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UFO Evidence From SOHO Satellite

Anonymous Coward writes "EuroSeti is set to reveal during the week of Jan 24-27 National Space Centre in Leicester, UK scientifically sound and verifiable evidence based on observations taken by the SOHO satellite and other satellites that indicate UFOs are present within our solar system. For the past two years, hundreds of extraordinary UFO-like images have been gleaned by a Spanish-based team using two space-based satellites. NASA initially tried to explain the images away as pixel faults, passing meteors or asteroids, etc., but when a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up.'"

57 of 749 comments (clear)

  1. One question? by RaZ0r · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If UFOs are in our solar system then why hasn't SETI picked up any signals??

    --


    - Think for yourself, question authority.-
    1. Re:One question? by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't do any good to look for signals that we either wouldn't recognize or even see at all.

      Who is to say that a more advanced civilization would even bother communicating with Radio? That whole "Light Speed" limit kind of makes communication by this method rather worthless.

      I'll leave scientifically valid theories as to other ways they might communicate to someone advanced enough to figrue that out.

      --

      "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
    2. Re:One question? by brianosaurus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think the best reason for space-travelling aliens to communicate with radio is that a primitive society like ourselves might be able to hear them.

      Assuming they're not just cruising around stealthily, looking for planets to wipe out, and are in fact searching for other societies, sending primitive beacons would be a good way to find them, since we would be more likely to be able to answer them. Using their latest communications technology would go right over our heads.

      Obviously they would use something more advanced for their own communications (assuming they've figured out space travel, they've probably figured out lots of other neat stuff).

      On the other hand, they could be using SETI's approach and just cruise around listening for signals with their AM/FM/8-track stereos in their pimped out rides.

      --
      blog
    3. Re:One question? by Q+Who · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Three words: you have no clue.

      This "quantum pairing" doesn't allow passing of information.

    4. Re:One question? by sql*kitten · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who is to say that a more advanced civilization would even bother communicating with Radio? That whole "Light Speed" limit kind of makes communication by this method rather worthless.

      Even if you assume that that light speed is an absolute limit, there are good reasons not to use radio over any distance greater than a few hundred metres. The reason is simply efficiency: if you know more or less where the entity you want to communicate with is, why waste energy by broadcasting the signal on other directions? Over short ranges, broadcasting is good because it gives you freedom to move relative to a relay station, but between relay stations, hard links like optical fibre, or directional transmission by laser or microwave are the way to go.

      This can explain also why SETI@Home haven't found anything. The period of time between an alien civilization starting to broadcast radio and then realizing that there were more efficient ways to communication would have to overlap with the period in which our civilization was listening for said signals. Not only that, but even if a civilization would have overlapped at 50 lightyears, if they happened to be 200 lightyears away, there would be no overlap. We are talking about mere decades out of millions of years. Maybe exactly the signals we were looking for passed us by just before radio invented.

      Further, the limitation of lightspeed in communication is only really a problem if you assume that the users of it have to worry about time. I think it is reasonable to assume that before any civilization makes it any distance into space, they will have solved the problem of aging for themselves by whatever means.

    5. Re:One question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful


      Three words: you have no clue.

      that's four words, Fucktard.

    6. Re:One question? by Sophrosyne · · Score: 1, Insightful

      They aren't looking for radio transmissions like you'd find pumping out of your local FM or AM station. They working on the premise that Alien lifeforms use some type of energy for power, like electricity. Every electrical device gives off some kind of Electromagnetic field and produced radio waves. Yes there may be some super intelligent squids living at the bottom of an ocean on some planet light years away, but I think seti is most interested in finding life that is a lot like us.

    7. Re:One question? by Mac+Degger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      As I was reading your post, it struck me more and more that what you were saying does not at all add up in comparison to what I've read on the subject in Scientific American and Science. But then came this:

      "Additionally, if the two photon are emitted exactly 180 degrees opposite of each other, and both are traveling at velocity c, the transmission of data has a theoretical velocity of twice the speed of light."

      This just doesn't fit with current physics. Why? Because those photons travel in a reference frame...it's not called general/special !relativety! for nothing. The photons (and the data) travel at a speed of c...also relative to each other, due to the space-time dilation effect (ie it space-time compresses the faster you travel). Thing is, we don't know why or with what mechanism paired particles retain that odd connection...that's why it's called the 'strange attraction' :) We just know that it happens. And it has already been used to transmit data...check out the Scientific American of a couple of months back, which had an article about how this was done for not just a particle or two, but for two whole volumes of gas.

