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Ask Slashdot: What Is Your View On UFO Sightings?
dryriver writes: UFOs sightings have been reported in the tens of thousands over the last decades. In the past, some have seen flying cigar-shaped craft (blimps?), some flying triangles, some more rounded-looking flying saucers. Often the apparent spacecraft does something improbable like standing completely still in the sky and then shooting off to somewhere at an incredible speed. Some sightings are just lights or light formations flying around or dancing around in the night sky -- which could be military aircraft like helicopters and F16s training at night. There seem to be people who genuinely see stuff that is hard to explain, people who fake UFO sightings, photos and videos for profit to keep the "UFO industry" of websites, radio shows and magazines afloat, and yet others that think a regular airplane flying at night with its lights on is a UFO. What is your view on all this? Are we being visited from outer space? Is it prototype aircraft that look like UFOs to the untrained eye? Was some 190 IQ inventor-prankster having fun with quadcopter drones with colored lights four decades before quadcopters became a thing (hey, tons of people have created fake crop-circles in the past)? Where do all these supposed UFO sightings and reports come from? Did events like the famous "Battle Of Los Angeles" actually happen? And do you find any UFO reports credible at all?
go away and watch tv
UFOs are just that - Unidentified Flying Objects.
The hoopla around them is just because for *some* people, their existence is more exciting than the boring reality of human existence.
Personally, the more boring something tends to be (like water, air, gravity), the more grounded in reality I find it to be.
Deal with reality - the world as it is - rather than ideality - the world as you would like it to be.
But because they are by definition unidentified, it's unreasonable to claim they are of extra-terrestrial origin.
I've actually seen 2 @ once (w/ witnesses) - 1 still alive that would corroborate my story (a cousin). We weren't abducted or "anally probed" or anything like that. We just saw 2 of them in the distance (I was about 10 yrs. old & he's a year older) hovering a good 5 miles away or so in the sky.
I saw it 1st & pointed @ it yelling to my late Uncle who was on his tractor in the fields haying nearby us. We were just playing by some beehives in a tree fort we were making (lol, or trying to).
He saw it too & cut the tractor motor & said (in Polish) "psa kref" which means 'son of a bitch' in English (literally translates out to "dog's blood" or "blood of a dog" (descended from a dog I guess)).
Anyhow/anways:
They hovered for around 1/2 hour but got smaller as they went going very slowly towards the west. They were INCREBIDLY bright, Silvery-White I'd call it & glowing...
* I will never forget it.
APK
P.S.=> I ran home quickly, not "scared outta my wits" but more like "WoW - I have to tell Mom & Dad about THIS!" (I don't recall their reactions, they did believe me though, especially as I do remember saying "Ask Uncle Stan & Frank about it!")... apk
Intelligent life has had more than enough time to fill every corner of the galaxy, even traveling at sub-light speeds. We're either still-undiscovered, or we're being kept isolated as a sort of nature preserve. Assuming information has become the coin of the galaxy, we are valuable as an untouched phenomena to study.
It seems likely that most UFOs are optical illusions, affected by the current era's psychological concepts. (There used to be sightings of fantasy airships and flying sailing boats) If some of the UFOs we see are of alien origin, they're most likely just manifestations of remote viewing techniques.
If aliens are visiting us physically, they are doing so through artificial intelligence. They've sent wisp probes which have multiplied here, constructed more complex machines or even bases. If they've come to colonize, I wouldn't worry about them raining death down upon Earth. They'll likely build orbital colonies among the asteroids and populate them with beings replicated out of faxed DNA.
I have noticed that UFO sightings were a lot more common when people weren't carrying smartphones with integrated cameras with them. Now that everybody's got one, the UFOs have disappeared.
If it is unidentified and appears to be flying, it's an UFO.
The connection "strange lights in the sky -> it must be advanced ships from another galaxy" is the faulty logic step.
A few propositions for new article titles for the editors: - How would you rate your most recent encounter with chupacabra? - Is Yeti a good Xmas house guest? - Bigfoot - what to serve for breakfast... is tea OK? - Why are gargoyles unhappy with their medieval portraits? Looking at you BeauHD... but not only you.
Here is one of the most famous videos of a UFO sighting. It's not your typical shaky shot of some light(s) off in the distance; the quality is quite good and at around 33 seconds you can actually see some detail of the alleged UFO.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The US Air Force had Projects Sign, Grudge and Bluebook and they still had cases that under the most stringent investigation still could not be explained.
Those that could not be explained away were not insignificant numbers, even when Project Grudge was doing its best to bury them.
The fact that military forces all over the world had had incidents and trained observers can't explain the Who, Why or How means there must be at some point a recognition by any intelligent person that there has to be vehicles not originating from Earth.
After all, if we were the only intelligent species, wouldn't it be a giant waste of space?
Sometimes there are flying things we don't know what they are. studying them usually identify them.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
I don't believe in ghosts, gods, goblins or little green men.
It's our media in general.
Water, oxygen etc must be easy for space traveling civilizations to come by, but can be safely assumed that music, art etc is quite unique on every planet.
Which means the visitors are probably just pointing their advanced downloading devices to our planet and copying up EVERYTHING to some database that gets shared/sold later on.
And there's not a damn thing esa/riaa/mpaa can do to stop the space pirates.
Our "powerful encryptions and digital locks" probably falls in mere seconds on their advanced computers and cracking techniques.
Everyone had something to test. People saw all kinds of post ww2 Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... evaluations.
The Christofilos effect, Project 137 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
SR-71 and D-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... testing.
Then the stealth work. Now its MAV and Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System.
People have seen a lot of mil work been done and had to be dissuaded from talking. UFO was the perfect cover to bait and infiltrate any people, groups watching for mil/gov work.
