Slashdot Mirror
Deathbed Confession Says Aliens Were at Roswell
xnuandax writes "The army's explanation of weather balloons in the Roswell, New Mexico incident 60 years ago has been dealt a serious public relations blow. Late Army Lt. Walter Haut had signed a sealed affidavit prior to his death last year asserting that he had witnessed the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field. An article at News.com.au reviews how Haut had worked as public relations officer for the Roswell base and was involved in the original weather balloon explanation of events at the time. This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."
As much as I want to believe aliens are among us, it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico. And the chances of aliens being humanoid in appearance are close to zero.
A-Bomb
It is not like this affidavit is going to change the world or anything. There is absolutely no proof. It just sells newspapers and adds fire to crackpot theories. Even if there was extraterrestrial life, I would not want to know about, or even let any of the crazy people in this world know about it. The reaction would not be good. Humanity is not ready yet.
the craft's name was 'Humpty Dumpty'?
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
Last time I threw an egg it didnt fly :(
So yeah. Scientific testing confirms the theory!
Also, isnt this a repost story?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
This makes Bigfoot real!
He probably died laughing behind his teethes.
THEY WERE FROM ORK
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
to have emitted strange sounds....
"Bite my shiny, metal ass."
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
I want to believe.....
That being said... the U.S. government is remarkably inept at keeping secrets much less orchestrating a cover up of this size.
Same is true of most conspiracy theories.
My name is Jaap Ballspoogen,
and I have a problem!!877@#$%^&45RTFGB!
He was the founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, NM. I think that makes it necessary to take his death bed statement with a grain of salt.
It's hardly a blow. It could be just a BS story that he made up. Maybe he went to his grave laughing at the thought of people taking his sealed "story" seriously. Just look at out of control L. Ron Hubbard's little joke has become. Of course, there's no evidence, just his statement.
" This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."
Mork from Ork?
Shazbot, na-nu na-nu
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
At this point, unless his affidavit leads to compelling and PUBLIC evidence, it doesn't matter whether it was a deathbed joke or and earnest confession. It will come to nothing more than a Discovery Channel episode.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
"Crazy theories 1, regular theories a billion".
No? Well, bummer then because this becomes another in the long history of anecdotes.
Queue all the people saying he only waited until after he died so no one could rebut his story.
Experience teaches only the teachable. -AH
You gotta admit, a deathbed confession deisgned to perpeutate a myth would be pretty funny. I'd be laughing all the way to the mortuary, if it were me...
You're right about the humanoid appearance. What's more likely...aliens couldn't go get their "shuttle" after it crashed cuz they didn't have the technology and just let us discover it OR a secret prototype aircraft development location crashed some flying egg and the people inside were burned beyond recognition. Then obviously the PR people wouldn't be told about the details of the craft cuz it's classified so they were just told what to say by the government and he assumed they were covering up aliens.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
This was posted on digg, and as someone pointed out, Haut also ran a UFO museum. So .. yeah .. no ulterior motives ..
.. who knows. It just a bit odd. Other military people have come forward, including a high ranking general (who released a book). The general claimed all our current technology came from UFOs. Such as the night-vision goggles. This is a fairly outrageous claim even for someone with a rudimentary understanding of electronics.
A simple google search gives one of many such links:
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/07-20-95/cover.htm
Not to say that's the only reason he did that
It's not that I think aliens are impossible. I just am highly suspicious that they'd sneak about so much. Or that our government could keep anything a secret for so long. And crackpots coming out with books on UFOs does not count as the leaks.
Hear! Hear!
You can't keep anything secret for 60 years.
The most recent vast government conspiracy is of course that GWB et. al. Either orchastrated, or allowed to happen and then embellished, 9/11. Of course, all of this hinges on a grand conspiracy being meticulously carried out by Bush Administration. I'm sorry. But THIS adminstration? The adminstration that brought you Iraq and Katrina? I'm sorry, but we've seen the MO for this adminstration and competence, just isn't it.
This eliminates all debate, since we all know that old people who are in the process of dying never hallucinate, and they always remember perfectly something that happened 60 years before. I hope this "confession" is written on toilet paper, because at least then it would have a useful purpose. Obviously its another slow news day.
I agree with what other posters have said. I want to believe aliens exist. If nothing else, I want to see how the major religions deal with it when it is conclusively proven that we are not the only life in the universe. But our government has shown time and time again it couldn't keep a secret if it were placed in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall's porch. There is no way they could keep a secret of this magnitude and cover it up for 60 years.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I read your sig as an explanation of the kind of good it would do us...
Dying Man Has Perverse Sense of Humor
A drop of water is the same shape in any atmosphere (relative to temperature and gravity), so who would argue that people wouldn't kinda take the same basic shape anyway? If they crashed, the idea they were of higher intelligence sheds new light on theories of their conquering ways. They came to Earth likely to give us an intergalactic hug and US air force likely shot them down, thinking they were Russians.
... ... We're all stupid!!
Boy were they surprised!
The mystifying result of that accident sheds light on the nature of the universe itself...
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I thought we had already established that it was the Ferengi?
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Check out this wikipedia article. It has everything that you need to know.
With no evidence they exist, to call them 'rare' is to dramatically overstate the matter. On the other hand, people that jump to wild and irrational conclusions are common as dirt. Total nut-jobs are not exactly uncommon. I think I'll have to go with the numbers on this one.
"All your Eggs are belong to us."
There...now no one else can post it.
I for one, hope that we don't discover advanced aliens- sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from 'God'/magic.
Say for instance God himself decided to pop in, would we think he was an alien? Or the other way around, an alien pops in, would we think he is God?
I disagree, I think there are significant chances they would be somewhat humanoid if they existed. If they move around on land, they most likely need legs to do that. They might have more, but two is the minimum so they might have two. To make tools they need manipulative parts, and they could end up with two there. They would work better if they're up off the ground and a geared more towards fine control rather than being robust enough to walk on. Biology and evolution seem to favor bilateral symmetry, so they would probably have even numbers of limbs at least.
Also, sensory organs would usually work best when they're high up off the ground and able to turn in different directions, so I wouldn't be suprised if they had something resembling a head.
wow
well if true then we can make a real space ship from pastic foil , selotape and balsa wood
and some weather monitoring kit for navigation i expect
given that it may crash is another point , but its got to be cheaper than a shuttle
The Uncle of a co-worker was employed by the Army-AirForce in Ft Worth. He told DeeDee he saw the material from Roswell and it was not a weather balloon. He didn't know what it was but his opinion was the material was not American and maybe not terrestrial.
why the affadavit, which has been "released", is not printed in any of the articles?
"This recent evidence would seem to confirm speculation that egg-shaped saucers are notoriously difficult to fly safely at low altitude."
I'm curious just where this speculation was forwarded. Is there some UFO magazine with articles like "Egg Shape Saucers -- How Easy to Fly" or "Egg shaped versus conventional Plate shaped, which Flying Saucer is right for your intergalactic traveling needs?" or better yet is Consumer Reports planning a Fly Saucer Safety issue? "Flying Saucer Roll Over Crash Test Results -- Egg Shaped Models perform poorly"
Letter To Iran
There is no way they could keep a secret of this magnitude and cover it up for 60 years.
That's what they *want* you to believe, man. See, it hasn't been a secret, has it? People have *known for years* there was a spacecraft accident near Roswell. But the government has spent so much time putting out so much counter- and counter-counter propaganda, nobody can see the truth through the lies.
That's how the government keeps secrets. *It doesn't.* It puts the truth out there with a bunch of *other* crackpot theories, so that it seems like there's no real conspiracy. Like, "Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK," and "Terrorists flew planes into the twin towers," (actually, this one is true, but *it's not the terrorists they claimed!*), or "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction aimed at some three-year-old girl in New York City," or, "Fluoridation is good for you," or "Santa-- Satan. See the similarity?"
It's all about providing the truth alongside a bunch of crazier-sounding lies, and then making the "official" explanation seem more plausible. It's just that simple.
Oh, and those aliens looked just like Elvis.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Just look at out of control L. Ron Hubbard's little joke has become. Of course, there's no evidence, just his statement.
Even better, just look at what happened with that Jesus dude's little practical joke.
"'Son of God.' I slay me!"
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
...and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field.
And the extraterrestrial's name was Zoidberg!!!!!
I got nothin'
The most recent "vast government conspiracy" has to do with GWB and friends hijacking the US Constitution, lying to the world to lead the US into war with Iraq, providing bid-free billion-dollar contracts to close friends, and declaring the Vice-Presidency is outside the law.
I mean, who could believe *that*?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Animals tend to have heads, at the leading end of the body. This head contains sensory organs, often eyes, but not limited to them. Antennae/trunks/feelers are also common, as well as ears (though ears may be elsewhere as well).
Also the head tends to contain a mouth-like orgain for feeding/drinking that often includes teeth or other specialized feeding aparatus. There is also a digestive tract throughout the body and abdomen, leading to a rectum or exit hole. There is also a kind of circulation system to move the necessities of life through the body.
Appendages such as arms or legs are common, as well as wings. They tend to have claws or appendages at the ends for grasping or manipulation.
There may be some things unique to intelligent species, such as a large brain organ, or nimble appendages.
But, then again, their life forms may be so much different as to be unimaginable. Nucular powered instead of solar/chemical powered? Non-Carbon based? Who knows.
all joking aside, i would have been more interested to read the acctual document than a reporters version of it.
as for the Egg, it sounds more like an escape pod than a flying saucer, but i guess we'll never know.
well any darn fool knows that.
This must be a next article in Popular Mechanics Today!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Seriously folk, why should we listen to people on their death bed or to voices from beyond the grave? Do we really think that when people have nothing to lose or are dead they somehow get enlightened and honest?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The fact that there is so much out there, says so. Instead, the feds work by offering up other explanations, and making originals seem crazy. Even now, the feds do a lot of their work in the open. It is just that alternative explanation of what it is, is offered.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I don't quite understand why this is would be an outrageous claim. Let's say that it did come from alien technology, does that mean it's magic? Surely not, even alien technology is planted in physics. "current technology came from UFOs" would simply mean that we now have the technology that may have taken longer to invent by ourselves. Alien technology wouldn't defy the laws of physics. With that said, I'm not saying we did get it from UFOs, but the statement itself isn't outrageous as you claim.
> a serious public relations blow.
From a (yet another) Roswell story? You must be new to this planet. Hope you landed more successfully than your predecessors.
The admission of the photographer of the "alien" autopsies that it was all staged didn't make a dent in the myth, nor did the facts surrounding the captured Japanese Fugu balloon project team building test craft for the Air Corps/Force, and neither will this. The believers, skeptics and Skeptics (the last being Faithful Disblievers for its own sale -- er, sake -- like Randi) will all continue in their behavioral/cognitive momentum for the same reasons that place them in those categories. Why anyone would assume that someone changing their story is now telling the truth just because he's now dead is beyond me. We don't accept story changing from living people (unless they change it to support our particular belief system). Dying might make musicians better and poets tolerable*, but it doesn't make anyone on any side of the Roswell story more credible to anyone on any of the other sides, or more credible period.
(* The former is a popular misconception in the more explicit sense in that people believe it despite evidence and adjust their taste to match, avoiding cognitive dissonance of the changed belief system as well as avoiding grieving for the person that's dead. That's why recent Hendrix releases sell well although the quality is poor, and repeats other works as well as itself by including multiple takes of other, more polished releases. If he were alive nobody would stand for this. And I made up the part about poets because it made for a good sentence. I look forward to its being accepted as "common wisdom".)
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
The fact that statement arises from a deathbed confession doesn't make it any more plausible.
This is just a parallel to the recent trend of old mafia hitmen making deathbed confessions claiming to know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried.
I think this alien story is totally made by the US government to hide something else.. Say all the smart people are busy understanding these BS conspiracy theories... people won't care to notice all the atrocities of US government itself... US government is fast making itself a bad image abroad.. when we talk about aliens being here and all, care to see if it is all just perpetrated to hide something else... a decoy I personally believe that aliens should and do exist and maybe even if US government had found such alien crafts at Roswell, it's unlikely that any government will acknowledge such news so easily. Simple reason being aliens must be more intelligent than us simply by coming here in the first place from so many light years away. This directly challenges the authority of a government being the prime force in running a country. Who can guarantee that some cut wont come up and start worshipping one of these "beings" if they were found ?(I think they are called UFOlogists)
.. it looks like Lt. Haut saw the results of the latest Slashdot Poll before he died.
Humans are notoriously inaccurate. I know people that have mistaken many observances. I put the lack of objective observation on the same level as believing in god, which covers the vast majority of humans on this planet.
This story has the tinfoil hat community buzzing.
--
Just another 105 years to go...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Everyone knows that UFOs aren't egg shaped, they are in fact blue wooden boxes with the word Police written on them
There is no way they could keep a secret of this magnitude and cover it up for 60 years.
... keep a secret secret? Is it possible that we wouldn't have heard about it?
Ok, let me get this reasoning straight.
a) There's no way that the government could keep a secret that long.
b) How do we know that there's no way that the government could keep a secret that long?
c) Because if the government tried to keep a secret that long we would have beard about it.
Just for the sake of argument, what if the government managed to... um
(especially if they used secret alien technology to keep it secret!)
Three Squirrels
OK, so basically it seems a lot of people tend to dismiss any stories like this based on any sort of belief, prejudice, theory, etc. Still, there is a natural impulse on a lot of us to read about them, even if it's just for fun. That's fine. With that in mind, when I read this, I remembered this interesting piece I read not too long ago.
I'm a fan of the band 'Tool'. People familiar with them probably know how they have their own set of beliefs regarding a number of topics that are usually described as "occultism" or "mysticism", and those can be appreciated on their music. Anyway, one day I was just listening to the Lateralus album, and as the last track played, I decided to google the song for a bit, see if I found something interesting about it. Well, interesting was certainly what I found. The following message is pasted from a public forum, it's claimed to be written by one of the admins of a semi-official Tool website, it might make for an interesting read to the casual observer, and if it makes you think, all the better. You can believe what you want. Enjoy.
- - -
I still receive a lot of email about the live version of the 'hidden' track, Faaip de Oiad that was performed during the latter stages of the Lateralus tour which, as I explained sometime last year, would most likely be included on the new dvd (no release date yet, I'm sorry to report). I also still get quite a few questions as to the precise meaning of the Enochian title, Faaip de Oiad (Voice of God), and the strange circumstances surrounding the frantic, some would say paranoid, voice that can be heard on the track from the Tool CD. Rather than answer all the emailers individually, I have decided that it's finally time to explain how the piece initially came about, how the original idea was aborted to better fit with the Lateralus concept, and the truly bizarre coincidences surrounding both the original version as planned by Danny and myself along with the recorded version in which Danny utilized the voice on the "Area 51 caller line", during which time a mysterious satellite outage abruptly knocked the 'Coast to Coast AM' radio program and various other broadcasts temporarily off the air on the night of September 11, 1997 (yes, that's right: 911).
First, let me clear up one thing once and for all. Evidently there are a lot of Tool fans who still think that the words that can be heard on the track were written (and uttered) by MJK (some saying that it's similar to "Cesaro Summability" from AEnima). This is simply NOT TRUE. The obviously distraught caller was real (whether he was perpetrating a hoax or not still remains to be determined, this despite the belief by many that this same person later called back and admitted to Art that he was in fact responsible for the deception). In fact, for what ever reason, I had been recording the program that night, and it was my cassette tape that Danny used on the track. Those interested can probably listen to a copy of the original broadcast in the MP3 format that's available via the Internet. This recording will also contain Art Bell's voice, with his questions and responses that were edited out by Danny for use on Faaip de Oiad. For those who can't quite make out what the caller is saying, here is a transcript (complete with verbal place holders) that was taken from the COAST TO COAST AM radio program hosted by Art Bell and transmitted from Pahrump, NV (near Area 51). There is one line in particular that will take on a new meaning in the upcoming text, but for now, read it in innocence.
TRANSCRIPT (9-11-97)
"I, I don't have a whole lot of time. Um, OK, I'm a former employee of Area 51. I, I was let go on a medical discharge about a week ago and, and... [chokes] I've kind of been running across the country. Damn, I don't know where to start, they're, they're gonna, um, they'll triangulate on this position really soon. Ok, um, um, Ok, what we're thinking of as, as aliens, they're extradimensional beings, that, an earlier precursor of the, um, space program they made conta
...then they headed north west to work in California's orchards.
lol: You see no door there!
"I disagree, I think there are significant chances they would be somewhat humanoid if they existed."
But according to evolutionist, evolution is millions upon millions of decisions over "millions of years". That fact alone means that you will have something that's completely different. Some environments may be earth-like NOW! But that doesn't mean it has been so over those "millions of years". Plus environments are complex things, especially over "millions of years" of interaction. In other words the odds over "millions of years" are against it, even if the laws of physics over "millions of years" are the same everywhere.
How many times did we crash on mars once we made it all the way there? And that was not even something complicated enough to carry creatures. Shit happens in space..At least it always seems to the case when I go. ;)
... that sometimes, people can convince themselves that they saw something, even when they haven't.