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    8. Re:One question? by myowntrueself · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I totally agree;
      "Further, the limitation of lightspeed in communication is only really a problem if you assume that the users of it have to worry about time. I think it is reasonable to assume that before any civilization makes it any distance into space, they will have solved the problem of aging for themselves by whatever means."

      But I once was stunned into mental chaos when I heard the eminent Carl Sagan completely and unequivocally dismiss the possibility of extraterrestrials visiting Earth on the grounds that it would take far too long to travel over the vast distances involved. Carl Freakin Sagan! I thought the guy had imagination.

      After that I realised that he was, after all, a pothead like myself...

      Only I allow myself a bit more imagination when I am stoned out of my gourd.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    9. Re:One question? by Mac+Degger · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's not data traveling, that's assumptions you are making. And that's not actual data (except in the sense that you can say "based on this, I now make this assumption; the data I have consists of that assumption").

      There is a HUGE difference between data and assumptions.

      It's like saying royalty travels at an instantanious speed, because as soon as the king is dead, his son is king. No data has traveled, and you also don't know at the time that the king has died that something has happened: you only know that that transfer has taken place when you hear the news...so it's not even like royalty, as royalty travels at the speed of newsbroadcasts :)

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    10. Re:One question? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Remember that "current physics" has no working
      model to reconcile quantum level behavior with
      general relativity.

      "current physics" is broke, but we're still
      waiting for evidence from any of the smart
      people proposing various and sundry
      improvements/counter-theories.

  2. Id love to believe this but.... by Liquidrage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ill believe evidence of UFO's when the evidence isn't a link to a UFO-centric site.

    1. Re:Id love to believe this but.... by iCEBaLM · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yeah, absolutely, because you know it's true when it comes from a dog groomers website. Or when you see the remains from a squished alien who fell out of his spacecraft and landed on a concrete sidewalk of NYC on stileproject.com.

      I mean really, who else would have evidence of UFO's but the UFO centric people who have been researching them. Just because they're looking for it doesn't mean it isn't there.

      -- iCEBaLM

    2. Re:Id love to believe this but.... by Raiford · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I guess the logic is: if an atheist states that God does exist it is a far more credible statement than a sermon from Jerry Falwell.

      --
      "player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
    3. Re:Id love to believe this but.... by PylonHead · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, that's the kind of thinking that makes one skeptical, and skepticism is the knife that divides science from psuedo-science.

      If someone has been hoping to find something their entire life, and claims to have found it, you should take their claims with a grain of salt.

      If they can convince others with less of an emotional stake in the issue to repeat their experiments and those people come to the same conclusions, then you might have something worth posting on slashdot.

      --
      # (/.);;
      - : float -> float -> float =
  3. now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    if you can get the american public to believe it.

  4. Why by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why has it become such that UFO = flying saucer?

    A "UFO" is just an unidentified flying object. Anything whizzing through the air that I can't identify is a "UFO", whether or not it has anything to do with spacecraft from another world.

  5. Grrr...not even pseudo-science - an advertisement! by EchoMirage · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Dammit, editors, RTFLA (linked article)! I quote from the site:
    On Tuesday, 7 January 2003, Mr. Mike Murray, one of the founders of EUROSETI, visited the offices of UFO Magazine to conduct a WORLD EXCLUSIVE filmed interview. With his kind permission, that interview - which features a healthy selection of these images - can now be viewed on our website.

    Those wishing to attend the lectures at Britain's National Space Centre in Leicester should book their seat a.s.a.p. with EUROSETI. Tickets are £20.00 each and available NOW!
    Even if there had been linked information (there wasn't) why should this type of very skeptical pseudo-science make the front page? What's next, a link to the cold fusion magazines? Perpetual motion devices?

    This article exemplifies the growing problem of apathy amongst the editorial staff of Slashdot. I'm disappointed, too, because I like this place.
  6. ufo conspiracy garbage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please can slashdot not post crap like this in future?