Their results when seeing mil projects could be covered up with the mention of been a UFO enthusiast.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Well AC, I suppose any alien species seem "insane" to each other, and experienced explorers will simply watch us calmly from a safe distance.
And our pipsqueak atom bombs haven't produced any gamma ray bursts that could possibly be seen over the glare of the Sun and all other natural phenomena.
It doesn't make sense for aliens to secretly contact our governments unless it is to give time to prepare for their imminent coming. And nothing our governments are doing seem to be with that in mind. Aliens are more likely to avoid us until we have our shit together. If they're responsible for triggering world unrest, then they're screwups.
All alone at night
Bright lights flashing in the sky
Not the anal probe!
This space unintentionally left blank.
What's your point? Who said we were special? I didn't.
Seriously aliens, who needs it ?
This seems to be a deliberate feeding of the conspiracy theorists that are so out of touch with reality that they take InfoWars seriously. I for one am not looking to indulge those people in the fantasies of secret shadow government conspiracies that are beyond improbable and firmly in the realm of the absurd. If you are interested in conspiracies then you need look no further than our own President's election campaign.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
There's a whole wiki article on it. It definitely wasn't aliens though, or even Japanese aircraft. In the early days of WW2, panic makes perfect sense. News reports back then were even harder to get than now. Many people at that time, even in the military, wouldn't know what the Japanese were going to attack next. Once a few shots were fired, tracers became targets that generated more tracers that generated more targets. That really does seem like the most reasonable explanation.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'd have to think that any civilization advanced enough to have interstellar travel would at least be able to match our own ability at stealthing atmospheric craft (including basic things like turning off the running lights and not flying during the daytime when they'd be easily seen). I also know how easy it is for people to get confused about what they're seeing when they know what they're seeing, let alone when they don't. And I can't see any motivation for extraterrestrial visitors to let themselves be seen without making their presence irrefutably known.
Conclusion: people were misinterpreting perfectly ordinary things for UFOs.
NB: this doesn't preclude us having extraterrestrial visitors. It just says that if you're not one of the ones they've decided to deal with directly then you're not going to see any hint that they're around.
This has all the hallmarks of a standard sighting of a couple of planets. Planets are much brighter than people expect them, and 'bright, silvery-white, almost glowing' sounds about right. Two of them appear close together (a conjunction, in astronomical terms) rarely enough for people to be surprised by them. By the way, your eyes can't determine distances, at all, above a few hundred meters away - from there you are guessing based on things like brightness.
Planets are often seen as 'getting closer' and 'zooming further away' because they change in brightness as light cloud moves across them. 'Fading' and 'drifting west' sounds about right, as the planets would be setting.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
This Sci Fi story based on 'The Thing' has a great closing line
http://clarkesworldmagazine.co...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Once you exclude the UFOs that can be confirmed as something mundane, then what else a UFO could be is effectively unfalsifiable. Either it's classified, or a one-off unrecorded meteorological/optical phenomenon laymen are ignorant of, or something 'new to science'. Completely new macroscopic phenomena are very rare nowadays, because anything that conspicuous was likely to have been noticed thousands of years ago, and thoroughly explained hundreds of years ago. Every now and then a legend is confirmed real, but sometimes is debunked (Loch Ness monster.)
More relevantly, aliens are passe in American culture now. They've lost credibility as a trope in media, having been replaced by Zombies and Vampires, who more closely resemble our current cultural anxieties. Xenophobia led to broad fear of space aliens, and the cold war Red Scare led to general fear of invasion. The fall of the USSR was accompanied by a shift in anxieties to fear of the internal moral collapse of one's society. Vampires represent the hidden minority slowly corrupting society, whereas Zombies represent a foolish majority clamoring for society's downfall.
In a society that promotes coexisting with other ethnicities, or even pluralism, it's difficult to take "nuke the little green men because they're all evil!" seriously.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Go have a look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Aligns perfectly with my opinion about it btw.
Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
Yes, and for some reason the images are always extremely blurry or they were "improved" with known Adobe After Effects packages (thanks Cpt. Disillusion!).
As for mere sightings, who cares? People also often see pink elephants, Elvis and the Holy Mary.
there's just always some mundane explanation.
The explanation is not always mundane. There have been several examples of small plane pilots intentionally spoofing people by flying in formation with weird synchronized lights. That is almost as cool as the guys that faked all crop circles. I really admire these people. Their ingenuity and hard work have made the world a more interesting place.
I have noticed that UFO sightings were a lot more common when people weren't carrying smartphones with integrated cameras with them. Now that everybody's got one, the UFOs have disappeared.
I don't really have issues with the basic idea of UFOs as long as you manage to treat them as just that, Unknown Flying Objects and manage to restrain your imagination and maintain critical thinking when evaluating a sighting. I have issues with people who default to the assumption that UFOs are alien spacecraft and often get angry when you point out an alternative explanation or raise questions. Something like 99% of UFOs are known natural phenomenons of some kind, or caused by mundane man made objects. Of the remainder something like 0.9999...% are more interesting things, like military aircraft of some kind, possibly (if you are lucky) military prototypes or some kind of rare or (if you are REALLY lucky) unknown natural phenomenon. The remainder are things that might possibly be Aliens but the overwhelming odds are that on closer examination they belong to they are one of the former two groups.
This is quite similar to psychokinetic and telekinetic powers. About 200 years ago, mediums could use the 'power of the mind' to move very heavy objects such as tables or people. And somehow, during the 20th century, the 'movable' size decreased while the ability to detect frauds increased. Nowadays people with powers can barely move teeny weeny objects and only when the conditions are good (aka no expert watching them to detect frauds).