I remember reading some articles not too long ago, and they investigated the process of generating false memories and found it to be surprisingly easy. This guy, being the founder of the International UFO Museum and Research Center, could have possibly been just a bit enthusiastic about extraterrestrials and the Roswell incident. Keeping this in mind, I don't think it would be impossible for this man to convince himself he saw some extra-stellar beings.
He could have been so sure, in fact, to write down what he "remembers" seeing in a sworn affidavit.
Just because he made a sworn affidavit does not mean that the man really saw something. As scientists have demonstrated, this might easily be something he created and believed himself.
I guess that takes care of choice #1 on our poll. ;)
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
A little OT, I know, but it took me four attempts to access this article.
I assume 99% of UFO sightings have reasonable explanations including that some of the witnesses are crazy and or lying.
Also I don't believe in ghosts, I've never seen a UFO, and I certainly don't subscribe to any conspiracy theories. I believe we live in a rational well ordered universe, however I read something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights
Where:
1) Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people witness a gigantic V shaped craft up with lights on its leading edge sitting on top of Phoenix.
2) One of the witnesses is the govenor of the state who for ten years is too intimidated to say anything.
3) The event is video taped.
I need an explanation, that isn't flares, cause that explanation stinks. I have to believe a large silent triangle craft exists and that one of the following explanations are true:
1) The craft is built and operated by the US military and they have become so careless as to very slowly fly their top secret, mega sized creation over a large American city.
2) The craft doesn't belong to them.
Sorry I just don't believe this can be explained away by flares and I simply can't ignore it either. Perhaps the most interesting part is the socialogical effect that people will simply ignore an anomoly like this if given a explanation, no matter how weak that explanation is. Perhaps there is a perfectly *realistic* explanation, but I require one. I have a feeling that if a fleet of UFO's landed on the White House lawn and flew away a few hours later, the goverment would say it was just a publicity stunt for a new movie or some other weak ass explanation. This would allow people to explain it away and go about there lives like nothing really happened. Seriously is there any event that can't be explained away with some weakly plausible hypothesis?
Lt. Walter Haut had a great sense of humor.
"Evolution is actually the opposite of that."
Intelligent Evolution?
that Earth is the only planet with life in the universe, with dumb, racist, sexist, warmongering, Walmart-shopping, Country music-listening humans as its stewards?
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Wasn't invented yet
That airbase near there was the first A bomb stash. think about that. This is significant, and what else is significant is the huge deal they made out of it when all it was according to them later was a weather balloon or observation balloon.
The simple explanation is that they (the little dudes) were checking out what the stupid warmonkeys were doing with nuclear fission. Why it crashed no idea, bad caps on the navigation mobo maybe.... stuff happens, mechanical stuff is mechanical stuff, alien or not.
The universe is huge, to think we are the only inhabitants is just cosmic arrogance and astronomical luddism. If we don't blow ourselves up or poison the planet too bad or release biowarfare bugs, imagine our technology in just 1000 years time, said thousand years a drop in the bucket compared to the age of the universe. We'll be cruising around where we want to by then, all over, at least inside our galaxy. It only took us 60 years from powered flight to landing on the moon!
It is way more probable than not that there are other civilizations (life in general), a lot of them more advanced, a lot of them less advanced.
The disclosure project, congressional immunity for testimony now!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
When translated the banner said "Mission Accomplished". That confirms it. The crew were actually Americans from the future.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
The whole problem, in my mind, with the Roswell "conspiracy", is the part that has a flight of P-51 Mustangs shooting down a spacecraft capable of travelling at intersteller speeds. As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft such as the F-22 or the EF-2000. Obviously, the technology required for manned interstellar space flight is easily 50 - 100 years beyond what we have now, and so, the claim seems utterly foolish. In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?
This is my sig.
Crazy alien kids joyriding again, I bet that gave the "Prime Directive" guys in charge a big headache. ;). There could be zillions of explanations.
But I want to know what sort of guy made that death bed confession - maybe it's his last joke on the world. Or maybe it's true.
Late Army Lt. Walter Haut had signed a sealed affidavit prior to his death last year asserting that he had witnessed the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft and its extraterrestrial crew while working at the Roswell Army Air Field.
Great, of all the aliens that could possibly land on Earth, we wound up with Orkans.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Clearly, the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is have the FAA do a full inspection on the flight-worthiness of egg-shaped saucers.
Um, "Egg-shaped" + "Saucer" ? Does anyone else have a problem with that description ?
I digress.
The good news is, the FAA is good at this, and can investigate the paint off a wall. The bad news is, being a government agency, it'll take them a few hundred years, and by that time, Zeffrim Cochrane will already have made First Contact...
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Thank god for that! So it wasn't my girlfriend shoving things into my arse at night then. Damn, will have to visit the florist this afternoon.
So, we can scratch this one from the poll then?
.
Sorry, it should've been "degenerate".
Table-ized A.I.
I hope when I die I can leave behind a nice gag like this one - way to fuck with the Air Force.
Everyone knows that damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. -Pope Pius XI
Big deal 1 guy admits it, the video below shows 22 of 400 senior Government, NASA, Airfoce & other top Military personel admitting it on National/International television that aliens are real & Gov has been hiding it.
The Disclosure Project:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk
Yeah it's almost 2 hours long, but it will blow your mind!
I wonder how much longer they can keep denying the more than obvious.
Nuff said.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
I believe the first F-117 Stealth (invisible to all high tech anti-air defenses) was brought down over Serbia by an AK-47. The Pentagon story is it was brought down with an SA-3 with a hacked radar, but either way a primitive tool brought it down.
Can we discuss this rationally? If we assume that Einstein was right, and faster than light speed travel is not possible, then isn't manned space flight pretty much impossible? My understanding is that Alpha Centauri is four light years away, making a round trip eight years, compounded by the fact that there's nothing there.
To meaningfully pursue manned space flight, how fast would we need to go to make Alpha Centauri functional? I'm not trying to cause trouble here, just uninformed and curious. I'm sure someone out there (especially in this community) has thought about this far more deeply than I.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
I have it from a reliable source that those egg shaped alien craft handle like a pig when you try to fly low and slow.
Wishful thinking i know, but who knows what would happen if the galaxies other inhabitants decided to reveal themselves to us.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The closest star is some 4 light years away, the next one is about 10 or 12, I am not sure. Then it goes up. Lets say they are relatively on our doorstep on a star less than 50 light years away, we still have another 3 years before they will learn their aircraft was shot and about 53 years to get the war declaration message, providing we are able to receive it. And I'd say that around 70 to 100 years before their fleet shows up :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
50-100 years? We wish.
Where is the Undo button for my life? Not to mention the Esc key.
This is the word of some butterbar who spent no more than 4 years commissioned?
Wow, why don't we just as some guy who once had a Greyhound layover in New Mexico?
Suffice it to say that a Lieutenant is not exactly going to be high on the "need to know" list.
This is a hoax.. no aliens at Roswell..
I disagree with the author because he's got a stupid premise - that people can only live 50 - 100 years. There's no law of physics that says we can't tinker with our genes until we can live for 0,000 years, at which point, intersteller flight becomes trivial, if boring.
This is my sig.
If it was really a secret, he may not have been briefed.
"And the chances of aliens being humanoid in appearance are close to zero."
Why would you say that? Assuming it evolved in a similar environment I would expect it to evolve similarly.
Are you familiar with the analogous forms of mammals and marsupials?
He also swore an affidavit in 1993. It is very similar: http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Haut.html. These seem to be things he believed. I recall when Stanton Friedman http://www.stantonfriedman.com/ stayed as a guest at my home when I was a kid. He'd worked with my father, also a nuclear physicist, before and came to give a lecture on UFOs. He also believed what he was saying. I think you need to look for explanations that do not rely on impuning motive in some of these cases.
1 567311210/ref=sr_1_1/105-3124676-0728448?ie=UTF8&s =books&qid=1183345880&sr=1-1 s -selling-solar.html
I'm not one to want to leave behind the delicious contemplation of the Fermi Paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox, so I wait for stronger evidence, but there are many sincere people who are quite sure they've experienced something that can only be explained in this way: http://www.disclosureproject.org/.
I think Carl Jung took an interesting stab and an alternative explanation in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Flying-Saucers-C-G-Jung/dp/
--
Get solar power the easy way: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
"I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence rather than the unknown rational efforts of extra terrestrial intelligence." -- R.P. Feynman
Sooo, you have a signed affidavit? Does it hover? How is it "shaped?"
Guys, he was a PR officer! He and others filling his job receive scripts to read and is told what to say and puts a happy face on everything. Why does everyone think that just because he was there that he had security clearance to see the deep dark secrets they had there? He's nothing more than a mouth-piece and no one to take final statements from as in he was not in the inner circle of people who would be truly in the know. It's like that TXU spokesperson promising that yes they will not raise prices of electricity and yes they were investigating that wrongfully applied bill that became news because it was a slow news day. In reality, this person is told what to say and is in no way connected to the price-setting or policy effecting mechanism. PR, people. Not scientist. Not connected. Just a pretty face to keep the public happy while work goes on, and yet completely oblivious of what's really happening.
And, if the military acquired such precious specimens as alien life, who in their right mind thinks they would actually call an undertaker to make "child sized" coffins for them? They're specimens for study! Sheesh - we'd more likely pickle them in a tub of formaldehyde! We pay top dollar for meteorites and some of the most valuable material on this earth is moon rocks tucked away in NASA vaults - dirt and rocks treated like a priceless treasure and we're supposed to believe that and undertaker was going to stuff some alien bodies in hastily built coffins? Rubbish!
Both of these stories leads credence to the fact that this whole thing is just a fun little distraction with no fact behind it. Enjoy your fantasy.
He was pretty funny, pity his career went nowhere...
-- My Weblog.
As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft such as the F-22 or the EF-2000
Just for the sake of good engineering argument: What if the aliens weren't flying their highest-tech fighter saucer? The F-22 and Eurofighter and the like are military aircraft, built for maximum speed and maneuverability in an atmosphere, and equipped with weapons and target-tracking radar systems. Their sole purpose is to avoid being shot down by other aircraft. A modern civilian airliner could easily be downed by an P-51 (assuming it could be caught at the right altitude...probably close to takeoff or landing.)
Thus far, all the spacecraft built by humans (Soviet, American, Chinese, or Burt Rutan) have been totally defenseless, and generally limited when operating within an atmosphere. Air-to-air combat is not in their mission profile. It's perfectly reasonable that, assuming there are planet-hopping aliens, that they would be ill-equipped to defend themselves in an atmosphere. They could simply have made a simple mistake, gotten a little too curious, and wound up a little too close to the natives.
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
I know this is offtopic but I have to ask. I have installed the free version of Opera 9 to give it a try. My first and most pressing issue is that when I attempt to scroll down in a Slashdot discussion the scrolling is slow and jerky. The smooth scrolling option doesn't seem to help.
It is worth noting that I am using the new discussion system and that I am also encountering problems when I click the plus to expand comments. Sometimes the response is slow and sometimes non-existant. I am used to Firefox and the page scrolls smoothly and the comments open and close instantly when clicked.
I really want to give Opera a fair shot but this is a show stopper for me.
"As much as I want to believe aliens are among us, it just doesn't make sense that a civilization advanced enough to cross interstellar space would crash in New Mexico."
Maybe the contract went to the lowest bidder?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
>Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of >the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself. I think it's unlikely that the base commander would show something this top secret to a lowly press officer. Think of it this way, suddenly a UFO shows up, the Feds charge you as the Base Commander to clean up the site, hide the UFO and bodies and most of all, try your best to minimize the number of possible leaks of this information. So you're not going to go out of your way and show the stuff to the base press officer. He has no need to know, it would be better for you to feed him the same cover story as he's going to give the press.
A spaceship is just that. A spaceship. It probably wouldn't, and I assume this is what the summary meant with its comment on the shape, fly very well when not in space. Whether "not very well" is so poorly that P-51 Mustang could shoot it down or not is debatable. In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades? Now this has some fairly obvious answers. One, as someone else mentioned, is the time requirement for the aliens to get here, the planet they came from learning of them not returning, and then the planet sending out a rescue fleet. Another is just simply no one expected them to return. If we were to pack six astronauts into a rocket and send them off towards, say, Alpha Centauri in search of life or something, would you expect them to return whether they discovered something or not?
Yeah it's almost 2 hours long, but it will blow your mind!
yawn, so will Dr. Greer's new book "Hidden Truth". Apparently, he can invite aliens to visit where ever he is on earth by Transcendental Meditation. Hell, he's been abducted by them too.
Crackpot central! Religious Agenda!
Don't believe me? Read the first two chapters here
And darn it, I thought Disclosure Project was for real. Turns out too good to be true.
Arrgghh!!
I'm just really hoping that this won't lead to another terrible TV series about obnoxious, angsty teenagers with super powers.
(although Katherine Heigl does have a stupendous rack...)
sic transit gloria mundi
Spaceships aren't jet aircraft! Could you imagine a P-51 bringing down the space shuttle? I sure as hell could.
The whole problem, in my mind, with the Roswell "conspiracy", is the part that has a flight of P-51 Mustangs shooting down a spacecraft capable of travelling at intersteller speeds.
I think the whole story is bollocks too, but this isn't a decent reason.
Firstly, just because aliens would presumably come from a different star system, it doesn't mean that every vehicle they have is built for or capable of interstellar travel. Consider the analogue of USA fighter jets in the Middle East: they aren't flying from America, are they? They get carted over on an aircraft carrier. In much the same way, I wouldn't expect aliens to have one vehicle they use for both interstellar travel and recon in a planet's atmosphere. Apart from anything else, wouldn't it be awfully cramped on the journey home? No, I'd expect a much larger mothership and smaller craft for visiting planets.
Secondly, even if you assume they are flying around in our atmosphere in the same craft that they used to get to our star system, it doesn't mean that it's impenetrable at all times. Sure, maybe they have some super-dense, super-light material to handle entering atmospheres that would make it difficult to shoot down. Or maybe they have some kind of energy shield that is only enabled when needed. A blanket assumption that any craft must necessarily be totally immune to our weaponry at all times seems completely unwarranted.
In any case, if an interstellar ship could reach the earth once, why wouldn't they have sent a rescue party looking for their fallen comrades?
Who says they haven't? They could have been and gone, they could still be on their way (interstellar travel takes a while, you know), or they might not even be aware they are missing (for all we know, they could have been due to check in a hundred years from now).
This movie is mind-blowing. It's hard to believe that so many real, honest to goodness high-ranking people would confess such things if they weren't true. Perhaps they just want it to be true, or just want it to be perceived true enough that we begin looking harder for extraterrestrials... but in either case, this video is shocking to say the least.
Can somebody shed some light on this issue as to why these extremely high-placed government officials come to admit these sort of things, whether they are true or false?
The source is an article in news.com.au, home of Rupert Murdoch. The businessman who is preparing to turn the Wall Street Journal into a supermarket tabloid. He's in the business of selling papers, and has a history of doing whatever it takes to make them sell.
Toxic waste.
This is what I've heard, and I tend to believe it.
The place is a mess; tons of projects have been improperly disposed of, and many employees have become sick with what looks like heavy metal poisoning (the government has refused to reveal what it was they might have been exposed to, however, so many have been unable to get appropriate treatment).
Basically, because it's classified, there's no oversight, and because there's no oversight, the place is a disaster. "Area 51" is nothing but a neglected Superfund site where they fly airplanes.
[Sources: There was a 60 Minutes episode interviewing some very sick people, and there were satellite photos in Popular Mechanics (I know, it's a rag), also showing chemical pools, etc.]
________________________
And here's more info on the above:
For the fifth year in a row, President Bush has granted the Air Force an executive exemption from legal requirements to disclose information regarding solid or hazardous waste disposal operations at Area 51.
[...]
Area 51's annual exemption stems from lawsuits filed in 1996 on the behalf of two former civilian employees at the facility. Both employees, Robert Frost and Wally Kasza, died of illnesses attributed to inhalation of smoke from toxic materials being disposed of at Area 51.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuits, Frost v. Perry and Kasza v. Browne, claimed that the Air Force and EPA had violated the RCRA by illegally burning Area 51's hazardous waste in open pits.
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/blgrooml ake.htm
Base workers risking imprisonment came forward to tell CNN how government contractors reportedly used Area 51 as a secret dumping ground. They described how truckloads of hazardous wastes were dumped into large open trenches and set on fire as armed guards stood watch. The workers, who demanded anonymity in speaking to CNN, said they developed health problems after breathing smoke from the burning trenches. They claim their complaints were ignored and that requests for protective clothing were denied.http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/b ases022.html
There's no reason to think that this craft was interstellar capable. All one needs is a "mothership" or some sort of base either on Earth or elsewhere in the Solar System. But my take is that if this is an alien vehicle, then it probably either came from somewhere on Earth or was never intended to enter the Earth's atmosphere under normal circumstances. The "egg-shape" (which is an aerodynamic shape) probably indicates that it was intended to move in Earth's atmosphere, but perhaps unpowered like reentry capsules.
Also, I'm dubious of the assumption of faster-than-light travel. Nothing we've done indicates that this exists and I think we're sufficiently sophisticated to find evidence of this, if it exists. My take is that by the time their home planet hears of it, at least several decades (if not several millenia) would have passed on Earth.I don't see how this has any weight whatsoever. These fools also believe in a big magic sky man and baby jesus and a lot of people claim to be watched over by angels or talk with god or have had near death experiences or lived past lives or have knowledge of some uber secret government plot to kill JFK.
