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UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt', Says Former Head of Pentagon Alien Program (newsweek.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Newsweek report: The existence of UFOs had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt," according the head of the secret Pentagon program that analyzed the mysterious aircrafts. In an interview with British broadsheet The Telegraph published on Saturday, Luis Elizondo told the newspaper of the sightings, "In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt.'" "I hate to use the term UFO but that's what we're looking at," he added. "I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they're from." Elizondo led the U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, investigating evidence of UFOs and alien life, from 2007 to 2012, when it was shuttered. Its existence was first reported by The New York Times this month.
The existence of UFOs had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt," according the head of the secret Pentagon program that analyzed the mysterious aircrafts.
LOL, no. As much as I'd prefer that there were starfaring alien civilization(s) that have been visiting us (it would irrevocably change the entire paradigm of the human species, hopefully in a positive way), before I'm willing to 'believe' in the Fox Mulder-sort of way, I'll need to see actual alien hardware of some sort: an actual ship, or some piece of tech that absolutely can't have been of human manufacture, or some other hard evidence (like, say, an actual, live, walking-and-talking member of an alien species). Pictures, still or moving, just don't cut it, especially in a day and age where we've got the technology to fake just about anything like that. I can't believe that someone who was allegedly that high up the food chain would say something like this.
I certainly have doubt, and I consider myself quite reasonable.
I suspect this fellow has a rather distorted opinion of who a "reasonable person" is, or is grossly over-estimating opinions.
Maybe he's including "life in the universe we will never encounter"? That I think I can buy into. The universe is just too big for there not to be life elsewhere, probably a lot of elsewheres. But be it in the past, present, or future, the tense doesn't really matter because our current understanding of physics prevents us from ever being able to even discover evidence of their existence, and the problem just grows more difficult as the universe continues to expand.
I love Kurz's videos, and he did a wonderful (2 part) video on the subject, The Fermi Paradox. It's both educational and enlightening - a "must watch" for anyone pondering aliens.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Of course they exists. Does not mean they are extraterrestrials.
I can't believe that someone who was allegedly that high up the food chain would say something like this.
Either this is more fanciful distraction bullshit, or the guy is nuts. Nobody would say something like that without proof unless they didn't care if everyone thought they were a wingnut, which is itself a kind of insanity when you live in a world which contains other people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This guy is a proven UFO nutter, so unless he is in possession of some unseen concrete evidence of UFOs demonstrating that they are anything other than prosaic phenomena, his opinion means less than nothing.
and Trump's hair.
Table-ized A.I.
Remember they recruited Howard Hughes, floating a cock and bull story about mining sea floor "noudles" for rare metals, as a cover story to hunt for the lost Russian submarine.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Enough said.
It was proven beyond reasonable doubt that we haven't identified all flying objects?
That's really shocking. Never expected that.
For the longest time, we have known we are not alone. On whatever plane of existence, whatever moment in time; past, present and future -- most just believe in what they can prove using their known five senses and stop there as acceptance.
Others like some of us, know there is more. Even the smallest of measurements that technology today cannot measure does not prove non-existence.
Budgets are allocated and spent searching for answers to "what-if" - "are we alone?" - "am I alone?" -- the answer is "no" - now prove it. Yes, we can, we just need to evolve a little more, some of us will, not all of us will do so, yet we all can in time.
step outside, look around, ask yourself, -- when did you become conscious of "existing" - "self aware" -- go back, way back and try to remember... can you? now move forward in your mind and time, and see around the metaphorical bend of now -- what do you see? can you see? can you sense?
deja vous? how many times has this happened? why do you know things before they happen, and yet, when they happened, you already knew, yet for some reason you were not taught, trained, or remember that you were here, there.... before....
on that thought.. enjoy and step outside, slow down and stop and for a moment... if today was your known last day... would anything else matter? ...
i smile and smirk, and stay in that moment of doing what is most important, and realize, your consciousness is all you have left if everything else does not exist...
- drew jackson
There are legitimate reasons to disagree with the President on certain policy issues, but you must admit, his hair is magnificent.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> 'll need to see actual alien hardware
He said "UFOs are proven beyond a reasonable doubt". You jumped STRAIGHT to "alien". Why didn't you jump straight to "mole men"? Or the "COBRA" organization from "GI Joe"?
His point is, no one knows where these flying machines are coming from, or who controls them. Extraterrestrial aliens is a pleasing theory for a lot of reasons, but with space being so vast, it barely gives us any information at all- and it tends to blindside other options, such as some tech by a known nation being very advanced and well kept as a secret, or there being unknown human actors with some kind of aeronautical agenda.