UFOs are a bit like that. They are still sittings but most of the proofs, usually videos, do not resist a careful analysis by a CGI specialist or anyone with a true critical mind. See for instance the Oskar Jungell videos on YT. https://www.youtube.com/user/O...
Of course, one could argue that aliens want to remain undetected (e.g. the Star-Trek Prime Directive) and consequently they stopped visiting us when the risk of being caught on camera became too high. That is a reasonable argument but that does not help to prove that aliens really exist and have visited us.
Simple reason: we have high definition cameras everywhere now. The tactic of the "UFOs are aliens" crank is to take blurry, low res photos that invite pareidolia.
A lot of former UFO enthusiasts are packing it in for this very reason. If we were being visited by aliens, we absolutely should have concrete evidence. And we don't.
Are aliens up there in space? Yeah, probably. I reckon probably NOT in our galaxy, and possibly NOT in our hubble volume (observable universe). If we were a competent species that would be a good thing because we could spread through the galaxy before we're absorbed by a more advanced culture.
But in any case, we're not a competent species so it doesn't matter. We'll almost certainly be extinct in the next century or so. Maybe a few smart individuals could get away and learn to live in space, but it's not looking very likely.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
When I was a child (about 5 or 6 years old) I saw an UFO, weird experience but fascinating. I was living in San Luis, Argentina at the moment and I saw it first hand with a lot of other people as well. What I saw was a blueish circle, right above us beyond the clouds, it was lightly clouded and you can see the translucent clouds moving below the object, it stood there for a couple of minutes and then it was as if it turned off the light and suddenly it wasn't there anymore.
As if what I saw was alien in nature, I cannot tell. I sure hope there are more species living out there. And for what I think about most of the videos I've seen about UFOs I think most (if not all) are fake, specially since pretty much anyone carries a decent quality camera today and every video is just about a dot in the sky or with such a bad quality you cannot tell anything from it.
Awesome story! Thanks!
To travel fast through space one of the theories is that we can warp space (and time). Some of these unidentified objects are probably echos or shadows of our future when we start developing advanced space propulsion systems... The rest are likely just delusions of a primitive people (us).
The light was moving in those spiral paths QUICKLY. Thus they were high-G. I'm not going to debate the rest with you. I truly don't care if you believe that people can't tell if something is far away.
Well, that pretty much wraps up Norway for a period of several years. Glad the whole world-wide mystery is solved in your mind!
Most of the stuff on Youtube is fake. Check out Captain Disillusion's channel. After you've seen a few videos, you won't trust many videos on Youtube any longer. He easily spots indicators that I would never recognize. It's just a pity that he can't produce more - the production quality of his videos is very, very high, so it takes a lot of time to make them.
That being said, among the more legit sources such as multiple recordings from TV channels, these are very rare and I've never seen anything that wasn't easily explained as an airplane, laser-show or reflection of headlights in the sky. The latter seems to be the most common phenomenon. They are also described by eye witnesses very often. When you see some blurry illuminated objects in the sky that are static or in slow uniform motion and then suddenly accelerate extremely fast, maybe changing their course rapidly, then chances are very, very high that you've seen the reflections of lights of some vehicle on ground.
All of that is not to say that you haven't seen a UFO, APK. I'm just pointing out that most of the sightings are not very credible. (Why did I write this? UFOs and possible life on extrasolar planets are among my long-term interests and I'm writing science fiction novels in my spare time.)
They have occurred. People have watched something flying and they were unable to identify what it was. So they saw an Unidentified Flying Object.
Oh, you mean that people "saw aliens"? No, that never occurred.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
UFOs? Yes. People see things they can't identify, they're flying, thus Unidentified Flying Objects. Most of the time, you'll eventually get a pretty good explanation for them. What's left usually happens near weapon testing sites where governments try out their new toys. And why would governments act strange and keep the alien myth alive? Because it's better to send you on a wild goose chase for aliens and flying saucers, that way you don't want to investigate their much more mundane new stealth bomber.
There is very little reason to believe it's aliens. For a very simple reason: You want to tell me that these people (or whatever they are) are capable of FTL travel, come here to this rather insignificant marble in a godforsaken corner of a nondescript galaxy... and then crash land because they can't brake in time? Please.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I fully agree. I think there were "UFOs" in the bunkers below Tempelhof airfield but the site has been given up and is now a recreational spot. UFOs are not from outer space but military aircraft to which the public services developed a narrative to encourage citizens to report sightings.
Does life exist elsewhere? most likely
Does intelligent life exist elsewhere? Most likely
due to the countless amount of stars and planets and galaxies the above is most likely
Have we been visited by any of them? not likely.
why? because it would be obvious. If humans travelled to a planet with less intelligent creatures would it not be obvious to them that we have arrived? so why are we so arrogant to believe that other creatures would go out of their way to remain elusive to us upon coming to earth?. Did Columbus try to remain elusive to the Indians?
If we landed on another planet populated by...let say monkeys for instance would we go out of our way to hide from them or would we just clear land and setup shop?
So to me the answer is no. we have not been visited by any more advanced creature otherwise it would be blatantly obvious. They would just simply clear land and setup shop most likely ignoring us like we ignore creatures living in the forest when we decide to setup a new subdivision or shopping complex. We simply clear land and setup shop.
Do you really care about how agressive ants are ?
If an alien civilization has the technology to come all the way to Earth, there is no reason to think they will see us as something much different than ants or wasps. Yes, wasps may be agressive and a nest full of them may even harm a human. However, you only need a can of insecticide to get rid of them. It wont be that much different for an alien civilization that has the advanced technology needed for space travel. They may look at us, study us, but see us as something dangerous ? Not very probable. Try to talk to us ? Not probable either. Do you even try talking to the average wasp ?
Come now, many people saw Michael Jackson. Admittedly he wasn't an alien when he started out, but that's what he became.