There is nothing here that is "more than obvious" other than there are a bunch of supposedly high ranking people claiming that there is a government cover-up about aliens. So what?! Give me solid proof or a president coming out and stating it in a public address and maybe I'll start to buy into it.
And really, some dude's deathbed confession?! That's the most worthless thing ever. If you're dying, what in the hell do you have to fear from making absurdly false statements?
I have no doubt that there is a great possibility of advanced life outside of our solar system. However, I see no solid reason to believe that they've come across the universe to earth, crashed here, abducted people and that it's all been covered up by international uber global government conspiracies.
You could trot 10,000 people in front of me. It wouldn't make any difference. Most Americans believe in a lot of stupid stuff and a HUGE percentage of people claim that they personally have seen a UFO, been abducted by a UFO or that they believe in angels or an afterlife or near death experiences or past lives.
A person's word is hardly worth anything, for the most part.
Can we digg this story down? This has to be the lamest non-Roland Piquepaille story I've seen on slashdot. It's more of a digg headline. Anyway, supposedly Darwin confessed on his deathbed evolution was wrong. Crackpots can have deathbed confessions too. They may honestly believe that what they say is true even on their deathbeds. It doesn't give it any more credibility and dying people aren't necessarily their most lucid in their final moments.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
You reminded me of an interesting theory I read some years ago. The idea goes that the aliens wanted to make contact, but knew they had to operate in a non-threatening manner. So, instead of coming down and saying "we come in peace" (or whatever), they put some dead bodies (maybe cloned or what-have-you) into a ship and deliberately crash it on Earth. Humans then come along, take the remains of the bodies and the ship, and study them.
Knowing the humans are now aware of extraterrestrial life, and knowing they will eventually learn to use whatever technology they've salvaged, the aliens wait until mankind reaches a point where contact can be made safely and with predictable results.
Of course, this depends on understanding human psychology. And economics. I don't think trashing a spaceship would be cheap. And what does it say about a race that throws expired members of its own species at other civilizations?
Well...at least we get a tourist trap out of it.
--Erik
well the rule is if any unindetyfiyed aircraft hits miltery space and does not respond as frendly and is proven so they shoot it down it doesent matter what it is. we have even shot down passanger jets. so a alien craft probly wouldent speak any language we knoe and no response aka hostale not to the folks that would acully see it and probly would freak out and fire at it. whoever said humanty is ready to cope with aliens well your wrong people would totaly go insane. we cant even handel are own issues eg oil bush 3rd world cuntrays homeless and so on. conpersy therys are one matter and i dont buy into any of them but thers 1 i do beleve and thats 911 simply couse buldings a. do not fall from fire b. even if did faile to fire would not go down so quickly. even if you can buy that then you got bulding 7 witch cannot be aruged that was setup.watch the loose change vs popler mancics debate and watch the poplur mancis rep doge the questions left and right the loose change guys toss at him. unlike most compercy vids lose change just shoots at the holes in the storys rather then make things up.
You've got to admit, a family of homo sapiens are more advanced than wolves, and yet...
Maybe the aliens weren't expecting to have to deal with someone shooting hypersonic slugs of lead at their craft.
There's a bunch of much better arguments for not believing aliens crashed in Roswell, but dismissing it because you don't think it could have been shot down is begging a much bigger question.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm ready. I'd bet you're ready. But most of humanity is not.
Three out of four Americans are Christians, and they're definitely not ready. So are most other people of faith - since little green men from Tau Ceti would pretty much blow their creation stories out of the water.
It would be instant chaos. Three out of four people...or more, depending on what part of the world you're from. Suddenly, the foundation and moral code they've all built their life on - is provably false. And therefore...gone. They would go nuts.
If these guys are smart enough to cheat physics and be here, they're probably smart enough to not go public. As a species, unfortunately...we couldn't handle it. Which is a real bummer for me, personally. I'd like to meet them if they're around. I've got nothing to lose, it wouldn't change my world views by very much at all. But for most other folks it would be simply too traumatic.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
How many gorillas went around telling their friends about the "alien" who keeps watching them?
How many lions get interviewed every time there's a storm to tell about the "aliens" who put tracking devices on their ears?
If they're staying hidden, they're not doing a very good job at it. If they are there, they certainly ARE affecting our behaviour. Just look at TFA's content.
They could just setup on the other side of the moon and catch our broadcasts if they wanted to "study" us. No weird sightings or crashes or anything.
Many of the accounts of the crash site at Roswell and the parts recovered claim that there was a metal that despite being super thin, was flexible and impervious to damage. Ok... if they really had such a material, how the heck did the craft crash and scatter debris? If the material was that good, how did it come apart? I'd love to believe, but that part in particular has always made me a bit skeptical of the whole incident.
today is spelling optional day.
I think I've seen the same craft myself....
m
http://www.toymania.com/334archives/mork/index.ht
Pretty sure it was one of the ships of the "Humpty Dumpty" class.
Thin shelled crafts better suited for commissary duty, not front line action.
Pretty eggciting!
I, for one, welcome our egg flying (crashing) overlords.
I for one welcome our new human resembling wreckless flying alien overlords!
With lots of people suggesting other forms might be just as likely to develop as an intelligent, spacefaring race as the humanoid form, perhaps a challenge is in order. Call it the "intelligent design challenge". The challenge is this:
Design the most non-humanoid life-form that is at least as well adapted to spacefaring tool use as the humanoid form, together with a plausible evolutionary path that would be favoured by natural selection. Designs should include not only the externally visible human form but should include information on the placement of organs and passages so as to assist in evaluating evolutionary viability.
The winner is the life form that is at least as well adapted to tool use and spacefaring technology as the humanoid form, has a reasonably likely evolutionary pathway, and is furthest from humanoid.
Perhaps we could prevail on Paramount to provide the prize by including the winning life form as a major guest character in the next Star Trek movie.
If I had Mod points I would rate you Funny.
Can you install Linux on the Egg?
Perhaps it crashed because it was running the other OS.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And we thought that show was a comedy, when in fact it was the first reality show ever.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
I'm in yur southwests crashin' eggz.
Clearly, the only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is have the FAA do a full inspection on the flight-worthiness of egg-shaped saucers.
Back in the 1980s, when the Transcendental Meditation people were claiming to teach levitation, someone asked the FAA to investigate TM as an "unlicensed flight school". The FAA actually replied, stating that FAA jurisdiction begins at 50 feet above ground level (hovercraft are thus regulated as ground vehicles), and that the TM people appeared unable to achieve sufficient altitude.
This got some publicity, and embarrassed the TM people, who stopped selling "levitation seminars". Especially after someone established that their pictures of people levitating in lotus position were achieved by bouncing on a trampoline.
Also, we now know that the CIA and DoD actually kind of encouraged reports of UFO's to divert attention from classified aircraft seen by the public. That was how they passed off sightings of the U-2 and the A-12 (the predecessor to the SR-71), and probably passed off sightings of the Northrup Tacit Blue and Boeing Bird of Prey stealth research planes.
Give me solid proof or a president coming out and stating it in a public address and maybe I'll start to buy into it.
Three words... WMDs...
Your criteria is really reliable.
As good as the P-51 was back in its day, it would be almost miraculous for one of these planes to shoot down a modern jet aircraft...
That's what those smug aliens thought, and look where it got'em! Should've used SEP.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
Creationists claim world created by God. Tonight at 11.
How is this comment +5 Insightful? He/She is saying they disagree. That's not insightful, Slashdot.
http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Haut.html.
Easy solar energy: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
--
I for one welcome our new...
Ah, shit.
The U.S. is quite the innovation machine whenever it is scared shitless.
You are correct that you really don't get hard evidence for alien spacecraft visiting Earth from watching the Disclosure Project. However, if you take the evidence that people present, from radar evidence to fighter jet scrambles to cover-ups from high-up in the chain of command, you begin to see that the world's governments and militaries are putting a lot of effort and energy into making sure that the laypeople remain ignorant and unaware of *something* that is happening in the skies and space.
The most skeptical conclusion I can come to is that they don't really understand it -- it could be something weird like ball lightning that appears and acts like vessels -- but so far, it hasn't proved harmful or out of control enough to warrant the need to explain it to the public. The job of the military and government is to protect us. Actually, it's more than their job -- the psychological need of human beings to think that somebody is out there, protecting us from dangers, is what has allowed the institutions of military and government to exist since the dawn of humanity. People *need* the government and military, or else they would be out there all on their own in the Big Scary Universe, psychologically speaking. If the common person found out that there was some phenomenon out there that the government or military really didn't understand, but could be potentially dangerous, people would lose faith in our societal institutions. And the people in charge would fall out of power -- or at the very least, there would be a big shake up. This is why they're covering it up. Space aliens or ball lightning, it means they will have a hard time winning the next election.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
You are implying that we are aware of all the tech the military has. The Roswell crash supposedly happened in 1947. As far as I know, the first night vision patent was in 1978. I'm not saying that night vision actually came from alien tech. But you're saying it's impossible that the military had night vision tech in the 1940's before commercially "discovered" in the 70's?
Why do aliens only land in America?
The low flying eggs are actually the unhatched offspring of the Porridge Bird which is known to lay its egss in the air.
Barney
I'm surprised not to find shock and outrage reflected amongst the comments below.
Is there anything more the man could have done to speak the truth before dying? And if you believe his word, does no-one find the non-disclosure a breach of trust?
From Wikipedia:
Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, a dying declaration is admissible if:
1. it constituted the last words of a person who was dying or thought he was dying, and
2. that person was aware that he or she was dying, and
3. that person made a statement, based on their actual knowledge, that relates in some way to the cause or circumstances of his or her death.
Haut's affidavit lacks any of the qualities of a Dying Declaration.
Fly a craft trillions of miles, then crash due to an imperial to metric conversion error. The fact is, that they were aiming for Betelgeuse and only came here due to a navigation mistake...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Everyone mentions time travel and imagine it happening like in a Hollywood movies, hate to burst everyones bubble but even if you do have time travel in say 200 years the earth will be trillions of miles away from the position it is in today. The earth, solar system, galaxy are all hurtling through space and time in a direction that leads away from the relative position in time that earth was in before. The best way to imagine it is if there is a conveyor belt for each year that passes, the longer you stay on your conveyor belt of time the further your positions changes, now lets say you jump of the conveyer belt 200 year into the future onto the year 2007, your relative position stays the same so your still miles away from the 2007 point were earth is positioned on the conveyor belt.
If I had in my possession the remains of an alien spaceship, and the bodies of the crew, would I :
.. where nobody will even friggen notice !!
a) Send the materials to the best labs available for preservation and analysis.
b) Preseve the remains of the crew for future study.
c) Provide free and open access to all the evidence.
OR
a) Hand the material over to an airforce colonel to have a touch and feel. If he declares the material to be 'Unknown', then its case closed, we can dispose of the material and declare it a mystery.
b) Order child sized coffins for the crew, and make sure they get a decent Chrishun burial. No need to keep such unnatural remains - only mad Nazi scientists would want to do something horrid like that !
c) Invent a cover story and quickly destroy all evidence, before the subhuman Bolshevik Russians get their hands on it, and use this to create terrible weapons that may threaten the very survival of the free world.
Given the way that people's brains seemed to work in 1947, the choices of how to handle the situation ring rather on the true side as opposed to wild fantasy.
Unfortunately (for us), the Aliens just picked the wrong time and place to crash their spaceship. They should have landed in Italy during the Renaissance, or maybe crash landed in Auckland NZ during a Linux.conf.au conference, or something similar.
The world has grown up a lot in the last 50 years, but knowing our luck, the next crash landing may well be in Germany at the end of July
(see http://www.fullmoon-festival.com/ for details)
For example, we could have a NVG as early as 1930 because you could use the early iconoscope to capture IR light below the visible power and amplify it as much as you want. That's what TV does, basically, and it is not a surprise that some camcorders are IR-capable.
But that NVG would weigh 200-300 lbs and wouldn't be exactly portable. To make it portable you need to advance the technology quite a lot. First portable NVGs were still vacuum tube based, but implemented in a very smart way, as a series of long parallel holes in a glass plate. The front edge, facing the field, would receive the picture, produce electrons, those electrons would then be accelerated within all the tubes and when they hit the end, facing you, the light would be both visible and bright. That worked like a "bug eye" - once the picture is focused it is transferred as if through a bunch of fibers, just with amplification.
With semiconductors you can create far fancier, and more efficient NVGs. But we, as a society, made every single step of this path, and it is proven beyond doubt how exactly each step was made, by who (scientists like to publish!) and who stepped on shoulders of those giants and made the next advance, etc. etc.
As other people mentioned, if you show me a working time machine, or a fusion battery of CR2032 size, or an FTL drive, then I may want to consider the idea of external help - just because no human on this planet has a foggiest idea about how to even approach any of those challenges. But the problem is that every known invention on this planet is 100% traceable to its origins, and origins of those origins, recursively.
A Lieutenant, yes. Higher the rank means the higher levels of supervisor. Generals don't get their hands dirty. You wouldn't see a General fueling a jet, driving a tank, and most certainly cleaning up a crash site. Which poor bastard would have the responsibility of picking up dead bodies? Probably an enlisted Airman, or even a contacted civilian. But certainly not a high ranking officer if that's what you're insinuating.
Who is going to cover up the story? My guess is that it's probably that General who started the hoax. But certainly not a Lieutenant.
You've got the pop sci-fi on the brain.
There's no way in hell a P-51 could catch or even ding the launch and cruise stages of a Saturn moon rocket. But those little bitty slow moving paper-thin moonlanders? That's another story.
I'll bet the damned thing sucked a bird into an intake or something.
Simple. Their magnetic bottle lost containment. Titanium may be tough (at the right thicknesses, etc) but when the jet it's attached to goes kerplooey, you don't see pristine sheets of the stuff spanging off the ground.
:P
Just because WE can't find a means of damaging, distorting, or otherwise rending a material doesn't mean the forces it contained weren't great enough to do so.
There are a lot of posts asking why aliens would come to earth, if they are so advanced then why did they crash, etc...
Hey, I doubt it's Star Trek out there in the universe, it's probably a lot more like Spaceballs. Hell, look at the humans around you. It's been like this for thousands of years, the only thing that's changed is we have electricity and house plumbing. Not much else has changed as far as the basic human intelligence goes. The aliens might have been joyriding. They might have been checking an inexperienced pilot out on the craft. The craft might have been built by the lowest bidder. Etc...
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
hey. we sent out a satellite a long time ago, and it's probably drifting about still...
maybe these aliens just drifted here after some horrible error - like not recalculating their old measurement system into a more common newer system - and they had possibly an explosive reactor failure on their mothership. there could be hundreds to thousands of them on a single large vessel, and when they bailed out, some died soon after to intense radiation exposure, or a design flaw that the vacuum of space allowed, but kept somewhat preserved inside their protective egg.
inside their escape pod could be alien bacteria or cellular forms....
Do you believe the affidavit? Does his family and friends believe it's a joke?
Dedicated to the cause? Not squeamish? Treating dead body as a dead body, and not as a sacred vessel? Or maybe able to move their consciousness between bodies with ease?
maybe cloned or what-have-you
Even better.
I don't think trashing a spaceship would be cheap
Not cheaper than failing the whole interstellar mission, I guess.
the aliens wait until mankind reaches a point where contact can be made safely and with predictable results
Why should we expect aliens flying spacecraft to be more competent than humans driving cars or flying small personal aircraft?
There is no evidence that the roswell craft assuming it existed was anything more than a small landing craft
quite possibly incapable of interstellar flight. Likewise most human being flying on space shuttle or commercial
aircraft could not pilot the craft to literally save their life.
I am sure they are not immune to it. And when something can crash it will ;-).
While I would *like* to believe, I still find it difficult to think that Roswell is really an alien cover-up.
That being said, I see a lot of people on here speculating that "beings who can manage interstellar flight and have technology 100 years beyond ours" could never possibly crash in New Mexico.
I would like to point out that we have been able to successfully fly crafts to Moon and Mars, and in both cases have made a bit of a crash landing. Our technology could very well look like "interstellar flight" and "100 years from the future" to anyone on Moon or Mars.
It could very well be that this flight to Earth was their first flight, and they goofed (much like we are capable of).
-David
Also they said the amterial with thin and tough. They didn't say they tried to hit it with a hammer to bend it, or blow it up or melt it.
Also there's no telling how hard the ship hit.
Thanks for making that point. There are many people in the U.S. who want to avoid knowing that their supposedly Christian country is violent, and usually for the sole purpose of making a few rich people richer.
1) this is not a death bed confession. The guys announced he would write something down in 2000, signed it and amde it in 2002, and dead in 2005. If this is a deathbed confession , then my girl friend is a bitch like Paris Hilton (I will post this anonymously :P).
..... *dead*". Good luck searching fool's gold or alien in roswell.
2) When you read part of the story, it DOES NOT make sense at all. Why the hell bury body instead of studying them ? Hellllo ? Alien land on earth and we bury them instead of making a torough disection and keeping all body part in different jar for conservation ? No way in hell the military would ever allow that.
