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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.'"

69 of 749 comments (clear)

  1. Who knew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A Small Office/Home Office satelite would do something the big commercial, governmental and scientific satelites couldn't! Amazing!

    1. Re:Who knew by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not really very amazing at all. UFO means unidentified. NASA probably see thousands of UFOs a day, but since they're probably just rocks or something, there's no reason to get all excited about a few objects that you found someplace where you expected you would find nothing.

      Supposing this isn't some stupid scam, there's no doubt a simple explaination for what they've seen. They just probably aren't skilled enough to explain it, so their imaginations are running wild.

      --

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

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
    2. Re:Who knew by Cerlyn · · Score: 3, Funny

      And how do we know that you, my friend, are not part of the conspiracy to cover this up?

      (/me puts on a tinfoil hat on to protect themself from the programming rays put out by the government that they learned to produce from the Du'horti that they learned from the Ma'khal that they learned from the J'dar that are really in control of us all!)

    3. Re:Who knew by WatertonMan · · Score: 4, Funny
      And how do we know that you, my friend, are not part of the conspiracy to cover this up?

      The conspiracy to cover it up involved the DoS attack aka being slashdotted. The boys in the black jackets knew that no one of slashdot would accept the aliens because they used a closed non-open source computing environment and that it had already been done in Star Trek and X-Files. Plus they are all too hard for regular people to understand anyway. Then the UFO site goes down under the load and the government conspiracy can get back to doing trilateral control of the oil reserves.

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

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

    5. Re:Who knew by zaqattack911 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why do all alien species have an apostraphy "'" in their name?

      Maybe an alian race has an unusually easy to pronounce name. Like "Bob" or "people of Bob"

    6. 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..

    7. Re:Who knew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah. I had a friend who became Irish, and it no longer is funny.

  2. When UFO's Attack! by OutRigged · · Score: 5, Funny

    And when they come to Earth and systematically wipe us out one city at a time, one brave computer geek will upload a virus to thier mothership, and take the whole alien fleet out! They'll make movies out of this!

    Oh wait, they already did...

    --
    RaGe
    We're all just noise on the wires..
    1. Re:When UFO's Attack! by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Funny
      And when they come to Earth and systematically wipe us out one city at a time, one brave computer geek will upload a virus to thier mothership, and take the whole alien fleet out! They'll make movies out of this!

      Just remember guys, a few things we know about these aliens so far: They're VERY susceptible to dying from earth based bacteria (War of the Worlds), their computers can be interfaced via Macintosh computers.. although I'm afraid we'll need to use OS9 or Classic mode to do that since they aren't advanced enough to use a BSD kernel yet (Independence Day), and water is deadly to them! (Signs) Remember this when they start invading guys.

    2. Re:When UFO's Attack! by CybSirius · · Score: 5, Funny

      We could just post the URL for the mothership and wait for the Slashdot effect...

  3. 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 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"
  4. Re:One question? by SuperCal · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think seti looks for signals outside the solar system. I remember reading that they have some sort of system set up to filter out any signals that don't come from the part os space they are checking.

    --
    Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

    1. Re:Why by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Funny

      Verbing weirds language.

      -- Calvin

      --

      I write in my journal
    2. Re:Why by jc42 · · Score: 4, Funny

      A "UFO" is just an unidentified flying object.

      Yeah; I just saw a UFO out of my window here. It landed in a nearby tree. It was probably either a sparrow or a downy woodpecker, both of which are fairly common in this neighborhood. But it's getting dark, and the critter was too far away to identify clearly.

      So it was definitely a UFO.

      --
      Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  7. Can anyone prove the web-site exists? by Jack+William+Bell · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sure, I know they are claiming that the so-called 'Slashdot Effect' has rendered it invisible, but do we have any independent witnesses? Any physical proof? No...

    --
    - -
    Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
  8. 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.
  9. Woops they are gone already! by Prince_Ali · · Score: 3, Funny

    Colonel: "They've seen us! Prepare ship for Light Speed."
    Dark Helmet: "No, no, no, Light Speed is too slow."
    Colonel: "Light Speed too slow?"
    Dark Helmet: "Yes. We're going to have to go right to...Ludicrous Speed!"