Yes, just like there are legitimate reasons to disagree with Stalin on certain policy issues, but you must admit, his mustache is magnificent.
What else can explain his comments? When we catch a UFO on the ground occupied by extra-earth aliens, UFOs proven to contain intelligent beings from elsewhere in the universe is not proven beyond reasonable doubt.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
What you have here is a political/administrator/lawyer type, bringing out the court of law example illustrates it perfectly. In court of law a witness testimony actually counts for something, whereas an engineer would remain skeptical and a scientist would outright laugh at such a "proof".
He's stating that they've proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they're 'unidentified' and 'flying'. All you need for that is for no governmental bodies to claim them.
Well then.... Just reduce the statement to "I'll need to see actual hardware."
Now apply that to all the physical 'evidence' that's been presented.
I've come to expect the totally unexpected.
For example, if you had described GNOME 3 and systemd to me in 2005, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, only about a decade later, and GNOME 3 and systemd have managed to destroy even Debian GNU/Linux.
Another example is JavaScript. Again, if you had told me in 2005 that people would consider JavaScript to be a good programming language, and would even be using it for server-side programming, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, only about a decade later, and there are fools who actually do try to seriously use JavaScript!
Then there's Rust. If you had told me in 2005 that parts of Firefox would be written in a systems programming language whose community is more focused on things like pronouns and diversity than on anything technical, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are, only about a decade later, and there really are programming language communities that care more about "social justice" than they do about technical matters.
So extraterrestrial life doesn't seem so implausible after what I've seen happen with things like systemd, GNOME 3, Debian, JavaScript, Rust and Firefox. In fact, extraterrestrial life would be the sanest of all of those things!
This is such an absurd excerpt from a much more intelligent discussion. The guy is actually entirely stable, and he's 100% right. Flying Objects that have not been identified are 100% real. At no point did he ever imply that they were aliens poking around, but rather that it was "unidentified" it was "flying" and presumably it was an "object." If he were not in the news, his job would be called "intelligence." You know, the identification of unidentified things.
A UFO can simply be a plane with a broken radio. So, yes, beyond reasonable doubt, UFOs are legit.
Every so often I'll make the mistake of starting to watch one, because the idea is intriguing. And every time I do that, every single time it pisses me off.
These things piss me off because I really, really want it to be true. I want to believe we can make contact with alien civilizations; that FTL travel is not only possible, but practical. That we might someday look on the galaxy as sixteenth century explorers looked at our planet.
Consequently stupid, credulous bullshit really pisses me off. I can't even abide unwarranted leaps of faith. All I ask for is one incident, just one, thoroughly and critically investigated, in which nobody is able to come up with a terrestrial explanation good enough for skeptic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So this is just a snippet the NY Times has shared. Where's the rest?? While the prospect of not being alone is quite horrifying, we shouldn't hide from it. Does a truth like this represent an unraveling of the fabric of our society? So many possibilities with which to contend!
Hope it doesn't end up like this tho... https://www.amazon.com/Three-B...
has the frequency of UFO reports declined dramatically since the widespread presence of cell phones with cameras? Shouldn't we expect just the opposite if they were real? Eye witnesses are well known to be unreliable. Our brains are not as "mechanical" as the recording devices we have created. There are enough recording devices pointed skywards so that we can completely discount human testimony as unreliable (for a variety of reasons) and study only the physical records. I wonder what they'd tell us? I wonder what a skeptic would conclude? (The obvious first questions are about calibration and standardization). The human brain gets neither.
So they just come here and fly around? Why have they not colonized? 83k claimed sightings this year alone...and they just come and fly around.
Fanciful distraction bullshit 100%. For what though?
Of course UFO's (Unidentified Flying Objects) exist! It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt! However, there is absolutely no proof of Extra-Terrestrials piloting them.
To believe we're the only ones in the universe is the most arrogant (and naive) belief we can have.
If you want to see life out there (but not as we know it), all you need to do - is to lay down one summers night (preferably out in the woods) with a set of high quality binoculars and a lot of patience (3 hours ought to do it). You'll notice things that aren't quite like you'd think they are, it's mostly just lights that takes a different route than e.g. a satellite or an asteroid would do. An asteroid wouldn't all of a sudden do a 90 degree turn or fly in a fast wave like pattern, sure - it could be a military experiment, a drone reflecting from far away - but to YOU...this is still an U.F.O. (which unsurprisingly stands for Unidentified Flying Object), which it is...unless you know exactly what it is besides that.