3) Ask a freaking LOCAL mortician for coffin to bury top secret body ? Kid sized coffin as to make sure he remmember it his whole life ? Who the hell made that shit up is a very bad author of science fiction or spionnage story.
The bottom line is that the guy wanted to go into postherity , and he reachedf his goal.
When I die, I will mke the following deathbed confession "Nazi gold.... Found it... Lot of gold.... Artwork.... Herk.... It is well hidden underneath.... Gasp..... Look for the plan, the plan show how to get the gold it is in
Hmmm, what better way to screw over the Army for shorting his pension than to wait until the last second before he croaks to give 'em a PR headache of monstrous (er, alien?) proportions? Who're they gonna they gonna sue, whose pension records are they gonna conveniently lose that can hurt him now? And what a legacy to leave... he's guaranteed a whole chapter in every conspiracy book and blog for the next century!
But they've returned to Deep Space Nine the same day...
How is this a Troll? It's a Joke. If you don't find it funny, don't mod it. There's no Unfunny option, Overrated maybe but Troll, come on.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
"OMG, they DO exist!"
> I'll bet the damned thing sucked a bird into an intake or something.
:-P
No, our trans-quantum flux t-value displacement engines have no intakes.
Wait, did I say "our?" Ahem... of course I meant "their."
True, but you're leaving out one important detail; the particular individual being discussed was in a position to know a great deal more than you do on the subject. So really, it's your word against his as to whether or not he was a 'crackpot'. --And you sound rather judgmental and thoughtless to me. For instance. . , nobody is attributing credibility to the fact that he was dying. Why would you even think that? The credibility comes from the fact that he was beyond the reach of the military after dying, meaning he could no longer be punished for speaking out.
-FL
It couldn't have been that hard.
Indeed. -A ship which may well have been moving at speeds several orders of magnitude greater than any human jet was capable of at the time.
-FL
Einstein was an alien. The hair should have given it away anyway.
:p
If anybody's wondering, I'm referring to his "Annus Mirabiliis" - the year he published three ground-breaking papers on three different topics. Yeah, yeah, physics jokes. Sue me.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Maybe it was a scientific experiment that went wrong!! Imagine. They are trying to build a worm hole in some far away galaxy. and the alien scientist was well known for his success in projects convinced the President of the Alien-USA that he will be safe. He made them sit in a egg-shaped shell (egg-shape important for the whole apparatus to work, but is not designed to fly) some wrong calculation occurred and the egg shell landed in earth's airspace and crashed becoz it could not fly. Now the same state could not be replicated and the ministry (department of defence) pulled the plug on the scientists funding and vaporized him in a chamber for losing the President. So we have no more Alien-Visits or Rescue Missions. :P
My Blog | Badsh
I WNAT TO BELIEVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111
i want to use less caps
You're forgetting; this was the U.S. Air Force in the 1940's. Things were much more relaxed with regard to secrecy back then. In fact the high-paranoia secrecy structure in the U.S. today is, arguably largely the result of UFOs and all they entail. Read Richard Dolan's book on the subject.
Roswell was a simple training base in the middle of the desert. They didn't have much in the way of secrets. Roswell wasn't important until the multiple UFO crashes. (The nearest actual crash being over 150 miles away; the nearby farm only had debris, no ship.) In any case, Roswell didn't know how to deal with crashed UFO's. UFO's weren't considered secrets at that time. They had no classification because the human race was still trying to figure out what to make of the phenomenon. Indeed, the Roswell staff dealt with it perhaps as any rational humans might do; honestly and with a desire to share the astonishing knowledge with the world.
They took their public relations guy and they showed him the evidence they had collected so that he could prepare his report for the newspapers and radio stations. --Which he did, thus we had the infamous press release of 1947 which started this whole thing; the announcement that the U.S. Air Force had retrieved a crashed flying saucer. --Understand that a news reporter back in the forties was not just a voice for reading things over the radio. Reporters were expected to actually do their jobs; directly collect information and describe it to others, (as opposed to just mindlessly read off Pentagon press releases.), and since he was the first and only reporter on the scene, he executed his job appropriately and as was expected of him. Of course they showed him the evidence. It wasn't classified or even military in nature, so why not? The system of news gathering and dissemination in the 40's made a lot more sense than it does today.
Of course, when the big boys from the important parts of the military showed up, they put an end to all of this. The gears of secrecy had been turning in Washington for a few years now, and though there was no official doctrine as of yet, when a UFO crashes in your backyard, the government had enough paranoid minds at the top to know it was in their best interest to lock everything down tight. So the Roswell staff was forced to officially retract the original story and replace it with the tin-foil balloon thing. --And because people trusted their government and their news delivery systems, they believed the lie. People in the forties, as sadly they do now, are very easy to fool if you use an authoritative tone when you tell lies.
-FL
alien ships are influenced by the presence of magnetite. which causes their ships to crash. but my question is how many of these government employee confessions are legit and how many are fed as disinformation?
Need to know what? UFO's weren't classified in the 1940's. They were new and weird. The military and political structures of the day were making it up as they went with regard to the super-paranoid secrecy structures we are so familiar with today. That's why the Roswell staff made the decision to broadcast to the world that they had retrieved a crashed flying saucer. They didn't have standing orders not to.
--And I imagine that if you work on a dull little air training base in the middle of nowhere, when something like a crashed UFO enters your life, you might consider it awe-inspiring and important to all humans on the Earth. You might think that the rational thing to do would be to share news of it with the world. The gues at Roswell weren't paranoid presidential military advisors. They were Air Force working stiffs posted in the middle of nowhere on a boring little training base.
Of course, when the brass from the important parts of the military showed up, they put an end to that. The gears of secrecy had been beginning to turn in Washington for a few years with regard to UFO's, and though there was no official doctrine at that point, when a UFO crashed in your backyard, the government had enough paranoid minds at the top to know it was in their best interest to lock everything down tight. So the Roswell staff was forced to officially retract the original story and replace it with the tin-foil balloon thing.
-FL
I believe the first F-117 Stealth (invisible to all high tech anti-air defenses)
The "Stealth" planes are one of the greatest examples of why there are no advanced Alien Technologies. The F-117 is very visibile to most modern high-tech anti-air defense radar, its just a smaller bleep than it should be which makes it slightly trickier. This makes it difficult for crap 20+ year old radars to see it, e.g. the ones that the French, US and Brits sold to Iraq. If the F-117 was actually invisible to radar then they wouldn't be flying it at 30,000ft all the time.
If the US really does have alien technology and it led to the F-117 I'd really suggest complaining back to the "superior" race that invented it.
Now Stealth Ships however tend to work because they build on the radar clutter that the sea causes thus making the ships nearly impossible to make out from the background noise.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Where's the tech? The problem with an alien crash with recoverable material and which is studied by scientists or engineers is that it would introduce new technology and new ways of thinking about things. And it's absurd to claim that the US would cover up this new technology rather than promptly exploiting it on the battlefield or in the arms race with the USSR. There's no reason to. Even if implying the existence of UFOs is somehow too hard for the political establishment to do, it can still introduce the technology in other ways, very quickly. My take is that we don't see this occuring.
I will confess to being an Illuminati agent, to know who killed JFK, to have befriended the yeti, to know the warehouse where the moon landing set is stored, to be frequent visitor to Atlantis and to have the exact coordinates that lead to the centre of the Earth. After all, if it's in my affidavit and I'm not around to answer questions, it must be true. Right?
Could have been the retarded aliens that came here, that UFO was their version of the shortbus and it crashed...
Dude! I salute you for your intelligent & thorough reply. Having recently read some of the books of Sagan, Neil Turok, Richard Corefield, S J Gould I was stunned to see such post / reply on slashdot. Especially when, most times these days all you see is negativity & bitterness towards each other. Personal stabs & insults towards someone whose views are different from theirs. Guess humanity will survive this bitter phase of evolution after all.
I'm not saying that night vision actually came from alien tech. But you're saying it's impossible that the military had night vision tech in the 1940's before commercially "discovered" in the 70's?
# Generation_0
Sure, its possible. Both the US and Germany produced early night vision in WWII before the 1947 crash in Roswell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_vision_goggles
The US government doesn't produce weapons, they contract companies to produce them for them. Sure there are probably some technologies such as certain planes, radars, and other electronics that might be a secret, but the methods by which they would work still be known to people in those fields.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
CATS/Diebold '08- All your vote are belong to us!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
This little logic loop is one of the sillier and yet most effective ones in circulation amongst the sceptic crowd.
Here's the way out of the, "People can't keep secrets" trap. . .
It's true; people really can't keep secrets. There are leaks all the time. This article is just such an example. But so what? The military industrial complex has installed a failsafe to catch these leaks. It has gone to massive effort to teach everybody from a very young age that only losers who don't get laid believe in conspiracies, UFO's do not exist, James Randi is not an ego-maniacal twit, your highschool science teacher was not just repeating the same crap they taught him, and that the material universe is the beginning and the end of everything you ever need to know.
With all of that programming in place, when a leak does happen, (like the one in this very article), people climb over each other to rationalize it and ignore it.
How clever is that? Programming the inmates to keep themselves locked up. It's genius.
Interestingly, the slashdot crowd is more apt to falling for this trick because special attention is placed upon them; they're the ones with the brains to work everything out, so you have to make sure they are good and programmed. It's baked into the school system on many levels, one of the most poignant being where jocks are rewarded for bullying the geeks, the cheer leaders would never love a geek, and so the geeks are shunted away from relevance on a deeply emotional level. And so they retaliate by being smart and fearing being laughed at and seeking approval from teachers and authority figures. Any subject which taps this programming, (like UFO's,), simply cannot be argued with just reason. There's huge emotional baggage preventing rational thought from prevailing. --You have to deal with deeply buried emotional trauma and self-worth issues. Believing in UFO's gets you ridiculed, and ridicule means you will never be loved. That's emotional wall #1. It offends the science teachers, who the geeks turned to for emotional validation, so that's emotional wall #2. Two big emotional walls will not be breached with reason alone.
Unless they shed the programming, geeks maintain pretty much a permanent handicap when it comes to TV talking heads lying to them; (talking heads who speak with authority in the same warm-fuzzy tones felt in the, "Isn't Science Nice" stage of programming in the school system).
So realistically, even if Lieutenant Walter Haut had left a movie reel of an alien being cut open, or bits of space metal in with his testimonial, the truth would still be rejected if the Military Industrial Complex did not want it to be accepted, which they don't.
Not until the warm-fuzzy talking TV heads, the school teachers, and the sex-drive of teen-age girls are radically altered, will such ideas become 'real'. And thus, between the church and the science teacher, you have your population under a level of control which allows you to dictate to it what it actually chooses to think and believe.
-FL
A man about to die swears under penalty of law that he saw aliens. He then dies before any such legal penalty could possibly take effect. In other words, the affidavit adds absolutely no authority to these claims. But let's explore the highly unlikely possibility he's telling the truth.
If what this guy is saying is true - the events and observations he lists - then his conclusion that these were aliens from outer space can almost certainly not be true.
His claims are pretty consistent with the standard alien conspiracy theory:
1) Egg-shaped machine flying featuring no external features we currently associate with flying vehicles
2) Said machine was either taken down by our own fighters or malfunctioned and crashed
3) Machine was built of incredibly strong light metal
4) Creatures that are basically humans with certain features pronounced are found dead
IF all of this really happened, then it is incredibly, highly, amazingly statistically unlikely these dead creatures were aliens.
1) If the craft was shot down, why in the world would a craft so advanced that it flies 3x the speed of our best planes, in our atmosphere without any clear method of flight and with super-strong metal not survive attacks by such old US planes? Such a ship would either survive or at the very least escape.
2) Why in the world would the aliens look humanoid? It's arguably unlikely they'd even be carbon-based, they may not even be primarily solid (they could be cells of gases for example). It's nearly impossible they'd be in any way similar in size or shape to us.
The most damning part of #2 is the "like us" problem - it's essentially the same basic reason to question any God hypothesis - because nearly all God descriptions say God is essentially humanoid, which is very self-centered to assume that something so completely foreign and powerful should look anything like us. Both God and these aliens are as statistically likely to look like The Flying Spaghetti Monster as they are us, but more importantly they are MUCH more likely to look as strange as a floating cobble of spaghetti than they are to look familiar to us.
Since statistically this conclusion is so unlikely to be true we need to consider the observations and find an alternate explanation.
Statistically speaking, if we ever did find alien life it would be at a technological state nowhere near our own - so either way, way behind us (we found bacteria!) or way, way ahead of us. They got here so they're not that way behind us kind - so they must be leaps ahead of us. Not hundreds or thousands of years of technology but millions or billions of years ahead of us. Not the kind we shoot down with some crappy planes.
But what does suit this set of observations is a very different conclusion: That the ships observed were ourselves, perhaps 1000 years in the future, experimenting with time travel. They appear, the vessels fail or, not being designed for war (and not having interstellar capability) are shot down, and the dead people inside are what we have evolved to look like.
Whether time travel is actually possible is up for debate, and these observations are obviously dubious, but IF you are to accept this dying man's final words, then you cannot possibly conclude he saw aliens from outer space. He more likely saw our future selves.
Just as car manufacturers develop cars that try to save their passengers on impact as much as possible with every succeeding incarnation, alien spacecraft manufacturers develop their spacecraft, too.
Not just for the sake of the passengers inside, but also for the sake of the planet their ship might crash on.
This does not mean that something did or did not happen at Roswell: we need the evidence. Have governments covered up ? I don't know, but if they have I would like to know: why and how ?
Why would a government (or more likely - many governments round the world) want to suppress this over many decades and why would this be agreed by many different colours of political opinion.
How could many governments manage to stop all of it's personnel involved from smuggling out any piece of hard evidence ? I love a consiracy theory as much as the next man; however I don't believe that there exists total cooperative multi country control of media to prevent this getting out.
"either way a primitive tool brought it down"
Don'tcha be dissin' them SA3's now, boy. For all we know, that incident with the "stealth" bird could've been due to a Pechora-2/2M prototype. Of course, it's much more comfortable for americans to assume it was a lucky pot-shot that downed the F-117 than to admit that they haven't been able to make a stealth plane worth a damn...
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Yeah, aliens always crash in the US (and eventually Mexico), do you have some kind of crash contract with them, or something... We, in Europe, are unfortunate and will never see aliens, since they don't want to crash here :D.
You don't need to come up with reasons they may look like Jim next door and land in NM.
First you have to prove there is one. No one has.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
In all probability, any truly 'alien' life form would, more than likely, bear absolutely no resemblance to humans.
However, consider this...What if humans were bred from these 'aliens'? That is, a cross breed between these advanced beings and the primitive hominids that had evolved naturally on the Earth up until that point many thousands of years ago. Can these beings actually be our ancestors?
These beings may be what the Bible referred to as angels. Indeed, in many of the ancient Biblical texts, such as The Book of Enoch, describe the way these angels had gone into (i.e had sex with) the women of the Earth, which led to a race of giants which devoured all of the food and resources of the earth. This is supposedly the reason God sent the Great Flood...to wipe away this ravenous race of giants.
It also describes how these angels instructed humans in many of the fundamentals of civilization...science, mathematics, agriculture. Not that I believe any ancient text should be taken literally, but still interesting.
This also provides some glue between the evolution/intelligent design debate. Both viewpoints can be partially right. Natural selection (evolution) created the early hominids, and artificial selection (domestication or genetic engineering) led to the explosive increase in the mental abilities of 'humans.'
Obviously he's just seen Daft Punk, nothing to be scared of at all.
The reasons that F117 were shot down are two fold, but related.
Stealth aircraft need to be carefully maintained, the materials, paint and aircraft form must be kept immaculate to maintain such a low radar profile. Even slight damage to a stealth aircraft can significantly increase it's radar profile, furthermore the paint is prone to being damage by rain and this was the main problem in this incident.
Essentially what happened is that a sortie was carried out in heavy rain, as a result much of the paint on the aircraft was damaged significantly increasing it's visibility on radar. Once the aircraft was that much more visible on radar, stealth aircraft like the F117 become even more vulnerable in that they're just not as maneuverable or fast as many of their non-stealth counterparts like the F15, F16, F18 and hence it was fairly easy to shoot it with generic AA/small arms fire. As can be seen here, there's a clear bullet hole in the wing of the downed aircraft:
http://www.serbnews.com/f117/f117wreck26.jpg
Once the aircraft had taken such physical damage to it's airframe, coupled with the rain-damaged paint it was an easy target for a missile, as to what missile took it down is still somewhat in debate, some say it was from an SA6, others say a Mig 21 took it down with an Atoll but regardless what led to the missile strike was a combination of errors:
- Stealth aircraft kept in the wrong environment
- Stealth aircraft sortie in wrong weather conditions
- Unchanging flight paths for sorties over a number of days
It's also worth mentioning is that the F117 doesn't have countermeasures available such as chaff, flares, ECM and so I'd argue that quite frankly the USAF picked completely the wrong aircraft for the job on that occasion. The F117 relies entirely on it's low radar profile to survive, sending it up in conditions where it's low radar profile is heavily weakened was suicide because the aircraft has no other options once that low radar profile is eliminated. Assuming the strike was essential and couldn't be delayed it would've made far more sense to send up a conventional strike aircraft that, whilst visible on radar has the countermeasures to deal with it - still risky but a whole lot better. An F117 with no stealth is really little better than a small airliner in that both are relatively slow, both have no countermeasures and neither are terribly maneuverable.