    So they found some satellite images with some objects (asteroids / space debris) that hadn't yet been named / catalogued as it only showed up in a tiny mesh of 4x4 pixels before it crashed into the sun. Because of lossy image compression artifacts they think it looks like a UFO and NASA stops talking to them (something the UFO nuts take as "proof" that they're right).

    Big deal - I'd stop talking to them as well.

    Now they want to sell tickets to a "conference" where they'll reveal all. Wow. The only thing this scam is missing is an official from the Government of Nigeria / promise of Hot Teens / free Viagra / cheap home refinancing.

  7. I'm confused by DasAlbatross · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What the heck does "UFO-like" mean? Is that something that's been identified, but looks like it hasn't? Or is it something that you know you can identify, and the name is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't remember it?

  8. Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by Malcontent · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What difference does it make where the evidence is presented? Why don't you instead ask if the evidence is stong.

    --

    War is necrophilia.

    1. Re:Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by Liquidrage · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Because unless you plan to do your own detailed scientific research into the evidence, the source is what matter most.

      Can you trust the source?

      If a professor at Cal-Tech released this, I would be midly interested. If it was then further verfied by a research team from the University of Arizona and then later by another team from a Sweedish University, then I would consider it pretty legit.

      Now, if you have the resources, the training and capability to validate claims yourself then by all means go ahead. As for me, I use my "BS detector" to the best of my ability but in the end I know where my shortcomings are and in these areas defer to the experts.

    2. Re:Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What difference does it make where the evidence is presented? Why don't you instead ask if the evidence is stong.

      Because evidence that appears on its face to be strong yet comes from a completely incredible (i.e., not credible) source can usually dismissed without further examination. It's a time-saver.

      We use this technique all the time here on Slashdot. Remember all those Microsoft press releases about how Windows is more secure than UNIX? Because Microsoft released them, or funded the company that released them, we don't even bother to try to refute them. They're obviously not objective. Same thing here. When a UFO nut says, "Satellite detects UFO!" it's not even worth reading the article.

      --

      I write in my journal
    3. Re:Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Because the UFO Fanatics have been bringing forth crappy evidence for decades and they have no credibility whatsoever as a group. This doesn't mean they're all necessarily wackos, but you can't trust them because so much noise comes from that direction.

      Once this has been verified by some more reputable sources, I'll be interested, and it'll be worth posting on slashdot. I know this place is a fringe site as it is but there's no reason to go THIS far off the path of reason.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Of course not. That would be almost as stupid as the people in the early 1900's believing shitty paperbacks about underwater travel or space travel.

  9. Moderate it up! - good link by kurthr · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It has the link that should have been on the front page for balance, if not accuracy.

  10. Well, of course they're UFOs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Of course they're UFOs... what does UFO stand for?

    Unidentified
    Flying
    Oject

    So yes, they're UFOs, because they don't know definitively what they are. Oh, you mean you think they're alien spacecraft? I don't see any proof of that.

  11. Yes it does by brunes69 · · Score: 0, Insightful

    You quantum pair two molecules, then ship them X far apart. Any modifications to speed or velocity made to molecule 1 instantly take effect in molecule 2, you can use this aattribue to perform a kind of quantum "morse code" by hitting molecule 1 to change its attributes in specific ways. This method of FTL communication is very plausable and has of active reaearch going on in it right now.

    1. Re:Yes it does by mesocyclone · · Score: 3, Insightful

      While you can show statistically that the particles are linked, you cannot transmit any information. The linking is hidden is such a way that it is only apparent when you have the information from *both* ends, and of course to do that, you need to send it at light speed or less.

      This "transcendental modem" idea has been around for a long time, and a lot of very smart people have considered this issue, without ever finding a way to violate the speed-of-light causality (transfer of information rule) - probably because it is inherent in how the universe functions.

      --

      The only good weather is bad weather.

    2. Re:Yes it does by Gabrill · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Recently the effects of gravity were proven to travel at the speed of light. Who is to say that the effects of quantum entanglement don't travel at the same speed?

      --
      Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
  12. Why Slashdot Isn't Journalism, or To Be Trusted by reallocate · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up.

    In case anyone is wondering if the people at Slashdot practice journalism or even make an attempt at verifying facts, that quote provides the answer: no.

    Who says? What "European-led constortium"? Where's the evidence that NASA "clamped up"? What does "clearly none of the aforementioned" mean? That's an assertion of an opinion.