  10. Profile by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Funny

    Umm... Wouldn't the profile of a flying saucer, viewed from a satellite be, um, circular?

  11. 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.

  12. Let's hope they come soon. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apple might go really bankrupt sometime and then we have no weapons left to use against them.

    1. Re:Let's hope they come soon. by IAR80 · · Score: 5, Funny

      We could upload them the audigy drivers.

      --
      http://ebgp.net/ccc/
  13. I want to believe, but.. by dr_labrat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Somehow I think there might be another explanation:

    News story

    --
    The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
  14. Buyer beware... by dbarclay10 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Buyer beware. They're selling stuff. CDs for 15 pounds a pop (~25USD), and tickets for 20 pounds a pop.

    Supposedly, you are supposed to be able to view a video interview with some guy, but there are no links to that interview. You've got to buy the CD.

    So, "uh-huh".

    And let's keep in mind that UFOs are unidentified flying objects. A meteor *IS* a UFO, if it hasn't yet been identified.

    In fact, if they have identified it as anything, it's not a UFO any more. :) Significantly less sexy, eh?

    --

    Barclay family motto:
    Aut agere aut mori.
    (Either action or death.)
  15. image filename: Disney.jpg?? by jungd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The name of the image file on the page is Disney.jpg.

    Hmmm.

    --
    /..sig file not found - permission denied.
  16. Consistent Aliens by 1nv4d3r · · Score: 3, Funny
    Good to see they've stuck with the tried and true 'saucer' body style they've used since the 40s. The aliens must be immune to NIH.

    If humans had these ships they'd at least have have fins or something by the next season.

  17. 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
  18. Re:One question? by Q+Who · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Three words: you have no clue.

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

  19. Two Words: Bull Shit. by kevlar · · Score: 4, Informative


    UFO Mag says there are UFO's around the world and we're supposed to believe them? There is absolutely no evidence that even remotely validates their claims that a bright blur on some SOHO images are UFO's, versus meteors, comets or cometary fragments. They don't even describe what wavelength or anything. I say bull shit now!!! The burden of proof is on their shoulders!

  20. alien economy? by Narcocide · · Score: 3, Funny

    mabye the aliens can give me a job...

  21. 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.

  22. It's about time ... by Raiford · · Score: 4, Funny
    ... I have been getting pretty bored and annoyed with the current lifeforms inhabiting this planet.

    --
    "player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
  23. should ask at http://www.badastronomy.com by StarTux · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seeing this type of news on a UFO centric site certainly raises the crap-o-meter, but if in any doubt go and ask real astronomers over at http://www.badastronomy.com

    Its a site run be a real astronomer with real scientists there ready and willing to answer questions.

    StarTux

  24. They have been ./'dotted by StarTux · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can see this adding to their conspiracy theories:

    "The US Govt hit us with a massive denial of service attack after we broke this story, which means they are trying to hide something".

    StarTux

  25. There is no group called Euroseti! by Xtifr · · Score: 4, Informative

    See this link. :)

    More seriously, the first google link is a bunch of eurofolks running seti@home. I seriously doubt that seti@home has generated any pictures of "ufos" in our solar system. The second link is the one above. The third seems to be some crank who regularly gives speeches on "SETV" (the "Search for Extraterrestrial Vehicles") -- he claims to be a "professor", which may be true, as advanced degrees are hardly a prophylactic against insanity.

    So, ooh, ahh, some bunch of UFO freaks have announced that some obscure other group (which may or may not also be a bunch of UFO freaks) have proof (proof! At last, real proof! Mwuah-ha-ha-ha-ha!) of UFOs. Geeze, there's news for ya! Guess what, one group or another of UFO freaks has been claiming that they have proof (real proof, see, it's a genuine photograph of a blob, what more do you want, sheesh!) for years. Wake me when someone with a operating brain gets involved. :)

    Frankly, without a little more than this, I'm sticking with Timothy Leary's theory that so-called UFOs are actually human time-travellers from our future astral-projecting themselves back to our time. :)

    1. Re:There is no group called Euroseti! by iggymanz · · Score: 5, Funny
      Good grief, Slashdot is turning into the National Enquirer.