You just need a Fox Mulder to put all of the pieces together.
and this is how wackadoodles are born.
No matter how much explanation is given to show how you were mistaken your going to ignore it, do you happen to have your fingers in your ears while going "la la la la la"?
My parents, who are not pranksters or jokers, saw a UFO in the mid 90s (both are very smart people with high IQ). I never really believed their testimony yet they had exactly zero reasons to lie to me. They described an object in the sky which did imaginable things, like staying still for quite some time, then moving at speeds which are impossible for any human made flying apparatus.
Bigger spirals at the same rate of turn are higher G, not lower.
I know a guy who caused a few UFO sightings in his day. Army helicopter pilot, training on flying low and fast at night, all lights off, is following the terrain in Oklahoma when he spots a pickup cruising down a lonely road. He settles in for a bit of practice following a target at a consistent distance - and then when it's time to head back base, well, he flips on their multi-million-candlepower search light and banks hard to one side before flipping it back off.
I saw a fascinating UFO once, and several friends witnessed it as well. What we saw was an instance of "Often the apparent spacecraft does something improbable like standing completely still in the sky and then shooting off to somewhere at an incredible speed." Being an ultralight and RC pilot, I'm well aware that "standing still" can be when the object is moving toward or away from you, but I couldn't explain the maneuvers this thing was doing. It was night, a light in the sky moving in ways that planes don't. The four or five people watching it were confused and a little bit amazed.
Then it flew in front of a tree and we all recognized the lightning bug for what it was.
The whole incident demonstrated several scientific principles. A point of light against the dark sky could be 10 miles away and moving at 1,000 MPH or 300 feet away and moving at 1MPH - your eyes cannot tell the difference. (I don't feel like doing the math to convert arc seconds to MPH, but you get the point). Stereopsis isn't very effective after a hundred feet or so and and stops working at all at a distance of several hundred feet. We thought it was large object, far away moving fast. It was actually a small object, close, moving much slower, and the two are indistinguishable against a dark sky. Only when it flew in front of a tree did we have any way to estimate its true distance and size.
If this kind of thing interests a person, watch large planes fly around an airport before landing at night. They'll appear to come to a dead stop in midair as they turn to fly toward you. They my also seem to shoot almost straight up, though they are actually losing altitude, because they are coming toward you, to fly over your head. Overhead *seems* higher than being near the horizon, but the apparent altitude is unrelated to the actual altitude.
The grad students who were buzzing the Earth as part of the "research" for their theses on primitive cultures have all graduated, and no longer need to waste time in the sticks....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Personally I find it interesting how the shapes of the crafts have changed over time. Starting with hubcap shapes and gaining more size and details much in line with current at the time sci fi movies.
My favorite though is the mysterious lack of X-ray tech on UFOs. Why so much probing and prodding as though they were still using medical tech from the 40s? Perhaps they came all this way to learn about MRIs.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
My theory is that some alien species have senses that can detect TV transmissions, and the probing is an equivalent form of revenge. “This is for Seinfeld!”
More plausible, however, is that it’s CIA agents equipped with aerosol hallucinogens, slightly customized gas masks and dildos creating a cover story for black ops projects (or possibly just having an office party).
Blank until
Probably 6th grade, my mother was delivering some food to an ill friend. Told her I was going to wait in the car and look for UFO's. Just as she was heading back to the car, a half-moon object streaked across the North Hollywood sky, did a dead stop and hoovered for a short bit, became a full glowing disc and proceeded to shoot directly up and out into the stratosphere disappearing from site. Next morning KRLA reported the siting as being reported by hundreds of people. Oh, this was in the early 60's.
Really? There's not that many humans, statistically, with that high of an IQ. I think the vast majority of UFO sightings are planets, normal aircraft, or (in specific areas of the world) test military craft. Seriously, we "stupid humans" are only a few decades out from having "invisible" items using metamaterial cloaking. If we could do it, any society advanced enough to travel across the stars should have developed something similar years ago. If anything, any reconnaissance mission craft would be tiny, tiny drones.
Some of these sightings such as the Mllstadt sightings are undoubtedly testing of a radar invisible blimp. All that was seen was a slow moving fan powered blimp that exhibited characteristics of traditional blimp flight, could stand still, and move slowly. It was seen by a reputable witness, a police officer.
The other sightings that involve a stationary craft that then suddenly accelerates to 400 miles per hour is another matter, because obviously a blimp usually does not go 300 miles per hour, but a plane is not stationary. A helicopter does not go very fast either. Several optical illusions would need to be ruled out. If a plane is coming directly towards you, it can appear to be sort of stationary, if it veers off to the left, it can create the illusion of sudden acceleration, when in such acceleration actually occured because the movement is more visible if its headed at a 90 degree angle from you.
Another possibility for many sightings is a Fata Morgana where a temperature inversion in the atmosphere can transmit images of objects long distances. Some even report images of faraway islands floating in the sky.
Many reports were a flare technology where a flare is launched which then drifts slowly downward on a ballon or parachute.
I think that claims deserve interest, though i am a skeptic. The only thing that would rule out a terrestrial origin, is something that exhibits behaviour clearly contradictory to conventional propulsion and flight schemes, such as blimps, helicopters, balloons, parachutes and airplanes, such as an antigravity technology. That would be interesting because if an ET can build a antigravity drive, so can we, and indicate that there are fundamental oversights in our current models and extrapolations of physical laws. There are many that are false reports, many are simply blimps or other traditional aircraft.