    This story may be perfectly true, but then again it might not be. Meanwhile, /. goes on in full amateur mode.

    --
    -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
    1. Re:Why Slashdot Isn't Journalism, or To Be Trusted by reallocate · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Slashdot does not run every story that's submitted. The staff selects what it wants to post. That kind of selection is a journalistic function. By not going the rest of the way and acting responsibly, /. is just copping out.

      --
      -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
  13. Yet, no radio signals by autopr0n · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This should do a lot to discredit Seti. Either they are UFO loving wack-jobs, or UFO's do exist, but obviously aren't using any kind of radio communication that can be detected using Distributed computing.

    Perhaps these people will put their computers to better use.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  14. clamped up by Openadvocate · · Score: 2, Insightful

    when a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up.'"
    Don't we all know the feeling, when some moron just keeps on talking and we really want them to shut up or go away. First my responses gets limited to "yes" and "no", then "ah" and "hm", then I just stop reacting on what they are saying all together.

    --
    my sig
  15. Formula IS right by Baldrson · · Score: 1, Insightful
    You're getting the cart before the horse.

    If your random variables are not normally distributed ('normal' means they have low values of skewness and excess kurtosis) the typical rule of thumb is to apply some remapping function to normalize them.

    If a random variable is in some sort of exponential distribution it will have a high skewness (and possibly high excess kurtosis as well) and the proper thing to do is normalize with log before looking at the Pearson correlation coefficient. This is because the statistical significance math for correlations presumes normality.

    It so happens that a lot of variables on the 50 United States (plus DC) are not normally distributed and taking the log or sqrt gives a better distribution for statistical work.

  16. Re:Who knew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Ah, of course NASA buddies (*) are always smarter than their clueless european counterparts.

    (*) have you ever noticed that most of the brilliant scientists working for it are not americans?

  17. Re:Profile by SecretAsianMan · · Score: 1, Insightful
    Umm... Wouldn't the profile of a flying saucer, viewed from a satellite be, um, circular?

    No. For that to always be true, it would have to be a flying sphere. If it's just a saucer, you might be looking at its front instead of its top and see something else, definitely not a circle.

    --

    Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.

  18. Re:Who knew by rrowv · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Soho stands for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory in this case, not Small Office/Home Office.

  19. Slashdot Jumps the Shark by easyfrag · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Years from now people will reminisce about the late great Slashdot, I predict that a consensus will emerge that this story here was either the beginning of the end or the final straw depending on how you feel about /. today.

  20. Re:A UFO that was in the Sunday Times in Australia by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Notice how the "craft" appears to be at right angles (even with) the frame of the picture (assuming they have not altered the rotation for the newspaper photo).

    This would lend credibility to those who claim that it is an artifact of digital camera construction. The "blur" lines up with the pixels of the camera. If most of the other UFO images aligned like this, it is a dead ringer for "pixel blur".

  21. Timothy? A little unbiased, maybe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Honestly, I don't care if this gets me modded down: when pseudo science, a la roblimo's Alex Chiu "interview" is the norm, I won't bother reading Slashdot. Fortunately, there've been relatively few such articles thus far. Timothy, however, is clearly attempting to change that: first was the Starcraft book review (http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/16 /1630223&mode=thread&tid=160), and now he's posting unverified, unsubstantiated tripe from clearly biased sites. I -want- to believe in alien life! I'm dying to! But I consider myself in the same league as Carl Sagan: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." There's a big difference between the SETI folk, who want to believe in UFOs, but are yet to see proof, and the UFO-weenies, who already believe, proof be damned.

  22. Re:Who knew by JohnFluxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Unfortunetly everything is like that. Rape, death, being short, being bald, being fat, being thin, being irish, blonde, poor... and so on.

    You have just got to laugh - the alternatives aren't good :)

    I'm not being insensitive- I've spent half my laugh in a mental hospital..

  23. Re:Science as a belief system by ryochiji · · Score: 2, Insightful
    >What is really scary is the number of people who won't even entertain an idea because some "expert" says it's nutso

    There's a difference between entertaining an idea and believing in one. I entertain the idea of extraterrestrial life, but I don't think every unidentified flying object is one. I'll believe it when someone proves their existence using logical reasoning and not wishful thinking.