Would it come as a surprise to anyone that alien animals might be flying out there? Entities that comes together like a cloud like formation that lives on gases or micro-particles? Just because we don't know - doesn't mean it can't exist.
We'll find out - but it won't be as we think of it.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Every day I see tons of flying objects that I can‘t identify. They could be passenger planes, but since I can‘t identify them, they are UFOs to me.
And Stalin was a left-wing commie, of course.
Don't forget Huy Brasil and Lemuria.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Not a chance, his skin is too thin for upholstery.
Show me.
Again, if you had told me in 2005 that people would consider JavaScript to be a good programming language, and would even be using it for server-side programming, I would have laughed in your face.
And if you'd asked me in 2005, I could have saved you some embarrassment about a dozen years later by informing you that JavaScript had by that time already been in use on the server for about ten years.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Would you want this person on your jury if you are being tried for capital crimes?
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
And that is why you cant have nice things. like alien anti gravity engines.
Whoosh? Moron.
Assuming UFO's are aliens, why do we see so many? *We* can see enough from orbit that we don't need to fly through the atmosphere to look around. They're giving themselves away for nothing.
Declining to contact us makes sense: if they're advanced enough to get here, they're probably figured out the cultural problems that are destroying us; we'd look like a particularly poor, insane, and violent slum, and unlike us they'd know better than to try to "help." Most of our governments represent the absolute worst of us, so no mystery there.
I can't see how taking over and exploiting Earth makes sense either: if they can get here, they can get to our unexplored moons, plus the asteroid belt, which are much better for that purpose, assuming they're not after fossil fuels or agriculture. If they can get here so easily that colonization makes any sense at all they wouldn't need to wonder about us, they'd just use pesticide.
Maybe they're trying to help us survive by giving us hope? Let's hope it works, and also that they plan shoot down any armed ICBM's they see.
Really? This is hard to understand? The great white elephant that is national security has been ridden as far as it can go; it now is facing backlash (I mean, when the people you hire are unaware that the 'D.C.' abbreviation stands for 'District of Columbia,' you, as a Federal Senator / Representative / Lobbyist / etc., are on some really shaky, and potentially dangerous (to yourself) ground).
So, they are going for a new (and potentially safer, longer lasting) white elephant: space defense / security. Defense contracts that will employ hundreds of millions of people for 'threats' that may or may not exist...like certain forms of 'terrorism'...except without the accidental identification of human beings as potential targets (gotta make sure the aliens are alien enough). NASA will, no doubt, get a giant shot in the arm, to upgrade their observatories, to keep their eyes peeled for any 'strange' asteroids and what not.
Provided we don't actually encounter any aliens, or have encountered any, we are relatively safe from annihilation / self-annihilation for probably the next century. Which by then we will have a working fusion reactor, and a warp engine, and can focus on space colonization, instead of weaponization.
UFO existence has been an incredibly powerful and useful disinformation weapon used by the USA for over 50 years. Why on earth stop now? Elizondo is obviously in PSYOP, and he is correct - there's still some legs to the UFO game, even though xkcd demonstrated the fact that UFO's just aren't there with https://xkcd.com/1235/
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
a little googling and I found 'After his resignation, Elizondo joined To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science, a for-profit company that raises money for UFO research and studies UFO sightings. Elizondo is listed as director of global security and special programs. The company officially launched in October.'
It is indeed magnificent hair, but so incongruous with his head as to make one wonder why Trump can't allow someone with an actual sense of style to refine his look?
If they've been visiting frequently since the 1950s, they must have some kind of "non-contamination" policy at work.
I can't "believe" like Mulder yet, either - but I'm not ready to disbelieve based on the lack of evidence.
> As much as I'd prefer that there were starfaring alien civilization...
Elizondo didn't say they were aliens; he said they were UFOs. I've heard a few Air Force pilots opine on this same topic: they believe there's definitely some strange phenomenon that we don't understand. Not necessarily aliens, but something.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Hypothetically, suppose we knew for a fact that some sort of seemingly aircraft-like objects were flying around that were not built by human civilization as we now know it, and are also not an unknown phenomena of nature.
All of the following explanations appear improbable in the extreme, but which explanation would you consider to be the *least* improbable?
A. Extraterrestrials (biological or robotic)
B. Time travelers
C. Travelers from an alternate dimension or alternate timeline
D. An ancient advanced civilization that has been hitherto undiscovered (for instance, living deep within the Earth's crust, or deep undersea)
E. A supernatural phenomenon such as ghosts
F. Other (explain)
Personally I think the least improbable answer is D. Not that I think that answer is within the realm of realistic, but at least it requires fewer violations of the physical laws that we know than the other explanations.