      I'm thinking of submitting one of these stories:
      • Kabalists Apply Fourier Transform to Torah and Result Proves to be OpenBSD 3.3 Kernel (much sought after UltraSparc III version)!!! !
      • CmdrTaco says: My mother was tentacle raped by a Space Alien (and here I am)
      • Government Mind Control Satellite Rays Make Male Computer Geeks Download Naughty MPEGs
      • Elvis Appears to Bill Gates, Tells him India is Next Market
  26. 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.

  27. UFOs, maybe, maybe not by magi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    ...in the sense of unidentified objects. A few arguments pop into my small amateur astronomer mind:
    • It might be some dynamic physical or electric behaviour in the CCD or optics. The hardware is a few years old, after all, in extreme conditions. Might be water condensating on lenses, might be reflections from ice crystals, might be obscure electric charge dynamics on the CCD.
    • SOHO is located in one of the 5 Lagrange points where it stays at same relative position with both Earth and Sun. Since this is an exceptional point, some space garbage such as rocks or space suit gloves might get stuck in the vicinity of the (unstable) point for some time.
    • UFOs, as flown by some extra-terrestial intelligent beings, might generally be rather small objects. Space is big. SOHO's cameras do not have extremely good resolution and any visible object would have to be either enormous, very bright, or somewhat close to SOHO (and Earth), but between SOHO and Sun. Somehow that wouldn't seem to make much sense.
    • Similar bright objects have not been observed from Earth based observatories, which would mean that it's a local phenomenom to SOHO. This would hint towards the first two possibilities above.
    IANAA, IAAAA.
    1. 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.
  28. 75% of the Variance in UFO Sightings by Baldrson · · Score: 4, Funny
    Maybe now that some more people want to start being scientific about UFOs they'll take a look at improving this formula that accounts for 75% of the variance in the frequency of UFO activity per square mile:

    (FemaleStateLegislatorsPercapita2001*CostOfLivingG roceryItems2000*(AIDSTotalPercapitaThru2001/4+Suic idesPercapita1990+10*MurderPercapita2001)*(America n_Indian_Eskimo_or_AleutPercapita1990+Scotch_Irish Percapita1990)/BlacksPercapita1990)

  29. 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
  30. Damn it by geek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Now I have to filter out Timothy too. I'm down to like 2 "editors" left.

  31. Re:One question? by VoidEngineer · · Score: 3, Informative

    I beg to differ.

    As I understand the process, it works like this:

    Under controlled situations, one heats up an element. General black box radiation will usually suffice, but you typically need to have some weird constraints like using only a single atom as your emitter. Utilizing various methods, such as a laser, you excite the atom such that it emits a photon and an anti-photon (but, remember that a photon is it's own anti-particle, so the quantum pair turns out to be two photons). These photons are emitted in different directions.

    By pulsing the laser and the excitation level of the atom, you can emit photons in a morse-code like manner.

    Now then, utilizing affects of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Schroedinger Wave equation, the trick is to not 'observe' the photons as they are emitted (else, they wouldn't be observable to the folks you're sending them to on the other side of the galaxy).

    Anyhow, assume that these photons travel half way across the galaxy and are 'observed' by some other group. When the photons are observed, the quantum wave collapses, and discrete information is passed from the source of the photons to the observation apparatus. 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.

    That is, by calculating the direction of the incoming photon with the measurement apparatus, one can discretely calculate where the other photon is. Due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you loose the velocity information, however, so you know where the other photon is, but don't know how long it took to get there, or how fast it's traveling.

    This method of calculation, at the quantum level, is not un-common amongst scientists.

    I'm sure I haven't gotten the details exactly right, but this is a basic description of the method.

  32. Slashloid? Tabdot? by radpole · · Score: 5, Funny

    New slashdot headlines:

    Britany Spears impregnated by CowboyNeal.