It's interesting that this topic even got posted. I'm amused that everyone says it must not be true because it doesn't meet their preconceived criteria. What if aliens showed up and it turned out to not be like anything we imagined? Plus a long running smear campaign to label people who talk about UFOs as crackpots and lunatics. On one hand people's testimony is not good enough, everyone lies, wants fame, money, etc. On the other hand everyday in courts of law people's testimony can swing the balance of judgement both in civil and criminal trials. But you get outside of people's comfort zone and suddenly any excuse to dismiss the info as BS is hastily taken.
The UFO field is full of crackpots and nutcase, and people trying to capitalize on interest for their own personal gain. There's disinfo and lies and lots of crap to muddy the waters and make finding the truth nearly impossible. Maybe the naysayers need to have a personal experience to make them believe. I can only encourage people to explore and learn. But there's so much more to this and a quick once over will lead to frustration and confusion. There only needs to be one credible case. From what I heard about this man who made this affidavit, he was known as credible, honest, good guy. I don't know either way. Personally I believe something not belonging to the US military did crash at Roswell, bodies were recovered.
I'd also urge people to be skeptical about some of the "mainstream" UFO stuff from disclosure project, Whitley Streiber, and the whole "grays are our friends" club. Beware of hidden agendas, and false good guy bad guy tactics with the grays/reptilians. Think and discern. "Disclosure" is accelerating as evidenced by stories like this hitting mainstream press and slashdot. When everyone figures it out, they're going to be running to "credible" UFO researchers for info to get the scoop on how it is. It's almost like this situation has been manipulated for decades by a hidden hand.. Anyways... if anyone reads this, good luck, try to keep an open mind to other possibilities...
The UFO people (etc.) are _believers_ and don't need facts, and hence can't supply any. Not unlike faith/religion, you either believe or you don't.
But the question about aliens on earth (past, present or future) will only be answered if based on a clear answer. And that means facts, anything else is just speculation and best left for people writing fiction.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
That was further sarcasm. I experienced even fewer problems with my Apple II then with my first PC running DOS. The Compucolor II, although a bit noisy when booted (ba-DUMM is the sound I still hear in my imagination today when I think back to turning on the big toggle switch), was probably even more reliable. I wouldn't be surprised if it still worked - wherever it's gotten to.
Obviously, newer computers can also do a lot more than computers back then. However, that functionality comes at a cost - complexity. If you've never read it, I recommend "Why Things Bite Back" by Edward Tenner. It impacted me in the same way that Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" did.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
There was no alien at roswell.
Vulcans are only supposed to arrive in 2063.
welcome our marauding knife-wielding Octopi overlords.
Egg-shaped craft with no external markings sound like escape pods to me. Maybe their landing here was an accident.
The prophecy told them of the coming of goatse, decrypted data from the onboard computers suggests that the last computations went to the phrase :
"You are entering earth's atmmosphere, deploy heatshields? Cancel or Allow"
From the article:
"Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins."
Bury the alien bodies rather than keep them preserved for scientific examination? I suppose they took the spaceship down to the local scrap metal dealer too? I don't think so.
As seems to be common, these A-lee-uhns didn't take into account the difference between metric and imperial measurements... that and New Mexico doesn't recognize Daylights Savings Time, right?
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Why is the only mention of this in an Australian paper and on a Roswell website? And, if you had such a document, wouldn't you scan it and make the scans available?
:-)
Yeah. I thought so.
Oh, and the reason the "egg" had no control surfaces, windows, etc?
It was an escape pod.
(open the pod bay doors, please, Hal)
Of course, a high quality pair of binoculars with large objectiv lenses can gather extra light, and allow you to see better at night.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I read this forum and I see the influence of Star Trek. If the Rare Earth Hypothesis is true, then alien visitation is a bad omen for us. In Star Trek, the federation is a society of abundance and consist of 150 worlds. They have no need for another planet and can simply apply the Prime Directive whenever they come across a planet with primitive inhabitants. However, in a rare earth universe, habitable planets like ours might be a one in a million (or billion) and an alien species can't just altuistically leave us be. Our scientific knowledge to date tells that any one habitable is only habitable for a limited time since the aging of the star will eventually decimated the planet. An interstellar species might be frantically looking for an Earth type planet to resettle. Interstellar invasion will take decade if not centuries to accomplish for a variety of reasons. First, the species is not quite adapted to living on Earth and must be genetically engineered first. Such engineering would take generations to accomplish and may require borrowing adaptations from our genetic code which would take years of study. Second, the visitors up to this point are the just the initial scouts. Larger ships would be required to transport the total population. However, a larger ship would require more energy to move thorugh space and may be traveling much slower than the scouts. So, the invasion force just hasn't gotten here yet! If aliens have visited us, then I am worried.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Well, to play devil's advocate, who is history's greatest engineer? Probably Archimedes. Now take a piece of hardware that embodies a good selection of modern technology. Since this is slashdot, let's say an iPhone. Drop it out a 10th floor window, pick up the remains and shoot it back through a time machine to Archimedes' house, say around 232 BCE.
There is little doubt he would recognize it as a piece of advanced technology, from the materials alone. Yet, exactly how likely is it he'd glean anything that would be useful in repelling the Romans invaders who killed him twenty years later?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1. At this time the P-80 shooting star was the top of the line fighter the US had. It would have a very hard time shooting down a 737 much less a space craft of any type.
2. The US air defense network at that time was almost none existent.
3. SAM sites? The US didn't have them yet.
Also the US doesn't really have a history of shooting down aircraft over our air space.
If you compare the number of Soviet recon aircraft the US has shot down vs the number the US has lost you will see that the US really isn't that trigger happy.
You don't know many people in our military do you? why do you people think a crash would have to result from a crappy 1945 design ancestral jetfighter shooting an alien craft i dont understand.
ANY craft in the end is some contraption/machine that functions, and even in the most utopical societies there is/will always be the risk of machines/contraptions malfunctioning.
It would totally defy the concept of physics to say that the machine couldnt malfunction.
it is highly probable that any craft that can traverse any length of distance can malfunction at any given point in time.
Read radical news here
In my mind, they didn't crash or get shot down, but rather suffered a containment failure or other catastrophic equipment failure on one of their craft.
If this technology weren't cutting edge or experimental, we would likely have seen a lot more of these things by now. Where are the alien opportunists, for example, if just any of them can hop in an egg and land here? No, if it is at all possible that the Roswell incident happened as described here, we're not looking at an accomplished, routinely-travels-to-earth species. Rather one like we were at the earliest crossings of the Atlantic.
I also think that this could be why we're not seeing more and more reports of these types of incidents. This one was a fluke, and had almost nothing to do with the military being there (except perhaps some alien tourism...)
I'm amused that everyone says it must not be true because it doesn't meet their preconceived criteria.
My preconceived criteria here is the scientific method and similar empirical methods.
I'd also urge people to be skeptical about some of the "mainstream" UFO stuff from disclosure project, Whitley Streiber, and the whole "grays are our friends" club. Beware of hidden agendas, and false good guy bad guy tactics with the grays/reptilians. Think and discern. "Disclosure" is accelerating as evidenced by stories like this hitting mainstream press and slashdot. When everyone figures it out, they're going to be running to "credible" UFO researchers for info to get the scoop on how it is. It's almost like this situation has been manipulated for decades by a hidden hand.. Anyways... if anyone reads this, good luck, try to keep an open mind to other possibilities...
It all makes sense when you realize that people who believe in UFOs without any proof are gullible and/or mildly insane. Then they can be fed upon by the host of conmen and other parasites who prey on this sort of group. Genuine extraterrestrials wouldn't have to do anything to preserve their secret. The shysters and the insane would generate more than enough noise to mask or confuse legitimate signals in the UFO culture.
That's why I prefer empirical methods. They are harder to thwart either by a con, madness, or subterfuge from government or ET.His timing could not have been better, since Roswell is hosting the 60th anniversary of the crash in a couple months! That's right, folks, UFO theories may have died down due to the Internet, but with these new, unprovable sources, you'll want to come right down to the heart of it. Visit the International UFO Museum Center there, and be sure to stay at the "Little A'Le'Inn". Folks, bring the kids because they eat free Crash Site Cafe. That's highway forty, folks, exit Yakima Road. Bring your wallets!
Why assume it is a spacecraft capable of travelling at interstellar speeds? It could be a simple entry vehicle designed for earth's atmosphere dropped off by a bigger spacecraft that crashed unexpectedly because the local rustics damaged the chute with soft metal slugs. The "fallen comrades" could be the alien equivalent of mankind's space dogs.
There is no reason to resume that the intelligent aliens would be aboard the spacecraft themselves if the object of the expedition was anything other than colonization. They are intelligent, after all. The aliens concluded that they misjudged the locals (territorial aggressiveness even greater than expected; no sign of the expected tradition of hospitality to unarmed strangers), decided to try again in the friendlier Amazon river basin next time, and moved on to the next stop in the mission.
First off, who says they were aliens. Just because in the last 24,000 years we've had the planet to ourselves as the sole suriving species in the Homo genus doesn't make that normal. For more than 80% of our 130,000 year existence on this planet, we've shared it with other intelligent hominids. Now consider that the oldest civilization from which we can draw a line to our modern civilization would be the Egyptians. From the time agriculture was introduced to Egypt to our modern level of technological development is a mere nine thousand years, or scarcely seven percent of our species existence. And there is little reason to believe this is an exceptionally short developmental time -- quite the contrary. Humans did not even have the chimney until late medieval times. Imagine how things would have been different if movable type had been invented in Roman times.
So it's quite possible to imagine another homo species, perhaps with a little head start, perhaps with a little more brain power, perhaps with a little more luck, producing a civilization far in advance of ours at a time when we did not have writing. And since a technologically advanced civilization has less need for raw human muscle power, their fertility rate would be low. They'd have been like distant gods to us.
Assuming the large headed "aliens" were in fact humans of a different species, the "alien" craft would actually be terrestrial. Since these craft started appearing around the mid 20th century, it is reasonable to assume that they are indeed space exploration craft, possibly sent out to explore a nearby star system with a crew in suspended animation.
The crash is likewise easily explained. The returning craft rendezvous in orbit, but find no trace of the Atlantean civilization that sent them. Patrols are sent out around the globe which is swarming with tiny headed barbarians. One of the patrols comes upon the Sphinx, and the dread news flashes out to all the ships in the flotilla. "You Maniacs!" cries one of the pilots, "You blew it up! Ah, damn you! Anubis damn you all to Ammit!" He commits suicide by crashing his vessel.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Makes you wonder which technologies we currently use were reversed-engineered from an alien civilization.
Or confirm it.
How would it do that? I'm thinking you'd have to stretch things quite a bit to make the Christian Bible fit into a world with little green Tau-Cetites. I don't have any proof mind you, just a hunch.
I am not afraid, why are you?
A perfect example of what I'm talking about. In my experience, this is the kind of logic you get from people of faith. You read my post and this is your comment upon it. It's as if your critical thinking faculties are shut down. You didn't see the words, or take anything from their meaning - you applied your vision to it. I said something negative about people of faith, therefore you must say something bad back. Even if you have to ignore what's under your nose and make it up. What I actually did write was this:
"I'd like to meet them if they're around. I've got nothing to lose, it wouldn't change my world views by very much at all."
How does that translate to fear? Sounds like cheerful optimism to me.
Don't worry, it's a rhetorical question - I don't expect you to have a cogent response.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"With all of that programming in place, when a leak does happen, (like the one in this very article), people climb over each other to rationalize it and ignore it."
This point is moronic. This is not a "leak" it is an old man with an ulterior motive, nothing more.
Why do I say this? Because if he had this information, and really felt the need to share it, he would have done so sooner. Instead he waited until it was impossible for the consequences to matter.
That's all the proof I need.
And save that "you've been programmed" crap. It makes sense when you're sitting around your dorm room stoned, but in the light of reason, it's just vacuous. The only thing I've been programmed to do is seek REAL evidence, and this ain't it, not by a mile.
Someone get that man some coffee! Stat!
You can't take the sky from me...
When I lived in a one horse town in West Texas (Dell City), my high school counselor was the sheriff of Roswell's grand daughter. The same sheriff who was present at the crash. Her family story is "it wasn't a weather balloon." She further stated that the "government" told her grand father, if he valued his family he'd accept the government's story and quit pursuing a different answer.
I'm sure the judge at the Salem witch trials would have sworn on his deathbed that the men and woman they killed were real witches.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Not that I actually believe our current technology is alien-inspired, just playing devil's advocate.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How come that everyone automatically assumes that the crash was in fact an accident? Has it ever occured to any of you that the aliens might have smashed a fake spaceship filled with dummies into our planet on purpose? We are after all a quite unpredictable race, so maybe they just wanted to see how humanity was going to react when discovering a new species, with the possibility of making contact later on, if the result was favorable. Or maybe some bored aliens just did it to pass the time.
Yeah, okay.
How about if that interstellar ship slowed down enough to hover just beside and in-front of a couple fighters over US airspace, perhaps to say hello? Then the trigger happy american pilots pulled the trigger out of complete fear.
Is it so hard to believe that americans, or any human would be able to screw up a first contact in such a way?
Perhaps the aliens were completely oblivious to our violent nature, and genuinely wanted to meet us? Perhaps their flying egg was playing with a couple fighter planes during a live training flight, and one of the rookies got real scared.
Some of the lights we've seen dancing in the sky on UFO footage seem almost playful, I'm just saying.
"Large numbers of people believing something is NOT proof that something is true. What is needed is evidence that can be independently checked/tested."
... or "the enemy" more efficiently.
True it isn't final proof, but when those "large numbers" are also large numbers of the elite intellect & previously seriously respected Government officials (as opposed to just your average joe at home claiming abduction)... and considering several of these people are not yet retired from their high paying jobs, why would they risk looking like idiots in front of National & International TV?
I find it funny how when high ranking people are quiet about their alien experiences they are highly respected. As soon as they even suggest such things exist they are no longer credible.
"Why would a government (or more likely - many governments round the world) want to suppress this over many decades and why would this be agreed by many different colours of political opinion."
Not all governments do, France & Mexico are now disclosing their info. It won't be long now. I give it 10 years max before serious evidence presents itself.
"How could many governments manage to stop all of it's personnel involved from smuggling out any piece of hard evidence ? "
It's called BILLIONS of dollars in black budgets & highly top secret military basis reverse engineering alien tech so that we can blow up ourselves
Just watch the movie, then come back and post something you've actually contemplated for any length of time.
Adeptus.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Perhaps the alien ship could not flight within Earth's atmosphere with FTL speed, either by choice (because generating a local wormhole (assuming that they used wormholes) would consume Earth) or because they had a malfunction in their equipment.
Oh, I know it wasn't a spacecraft, and that the entire hoopla was based entirely on misdirection and misinformation.
But I have to admit, whoever thought up the whole "alien" angle deserved a promotion. A big one. That was bloody brilliant. And, it's provided pop-culture fodder for half a century. If our government's going to lie to us, I want a *creative* lie, damnit. An *interesting* lie, a fun lie.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"These fools also believe in a big magic sky man and baby jesus and a lot of people claim to be watched over by angels or talk with god or have had near death experiences or lived past lives or have knowledge of some uber secret government plot to kill JFK."
These aren't fools, these were the same people you and millions of other Americans highly respected. They were & are your government officials, high ranking military personal & even several scientists. They are only fools now because the suggest 'the Earth isn't flat', and you are of the unfounded belief that it is - which is only backed up by the fact that you haven't seen it yet (Earth = aliens in this analogy).
Seriously, watch the movie, nobody there talks about angels & baby jesus or secret gov plots or JFK. BTW, Near Death Experiences are real...but that's a whole other topic.
You are right though, the vast majority of people are either gullible, unintelligent & want to believe... I don't disagree this UFO field is highly tainted with lunatics, but this video is the first one I've ever seen that sounds pretty serious & credible... assuming of course all these people are legit & are who they say they are.
"I have no doubt that there is a great possibility of advanced life outside of our solar system. However, I see no solid reason to believe that they've come across the universe to earth, crashed here, abducted people and that it's all been covered up by international uber global government conspiracies."
Well if such advanced life did exist & they were here, what motives could governments / individuals possibly have for hiding all this from everyone else?
Hmm let's see....
1. Technological advance over any other (country) enemy
2. Money
3. Power
You know, the usual motives... mostly power & money. Just follow the money! Unfortunately, it's all black budgets to organizations that are undocumented.
Anyway, watch the movie, then come back and comment something related to it, rather than just debunking something you've never even been witness to.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
Jesus christ man, they never said it was indestructible. We have very strong materials to make vehicles and such out of, too, but they fail, crash, and break into a thousand pieces regularly.
Everything is so black and white with some people.
Their magnetic bottle lost containment.