I wouldnt be so quick to rule out the possibility of anti-gravity or artificial gravity technology. Most physical theories we have are based on limited observations of physical behaviour in certain test conditions and contexts, we then extrapolate these observations to apply to all other contexts, even though there has been no testing of these contexts. Thus, you cant really rule out the possibility because there could be an antigravity effect hiding that requires a very unusual arrangement of fields, such as a very particular arrangement of magnets of a certain strength. Its possible that such an arrangement could be one out of a million, and thus would be improbable that it would be found by accident and easy to miss. I'm not saying that this is likely, what I am pointing out is you shouldnt be quite so sure your current theories of physics are complete because there are obviously holes in your data, which have been extrapolated over, an assumption has made that the physical laws behave the same in all contexts even though many of these contexts have not been tested, of course there are billions of possible arrangements of say a magnetic field. So, it cannot be ruled out. There are possibilities for this such as a multidimensional theory, lets say our dimensions exist in a higher dimensional space, maybe there are higher dimensional geometries that can be interacted with only with a very specific geometric code. What drives discovery is imagination and wonder. Many with a more analytical mind however often lack imagination so we end up getting into a box of orthodox thinking. This can keep us from going out and looking for new discoveries and realizing that our understanding is not complete and such new discoveries might be waiting to be found. When some people looked out of an ocean, they thought it was the end of the world, and since they couldnt see any land in the distance, it didnt exist. Other wondered and had imaginations about possible distant lands that might exist on the other side of the ocean.
Is there life on other planets? How about *intelligent* life on other planets?
Given what we know about the size of our own Galaxy, let alone the size of the Universe ... some portion of which is so far away that the light cannot reach us (ie more Light Years than Earth time from the Big Bang), the chances that extra-terrestial life *doesn't* exist is by far the greater likelihood.
However, that doesn't change the fact that there is no known mechanism for such life to reach Earth. "Space Ships" cannot travel at the speed of light ... some fraction is all that is reasonable. At high near-lightspeeds the mass of the object gets to the point where just arriving at another planet would destroy that planet. We don't see planets being vaporized for no apparent reason.
So, there is no reasonable explanation as to how an alien spacecraft could reach Earth. Thus UFO sightings must have another explanation, even when that explanation isn't discoverable.
Ten thousand years ago, we looked up at the sun, stars, and moon and didn't understand them, so we made them supernatural deities to rationalize their existence. 70 years ago, we saw military test aircraft with flashing lights in the sky in the western US and didn't understand them, so we made them supernatural entities to rationalize their existence. 20 years ago, we recorded and saw unusual lighting phenomenon in rare circumstances, so we made them supernatural entities to rationalize their existence.
The common ground is a human being's desire to explain something they don't understand, not the flashing lights in the sky.
Stephen Hawking once said that if aliens visit us they will most likely not be friendly. Whether or not he is correct is irrelevant because the aliens aren't coming. Ever.
The idea of aliens coming to earth has been the subject of countless novels, movies and television shows, and even though those stories are entirely fictional, they have greatly influenced the way we think about the idea of encountering beings from other worlds. Unfortunately, our thinking on this subject is very small and limited. If we step back and think a little bigger, we will realize that any aliens with the ability to come visit us almost certainly would not care to.
Sci-fi stories can ignore the bits that aren't very interesting. Movie aliens rarely get sick or worry about eating. Sci-fi stories rarely mention gravity because, given our limited view, we expect gravity to just work and shooting a movie without it would be a huge pain. So, screw it, all movie aliens and all future civilizations have invented artificial gravity. After all, warp-drive engines and pew-pew energy-blasters are much more fun to think about.
In the real world, however, science tends to advance in all directions, because advances in one field almost always results in advances in many others. For example, the invention of the computer resulted in many advances in other fields of human science.
In order for aliens to reach earth, they will have to, at a minimum, perfect faster-than-light travel or perfect a way to travel for thousands of years at sub-light speed, conquer the long term biological effects of space radiation and weightlessness, and master extreme long distance space navigation. All of this just so they can come to earth and . . . what? Say hello? Steal our water?
That just doesn't make sense.
So why *WOULD* aliens come to earth?
Do they really want our water (or minerals or whatever)? That implies an economic model in their decision. By definition, they need those resources and coming here to get them is their most economical choice. Getting them somewhere closer to home or manufacturing them must be more "expensive" (in some sense of the word) than the cost of traveling all the way here, gathering our resources and flying them home.
While not impossible, that seems unlikely - both technologically and economically. Even we have (expensively) already mastered alchemy. We have the tech to create matter from energy. Imagine that tech in a few hundred years. What would be cheaper and better -- making stuff at home or building a fleet of galactic warships and sending them (along with thousands of soldiers and miners) to some far off planet?
Currently, we're not even able to get to Proxima Centauri (the closest star outside our solar system) much less get to a place where we think there's an actual planet. Getting us to Proxima Centauri in less than a few hundred years would require technology that is several orders of magnitude beyond what we have now. If getting humans to another star system is a 100 on some "technology ability scale", then we're currently at about 2, which is not far ahead of poodles who are probably at 1.
What about the idea that aliens might come to Earth to colonize the planet (and maybe vaporize us in the process)? You could argue that terraforming (or maybe aliens would call it xenoforming) could be a technology more advanced than FTL travel. With that assumption, you could imagine an alien race that can travel across the galaxy but not alter planets to suit their biological needs. Coming to colonize Earth could make sense. But this ignores the fact that several other requisite technologies would probably make their need to colonize obsolete.
Before they had FTL travel, they likely spent many decades traveling at less that light speed and so chances are their ships are quite comfortable. In fact probably more like sailing biodomes than ships - someplace they could live indefinitely. Assuming their other scientists were hard at work while their engi
Oh please, not the story about alien anal probes, that's so fake!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They just aren't from another planet. Any alien civilization capable of interstellar travel would have absolutely no reason to fly down to the Earth's surface, let alone be detectable by anything as primitive as our technology. There isn't a reason for any aliens to be aboard said ships either, as at their level of technology full AI automation would be more than enough.