    CmdrTaco blood is made of taco sauce.

    Timothy's brain is removed and no one noticed.

    Oh well thats why I keep reading slashdot you never know what is next.

  33. 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"
  34. The term "flying saucer" was a 1947 accident by sbjornda · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From An Aeronautical History of Flying Saucers":
    It is important to bear in mind that the UFO phenomenon kicks off in 1947, in the form we now recognize, as a result of observations made by Kenneth Arnold over Mount Rainier. Paradoxically, Arnold didn't see "flying saucers," rather, he witnessed a formation of nine boomerang-like devices, or "D"-shaped with the straight section aimed backward (the reader will recall the comments made by Justo Miranda regarding this most aerodynamic shape). It was a journalistic error that assigned Arnold the term "flying saucer." What really matters is that the saucer myth spread quickly across the U.S., and then throughout the rest of the world.
  35. 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?
  36. A Mac, of course... by dcavanaugh · · Score: 3, Funny

    For compatibiity with the alien systems. There may very well be other aliens (using Windoze), but they can't get out of their own galaxy without rebooting or encountering BSOD. The resources these aliens could have used to improve and stabilize their systems were foolishly squandered on DRM.

    1. Re:A Mac, of course... by Cruciform · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or give them Linux... since they'd be using bleeding edge technology it'd be months before they got working drivers, and the death rays would be offline for the interim :)

      Unless Alien hardware developers are more open with their driver specs :)

  37. Re:Shoddy Thinking at it's best. by AeiwiMaster · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    This is a techniques which the shadow government use to keep there work secret.

    They mix facts with fiction and release it trough a not credible source.
    The most used source is Hollywood.

    You can find clues about real projects in films/series like.
    X-files
    7 days
    Stargate.
    MIB

  38. Re: Mind Control Lasers vs. Tin Foil technology by MisterMook · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dear Sir,

    Thanks to recent advances in technology mind control lasers have never before been as safe and as effective as they are today. Insights from confidential sources have allowed us to make past limitations in our systems obsolete. Now mind control lasering technology relies on non-material interference bands and goes directly into each subject regardless of most terrestrial technologies jamming efforts.

    Please cease your /. revolutionary activities at once and report to your Control.

    Thank you,
    They

  39. 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.

  40. 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.'"
  41. Re:Cool video by thasmudyan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, the video is pretty cool. But I don't think it's genuine. Here's why:

    1. The girl is pointing to the tower and says something like "whats that". The reaction of the cameraman is to zoom right in until we see the craft hovering at the side of the building. I know *I* wouldn't have zoomed in instinctively at once if someone just said "look there".

    2. Although the craft is moving *really* fast (exceeding 2000 kph in my opinion) the girl never looses track and continues to point to its exact location. I know that if *I* would ride a helicopter when a strange aircraft is passing by at ludicrous speeds (tm), *I* would be having trouble to track it in real time.

    3. (now the most scientific point) Towards the end of the movie the aircraft passes in front of the helicopter at a speed of, say, at least 2000 kph. We can't be sure about distances here but let's say it's distance to the helicopter was 10 meters at its closest. Now: passing by in front of a brittle thing like a small mid air helicopter WITHOUT even making the helicopter shake a bit? Hell, the air draft alone (not to mention engine exhaust) should have gotten the heli into serious trouble at those speeds!

    Mind you, I don't know a thing about aviation, that's probably why my analysis is wrong. Any pilots around here? I'd like to hear your opinion!

  42. Re:How does the virus work? by KewlPC · · Score: 3, Funny

    Assuming that the aliens designed their computers the same way we do, there is still virtually no chance of a virus we made even running on their computers.