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
Human, or other terrestrial species. Modern humans are relative newcomers after all, could be there's other intelligent species native to this world as well. Seems like most every culture on the planet has legends of some variety of elves/gnomes/etc. that can only be found when they wish too. There's also the possibility of beings from a parallel universe - in some ways the possibility of traveling between universes poses fewer theoretical problems than interstellar travel. Though I suppose ancient Martian cultures might offer the potential for non-interstellar aliens.
And of course as a more pedestrian explanation, it's not impossible that these are some form of natural phenomena - either a "simple" phenomena whose explanation has thus far been overlooked, or possibly even clues to as-yet undiscovered physics.
Or for yet another possibility, they might be alien, but not intelligent. "Space-fish" or other creatures might have evolved interesting mechanisms for moving and/or minimizing their inertia. Relatively unintelligent species might also explain a lot of the sightings, where there seems to be evidence of intentional behavior, but no apparent objectives or desire for more meaningful contact.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No, only his hair, skin tone and small hands. Hating on genetics is the liberal way!
I'll grant his hands are natural but his hair and skin colours? No way.
Or get set free after decades. All were convicted by that "beyond reasonable doubt" standard. The courts do not do good work finding the truth, and this guy's organization is likely not any better and probably far worse. What ever happened to peer review, independent repetition of analysis or experiment and generally the Scientific Method?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But extra terrestrial? Nope.
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
The article in the Telegraph (whose journalists interviewed Elizondo) states: “Luis Elizondo said the existence of supremely advanced unidentified aircraft, using technology that did not belong to any nation, had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt".” That seems rather unambiguous to me.
He also said “I’d say bolster the [UFO research] program. We want NASA to find life on different planets, but we have highly educated pilots here, and they’re seeing something they can't understand”. I can’t imagine why he’d place a reference to NASA and extraterrestrial life in the middle of his statement unless he wanted to imply that sightings made on Earth are likely to have a similar origin.
This story is getting flogged to death by click bait sites and nutters trying to turn a scam, with multiple scammers, into "Aliens!"
But let's look at what the news reports really show.
That secret "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program" first reported in the New York Times? Here is what that NYT says:
The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow.
So, this program existed because a powerful politician - wanting to channel millions of dollars to a rich friend - 'requested' that it be created.
Meanwhile the Mr. Elizondo who led this program just retired and is now talking about it openly. This even though "Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.", in other words he is talking openly about an on-going program that he is supposedly highly classified. What is Mr. Elizondo up to now? Why this:
Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.
So now he is making (err, raising) money off of his claims in a private commercial venture!
I looked at the video released to support his claims and is posted on-line (the only one available last I checked, although he is claiming to have released three). The image in the cockpit display (assuming it is authentic and not doctored in any way) stays dead center the whole time in the display as it moves in the sky. We never see (as the Washington Post story would have it): "The strange aircraft ... appear to hover briefly before sprinting away at speeds that elicit gasps and shouts from the pilots." That is not on the video. Why not, if they have this amazing evidence?
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I can't "believe" like Mulder yet, either - but I'm not ready to disbelieve based on the lack of evidence.
Why not? The rational choice is to disbelieve due to lack of evidence. Otherwise you may as well believe in Russell's teapot, the flying spaghetti monster, Jesus, the abominable snowman, life after death, time travel and garden fairies.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
No, but it evidence of irrelevancy.
The report from iron mountain suggests using war for social cohesion and to remove undesirable elements from our society. It goes on to suggest an alien invasion as a way to unify earth. Shall I suggest that perpetual war on terrorism is getting old and we are laying the ground work for our next âoenewâ war?
He took over from Obama because orange is the new black.
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;
From the Telegraph article: “Luis Elizondo said the existence of supremely advanced unidentified aircraft, using technology that did not belong to any nation, had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt".” And, from the Newsweek article: “...there had been “lots” of UFO sightings (...) Investigators pinpointed geographical “hot spots” that were sometimes near nuclear facilities and power plants.”
Isn’t it fascinating how those mysteriously advanced extraterrestrial spacecrafts seem to be utterly attracted to our strategic facilities like flies around, hum, I digress. They are performing lengthy (but stunning!) acrobatic manoeuvres up there, while squinting down through their windows (because their spacecrafts have windows, so pilots can see where they’re driving), and exclaiming: “Whoa, look at’em smokestacks! And the incredible billowing clouds spewed out of them!”, soon bringing the scientific officer on board to announce “Captain, it appears this phenomenon might principally be coming from a redox reaction involving some allotrope of the atomic element used in fullerenes, but one that might have originally been produced through some incredible quasi-metamorphic transformation.” Then the captain: “Better find out about that advanced technology! Besides, we’re running low on gas and I need to get back home in time for supper.”