  24. Re:The term "flying saucer" was a 1947 accident by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's also interesting to note that throughout history different cultures have reported seeing flying objects or flying beasts, men from the heavens, and men riding chariots across the sky. Just because they didn't call them flying saucers prior to 1947 doesn't mean that they didn't exist. Those with limited knowledge will give a label to something they've never seen in comparison to something they have seen. What we label "saucer" today ancient people may have called a chariot, a dragon, fenris the wolf, or what-have-you.

    The problem may not be the legitimacy of certain sightings but may be in the fact that in 1947 people were given a term and an image that they could then slap on to anything they saw in the sky that they couldn't explain. Not much better than claiming "Faeries came to visit me last night". I don't really see us as having made too much progress on the whole past the point of those medieval and ancient peoples. We are still speculating about what's in the night sky. We are still labeling something we do not understand.

    "Houston we have a problem"

    "What's the problem"

    "We think we just saw a UFO"

    "Nah couldn't be it was probably just a metorite or a tool or something reflecting off the sun"

    "Uh Houston could you identify that object for us"

    "Oh could be just about anything"

    "Then you're saying it's unidentified right?"

    "Well no not exactly it could be a screw from MIR, or something burning up in the atmosphere"

    "It's burning up in the atmosphere, right. Would that technically be considered flying?"

    "Oh no no no. That would be falling or maybe we call it negative floatation, sky sinking.... hmmmm what will I call that..."

    "Houston. It's an object right?"

    "Well not necessarily, it could be gas or electricity or plasma and have no solid form..."

    "So then what do we call it?"

    "Oh let's see, we wanna stay away from UFO because for all practical purposes we have identified it.... so... hmmmmm... how about PIPTFAB (Partially Identified Possibly Terestrial Falling Atomic Bundle)"

    "Why don't we just stick with Unidentified Flying Object"

    "Well marketing decided that 'flying' seemed to purposeful a word. Plus anytime you say UFO people go nuts."

    "Oh...."

  25. Looking for Hard Evidence... by Cheesewhiz · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I don't care how many rooms full of blurry, patheticly useless photos of Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, or UFOs you compile, these things will continue to be what they've always been -- unidentifiable anomolies, or hoaxes -- until there's unavoidably conclusive evidence.

    Look, every Joe knows what UFO stands for. As long as these objects can possibly be considered "unidentifiable", they're not evidence at all, they're just freak anomolies. Inexplicable, or basically meaningless anomolies are a fact of life in every field of research, and life in general.

    I think I speak for quite a few people when I really could care less, and tell me when something is conclusive. Otherwise it's just more whining about what we DON'T know and can't explain, rather than what we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

    I seriously think Roswell sky-watchers are doing their cause more damage than good by constantly arguing utterly inconclusive anomolies. As long as it's even POSSIBLE to conceive of explaining them as "pixel faults", or whatever, that's not evidence. As such, they degrade their credibility one level further.

    If you disagree, don't mod me down, just reply to this post.

    --

    -----
    "Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
  26. Re:How does the virus work? by Iguanaphobic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    or perhaps the technical hooks in films are just a touch facile nowadays.

    DOn't forget that they had access to an alien ship for 50 years. So our architectures and computer concepts are all devolved from theirs.

    --
    Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
  27. Re:Profile by Steve+Franklin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, the original Ken Arnold saucer wasn't saucer shaped either. It was kind of a cross between a crescent and an echelon. (How's that for historical foreshadowing?) It was only after the media picked up the term "flying saucer" that people started seeing saucer-shaped objects. This type of evolution would tend to indicate something other than nuts and bolts.

    --
    Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
  28. Gimmie A Fucking Break... by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 4, Insightful



    *blink*blink*UFO MAGAZINE WORLD EXCLUSIVE*blink*blink*...

    Gimmie a fuckin break. I click on the only link on this page, expecting to see hard scientific data. What do I see? A bloated-ass animated GIF of a poorly rendered flying saucer, and three magazine covers. One magazine cover has a picture of a "grey" superimposed over the white house. Lovely. The second picture suggests the Moon landing was a fraud, which is a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of engineers who made it happen. The third image suggests aliens are abducting us with spooky-dookie glowing tractor beams. Yeah, thats great. Tons of credibility there.

