.

I have no clue. But it's hovering without rotors or any jet propulsion engine, and it's rotating in mid air.

This shape specifically (black triangle with white lights in each corner and an independent round red ball in the middle) has been reported numerous times over the decades, most prominently presented in the Belgian UFO wave 1989-1991 [1][2], including F-16 chases.

[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vague_belge_d%27ovnis [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7psGj4M1ZI

I couldn’t even take a video of an enormous search & rescue flare on a chute less than 1 km away at night and have it show up. If that’s legit, those lights must have been blinding

Same with Ghosts, I guess they're anti social.

Cameras don't have minds. Mind is not a camera. We do not know the nature of consciousness nor the true dimensionality of our reality. Joshua supposedly made the Sun stop and so do gurus in India (as a matter of routine) per numerous first hand reports, but no camera has ever captured it.

You don’t need a camera to prove the su stopped. The consequences of the sun stopping, or rather the Earth ceasing its rotation, would be detectable by an extraordinary number of sources and means worldwide. And yet, no one seems to have ever noticed such an anomaly.

That is exactly correct. Now please read what I wrote again..

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