    1)Completely different CPU instruction sets
    2)They probably have some form of network security.
    3)Even us stupid human sysops know that you don't just run any old program that you get off the network. You verify that the person who gave you the program is trustworthy, then you verify that the program itself doesn't do anything bad by running it on a standalone system.
    4)The only way to get their computers to run our code would be to root their OS.
    5)Of course, we wouldn't know anything about their OS. And since they're aliens, they probably use EBCDIC instead of ASCII ;)

  43. Not it doesn't by QEDog · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a lot of confusion with this. When the particles are, as you called, 'a quantum pair' and Alice measures one of them, the other one assumes the same measured value, so Bob also sees the same value. There is no way to transmit information that way, since Alice doesn't know or controls what value her measurement will turn out to be. But, as soon as she measures, both Alice and Bob has the same, totally useless, random piece of information. Well, not useless, you can use this as an encryption key, but that's another story...

    --
    "There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
  44. Take a look at the image closely. by sbaker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I look at the image at the head of the linked page ("Disney.jpg" - curiously)
    what I see is a VERY low resolution image.

    Look at the red trail behind it. There are a bunch of little raster-aligned
    four-pointed star shapes. (The one on the extreme left is a prime example).

    This is what you get if you take a VERY low resolution image an blow it up
    with simple bilinear blending between the pixels. Taking this as evidence
    of the original image resolution, we can see that the 'spaceship' at the
    righthand end of the image is just about 3 pixels across - but has been
    false-coloured so that the bilinear blending has become magenta and yellow
    bands. Those are not 'real' they are just a part of the false-colouring.

    Isn't it suspicious that the "UFO" is exactly aligned with the raster?

    This is a fake...well, perhaps not exactly a fake - but an intentional
    mis-use of image manipulation to produce an image that was never really
    there.

    You could reproduce this image in GIMP in about 3 minutes flat.

    1) Create a 20x20 RGB image.
    2) Using a 1 pixel brush, paint a diagonal line using bright red.
    3) Fatten one end of the line slightly.

    At this point, your image (if you'd gotten it from a photo of the
    night sky) wouldn't convince you that this was a UFO - would it?
    It could be any kind of a trail, meteor, military jet on afterburner,
    a flare, a firework, anything like that.

    4) Increase the image resolution to 400x400

    Notice how the 'tail' now looks EXACTLY like the one in the
    ufomag web site. Look at the 'star' shapes in the tail.

    So, now let's do some "false-colour enhancement":

    5) Choose 'select by colour' - set the threshold down to nearly
    zero percent and click on a region at the center of the 'head'
    of the trail. Fill it with magenta.

    6) Pick a pixel close to that, fill it with a nice lemon yellow.

    Notice how your image looks startlingly similar to the one
    on the ufomag website. All the artifacts present in their
    image are present in yours.

    Now, I'm not saying that they painted their image in GIMP,
    I'm quite prepared to accept that it's a photo of a real
    world night-sky object. However, the pretty pink and yellow
    spaceship on the right - complete with spooky red glow and
    engine exhaust is no more than a deliberately produced
    artifact.

    The yellow and pink regions are BOTH narrower than the original
    pixel resolution - no feature narrower than TWO pixels wide
    (Nyquist sampling limit) can ever be reconstructed from an
    image.

    Bah. BULLSHIT!!

    --
    www.sjbaker.org
    1. Re:Take a look at the image closely. by IdahoEv · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Okay, that's hilarious. The instant I saw their image, I tried to reproduce it, starting from a 15x11 pixel image in photoshop. THEN I saw this posting.

      Well, here for your viewing enjoyment, are the results of my simulation.

      Cheers,
      Ev

      --
      I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
  45. Simple explanation by titaniam · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This looks to me like an image of an ordinary star saturating the ccd (the cross), with some small portion of the exposure time suffering from a tracking problem (the diagonal smear). Many telescopes have a cross-shaped support for the imaging device within the light path, and what results is a cross-shaped diffraction peak around bright stars. Or, saturation of the pixels under a bright image bleeds out along the principal directions of the ccd. Notice how the cross is aligned with the up and down directions of the image?

  46. 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?
  47. Re:One question? by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 4, Funny
    "Three words: you have no clue."

    Three words: you cannot count.

  48. nasa's hiding something by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 3, Funny
    NASA initially tried to explain the images away as pixel faults, passing meteors or asteroids, etc.