It makes about as much sense as an "alien invasion". Why the hell would they bother marching themselves down here and risk death when they could easily destroy us a dozen different ways without coming anywhere near Earth. Best case scenario would be an army of AI automatons, but why waste the resources when choosing a random rock from the asteroid belt and chucking at our planet would do the trick just as nicely?
~X~
When the average moron says it yes, when people in the aviation field say it they mean exactly what they say, it's unidentified.
At least, it was real to my Mom. She was about 10 at the time and lived a block from one of the AAA guns that shot at whatever it was. There is also plenty of documentation, and that one picture. There’s no doubt they were shooting at something. The “what” is the question.
I wouldn't imagine them being "scared" of our nature at all... any more than americans are "scared" of chimpanzees. If a species is able to get to earth from several lightyears away... they are hundreds of years ahead of us scientifically... they'd have no reason to be "scared' of something that they can easily use precautions to avoid every possible threat we could pose.
That is my view.
If they come at all, it isn't going to be individuals riding in a ship. Probably not physical at all.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I know a guy who caused a few UFO sightings in his day. Army helicopter pilot, training on flying low and fast at night, all lights off, is following the terrain in Oklahoma when he spots a pickup cruising down a lonely road. He settles in for a bit of practice following a target at a consistent distance - and then when it's time to head back base, well, he flips on their multi-million-candlepower search light and banks hard to one side before flipping it back off.
How long ago was that? Current regulations do not let them fly without anti-collision lights over US Airspace. I've "watched" a helicopter that doesn't exist fly training missions simply because I was able to see the anti-collision strobes. Otherwise, I would have had no idea where the thing was, it's exhaust vents being designed to scatter sound and make it difficult to track the helicopter by sound.
Although Sturgeon's Law ("90 percent of *everything* is crap") is not universally applicable, it does seem to apply when someone is trying to sell you something, especially if you can live without the product. I'm frankly skeptical of UFO programs on tv in spite of having seen a couple of UFOs in my younger years.
Both UFOs were about the diameter of a quarter at arm's length, slow moving in various directions; each was a featureless perfect circle and glowing as if illuminated from within. Neither was an aircraft, balloon, bird, satellite, or other common artifact.
The late afternoon UFO was near the northern horizon and eventually moved down and out of sight. The UFO I saw at night was directly overhead; after moving around a bit, the diameter began shrinking slowly and it eventually disappeared within a few minutes. I have no explanation for either event.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Of course I believe in UFO sightings. How can people not see something merely because they haven't identified it?
Watch the Sirrius Disclosure project. All of the witnesses are either Airline Pilots, ex-Military, two former Astronauts and Police talking about their observations UAVs (Unidentified Aerial Vehicle), UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon) . There is over 35 *hours* of testimony from highly trained personnel, retired Generals, Lords of the Admiralty about dozens of incidents in England, the US and all over the world.
There is the Bentwaters incident, incidents where nuclear missile bases were shut down by unknown entities that by-passed the back-up systems of dozens of missiles. There is the incident of Nuclear missile weapons testing of a UAV circling a nuclear warhead *in-flight* shooting it and deactivating it captured on high-speed film. There is the incident where the US and the USSR almost launched Nuclear Missiles until they both realized it was a UAV.
Witness testimony from the General in control of the Roswell incident discussing how he released the technology recovered from it into American Industry to be reverse engineered. Reverse engineered craft. The CEO of Lockheed Martin Skunkworks saying "We now have the technology to take ET Home".
These professionals don't call them "UFOs" and if we trusted these people to handle Billion Dollar budgets, Nuclear missiles, B-52 Bombers, Fighter aircraft, Aircraft carriers, Passenger jets we fly in who are we to discount what they say they have all experienced. I thought UFOs were cover for military operations until I saw what these ex-service men and women had to say. The secrecy may have been a good idea after 'War of the Worlds' broadcast in 1938 but not in the 21st Century.
The sheer weight of the witness testimony alone tells us there is a lot more going on than we are being told and I have gone from being a complete UFO skeptic to accepting these inevitable conclusions:
Why haven't they visited us?
They are already here and they have been here for thousands of years.
Can they travel FTL?
Yes, and so can we - apparently.
Are they Hostile to us?
Some are.
Do they mean to harm us?
No, We'd be dead already. All they would need is to push an asteroid in our way, no Avatar like finale necessary.
Why don't they just show up?
Because we are hostile, prejudiced primitive primates. We kill humans that are different. They are 'Intelligent' not 'Stupid'
What are their motivations
How would I know? But they haven't destroyed us so we are probably going to stay ok as long as *we* are not hostile.
Why is it more secret than nuclear weapons
It disrupts oil and coal's control over the worlds energy markets.
Even if you do discount all of this witness testimony you have to reason what 8.5 Trillion dollars worth of taxpayer money in Unacknowledged Special Access Projects paid for? Politicians are afraid to go near this subject and the ridiculous belittling of people who come forward to share their experiences is an insular primitive fear response to the unknown, not critical thinking processing the sheer volume of information laid before them.
The only way to really get to the bottom of this would be to support changes to law that relieve these personnel of secrecy oaths for unacknowledged (and illegal) projects that do not come under congressional control so that more of these people can come forward whilst still protecting the secrecy of the legal projects. It is time to end the secrecy simply because it costs too much to maintain.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Was walking home to the dorms at UIUC back around 2001 and saw some lights in the sky. It looked like planes flying in V-formation across the sky--something like the Blue Angels would do. I thought it was pretty cool and kept my eye on it while walking, though as I remember back, none of the lights were blinking, which is what I'd expect for airplanes.