If the "magnetic bottle" popped, while containing enough energy to power a ship at the speeds this was supposed to be going, then I'd expect more than a little pop and a burst outer shell. I'd expect a blast and fireball large enough to wake up everyone in a large area.
Unless they just ran out of fuel and crashed empty. Would that have been because of a english to metric conversion problem? That would show that they are just like us.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
"If the common person found out that there was some phenomenon out there that the government or military really didn't understand, but could be potentially dangerous..."
You just described terrorism.
People until now had only one way to become famous and get remembered after their death in the books of history: They should do something newsworthy during their life, such as discovering something new in science, becoming a great artist or philosopher, or becoming the leader of a nation. Now there is a new way to save your name in the abyss of history: Just write a note saying that you witnessed something newsworthy, die silently, and wait until someone finds your note. Newspapers and television channels will quickly pick up to let millions of people know about you, and if what you witnessed had anything to do with the paranormal then thousands of lowly UFO magazines will help to brainwash billions of potential customers... er readers that you are the new prophet who witnessed the apocalypsis or the second coming of Christ, and suddenly your name will be featured on any new church built, as a new religion fuelled by the stupidity of the masses will consider you the new God for the next 2000 years. What an easy way to apotheosis!
...than a civilization advanced enough to send robotic probes through interplanetary space being seemingly incapable of designing a WHEEL or reliably calculating a goddamned kilometer.
Money is basically a representation of a person's past value - what they've contributed to society (approximately, there are shortcomings, accept it for now) - but it ignores future value - what they can or likely will contribute. To make up for this credit was invented. A medical student freshly graduated may have a negligable or even largely negative monitary value due to debts but a very large credit value. In other words, a medical student about to start work will have less trouble buying an expensive car than a receptionist who may have far more actual money.
In the Star Trek universe, physical goods have become cheap enough that perhaps it actually costs more to try to keep track of money than is worth. Not just from person to person, but interest, taxes, dividents, inflation projections - basically overhead that the world currently spends a few trillion on daily these days. There's vast profits to be made on skimming bits off this administration effort, so there's a lot of incentive to keep it going by bankers, investors, fund managers, and so on (and propoganda about "the profit motive" being important, though any motive for actual productivity at that point is tenuous and indirect), but there's also incentive to reduce this waste.
Credit is still a measure of "potential money", but if money becomes too expensive (the costs of managing it overcome the actual value it has), then credit could become a measure of a person's value in itself.
All bank accounts, credit accounts, and so on are only different forms of identity. Fundamentally they're all aspects of a person. One of the things mentioned in the Star Trek universe in its substitute economy is "self improvement", which makes sense then. Self improvement will increase your personal value (credit), without needing to go through the tedious steps to convert that worth to actual money. Consider many smart people who invent new things but don't have the ability, time, or desire to start a business to capitalize on it. Things like patents are another clumsy error-filled way of assigning value to a person without transferring money, in a way that allows someone else who is better at it to do the work of capitalization.
What's not specified in Star Trek is how this personal value is tracked, if not through money. Gene Roddenberry was an optimist, and felt that despite its problems humanity will become steadilly more "good", and it's reasonable at some point that a properly functioning, benign, and effective government would exist and would at that point be able to handle this sort of thing. There are problems with centralisation of control, but this would be only data management, which may work better with centralized control. For example, DNS uses a small number of root servers and a single domain name authority, and even its problems so far outweigh the alternative (remember bang paths? "...!hp!umich!csdept!netgroup!chserv!charlie"?) that even in the internet centralized control of some essential information is preferred.
So, someone wants to open up a Cajun restaurant, they ask a few people managing real estate in the area who have space available. Some of them have space, but it's too valuable for a restaurant, maybe a logistics firm or research lab could get it (Value measured how? Probably by expected demand, as in capitalism, but with much more accurate data). The owner settles on a location, and the landlord's "value" goes up immediately by the contribution to society the restaurant will produce, rather than having to wait for rent. Similarly for the furniture, supplies, staff, and so on.
Still not necessarily realistic, but I can see how it could work fictionally at least.
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
I think not. With "The Truth About Aliens" leading the /. poll on what we want to know, I find it hard to believe that this story's timing is anything other than the result of our demands. Slashdotters FTW!
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
It would not surprise me that we have been visited by aliens nor that some of our technology is a direct descendant from that spacecraft. I was trying to create the image of the craft in my mind by the description of the affidavit (12-15 ft. long, about as wide, 6 ft. thick, like an egg), and was struggling with it until someone mentioned the stealth bomber. Trim the wings in a bit for a denser atmosphere and there you have it.
Why haven't we had more visitations? Would you return to a planet that could not support your technology or biology on top of which gave you a hostile welcome at the first chance of peaceful contact? Maybe in a generation or two, they'll try again. Maybe at that time our leaders will have good sense to communicate first.
I see many comments using the claim that such a high technology flying saucer couldn't crash so easily in the middle of NM. Surely Roswell didn't harbour aliens, but the former is not a correct claim, I think: It only takes an engineer angry with their boss for high technology to fail, or (better) an alcoholic flying saucer captain.
There is an interesting psychological thing going on with this.
People are simply UNABLE to believe it. If you took them by the hand and dragged them into the room with the alien body and said touch...believe...they wouldn't because they can't. Big ideas, things far beyond our everyday experience are just too hard to accept, never mind how much evidence there is. Yes, God created the world, yes, Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, yes, the government has used mind-controlling regimens to create nutjob shooters such as Squeaky Fromme, Sirhan Sirhan, and John Hinckley Jr., yes, the goverment lied about Iraq, yes, there is electronic voting machine fraud, etc. But there is no amount of evidence that would ever convince huge numbers of any of these things. Now THAT'S easy for me to believe...
And just because someone is firing a shotgun at your steamship doesn't mean your boiler can't independently fail and explode.
I think you're right about the early-explorer thing -- just look at where Earth is on the galactic map. The only way we could be closer to bumfuck nullspace is to leave the galaxy entirely. Why the hell would anyone come clear out here?
1) Explorers
2) Refugees
3) Fleeing criminals
And remember, our little radio envelope, only a couple hundred light years across, is but a grain of sand on a remote beach. Someone *might* trip over it, but odds are against it.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"Us from the future" also explains why they were "here" vs someplace else, why they weren't so advanced as to avoid a crash, etc... The only thing even remotely unreasonable with your option #2 is that physics really seems to preclude time travel, and that's really a bit of a show stopper :-) Unless someone figures it out of course...
Unless someone has some actual facts on UFOs it's at least plausible for the UFO to have been shot down.
Maybe the UFO can go a bajillion miles an hour in space, but in earth's atmosphere it has to go much slower... It's like saying that the Shuttle can go a million miles an hour, so it's better than any fighter on the planet. It may go faster and higher than any fighter, but I wouldn't want to be in the Shuttle in a dog fight.
Now, that doesn't mean the Roswell thing is true or false, just that the "mustang shooting down a spacecraft" argument doesn't really work.
"Eye halve a spelling chequer, It came with my pea sea, It plainly marques four my revue, Miss steaks eye kin knot sea"
Funny how all the good evidence for the Roswell crap comes out *after* the corresponding witness has died.
On the news.com.au article, there are two photos. First is supposedly of an alien recovered at Roswell, with a caption explaining that the photo is known to be a hoax. The second photo appears to be of saucer aircraft, with a caption of "Not fake, this image of 'spacecraft' is the real deal, but the Air Force claim it's their experiment."
What is the story behind that saucer photo? It's not explained in the article.
Maybe they just got the date wrong. Maybe it was really March 20th, 1947, when the egg suddenly lost navigational control due to a most unexpected balancing of gravitational forces.
The analogy that came to my mind was a seventeenth century naval gunnery crew taking down our first moon lander. There's no way I would bet on the lander.
demi
If they're able to keep the details of their weather control machine under wraps, and demolish the WTC towers without leaving a trace of evidence that even suggest they might have been involved, then I don't see why they couldn't keep other secrets as well.
What makes you think aliens are necessarily any "better" or even particularly different? In fact, it's far more likely that any aliens wandering this far out (being we're on the wrong side of the galactic tracks) WILL be aggressive.
Exploration is a function of aggression. Maybe not overtly, but the ultimate object of exploration is expansion for your species, whether for living space, resources, or whatever.
In fact, failure to proactively defend our planet MIGHT be interpreted as CEDING our planet to said aliens.
We just don't KNOW. But it's foolish to assume that just because someone is exploring the Far Reaches of the Galaxy, that they necessarily come in peace and friendship. We need only look at ourselves for an example, and there is absolutely NO reason to believe that human behaviour is all that unique.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Just kidding :)
But seriously my grandmother it pushing 80 years old at this point. If you just met her you would think she is a completely normal person. She walks around, talks coherently, cooks, etc, just normal old age things like needing to use the bathroom a whole lot and being a little slower and not the best memory any more. But if you get to know her really well like me, well then there is another story. She told me a while back she murdered her first husband. If you had not known her well that would have truly bothered you but consider that a month ago she told me that she was on a walk and saw a purple faced boy with bangs (yes the haircut) that she knows has been murdering and raping old women in the area.
So I am just saying sometimes the mind of an old person become swiss cheese and you really can't believe much of anything they say unfortunately.
What's to say that this wasn't a landing pod similar to our Lunar Lander?
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
Actually, many do. With mid-air refueling you can fly aircraft for as long as the pilot can endure staying in the aircraft.
There have been several (primarily bombing) air missions that have flown from Nebraska and Oklahoma to deliver their payload in Iraq and make the return trip back to the middle of America.
Fighter aircraft may be staged (aka flown to be located at a base closer to the action) to Iraq, but you are correct that they will be doing most of their action at a base in the theater of operations. The point here is that fighters don't need to be carried on an aircraft carrier in order to make it to the Middle East from California or Oklahoma. And havn't needed to be carried that way for decades.
Carriers are primarily a way to have an "instant" air base already available with fuel, maintainence crews, sleeping quarters, and the ability to push forward and project military force. And the whole "unit" can be moved to new locations as necessary. Air wings don't even come to port with the ship, but instead leave and land at a naval air station at the end of a "deployment".
Yeah, that MUST be true, because look at all the F-117s that Saddam managed to shoot down... NOT!
BTW, how many stealth aircraft has YOUR country made? Not a damn one, have they?
You can give criticism when your country manages to build their own fighter aircraft... I won't hold my breath.
The US makes the best fighters in the world by the only criteria that matters, the facts of the number of aircraft lost versus victories in the air and damage on the ground. Everything else is just sour grapes from the whiners...
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
If I am not mistaken, they guy's son is following in his footsteps (ie. full time job/hobby) in the study of ufos/aliens. That is some crule joke to play on his own son.
Zero, since they expired by the time you arrive.
I have, in my possession, a replica of a sword used in a battle in the 1500s.
I am quite certain that I could demolish the Mars Rover with it, in spite of the enormous technology gap.
I agree with some of the posts that an alien craft built to navigate an atmosphere and a crew expecting something similar to Earth traveling all the way here and crashing seems unlikely, but traveling through mostly empty space is nothing like traveling through a layer of mixed gases with turbulence, wandering vapor clouds, hurricanes, lightning, hail, etc., and how likely is it that the crew knew exactly what to expect when they arrived or had a choice about entering the atmosphere upon arriving? We live very close to Mars and are still frequently surprised when a new probe arrives there. Besides, what if there've been a million sorties over the last few centuries or millenia. Wasn't it about time for a mechanical failure or for a drunk Klingon to fly a little too low?
But let's assume there really have been no ETs here. Perhaps Lt. Haut took advantage of his former position and had the last laugh on the UFOlogists. Maybe he owed someone a favor and that someone decided to ask for this. Or... he's not dead. Whose body was really buried/cremated/dropped into the sea? If I were leaving my lifelong identity permanently for a new one, I would want to go out in style. How better for him to get his name splattered all over the web? By denying UFOs existed? I think not.
For what it's worth, I attended New Mexico Tech (not too far north of Roswell) in the early 1980s and as part of a paranormal psychology class I wrote a paper on the Roswell Incident. For that paper I interviewed one of the physics teachers at the school WHO LAUNCHED THE WEATHER BALLOON THEY FOUND. He showed me dozens of letters he had written over the years to authors of various UFO books explaining the science project he had attached to the balloon, showing pictures of it, etc. Of course his side of the story was never printed by any of them.
I don't therefore I'm not... this is the converse of "I do, therefore I am." But the converse is rarely true. "I'm not, therefore I don't," is much a more accurate contrapositive, and funnier, in my opnion.
:)
But funny comment nevertheless.
Why should the aliens be so advanced? The United States has the ability right now to build an egg, put frozen bodies inside, and send them to a planet light years away for a crash landing. Suppose those aliens were dead, and they wanted their burial ceremony to include being frozen and shot in an egg to another planet believed to be harboring intelligent life, just to say "you are not alone Earthlings". I would go for something like that; it would be a hell of a lot more original than being put in the ground. This is really not far fetched at all, we sent rovers to mars and they have been roaming around the Martian surface, I think it would be possibly easier to crash land an egg on a much more distant planet.
Also, space exploration has its far share of casualties. Everyone is making fun of aliens not capable of landing their egg on a planet they have never been too, but we have had a few of our shuttles go up in flames in our own atmosphere; now who looks like a bunch of morons there? That's right, we do.
You've got to look deep inside yourself and ask, if I was about to die would I leave this world with a final sin "a lie" I don't really think many people could, religious or not!
I bet it was Ludwig.
Stick Men
What you just described is called "whuffie" by Cory Doctorow, in his story Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. He calls the surplus-society meritocracy you describe "The Bitchun Society". The story is Freely available (Creative Commons license) at http://www.craphound.com/down/ and is well worth the read.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It's still more likely that this is some government run psyche test to trick observers into thinking they've seen aliens.. why I dunno, but they admit testing LSD on soldiers, so I figure they'll try anything once.
Beyond that it would seem pointless to argue the rational of why aliens would do anything.... that's kind of the idea of alien in the first place. It's not like us.
Perhaps their idea of space travel isn't sitting on the front of a giant explosion so their ship was different, who knows.
You gotta admit it's weird how much controversy has been generated out of that place. Seems either something pretty weird happened or the government was testing propaganda techniques and/or hallucinogenics.
that would be his rommate.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Just want everyone to know, it is impossible to make any aircraft "stealth" to all frequency ranges. Mind you that an aircraft must use some metal parts (conductors) as parts of the engine. The bigger the metal part the lower the frequency it reflects. The lower the frequency, the harder is to hide it from the radar beam.
The "facts" I know ( and You will have to believe me on that )
1. The radar was "hacked". It was an vintage radar working on VHF or UHF range.
2. The F-117A was flying low.
3. The F-177A was hit by an manually guided missile. There was no direct hit.
4. The aircraft crashed down and burned down almost completely because the Serbian soldiers that came to the site did not want / did not have an order to put the fire out.
The guy that hacked the radar was my high school friend. He said to me that the main issue with the hacked radar was slow scan time. That made guiding the missile tricky.
The other friend of mine that was in the vicinity of the F-117A crash site and came to it said that aircraft was damaged by gunfire ( AK-47 for sure ) but the main damage was due to blast and large shrapnel's. The soldiers had an order to guard the crash site and they just let the wrecked plane burn down. Shit happens when one lives in Serbia.
The point of this story is that the primitive tools can bring down high tech systems if they are unexpected.
Back to topic:
1. The article mentions the egg-shaped alien craft. This is quite odd. I taught aliens have the saucer shaped crafts. Or saucer-shaped was Nazis craft.
2. What kept this guy silent for years ?
3. The mentioned craft was rather small. Could it be an escape pod from the larger craft ? If it is where is the big one ?
4. The whole Roswell story looked like an US military cover up for the spying program. Aliens fit in there like a perfect decoy. Now some old pa says it was the aliens.
PS
The Roses are red, the Violets are blue, in Serbian aerospace hacked radar brings down F-117@You!!!
I'm not going to play "clashing definitions" with you. The fact of the matter is that this represents new information from an inside source. You can choose to believe or to not, but the leak, whistle-blower, informant, whatever you choose to call him, obviously exists. He's sixty years late, but that doesn't change the fact that he is in a position to know. He's the one who researched and authored the original press release wherein the military at Roswell announced that they had recovered a crashed flying saucer.
Why do I say this? Because if he had this information, and really felt the need to share it, he would have done so sooner. Instead he waited until it was impossible for the consequences to matter. That's all the proof I need.
You can make a statement like that and call my reasoning moronic? You know nothing about this man or how he worked. How can you possibly make any kind of statement about how he would or would not react to the influences in his life and what those reactions mean with regard to the validity of the information he is passing on? You can't, plain and simple. From my perspective, I can see a lot of sense in his approach; while alive, as you point out, he was available to pay the consequences for not towing a military secret. How does that do anything to take away from his testimony? Your reasoning is broken.
And calling his motives "ulterior" is even worse. That's a huge, baseless assumption and judgment based on what appears to be a strong dogmatic bias on your part.
And save that "you've been programmed" crap. It makes sense when you're sitting around your dorm room stoned, but in the light of reason, it's just vacuous. The only thing I've been programmed to do is seek REAL evidence, and this ain't it, not by a mile.