    They are always pulling that kind of rationalization or disinformation.

    Once, when I showed them a picture I had of an alien on the moon, they tried to explain it away as being Buzz Aldrin. When I kept confronting them, they clamped up.

    --
    This space available.
  49. I worked on the SOHO project... by Dr.+Zowie · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... and there have certainly been "UFO's" sighted in some of the images, in the strict sense of "unidentified flying objects".

    Most of them are attributable to dust thrown off by the spacecraft itself -- e.g. one of the instruments would close its door, and then another instrument would see loads of moving specks.

    Other streaks (like the one at the top of the linked page in the article) are often attributable to cosmic rays (often deliberately mistyped as "comic rays" by my cow orkers) or ionizing radiation from the Sun itself.

    The LASCO wide-angle coronal camera often sees stuff moving in strange directions -- most of that is sungrazing comets from the Kreutz family of comets.

    I work at the Southwest Research Institute now, and my coworker Dan Durda has done an extensive search through thousands of LASCO images for moving objects that don't fit the pattern of the sungrazing comets -- because he's interested in "vulcanoid asteroids", asteroids inside Mercury's orbit. He didn't find any, but I'm sure that any alien spacecraft jetting through the field of view would have tripped his algorithm.

    It's certainly possible that these guys have found something new, but remember that "UFO" doesn't necessarily mean "alien spaceship".

    Interestingly enough, SOHO itself registered as a false positive (caught by humans, fortunately) for the earthbound SETI algorithms. It's a strongish radio source that doesn't fit their earth-satellite pattern, since it's sitting at the Earth-Sun Lagrange point.

  50. 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

  51. Did anyone bother to check SOHO's explanation? by chascarrillo · · Score: 3, Informative
    Here's the dirt according to Dr SOHO's FAQ:

    What are those flying saucer-shaped objects in the LASCO images?

    The "funny-looking spheroid" is a typical response of the SOHO LASCO coronagraph CCD detector to an object (planet or bright star) of small angular extent but so bright that it saturates the CCD camera so that "bleeding" occurs along pixel rows. There is a bright horizontal streak on either side of the image, because the charge leaks easier along the direction in which the CCD image is read out by the associated electronics.

    CCD stands for charge-coupled detector, and refers to a silicon chip, usually a centimeter or two across, divided into a grid of cells, each of which acts like a small photomultiplier in that an incoming photon knocks loose one or more electrons. The electrons are "read out" by row (fast direction) and column (slow direction), the current converted to a digital signal, and each cell or picture element ("pixel") thus assigned a digital value proportional to the the number of incoming photons in that pixel (the brightness of the part of the image falling on that pixel). This is the same kind of detector as is used in a hand-held video camera, though until recently, the analog-to-digital conversion was left out in consumer devices.

    If you point a video camera at a very bright source (say, the Sun), the image "blooms" or brightens all over --- there are so many electrons produced in the pixels corresponding to the bright source that they spill over into adjacent rows and column, perhaps over the entire detector. Better CCD's will "bleed" only along the fast readout direction (a single row), and perhaps a few adjacent rows.

    The LASCO and EIT CCD cameras include "anti-bleed" electronics which limit the pixel bleeding around bright sources to less than the full row (and usually no adjacent rows). In the case of a marginally too-bright object, the pixel bleeding will be only a few pixels in either direction along the fast readout direction. Thus, the "flying saucer" images.

    A few of the LASCO images that have appeared on the "extraterrestrial" Web sites show much larger and brighter, but still saucer-like features. These images are in fact obtained with the instrument door closed, but with an incorrectly long exposure. The big "saucers" result from massive pixel bleeding along every row of the detector containing part of the image of the "opal," or small diffusing lens, in the instrument door, that is used for obtaining calibration data.

    If your correspondents still prefer to believe that the pixel-bled images of planets or bright stars are something else, ask them why the extended part of the "saucers" (i.e., the pixel bleeding) always occurs in the same direction relative to the image --- even when the spacecraft is rolled relative to its normal orientation relative to the Sun.

  52. 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.