Then the strangest thing happened. They started moving around, but they didn't move in a way that would be possible for airplanes. They started circling around each other (still while the whole formation was moving). They looked like they were moving around like bugs, but the light still looked like plane or starlight--very far off. Then after about 5 seconds of this bizarre movement, the lights turned off.
I literally have no idea what to think of it. It didn't have the movement pattern of planes or missiles or drones or balloons. I do not think it was alien ships or anything like that (even that wouldn't make sense...the g-force on those objects if they were distant aircraft would have been incredible). Perhaps the only phenomenon that might make sense, and I stress "might," is ball lightning.
I wish I had a smart phone to record, but I don't think it would have helped. The lights were too far off that I don't think they have shown well on a phone's large field of view. The other issue is that by the time I saw something interesting worth recording, it would have been gone by the time I got the phone out and turned on. I can't even get the cute moments I see with my kids today--there's no way I would have recorded those lights in time. But they were very memorable.
Once it gets identified, it's no longer a UFO... even if it actually *were* an alien spaceship.
Yes, these two statements are tautologies, but that is about the limits of my brain power I am willing to put into it.
And for the record, I saw a UFO once... when I was 15. I still don't know exactly what it was. I've long since accepted that I never will.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
First of all, you have to realize not everyone looks up at the sky; it's not like it was a thousand years ago, most modern city dwellers never give it a second glance. Second, with light pollution many wouldn't have much to see if they did.
But I have seen things. Mysterious things. Things that appear to be impossible to explain as anything other than a fleet of alien spacecraft with propulsion .... unless you know a little astronomy.
As most people who've gone out to view a meteor shower know, even with a supposedly "major" meteor shower, if you didn't know it was happening you probably wouldn't even notice. Given the levels of light pollution most of us live with you're lucky if you see one or two brief (maybe 200 msec) flashes every ten minutes.
But sometimes you're out in a place with a dark sky, and you just luck out; you get a meteor shower that really lives up to the name: shower. I mean more meteors than you can count in a minute. And when you find yourself with a good sample like that, you see a lot of things that look impossible for a falling rock. For example you can see a light that descends, hovers in place, and then zooms upward. This is a meteor that is actually falling all the time, but because you can't perceive the horizontal component of its velocity until it is overhead looks like it is falling slowly or hovering. When it passes "up" overhead it is still falling because then you can't perceive the vertical component of velocity.
People unfamiliar with the sky frequently react to ordinary stuff that is unfamiliar to them with superstitious awe. Here's an example of a news crew mistaking the planet Jupiter for a spacecraft. Just to explain the circumstances, earlier that day a large number of mylar balloons had been accidentally released in New Jersey. They floated east over Manhattan and generated lots of reports as the sun set in the west. The news crew got there too late to photograph that, but the camerman did manage to capture Jupiter being "trailed" by its four Galilean moons.
It's easy for someone like me who's seen that in a telescope hundreds of times to laugh at these people, but how many New Yorkers could identify Jupiter, even though it's one of the few astronomical bodies visible through the light pollution there? Normal people don't spend their time gazing up at the sky, and so when their attention is brought there they're naturally surprised.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ummm. "Until they have been identified...."
Here the deal. I live near a military base, two airports, a fault scar, and a great lake. We tons powerful winds and air traffic. So often we get UFO's making wide turns around densely inhabited areas. The local rumor is that the military is testing unmanned, long range, stealth flight vehicles. The crop circles are presumed to be caused by circular patterns similar to small localized tornadoes. In general there are one or two sightings a year the get documented and doesn't have an easy explanation. And no, I'm not one of those people that has filed one of those unexplained sightings. Still it keeps the dinner table conversations interesting.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Current regulations do not let them fly without anti-collision lights over US Airspace.
FAA regulations don't apply to military aircraft flying in military airspace.
"Often the apparent spacecraft does something improbable like standing completely still in the sky and then shooting off to somewhere at an incredible speed" is a common theme to sightings but never reports of a sonic boom, which obviously MANY more people would notice. But for fun let’s pretend these sightings are genuine and these objects move at incredible speeds without displacing air, what interesting hypotheses can be dreamed up about how these objects are propelled?
"It's fun to obey the machine" - Ralph Wiggum
Oblig XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1235/
The distances between planets that may or may not contain intelligent life are vast. So vast I strongly doubt a more advanced civilization can do FTL.
However I will say, I know in physics time travel is mathematically possible. So what some people might be seeing vis a vis the life forms are likely advanced humans.
While there have been several times I have had some cause to wonder at the nature of what I was seeing, there was one extraordinary event that was so in my face I couldn't manage to explain it away. That story is here... https://people.well.com/user/s...
Current regulations do not let them fly without anti-collision lights over US Airspace.
FAA regulations don't apply to military aircraft flying in military airspace.
That is not correct at all. Current military regulations requires all military aircraft to follow FAA regulations in US airspace, even when over military bases. They must fly with anti-collision lights over the US, barring extreme circumstances that do not include any sort of training exercise that I've ever watched. And I spent many years watching such exercises, even covert ones.
I would have a great view of UFOs from my house but I haven't actually seen any.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
instead of some drunk homophobe in flyover country whom no one's going to believe. I'm a physicist and would like to ask some questions about their transport methodology. Since that never happens....and as someone said above, since ubiquitous cameras, they seem to not be anywhere anymore...I think the idea of alien visits is pretty unlikely.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
... has always been from below. Hope that helps.
Some of the testimony is otherwise enough to put somebody away for murder. In one case a military bomber plane was passing nearby a military base in broad daylight, and ground witnesses spotted an undiscernable metallic object near it.