Either that or, well, you know, just nosy friends checking out the neighbourhood for contingency planning.
Naaah, just kidding! Nobody’s got technology that we don’t understand and already have! Those are from outer space.
If the plane with a broken radio was piloted by a foreigner, it’d be an alien UFO. So alien UFOs are legit too.
Wrong. The rational approach is to defer a decision until one actually has some evidence upon which to base a decision.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Simple is what you would have to be to think the Earth could possibly be flat, now, wouldn't it.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I have no doubt of the existence of unidentified flying objects. Once we identify them they will no longer be unidentified. I suspect the video from the fighter jet that made it in the news though is probably a sensor glitch of some kind. In any case they're worth examination. I think chances we're being visited by aliens or alien tech is relatively low. Maybe not impossible, but low...
In fact, extraterrestrial life would be the sanest of all of those things!
Probably because it uses Lisp?
Ezekiel 23:20
Let us take it as axiomatic that there are aliens of intelligence at least as good as our who also have the ability to have practical interplanetary travel. These are massive and mighty assumptions.
The idea that such a species would spend all their time obsessing about us is arrogant. At best they might leave some technology to disable fleets of ICBMs so we don't kill ourselves but beyond that, why would they come here to get abused and to try to intercede in our domestic (planetary) squabbles.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Personally, I don't find it that hard to believe that we've been visited before by other life forms? If nothing else, all of our radio and TV broadcasts we've got zipping around all over the planet probably attract some attention, if intelligent life is looking.
But back when I took enough interest in UFOs to read a lot of books and watch a lot of supposed "documentaries" on the subject? I realized that time and time again, you had people who stood to make a decent amount of money and who enjoyed the fame and attention in certain circles by telling these stories. All the fakery pollutes things to the point where someone telling a true story just gets drowned out in all the nonsense.
Some of the more interesting claims come from former military or airline pilots who were far more often in situations where they'd be able to see a UFO than the average person. (When "farmer Fred" tells you some tale of a flying saucer coming down over his field and scaring the cows - it's not quite as credible as a jet fighter pilot in the Air Force who spent thousands of hours in the sky with a plane equipped with radar systems, etc.)
But government also has a different motivation for investigating UFOs than the general public does. The government is interested in finding any military flying machines that a foreign government might be testing out as part of a secret project. If it can get people to report strange sightings in the sky, hoping to find aliens? It's going to promote that if it helps them find the next Russian spy plane or what-not.
It could turn out, in fact, that any alien life that actually visited/visits us is nothing like what we tend to expect. Maybe FTL travel isn't even something they're doing to reach us? Perhaps they're some sort of creature that lives an incredibly long time and doesn't require an atmosphere to breathe in, or even a space ship to travel in? Maybe it just floats through the vast universe like a gas until it finds something like us?
UFO does not equal Alien. It smply means there are flying objects that government agencies have not been able to identify, this could mean aliens, or foreign government objects or some other as yet unclassified object, regardless all that is being said here is that there is 100% flying objects encountered that they have not been able to say what they are.
We have a ready explanation for a lot of "sightings" of ghosts and UFOs and even some seemingly religious experiences: outright defective brains.
http://www.treatmentadvocacyce...
Website says 1.1% of people in US have schizophrenia, which can have delusions and hallucinations as symptoms. Even if *I* saw something I'd have to consider the possibility that my brain is simply defective as being, in all likelihood, more probable than whatever oddity it is that I'm seeing. Of which I have seen exactly 0 in my life so far.
I've known two people who have claimed to have seen either demons/devils or ghosts, and both of them have ended up in the metal health system, NOT for simply claiming to have seen things but rather from disorganized life behavior.
Given this, it's going to take some really extraordinary evidence to get me to believe in aliens, ghosts, or the supernatural.
I do believe in science, however, evidence of that abounds around me. In our technological society, I'm basically swimming in evidence of science.
--PM
We don't know WHAT these are and there is ZERO proof that they are "aliens". The man is full of bovine fecal matter.
I suppose Luis Elizondo would know all about illegal aliens.