First of all, I don't take drugs. Secondly, the light of reason shines quite brightly in my life; The logical fallacies in your post suggest, however, that you spend less time in the same light. You say you are programmed to seek REAL evidence, and you couldn't be more correct. But who defines REAL for you? Think: you are not even considering the current information now; you are brushing it aside based on assumptions and logical fallacies without even having seen it. All you have is a second hand news report which was light on details.
The point is, the claim may be false, and it may be real. I won't know until I see more. But I am not brushing it aside so thoughtlessly. Thoughtless and forceful rejection of an idea is one of the hallmarks of having been brainwashed.
-FL
There _has_ to be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this, and it has nothing to do with aliens:
1.) U.S.A. or Russia invents a new flying technology.
2.) But they can only stick it in a ship that's small.
3.) So they use a crew of midgets to fly it around.
4.) It crashes and all the yokels who have never seen ANYTHING like this before assume it's aliens.
Having sailed all the way back from Hawaii to San Francisco safely and pleasantly, then *promptly* crashed into the dock in front of a crowd of welcoming well-wishers, I have no trouble believing the poor tired bastards cratered it in out in the desert after crossing galaxies successfully!
Four legs provide the simplest way for a large animal to locomote on dry land. And standing on the hind legs frees up two limbs to use for manipulation. Sensory organs in front makes sense for a 4-legged creature, and when it stands on its hind legs, they end up on top. So while a more-or-less humanoid appearance is doubtless not universal, it is probably a fairly common evolutionary pathway.
Why would the military request coffins from a local undertaker? If they had alien corpses, I rather doubt they'd be interested in burying them. And they sure as hell wouldn't be transporting them around in something like a standard coffin.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
If there were aliens at Roswell, well, that's been covered. But if there weren't, then what was all the hub-bub about? In 1997, I heard some government spokesman try to explain about the Roswell stories by claiming that the witnesses had confused the bodies they say with some test dummies that were dropped from planes in 1957. That was absurd to me that anyone would suggest that people would confuse events 10 years apart. It was so absurd that at that point, I had my answer. The government simply wants people to believe that aliens crashed at Roswell. They were trying to fuel the conspiracists.
If it was a real conspiracy to hide aliens, they'd (yes, even the government) do a better job at it. They wouldn't come up with such absurd statements after having 50 years to come up with a better cover story. Given all the top secret research we were doing at the time, it seems much more likely that the alien story is a way to deflect the attention of those who might otherwise snoop. Plus it has the added benefit of putting doubt into the minds of your adversaries about your true capabilities.
I'm not saying that the alien stuff is impossible. I try to always keep an open mind. But ever since that day in 1997, I felt like the book was closed on Roswell. Nice try.
No, he meant Marketing vs. Management.
"You can make a statement like that and call my reasoning moronic?"
Yes. That's because it is.
"And calling his motives "ulterior" is even worse. That's a huge, baseless assumption and judgment based on what appears to be a strong dogmatic bias on your part."
NO, actually, it isn't, it's spot-fucking-on. He's not associated with any UFO related businesses is he. OH WAIT HE IS... Kind of makes that "ulterior motive" thing a little more credible doesn't it. How fucking stupid are you that you'd insist something was baseless when others have posted the information that proves otherwise?
"Thoughtless and forceful rejection of an idea is one of the hallmarks of having been brainwashed."
Great, I'm glad I thought about it thoroughly, decided it was ridiculous, and then rejected it, somewhat mildly. I'm glad you agree I'm not brainwashed.
I do have to say, however, that accepting a supposition based on a total lack of credible evidence, is the hallmark of a fucking moron. And since you accepted this supposition based on a total lack of credible evidence, well...
Stop telling people they're brainwashed, it makes you sound even more retarded, especially when you are too dumb to make a better case than "YOU ARE TEH BRAINWASHEEED!!! I AM TEH NOT, SOS I BE MO BETTAH!!!"
If you could manage faster than light travel to cross the Universe, the chances are that basic resources we fight over (and much of that is a Created battle we don't really need) on earth, would not be an incentive to travel.
Anyone sufficiently advanced to cross the Galaxy, in other words, won't need to steal our gold or eat our people. The ONLY reason I would believe, that one would mess with other primitive races is to research, or manipulate evolution. You could seed planets, create interesting things because curiosity is all that drives you, or treat the Galaxy as your garden.
I don't think it would necessarily take a civilization Millions of years more advanced to start doing that. I think that within a thousand years, we will be able to travel across the galaxy and manipulate life forms.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
None of that is the point.
First of all, the man was in a position to know. He's the one who researched and authored the original press release wherein the military at Roswell announced that they had recovered a crashed flying saucer. It was the brass from Washington who flew in and ordered the story classified and changed. Listening to him because he has nothing to gain is petty thinking based on a deep desire in oneself to profit. Considering his claim because he can no longer be punished for talking is another story.
With regard to your point #2, "Insensitivity" is not an accusation I've seen anybody throw around with regard to this story, so I'm not sure what you are getting at. I certainly don't care how sensitive to an old man's suffering one is being when discussing Roswell, although it does indicate a type of thinking in a person which is more likely to be counter-productive as being unaware and un-open to emotions limits understanding of the human condition and thus the knowledge which can be obtained and worked with. But that's neither here nor there. --As for people being unable to exact revenge for thinking that they've been fooled? HUH??? You really must exist in an odd head-space to even consider that. Profit from lying, using emotions to protect your lie, and fear of revenge when found out? If those are any indication of the sorts of rules you live by on a regular basis, then it's no wonder you assume this man is hoaxing.
Fortunately, I live in a world where those rules are far, far from the norm, (people tend to attract the kinds of people into their lives they best resonate with. If you are representing yourself accurately here, then I imagine your life would be rather difficult when it comes to intimacy and trust.), and I am willing to entertain the idea that the deceased lieutenant might have had somewhat different motives than profit, cruelty and manipulation for fun on his mind.
The CSICOP webpage you linked to simply reiterated the government's story and used the government's evidence while ignoring all the inconvenient details. The only way people could call that a 'thorough debunking' is if they were willing to delude and blind themselves in order to maintain a dogmatic belief structure. This isn't anything new; it's textbook 'fullaholes' scepticism. --I'm not saying I know what happened, but I will say that there is a lot of information which doesn't fit with the 'truth' the he sceptics are promoting. See the difference?
That's why I spell the word two ways; There's Skeptic, which is somebody who doesn't believe anything, but explores all avenues of thought without pre-judgment or bias, (there are very, very few people like this.) And then there are the Sceptics, who only pretend to love science and rational thinking, but really they only apply it when it fits with their pre-fabricated beliefs. I spell their kind of Sceptic with a 'C', because then it rhymes with "Sewage" (as in "sceptic tank"), which I think is quite appropriate.
-FL
While it is possible you're correct, it is also equally possible that you are not. These things do not necessarily have to go hand in hand. FTL travel does not necessarily mean the end of resource issues.
Imagine, if you will, that they are not that advanced at all. Imagine that they simply stumbled upon this achievement and have been trying desparately to repeat their accidental result. They may be only slightly more advanced than we are, and could therefore have only slightly less need for natural resources than we do.
And why would they target earth and not 'GOLDPLANET 9545'? Perhaps because the signals we emit make it easier to 'hit' earth in a sky of infinite targets?
We really don't know, but I wish that we could find out. And I'd like to be there when we do...
This stolen video of a government training film confirms the lieutenant's affidavit.
I'm gonna do what I want and I'm gonna get paid -- Tom Waits
The previous poster's argument still stands. How many of those "large numbers of the elite intellect & previously seriously respected Government officials" also believe in a personal God, or miracles, or anything else of the like that is largely improbable? Many scientists with a PhD and who are well respected for their work still believe in things like this. It is the same type of scenario.
I read Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" tetralogy recently (and not done yet.) But here is the relevant part. The time is 1942, and aliens (of our own technological level in 2000) already invaded. An englishman, a radar operator and otherwise smart guy, opens up a semiconductor-based radar from a downed alien airplane and can't figure out how it works. "There are no tubes!" he says. I believe this scene is realistic. Only few scientists of the time could comprehend the principle, and they'd have to be able to either dissect a solid crystal and visualize individual doping atoms (hardly possible!) or they'd have to somehow infer the planar technology, P-N barriers and everything else that hasn't been invented yet, and won't be invented for decades ahead. Maybe if the scientists are given the working alien hardware and told to dig in this direction they'd save a few years, but still they have to do most of the work themselves - the equipment does not come with textbooks on metallurgy and crystallography and solid state physics - and all that is a required knowledge if you want to make a transistor. Add quantum physics to the mix if you want your transistor to work fast.
No one is collating this story with the "locking shopping carts" story today at /.
It's obvious: the alien spacecraft was stolen from an alien grocery store and locked up because Earth is just outside the parking lot boundaries.
MYSTERY... SOLVED! ROOOOBY ROO!
The media isn't interested in truth. It's a business that wants storylines and templates that follow an agenda. With the revelation that journalists donate to Democrats at a ratio of 9 to 1, it's no surprise that they completely ignore what troops will tell you if you actually ask them, since they're the ones actually over there in Iraq and all. No, better to listen to lameduck Nancy Pelosi and the spin machine controlling Congress, currently at its lowest approval rating in history.
Again, the problem is that when you throw around the term "people", you have to keep in mind who those people are. They are scientists in many different parts of the country, through many different decades. They would have to have all been keeping a secret. This seems incredibly less likely than that they would announce the advanced technology itself as the discovery, rather than puttering around in a lab for decades, making an incremental advance half-way work. That's where the outrageousness really comes into play.
I'm saying it's a highly outrageous claim, since there is a line of inventions and incremental work by unrelated scientists all over the world leading up to NVG or any other tech. So the claim would have to be that the military got them, used them but kept them quiet, then coordinated with all the scientists to give them little bits of information every few years but convinced them to keep it hush-hush. Also, they convinced the soldiers who used them to keep it quiet. Again, it's simply an outrageous claim.
I can't believe the civilization as advanced as ours is full of people who can't even program a computer. It's just odd.
It's just the opposite - the more advanced we get, the more specialized our jobs become. If you live in a tribe in the jungle, you might know everything your civilization knows. If you live in a space age civ, you can't possibly.
Can you make your own clothes? Grow your own food? Build a telephone? Diagnose your own illnesses? Design your own car? Draft your own legislation? For everything you answer "yes," there are a hundred other jobs you can't do for yourself because there isn't time in one life to learn it all.
My med-school-student fiance will never know how to program a computer, and doesn't care to. But you'll be glad she hasn't wasted her time on that if she's your doctor someday.
So not having read something makes me stupid, does it?
Wrong.
Stupid is when you do not adapt your thinking to make room for new information. I didn't know that Walter Haut owned a UFO museum. (Just looked that up.) But you didn't indicate that you knew it either, when you posted your silly argument. quote:
"Why do I say this? Because if he had this information, and really felt the need to share it, he would have done so sooner. Instead he waited until it was impossible for the consequences to matter. That's all the proof I need."
Hm. If that's all the proof you need, then the museum thing really doesn't figure into your thinking at all, does it?
So what are you saying now? That you think he was hoaxing because, "If he had the information and felt the need to share it, he would have done so sooner", or because, as you now suggest, he was involved with a UFO business?
It seems to me that you are retro-actively padding a weak argument and getting angry and rude with me for having to do so. Hint: In the future, have some talking points before you actually talk. And avoid getting rude with people for reacting to your faulty logic; even if you know in your own head what you are talking about, posting gibberish and getting angry with people for not understanding you makes you look incredibly childish.
I do have to say, however, that accepting a supposition based on a total lack of credible evidence, is the hallmark of a fucking moron. And since you accepted this supposition based on a total lack of credible evidence, well...
More false assumptions. Who said I accepted anything? I let this kind of information in along with all other information. Then I let the good and bad ideas cancel one another out. It's call differential analysis, or cross examination and it works. It's one of the primary tools of the Skeptic; something few around here actually seem to understand. As for Walter Haut; he cannot be written off yet. There's not enough information available to do so.
Stop telling people they're brainwashed, it makes you sound even more retarded, especially when you are too dumb to make a better case than "YOU ARE TEH BRAINWASHEEED!!! I AM TEH NOT, SOS I BE MO BETTAH!!!"
(Speaking of childish. .
And I must say it: your juvenile post is in fact further possible evidence of psychological blockages with regard to this material. You would probably not be reacting like you are now if we were discussing automotive parts. Why does UFO theory upset you so much?
-FL
- Where is their stuff?
- Where is the plastic that wouldn't have biodegraded?
- Where are the ruins of their cities?
- Where is their waste, particularly the radioactive kind?
- Shouldn't they have spanned the globe in seeking resources for their growth?
- Where are their religious and historical monuments?
- Where are they?
- Did they develop cheap FTL tech? Why haven't we heard from their other colonies if so?
- Why would they all have left at the same time with no dissenters left to stay on mother Earth after cleaning everything up?
- Why are there things left for us?
- Why do we still have oil and fossil fuels? Why didn't they cause a spike of global warming in their quest for the energy needed for space flight?
- Why do we still have so many easily found fossils?
- Why don't we see any evidence of industrial mining?
All in all, it just doesn't add up. If our supposed space-travelling ancestors were anything like us on a fundamental sociobiological level, then I don't see it.If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Once those forces are tapped within humanity, you'd better damn well make sure they ARE for noble purposes, with no possibility of any other purpose just happening to stroll by. It's not quite mob psychology, but it's close enough. It's using the passion of the group to steer the group as a single entity.
The attack on Iraq used those psychological forces to engage in a stupid, childish vendetta (with the possibility of oil). The Apollo missions used those same forces to engage in a race to the moon, invoking fear of the Soviets getting there first. Politicians utilize this whole mechanism to get massive numbers of people who neither know nor care to vote the way the politician wants them to vote; the best psychologist wins. For that matter, do you think so many people would watch Super Bowl Sunday if there wasn't the very same kind of psyching-up?
These techniques are already being used for mundane purposes with terrible, destructive consequences. That's not going to change. Using these methods to do some good for society is certainly no worse than using the methods to rescue the men at Dunkirk - a genuinely noble and brave thing - and may result in populations too isolated from "mainstream" culture to be so perverted, which must help.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It is possible that they were just on a trip and encountered problems with their ship. They had to stop on a habitable planet to wait for help. However, the ship crashed before it can safely land.
There's an awfully huge difference between 'need' and 'want.' There's also an awfully huge problem with assigning the concept of a 'need' to an entire race.
After all, what an American 'needs' and what, say, a starving Ethopian 'needs' are pretty far apart.
After all, did, say, Sir Richard Branson 'need' to try flying around the world on a hot air balloon? For all we know, aliens did, in fact, make it to the Earth in 1947, but they were the alien version of very bored, very rich folks with too much time on their hands. Or the alien versions of crackpot inventors.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Let's see, our predictive models are:
Given the lack of credible evidence of aliens or viable flying egg shaped craft other than bathyspheres, compared to the overwhelming mountain of evidence of human proclivity for pranking, I'd say this is an easy one to figure out.
Ha Ha Ha. Nothing to see here... move along.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Tell you what. Instead of a 2 hour *video*, let's see some transcripts somewhere, with names and links to the documents proving they are who they are.
Any jackhat can claim to be "a government official" - and "elite intellect" is something I'm not taking someone's word on.
Which people do you refer to who haven't resigned from what high-paying jobs?
This is why video is bullshit. Text is faster and better in every way - but video is what convinces the rubes, and gives people the lame "just waste two hours watching the whole thing" excuse.
When Betty and Barney Hill described their adventures while in the hands of the off worlders that snatched them, they included a treatment of Betty Hill with a long needle in the abdomen that our off world visitors said was a pregnancy test. We now call such a test a laparoscopy and we used to use it, however its knowledge was unknown to medicine at the time that Betty and Barney became guests of the neighbors. We have since moved on to the far less invasive, not to mention less painful, method of ultrasound to check for pregnancies. In this we seem in reality more advanced than our visitors. It is quite possible that our visitors can do what they do because they got lucky in the lottery of planets 'handed out' to sentients. Maybe they evolved on a world where certain trans uranic elements in predicted zones of stability exist in usable quantities. Perhaps as postulated by some these elements really do facilitate interstellar travel. No matter what Einstein worshipers prattle and spout so tirelessly and so smugly about a theory that is over a hundred years old. Some of these sycophants may be less secure if they knew that some volumes of the old buzzard's early books yet exist in dusty garages. Picked one up a couple of years ago. Seems he doubted himself at least at first before he transformed from an underemployed bum to a fawned on object of the job security of the small mind. There are extra terms in his so called e=mc^2 formula. Matter is now known to not be a constant; and neither is the so called speed of light which has shown itself to be highly media dependant. Space by the way is not empty, and the fabric of space itself may be subject to a kind of D'Arcy Weisbach fluid friction. Step outside of it or fold into its interstices......?