    This "news" isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell.

    Cheers,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  29. Re:Who knew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I believe that NASA knows the location of and trackes every piece of debris in orbit around the earth. Colisions are not good for satelites, shuttles, etc.

  30. Re:except... by pogen · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Sure, planets revolve around stars, but do they move that quickly? I thinketh not.

    Well, I agree with the last sentence.

    The camera panning and zooming can create the illusion that an object in its field of view is moving.

  31. Let's assume the aliens are REAL (read the rest) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And let's assume ALL the reports of abductees by little white aliens with big black eyes are bipeds, and have hands, feet, fingers, toes, etc... (just like us). If they are THAT similar to humans and Earthly primates, then one of two things occured: 1. (the most likely) They came from Earth before us, aka a "Pre-Adamic Race" - the bible may mention this, and I may be wrong on this; or 2. They put us here and all other bipeds/quadrapeds. I think the former is more likely, but that they branched out to explore the universe/solar system, taking a break to examine the little ape-like primates that we are. It is so very unlikely for these features to develop in species that originated from completely different environments let alone different PLANETS! The Earth seems replete with the right combination of chemical elements to keep life, the economy, and technology interesting. This could be an incredible and unlikely chance event or by divine design, you be the judge, but according to some information out there, WE are the experiment designed by the aliens, who also instilled into our conscious the idea/sense of God or other diety. So many things to ponder...

  32. Re:Not only that by valdis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, the Areceibo dish with its current transmitter and receiver should be able to hear a copy of itself from anywhere within the Milky Way (except possible for the small wedge hidden by the galactic core). And those could be upgraded if we really felt the need/desire to do so.

    We're *well* within the ability technically to make ourselves heard. The problem is being noticed. With that many stars in the galaxy, everybody's transmitting with a -3 AC penalty.

  33. Re:UFOs, maybe, maybe not by sl3xd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is almost a guaranteed thing that the image is an artifact from the imaging device used to take the picture. Even in the absolute absence of all light, CCD's, and to a much larger extent CMOS imagers, have pixels register light when there is none there. It is impossible to observe any light without effecting the picture in some way or another; it's a scientific fact. Toss enough photons at a non-film camera, and there will be ghosting, and there will be 'erratic non-smooth' tails. It's interesting how often people point at a 'right angle' in a photograph, and say "see that right-angle blur? That can't happen in nature." And yet these people are the same ones who conveniently forget that the camera used to take the picture has (gasp!) right-angles in its mechanism. Or the hexagonal lights (can you say 'camera iris' or 'lens flare'?).

    The sad fact is that all too often, people in general (and Americans in particular), believe that they really 'know science', when the reality is that much of what we see is based on an incomplete understanding. We Americans are particularly bad about believing pseudo-science, and its supporters. For that matter, there is a famous test (I don't recall whom did it; please feel free to elaborate), in which test subjects were told to turn a knob which would inflict pain on another person. The 'real' scientists who were performing the test were observing how the average American tends to believe anyone who looks like they are educated about something. The test subjects were told that turning the knob would do no harm, in spite of the actor in the next room screaming in 'agony' and begging for mercy. Basically, there are a lot of human sheep who just want to believe a liar because it's easier than educating oneself, and trusting his/her own judgement-- so they trust the judgement of someone else, often con artists.

    It's this lack of understanding of science that enables groups to claim that the Apollo moon landings were faked. Con artists found some loopholes in what people believe about physics, and exploited them. It doesn't even take a degree in physics to show they're lying, or at least mistaken. But too many people do not know the real nature of how light works, how it is percieved, and how our machines translate and process light into data we like to believe is useful. The fact is simple: Light is extremely complex, and its behavior is still extremely difficult to understand. There is so much about the nature of light that isn't taught in even a mid-level college physics class, that people just think that it must be simple, when in fact it is very, very complex. So when a lie is presented to them, they believe it fully, because it 'makes sense', even though it is pure rubbish.

    --
    -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  34. Re:except... by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Brush up on your reading skills.

    "NASA initially tried to explain the images away as pixel faults, passing meteors or asteroids, etc., but when a European-led consortium presented them with images that clearly were none of the aforementioned, they 'clamped up'."