But seriously, anybody who conflates "UFO" with "extraterrestrials" has no credibility. A UFO is, by its very definition, unidentified, so of course they exist. UFOs are normal occurrences that are spotted every single day, which can be anything from a kite to a bird to a drone to a helicopter to an airplane to a balloon to a meteor, etc. To immediately jump to "aliens" as the answer is idiotic and childish. It would be like hearing a thump in the night and immediately thinking it's a monster under your bed.
Not so fast. The same issues that lead to war will always be with us.
It's a bit more than that.
He's asserting flight characteristics that are simply not possible with any known tech.
It's been a common dismissal to say, "well these things could be secret next-gen military craft". He's basically saying "no, they're really not".
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
No, I created my own specific user so I don't have to login as root but I gave it uid 0 otherwise I was getting permission denied on some stuff.
Giving your own user uid 0 is the recommended way to avoid login in as root.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
War. War never changes...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
To believe that we are the only intelligent life in the universe is arrogance of the highest order.
To believe that faster than light travel is not possible is putting yourself into the same boat as primitives who didn't believe man could fly.
Do we know HOW to travel faster than light? Nope. But the primitives didn't know how to build a plane either.
Can we travel faster than light? Not according to what we know. And what do we know about ourselves? That we don't know very much.
Of course there will only proof beyond reasonable doubt when an actual alien spaceship lands on the Pentagon Lawn and they come out, laughing their asses off at how stupid and primitive we are.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Here in Alaska, I regularly see giant UFOs moving really fast. Now, I know there is extra terrestrial in them because educated people from town call them "Aurora Borealis". I believe they come from the star system Borealis.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Wrong. The rational approach is to defer a decision until one actually has some evidence upon which to base a decision.
Yeah, plus a healthy dose of skepticism in the interim.
The same with those ghost hunter shows. "Let's go into this old, dark house with some video cameras. Did you hear that creak? Did you feel that draft of wind? IT MUST BE A GHOST! GHOOOOOOOST!!!!!"
I would love for things like ghosts, Bigfoot, Nessie, psychic powers, and aliens visiting Earth to be real. Mostly because, with science saying they don't exist, we would need to do some serious science to explain why they do exist. However, the more high quality cameras everyone carries around, the fewer sightings we seem to get. (Or the more they seem to happen "just when my cell phone's battery died" or "when I forgot my phone at home.")
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If I discovered that my house was haunted that would be the happiest day of my life. I'm at an age where I've lost a number of people I love, and a genuine haunting would be proof that there might be some part of them still out there beyond what I carry in my memory.
I agree the haunting shows are just as silly, but they don't annoy me quite so much because they're so outrageously theatrical. UFO shows are so pompously pedantic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It has to be said every time these stories come up: UFO != aliens. Yes, UFO = unidentified by definition. Let's not get hung up on the labels and entrenched misunderstandings such that we're dismissive of any actual news. There's a far bigger take away here I think. One that I find totally mind blowing. I've always found the topic fascinating yet little more than a weird curiosity. UFO cases have almost always just been totally unsubstantiated claims, from sources not vetted, with bad corroborating evidence, something totally mundane, something misidentified, hoaxes, and the people "studying" them use faulty methodologies or are of questionable motives. Not good science, or something science could seriously approach. But this is different. We have multiple first person accounts from naval aviators. We have third party corroboration from radar operators and military command. We have photographic evidence from a verified, vetted source. That video came off a military aircraft and went straight to the Pentagon presumably. Yeah, it could have been doctored somewhere in the mix. But why? And the first person accounts support the video. The sources are incredibly strong. So we know it's not a hoax. If it's a conspiracy, it's massive and would have many loose ends, which makes it highly unlikely. That the Pentagon would have a large, expensive effort to investigate its own secret spycraft, maybe to intentionally mislead, or that this program sits directly at odds with another unconnected secret program seems like an incredible stretch that creates even more problems than it explains. I don't know what the research methodology was here, but it could have been quite thorough. It sounds like Elizondo had qualified and experienced staff and an extensive tool set. If they're cataloging thousands of objects using similar sources, additional classified sources, and with powerful tools, then this being the mundane sounds unlikely as well. The only thing that seems possibly off here are Elizondo's motives now that he's involved in a private "Academy of Art" business venture. But if you've got a legit phenomenon here you're trying to pursue and you're hitting dead ends trying to continue your work using government avenues, then it seems totally plausible and acceptable that you'd try to continue this with a private venture. Especially if there is little if any respected scientific avenue that would pick this up too. Where would you even begin? Astronomy grants? We have no idea even what the applicable field is. So what does that mean? It's aliens? No, it seems that this is some phenomenon that is wholly unknown to science. "Duh, it's unidentified so of course it's unknown". It's way bigger than that. As far as I know, this is the most compelling case that there is a real phenomenon behind some UFO claims. A phenomenon of which we have no fundamental understanding. The most compelling case that this is not something totally mundane like a cloud, plane, camera artifact, or a hoax. Maybe you think that's boring and I'm unnecessarily geeking out, that of course science doesn't know everything that's out there. But that we can barely even begin to describe what this might be means that this may not just be some "object" we're waiting for science to describe. There could be entirely new types of science needed before it can be described. And that I find mind blowing.