AS for our visitors, the good folks at Wright Patterson will someday reverse engineer what they have. Maybe they really pulled it off but need more of the special fuel. THAT may prove challenging! Before they run out of it, they will have enough for a few more good 'F117a stealth bomb runs' like those reported by ex Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz when he publicly announced that his country's radar detected and clocked an American craft at 9000 miles per hour over his country. No wonder Sadaam's anti air installations had no chance. Manufacture of synthetic elements is possible, but the nuclear chemistry has to be known; and all these processes are prohibitively expensive. Much better to get it out of the ground. Our best chance is to find a really heavy planet orbiting close to its star, like Mercury, and mine it. I am sure the Chinese plan to do this. AS for Tariq, whatever he says now carries no integrity as he has no doubt been tortured by the Americans and would swear with all his heart that the moon was made of green cheese and our world was the gift of the great pumpkin.
Maybe a coverup was necessitated by the embarrassing fact that we SHOT DOWN our first contact>
How about emotional (intellectual?) wall #3, aliens can't physically travel interstellar distances, and emotional (intellectual?) wall #4, if they did, there would be a hell of a lot more going on, than simple Roswell conspiracy theories.
For someone with bold ideas, you seem to harp on the most nonsensical stories.
Good luck with UFO sightings Mr. Fantastic.
"So not having read something makes me stupid, does it?"
No, it makes you ignorant. It is your commenting on this subject as though you know what you're talking about, while being grossly ignorant of the facts that makes you stupid.
I didn't read the rest of your post, as you're ignorant and stupid.
Alien: "Well, we've been coming here for decades, abducting people and conducting endless anal probes. And the only thing we've discovered, in all that time, is that one in ten doesn't really seem to mind..."
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I'd always assumed that it was due to a good training process, and a strong (and held to) set of requirements for even getting on a starship in the first place. There were plenty of less intelligent people on the various planets they landed on, and various cases of nepotism in the hierarchy, so I can stick with the idea that you had to be somewhat bright to get into a decent position on a starship.
:-)
Of course, it was just Star Trek, which is TV not reality
The Aliens Lived.
They're now serving in Congress and the Bush Whitehouse.
A couple of them went a different direction and started Fox News
almost every great breakthrough in Human history was "stumbled upon." Watch the series "Connections" and you will find that refrigeration was invented by a Florida Doctor who was trying to treat Yellow Fever. Fascinating stuff.
If you have FTL, you can mine asteroids and use gas giants for fuel. I can't think of anything beyond Biological products that would be any use for an FTL visitor to our planet.
Even if they never really understood it -- much like a lot of inventions like electricity we depend upon, such a fundamental technology would have many spin-offs.
It is an easy thing to imagine, that once a race hits something like Humanity's "Industrial Revolution" that society either advances at a quick pace or destroys itself rather quickly. The reason that we don't see other advanced races, is that once they get to broadcasting signals like Radio Waves (which would not be that easy to detect over great distances), it's probably less than a thousand years to advances that make those signals "go dark." You can already see the transition now; compression of Radio signals to use for devices and short-range communication.
I can see 4 scenarios;
1) FTL is difficult, and requires harnessing energies like black holes -- I think some SciFi author has already come up with a "class" of advancement, this would be along the lines of "planet builders." And when you look at such a high bar to get where movement between the stars is practical, then races are very advanced before they meet other races.
2) FTL is not too much beyond us -- say a thousand years.
3) There is no FTL, and thus visiting a planet like earth would be a one-way trip in some sort of suspension. This model would mean a lot more interaction, as whomever came to earth would inevitably "need to do something" with the locals. Either they would dominate, or have a limited interaction where they kept themselves mostly secret. Curiosity is probably the one defining feature of any advanced species. And when you are stuck somewhere as a curious being -- you either are going to "experiment" with what is there, or Grow, and dominate. Since we don't seem to be dominated by aliens -- it seems that MOST ideas of Alien involvement in earth would suggest that FTL was beyond them, and they just mess with humans to satisfy some curiosity they have. Of course -- FTL being very difficult, and requiring the moving of stars and such to create worm holes might fit this scenario as well.
4) NO aliens. About the most unlikely thing I can imagine. A Billion stars in a galaxy -- and a trillion galaxies, as far as we know. Now we are seeing that most may have gas giants like Jupiter. Once we have better telescopes -- how many earth like planets will we find? 1 in 10. 1 in 4. Most? Even if life is preposterously difficult, and even more rare to form intelligence. A Billion-Trillion chances over Billions and Billions of years (I can hear Carl Sagan in my head) provides a lot of opportunity.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
I'm assuming that a race that makes it beyond the Nuclear and the Pollution Age (like we are in), has some maturity with respect to balancing Wants and Needs.
Wants can take you anywhere, but needs start wars.
Now, with an immature race, that allows greedy psychopaths to get the reigns. The WANT for more oil profits and military boondoggles can certainly start wars. Most of the wars we have been involved in as a country were Wants and not Needs driven -- thought the populace was sold that story.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
then I imagine your life would be rather difficult when it comes to intimacy and trust
You just love insulting people, don't you. Well, I do too. We know very little about each other and although I could make a great many assumptions about you, they would be as equally erroneous as the ones you seem to have made about me. After seeing your name, I recognized we've made comments back and forth of equally insulting nature. Would I be making an erroneous assumption that you are a disturbed individual based on the nature of your personal attacks on me?
I assure you that I am a reasonably well educated and well adjusted person who is somewhat baffled by your uncritical acceptance of pseudoscience. Because at times you do seem to write lucidly. Yes, that is judgmental but I see nothing you've said reasoned or insulting to change that view.
If you wish to continue to trade juvenile insults and arguments. I'll be here. I know this will sound ironic to you, but a high intelligence is no guarantee against believing in things that just aren't true. In fact, I'll go on to assert that it is easier for an intelligent person to delude themselves because it is so much easier to find rationalizations for believing that way. And it is harder to convince them otherwise.
What I have to say is incapable of satisfying you, so I won't waste too much effort here. I have enough facts at my disposal to make a reasonably good assessment of Roswell and UFO's in general to sort the wheat from the chaff. And it's all chaff.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Yes, but then again consider sharks and dolphins. Very similar in appearance, even though one is a mammal and one is a fish. Frequently they're mistaken for one another even thought they aren't remotely related.
You're looking for Convergent Evolution. The simple fact is that given a set of criteria, evolution will tend to find an optimal solution for that criteria, given enough time, regardless of the underlying mechanism.
Sometimes it's outward appearance, sometimes it's physiology, depends on what is being selected for and against.
Now, whether this breeds Asgard probably largely depends on what their planet looks like.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Maybe God is really grey-skinned with a big head and bug-eyes. The Bible didn't say "exactly in his image".
There's not reason to expect alien visitation on Earth until you get to Ezekiel.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Why would you assume that? Honest question.
Again, you assume that what you define as a 'need' is what somebody else would define as a 'need.' What 'need' started World War 1? World War 2? Vietnam? Korea?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
What's the chance that ANYONE would trip over the tiny fraction of a percent of the galaxy that comprises our volume of radio space?? About equivalent to finding a single marble lying among the rocks on some random Aleut beach. It could happen, but odds are against it.
If you have interstellar travel and advanced communications and robotics, and are interested in exploring, you build a robot robot factory and have it send out probes to all the stars in your galaxy. You collect all kinds of data, probably you're just looking for natural resources, but then the exozoologists get ahold of your data and somebody sends them on an expedition.
Heck, *we'd* do that if we had the technology and money, and we're just tree-swingers who don't even understand our own physics or biology.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well now, I think you did read the rest of my post, albeit, you probably skimmed as quickly as you could because that's all you could manage due to the sick feeling in your gut which always hits when you have to deal with the repercussions of your actions and the possibility that somebody might make you face yourself. But that's beside the point.
Listen, we are all ignorant at all times on many levels, yet we do the best we can to continue living with the information we have, formulating theories and testing them through application while we work to collect new information. The point you brought up is interesting and I am glad to know it, but my original post and all the points therein are not actually diminished by it, so your abusive screaming about, 'gross ignorance,' is entirely unfair. It is in fact itself ignorant behavior. Essentially, you posted with knee-jerk anger in response to my attempt at examining how kids grow up in a system where they are psychologically manipulated. When I responded to your irrational and poorly communicated points, you became even more rude and agitated and irrational. And now you have regressed to calling names and running away. How old are you, anyway?
Maybe it is time for you to grow up and face yourself and the world squarely and without fear. Preferably before you do any more typing.
-FL
subject title says it all
In a land obsessed with fame, we're suprised a former US Army PR flak would purjor themself while alive and not allow the affidavit's publication until after his death. A desperate grasp for a last minute entry in the record books. As for the idea that an alien race that could come here from so far away wouldn't crash, well, have a look at traffic stats. People of high of high IQ, in well-maintained, late-model cars, are just as likely to crash as anybody in the community. Just because a species is advanced doesn't mean it's naturally going to follow that individuals in that species will be perfect.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
You are presuming that another civilization would have achieved interstellar spaceflight by being just like us. In case it's not obvious, this is illogical, since we have not developed interstellar spaceflight. It is at least as likely that we are a model for how *not* to do it. Civilizations that waste their resources on Hummers, Big Macs, and WMDs may self-select for staying put.
I think we'd have a better shot at it, for instance, if we were more scientific and less mystical, if we were more visionary on a multigenerational scale, if we were less concerned with material wealth and acquisitiveness, and if we weren't so busy fighting each other due to population pressures and religious differences. If we were all of those things, we could easily have left the Earth thousands of years ago without having left a fraction of the mark we've made as earthbound primates.
"Come to think of it Scandinavia is not particularly capitalist..."
/.? How is it possible for people not to know that Norway is one of the richest countries on Earth in monetary terms precisely because of our capitalistic exploitation of our natural resources like oil, hydroelectricity, lumber, fish and aquaculture? Then add shipping and technologies relevant to offshore drilling.
Why is this drivel so prevalent on
It's ALL capitalism and although the examples differ it's the same deal in Sweden and Denmark (or, if we expand into the nordic countries, Finland and Iceland as well), All scandinavian and nordic countries have always operated by capitalism. The baltic and hopefully future Nordic Council member states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia also have a long history of being capitalist and trading societies except of course during their occupation by the USSR.
You want to attempt to build a welfare society? Then you need capitalism and a ethnically near-homogeneous population, when either of those dilutes too far then the rest goes as well (as has already happened in scandinavia).
- Anonymous Annoyed Norwegian
You are presuming that another civilization would have achieved interstellar spaceflight by being just like us.
There are several things we can reasonably assume. A civilization reaching space travel is probably going to have to have industrial metallurgy. (Otherwise, what are you going to make the ship out of?) That requires mining and a way to fuel the smelting of metals. Both of these things consume resources and leave geological markers. You don't go from banging rocks together to microprocessors without having to go through advanced mechanical devices and industrial chemical engineering first. You don't launch to orbit without manufacturing systems to make the various parts for the space craft, and this requires the consumption of resources, the production of wastes, and the building of structures that should've endured into the geological record.
Science and invention "stand on the shoulders of giants." This classic trope means that no invention or discovery happens in a vacuum -- it's the result of refinements and improvements based on the insights and creativity of past generations. While it's possible that you could make an entirely zero-impact industrial infrastructure, you would never be able to do so without going through dirtier technologies first.
If we were all of those things, we could easily have left the Earth thousands of years ago without having left a fraction of the mark we've made as earthbound primates.
Yes, but then they wouldn't be human -- or frankly any kind of terrestrial mammal that I'm aware of. We are the way we are because natural selection made us this way. We are obsessed with wealth and acquisitiveness because it helps us compete better against others to pass on our genes. We think of ourselves and our immediate needs because that's what helped us survive before civilization and long-term goals we invented. We fight each other other population pressures and philosophical differences because that's how social animals are; we form up in groups for mutual defense and then enhance our desire to compete against other groups by having a natural tendency to demonize their differences.
Natural selection is short-sighted. It only cares about the fitness of one generation to make the next. Anything beyond that is outside the scope of its ability to select. Really, aliens can't be an "enlightened" off-shoot of humanity from the past because humans from the past would've had the same evolutionary pressures as our ancestors. Too many of our negative traits go all the way back to ancestors far more ancient than hominids and primates, and they'd certainly share them.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You just love insulting people, don't you. Well, I do too. We know very little about each other and although I could make a great many assumptions about you, they would be as equally erroneous as the ones you seem to have made about me. After seeing your name, I recognized we've made comments back and forth of equally insulting nature. Would I be making an erroneous assumption that you are a disturbed individual based on the nature of your personal attacks on me?
Either I'm a far more terrible person than I think I am, or you're mis-interpreting my comments.
I just re-read my last post, and I really don't think I said anything which was insulting to you. I made very sure to qualify my comments in such a way that they responded only to what you were saying and to explain what might be easily inferred from what you were saying. --You told me directly in that you think it's cool and acceptable to mislead people for fun and profit. If that's not how you really feel, then why on earth would you represent yourself as such? Any insult or unhappiness you perceive from my pointing out the difficulties which result in living life in that manner is coming from within you.
My comments about false skepticism being like sewage is I think, as I said, appropriate. Dogmatic belief doesn't allow fresh ideas in, and it allows false knowledge to grow and fester. That's what sewage is; liquid waste which isn't being flushed away by fresh water. Again, any insult taken from that is hardly my fault. I'm just holding up a mirror. And whether or not you believe me when I say it, it is true; I do not mean any disrespect towards you. And anyway, I wasn't directing the Skeptic thing at you. I was just commenting on the phenomenon at large. If you chose to take it personally, then again, that is a choice you made for some reason which only you can answer to.
As for your thoughts regarding UFO's, I am absolutely interested. If you have information which lead you to the belief that UFOs are all 'chaf', then I really want to know it! Jeez. If you know something which is so very convincing, then it either must be really solid, (in which case, I want to know it too,) or it's faulty. However, based on the work I have put into looking at this, and all the patterns I have seen over, and over again, I am not banking on your being able to tell me anything I've not already heard and seen the flaws with, but who knows? I've been wrong before and I am not scared of being wrong again.
When I began looking at stuff, I had very strong beliefs in how things were, and UFO's didn't fit into that mold. I come from a very strict science background. But I wanted to know more, so I started looking. Then something very interesting happened; the first and immediate thing I ran into was that I found very deeply rooted negative emotional reactions in myself to even looking at stuff outside the orthodox mainstream. I was embarrassed to say what I was doing to my peers, and whenever I did breathe word of it, I was attacked ruthlessly with ridicule and the like.
This effectively prevented me from looking for many years.
But the day did come when I stopped and blinked and saw that there was a logical disconnect. Very simply, strong emotions like those I described are not supposed to be part of a scientific enquiry, and since they were so overwhelmingly powerful, not just in myself, but in virtually everybody I've ever heard talk about it on the orthodox science side, I began to wonder where that intense emotional energy came from and why they were so deeply entrenched in me and the people I knew. So I tried a little experiment. --I made a deliberate effort to push past those emotional boundaries and look honestly at the 'forbidden' materials and get on with the job of measuring them. I didn't think at the time I was doing anything special, but this changed my life in a significant way. Fear no longer controls what I allow myself to think about. --And suffice it to say, that when I fin
--That he was smart enough to come up with it, but not smart enough to use it properly?
Or could it be that the damned thing just doesn't work very well?
Occam's razor has a major flaw, and it is this: The person using it can only reason based on the knowledge s/he currently has available. That knowledge is ALWAYS incomplete, which means their reasoning is never beyond fault. To use the razor to eliminate entire areas of knowledge is unwise in the extreme.
Occam's razor can, when applied correctly, be a useful tool to help round down less-likely possibilities, but it is also a convenient tool (ab)used by sceptics to condemn things which they are not comfortable thinking about but which, when it comes right down to it, they cannot actually logically write off.
Here's one application of Occam which does appear to work somewhat. . .
1. You know everything and none of your assumptions are wrong, you have no internal fear-based blockages and you never fall prey to logical fallacies.
2. You are a human being capable of flaw.
Hmmm.
-FL
Unless you count all the countries in the Carribean, Central America, and half of South America.
Be fair: it's not quite all. The US never invaded the Bahamas, for example. And "half of South America" is overstating it too.
But, yes, since WW2, the USA has probably invaded more countries that have never attacked it than any other country.
"Velcro.. Yeah that was a NASA invention, riiiiight. I bet the egg was full of the stuff."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro
See that's why crackpot theories about Atlantis get so much attention. It's convenient to say most of the events/artifacts on your list happened on one little continent that happened to sink, and rather than skip to another continent they built a spaceship and headed for Proxima I.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"I didn't read the rest of your post, as you're ignorant and stupid."
See when I wrote that you replied with
"Well now, I think you did read the rest of my post"
NO MORON, I DID NOT.
How fucking stupid are you? Stop assuming people lie just because you do.
How fucking stupid are you? Stop assuming people lie just because you do.
And yet I notice you're still checking up to see what I have to say. And, please, but I don't lie. You cannot point to anything I've said which constitutes a deliberate intention to mislead. You're just angry and flailing around grabbing for any accusation to throw whether or not it makes any sense.
I am having an increasingly difficult time not picturing you as an animated character about a foot and a half tall with a big mouth and a runny nose. And a beanie with a propeller on top.
--Look, if you want to call names and spin around holding your hands over your ears while hollering nonsensical abuse at the world, then you may do so. That's your choice. But that kind of behavior leads to one living in a bubble-reality while the rest of the world gets on with their lives, perhaps taking a moment to glance in your direction and shake their heads in bafflement.
-FL