    If the images that "clearly were none of the aforementioned" were clearly of overexposed planets, the above statement remains 100% true. 'clamped up' is a meaningless phrase, irrespective of who's supposed it's supposed to be 'quoting'. I'd suggest that by 'clamped up' (by which I imagine they mean clammed up) they mean that NASA just stopped dignifying them by looking at any more of their amateurish splodges.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  35. Re:How does the virus work? by KewlPC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Face it, Roland Emerich was pulling insipid crap out of his ass (again). All his movies follow the same pattern:
    - Excellent first act, makes movie seem full of potential
    - Boring second act. Dumb melodrama. Lots of talking heads. We usually learn more about the bad guys than we could even want to know.
    - Lame and uninspired third act. Protagonists are down and out, but at the last minute they pull something together and kick the bad guys' ass.

    Take, for example, ID4:
    - First act: aliens come and blow shit up
    - Second act: they're down in the Area 51 bunker for what seems like ages. Lots of "talking heads" scenes.
    - Third act: down and out, all seems lost. Suddenly, Jeff Goldblum has a "Eureka!" moment, and after some trite "Tell my children I love them!" self-sacrifice crap, the good guys win.

    Stargate:
    - First act: the stargate is discovered. They go through it, and come across the natives.
    - Second act: Mr. Crying Game arrives, we get some uninspiring examples of how bad of a person he is. Then he kicks the heroes' asses.
    - Third act: down and out, all seems lost. Then, "unexpectedly", Guy From Supernova won't kill his friends, and Boys Who Rebelled Against The Establishment Because They Saw The True Path help our heroes save the day.

    The Patriot:
    - First act: the colonists get sick of the Limeys and start some shit. While clearly outclassed and outmanned, there is still Hope. We see the Good Guys use their Good Guy Intuition to kick some British ass.
    - Second act: Colonel Bad Guy On Horseback gets permission to do whatever he wants. Cue melodrama about how much he's beating the Good Guys. In a particularly underwhelming scene, Good Guy From Down Under gets whacked by Colonel Bad Guy On Horseback. Mucho mas talking heads.
    - Third act: All seems lost. Both of That Braveheart Dude's sons are dead. The rebels are getting their asses handed to them. George Washington is going to be taking it up the poop chute Real Soon Now. "Unexpectedly" That Braveheart Dude comes up with a plan, and the colonists pull a Hail Mary tactic in the following battle. Cue trite "Dead Good Guy From Down Under told us some insipid 'insightful' crap in Act Two, so we're doing it by building a house" scene.

    Yes, it's true that most movies follow a three act layout, but none are as formulaic as a Roland Emerich movie. None have as uninteresting of a second act or as uninspired of a third act as a Roland Emerich movie.

  36. Re:Who knew by meatspray · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one has accurately coined what it's called when you navigate around outside the atmosphere to my knowledge. If you're on water your sailing, if you're on land your driving, if your in the air you're flying. You could say in space they're orbiting, but that's like a ship in the harbor docking, it really dosen't fit the bill for ocean travel, I'd imagine space travel will eventualy take up nautical terms, due to the numerous silularities. (and all the past star trek movies :) The term UFO was coined at the time when they saw something in the sky,(presumably flying to them) if these are the same kinds of things thay saw back in the day,(whatever they are) I guess you could accurately call them UFOs. I don't really buy in to all this stuff, but if you wanted to get down to it, supposedly these things don't use friction of the air to generate lift anyway so technically if they exist they probably don't 'fly' at all.

  37. Re:Take a look at the image closely. by sbaker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes - your images look quite a bit like mine. I think simple intensity-to-hue
    lookup (such as is commonly used in 'false colour' imaging) is enough to produce
    the yellow and magenta region along with all the subtle shading.

    With modern computer graphics, you can produce photo-realistic images of anything you like. Photographic "proof" is not longer convincing if you can't trust the people who made the picture. This image proves that this particular band of UFO nuts are not trustworthy - so even if they publish an 8x10 glossy of their president shaking hands with The Great Thwaart of Twaarg himself with the seal of a notary public attesting to it's authenticity - I won't believe it.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

    Occam's razor dictates that when faced with a choice between bilinear-blending plus false colour versus hordes of invading little green men in pink and yellow spaceships (yeuck!!) - we should go with the faked image theory until overwhelming evidence shows otherwise.

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    www.sjbaker.org