If you were going for Funny, you failed pretty badly.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Perfect!
laughing their asses off at how stupid and primitive we are.
To think that we're worthy of a visit is the arrogance of the highest order.
They'll just destroy the solar system, and use the mass as fuel for the next trip.
You are a step away from shooting up a newspaper, dipshit.
That conjured an image of an addict shooting up the 'information' (newsprint) from a newspaper. Make a nice cartoon, perhaps entitled "general public".
You know that you're an extremist by your inability to see obvious humor, or to tolerate satire at your expense.
I have a suggestion for you. Look up the word "irony" and then reread your sentence above.
Meh, the existence of satellites prove Roundearth, and GPS satellites prove Einstein; things that these troll wannabees will never be able to wrap their heads around.
OTOH, I have a hypothesis that these folk have flat heads. I wonder if I can get a grant? Or a newsletter?
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
...a boat sailing into the sunset...
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
We all know you shitheads are planning the next culling with your fake ass alien invasion.
Well, wars have been a popular form of culling. I guess that if the choice is to be blown up by a weapon, or submitting to an anal probe, I know which one I would choo...
Oh shit, we have already chosen.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians! Russians everywhere! Behind every oak, behind every cloud, behind every shadow. (Sarcastic at its finest.)
UFO exists, in the sense there are aerial phenomena that are not identified. That's all.
All the idiots thinking about alien life coming to visit us are in dire need of learning.
The size of the universe, the speed of causality, the scale of time would be a start.
But also recent history. The one that led to this myth of the flying saucer.
In a nutshell.
Someday, a long time ago, a pilot reported he saw a V-shaped something in the sky that was moving weirdly (like a saucer bouncing on water).
Basically, he saw a bird and he could not identify it. I think to recall the drawings in the reports are looking like the "v" a child uses to draw any bird.
A lazy journalist took the note and reported "a flying saucer" (fake news are not a novelty).
Idiots being what they are, multiple reports of flying saucers spawned from people (so not shaped at all like the original text).
Fast forward to Roswel.
A Mogul crashed, it was decorated with "mysterious symbols" (usual stuff you could find in a shop in the area). And yet people believe this nonsense.
Why they don't simply take one of the many more common mythologies is beyond me.
And why this garbage is on Slashdot is just a new low. I should really consider blocking it on my resolver to lose the habit of coming here.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
Agreed.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
He didn't say the existence of aliens coming to Earth, he said Flying Objects we can't identify. They could be an animal species we have yet to discover. They could be advanced science from Dr. No. As long as they remain unidentified they don't prove anything. Super advanced tech also doesn't prove alien life. It could turn out to prove Batman exists.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Does that mean that alien boy I have hidden in my closet can come out and run around in public now?
Dayum I'm gonna miss him. He's gooooood!
{O,o}
Ok, what if the government is creating thrust-vectoring AI drone swarms - or whatever.... experimental, but has performance different from meat-sack filled aircraft.
Do you expect anyone to say, "OK, we can't lie, here are the blueprints, feel free to give a copy to the ruskies". .... or.... "no, they're really not (secret next-gen military craft)"
What does history tell you?
Do you remember the promo-reels for the SR71 while it was in development, showing the next gen in spy craft? ....no..... because it was kept secret.
"The best part? I became an ordained minister while not wearing pants." -- CleverNickName
And they would be right to believe that, because it is by far the more likely explanation.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
War. War never changes...
...because Humans won't evolve.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
yea, if we are going to INVENT possibilities I can think of other interesting ones that are equally unprovable like beings from another dimension to time travelers. They are unidentified and have flight characteristics we don't understand. Check and Check. Worth looking into.
Well, the "Flying" part might be debatable since that term usually refers to some sort of winged craft that uses the air for lift.
He's asserting flight characteristics that are simply not possible with any known tech.
Strong words, it is almost like astroturfing a new product.