There were 3 people aboard the plane. Two of them, the non-pilots, got a good view out the side window of a lens-shaped silver-metallic craft with an orange or tan band around the upper half. They estimated it came as close as about 20 feet from the window and roughly the size of a small plane. If I remember correctly, the pilot also saw it, but didn't get the best view.
The crew of 3 basically freaked out and insisted on landing nearby instead of continue the flight. They never sought publicity.
(I'm still trying to find the name and date of the incident...)
Table-ized A.I.
UFO's (in the sense of extra-terrestrials) are just the modern equivalent of ghosts. Enough "reliable" people have reported seeing UFOs and ghosts that the effect seems to be real as far as a human brain is concerned. However, the complete and utter lack of physical evidence suggests that they are purely a psychological effect and not a physical one.
Actually it is not.
It is a pretty safe assumption that people reporting thise where sexually abused as children, most likely by close relatives: aliens.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
a good way to see real ones, meaning ETs is to meditate a little, put out a blanket in a clearing atop a mountain and wait, they'll show up and do things that won't leave doubts
Except maybe for stealth probes.
And the reason I say this is simple: if we were to observe one, we would know certain things from the observations... and so we would know something is possible that we didn't know before.
However, there have been NO UNEXPLAINED BREAKTHROUGHS. We know where *every* bit of technology came from, from what research. No, UFO's didn't give us microwave ovens.....
Besides, if *you* were an intelligent alien race, would *you* want to contact this bunch of insane idiots (obligatory nod to the psycho in the White House)?
July 2009: Google updated the base aerial photography for this area and the “flying car” is no longer there. This rules out some of the theories in the comments that it was a permanent structure.
https://www.gearthblog.com/blo...
Other articles tell of people going to that location to see for themselves, yet never found anything.
I've been in groups of people and no one pulls their phone out to record, they are caught up in the moment of whatever is going on.
The vast majority of people don't have the drive and/or the means to actually go out and investigate places where there are alleged strange phenomenas (eg UFO flaps) occurring, or where strange land formations appear on google earth/maps (eg Antarctica). Until more people do and document what is there or not there, we will only have what looks like a crap artist production and hearsay.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to go on an expedition in the Antarctic to investigate those mountains that kinda sorta look like pyramids and bring back proof that they are just mountains (or actual pyramids!). But I'm not rich, and I don't have easy access to the ship and aircraft (and people to sail/fly those for me) that I would undoubtedly need.
DNA Analysis Finds That Yetis Are Actually Bears
Almost as if by the hand of God himself, the category of the unexplained accumulates the unexplainable, and no amount of explanatory liposuction ever fully drains this ponderous pond.
Same delusion, different manifestation.
I was taking my dog out to go to the bathroom around 2am. I was looking up at the night sky because it happened to be a particularly clear night and you could see a lot. What happened next baffles me to this day. Two green lights went silently from one side of the horizon to the other in about 10 seconds time. It seemed like they were attached to something; however, you could see clear space between the two lights. They were roughly as high as a jetliner, but definitely weren't a plane. I live near an airport and Lake Michigan (where the military routinely runs drills) so I'm very familiar with all that...it wasn't a plane, helicopter, drone, etc. Since then I've done my own research (satellite tracks and whatnot) and talked to amateur skygazers, but haven't gotten an answer. So yeah, I believe in UFO's because I saw one.
Not everyone thinks they're advanced ships from another galaxy. I'm certain it's something to do with the Rus$14./'. ;;in m@'
no carrier
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Mistaken identity and mental illness. Same with people who see or hear ghosts, spirits, demons,etc.
I haven't seen any.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
So if it's flying, and I can't be bothered to look up from my iShiney in order to identify it, it's a AFO (Apathetical Flying Object)?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Is it these Denver lights? http://www.thedenverchannel.co...
Why don't people ask the UFO what it identifies as? It would be wrong for us to make any assumptions that could cause offense.
AC, your "solution" doesn't match the experience I described. You're ignoring parts and inserting convenient parts of your own. And you're an ass. That's why you're not being accepted as a credible explainer.
Going the way of Alex Jones or the History channel. Conspiracies and bullshit to drive clickbait.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I have never heard of the term Lightning Bug, and I just found out it was just Firefly. Learned something new today.
w00t
That's funny. For a split second I thought about which of the two terms I should use. After about 200ms, when I couldn't remember the other term (fire fly), I went with lighting bug. :)
Bollocks, there are plenty of UFO recordings made on mobile phones. YT is full of fake vids. The first rule tho, is that you have to wave your hands up and down and never hold the damned phone still, so most of them are too annoying to look at.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Have you watched a meteor shower? The meteors absolutely appear to radiate outward from a central point, going in all different directions. Anyone watching would say some of the meteors in a given shower go east, some go west, some go south, etc. Unless you're watching from the moon. Watching from far away from the Earth, you see they are actually all coming from the same direction.
I suspect that's what you saw - either a meteor or space junk re-entering was coming toward you. Toward you and very slightly to your left. You could only the leftward motion. As it broke up, a piece continued toward you, but very slightly to the right. You can only see the rightward component, not the "toward you" component of the motion. From everything your eyes can see, it was going left, then it turned and went right
Your eyes have no way of knowing that while it was going left at 100 MPH, it was also going toward you at 4,000 MPH.
True.. Probably the right question is are some of those UFOs actually spacecrafts from alien civilizations ?
My view on UFO sightings is always blurry.
In UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS.
I do not necessarily believe they came from alien intelligences.
I just believe they're "UNIDENTIFIED"
Dunno about UFOs, but those OVNIs, now...
From underneath my tinfoil hat.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
It would have been the early nineties or so. He also might have obscured certain details; it may not have happened in US airspace.
Give tetraethyl lead its due as well.
The fact is that the entire global population is breathing a lot less neurotoxin in 2017 than in 1977.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.