Or, he could be just denying that it is one of his birds, in attempt to recover the compromised secrecy. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
No weapon is a super weapon just because of its superior characteristics. No, it has to bring with it a strategic surprise, it must be unexpected by an unprepared enemy. The enemy must not have a possibility of any contingency planning for it, a confusion and panic are tenfold more effective for military goals than weapon's primary effect itself. US has a history and tradition of employing super weapons in both large and small conflicts, it is a cultural thing, expected by the public. Some other traditional warring nations rely on more or less different strategies, but America just loves winning through techno wizardry (or at least attempting at, through techno optimism).
Imagine the military relinquishing control over their weapons, budget and power to release information about peaceful advanced cultures who want to share with us technologies that free us from the monopoly that oil and coal companies have over our economy.
I'm certain they would do everything in their power to ensure everyone has access to these technologies.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
To think that we're worthy of a visit is the arrogance of the highest order.
How do you know that the Earth isn't a huge park? Watch out for the native primates though, those motherfuckers are xrazy. Besides they like the steaks, it explains all the cattle mutilations.
They'll just destroy the solar system, and use the mass as fuel for the next trip.
C'mon, do you mutilate the parks after you visit them? Maybe the animals in the park are protected, even if they are hostile and dangerous.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Wrong. The rational approach is to check a dictionary. Or several.
1. https://www.thefreedictionary....
2. https://www.merriam-webster.co...
3. https://www.collinsdictionary....
You might actually (gasp) understand what the other person is saying. Crazy talk, I know.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
It worked fine for me. What do you see in it ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Do we know HOW to travel faster than light? Nope.
Worse, we don't even know what that means. You're probably still thinking of Galilean velocities. Bad news: That's not how they work.
Who ordered that?
Or make paperclips.
If our current state of politics, the only humans getting off of this dying rock are going to be the elite and their immediate servants and they'll probably finish the rest of us off on their way out.
Yet here we are, only about a decade later, and GNOME 3 and systemd have managed to destroy even Debian GNU/Linux.
Huh? Debian runs here just fine. Or are you talking about the destroying the community? I.e. that mass exodus that never happened?
For example, if you had described GNOME 3 and systemd to me in 2005, I would have laughed in your face.
launchd from which systemd is philosophically based launched (pun intended) in 2005. No one was laughing at how great OSX stormed onto the desktop scene. It was actually quite funny given the history of everyone trying to replace sysv-init even back then.
What do you find in it that makes it so ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
"NASA will, no doubt, get a giant shot in the arm, to upgrade their observatories, to keep their eyes peeled for any 'strange' asteroids and what not."
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...ohhhh hooo...AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
From this administration? From the pricks and morons leading this congress? Oh man, you are one funny guy. NASA and other public science and educational institutions might as well be temples of satanic worship. And with their fucking idiotic policies and inability to do basic math there wouldn't be the money to fund any such endeavor regardless.
Remember, these are the same bunch of assholes who branded massive foreign loans as "tax-cuts" and stuck the middle and poor classes with bill. If anything, these self-serving sociopaths would be making deals so the aliens had plenty of ways "to serve man" as long as they kept their money and power.
~X~
Yes because he is both ignorant and arrogant. He simply can't deal with the prospect that anyone on earth could build something that could out fly the us air force. The fact however is its quite easy to do as long as you dont include a pilot.
Yes, he could be straight up lying. That's certainly a possibility.
Let me ask you something though. Have you considered the possibility that he's telling the truth? That there are solid, radar-confirmed craft maneuvering in our atmosphere that don't belong to any government? Or would that just completely shatter your worldview?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Or some disgruntled radar firmware programming is laughing his head off...
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
The one that intrigues me the most is the ex-military guy that said he watched a warhead get launched into space. As the rocket ascended, he witnessed a small object quickly fly around the tip of the missile, shining a beam of light at the tip from a few different angles. The missile was rendered inert. This thing moved very quickly and precisely like a drone might, except it was moving at speed relative to the rocket and it happened in the pre-drone era. This little documentary I watched supposes that there are extra-terrestrials that are concerned about us sending weapons into space. I'm not sure if what I described above was from this launch or another, but they claimed that the US attempted to detonate a nuke on the moon in a show of force to the Russians during the cold war. a UFO intercepted and disabled the missile en-route.
Here's the "documentary" I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... and https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I think Stalin's mustache was much more impressive than Trump's hair, personally.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The Bayesian approach is to estimate a prior probability of UFOs before estimating the probability that UFOs exist. Now, I believe 100% that UFOs exist, but under 1% that they're alien spacecraft, so I'm going to go on thinking it's very unlikely that it's aliens unless I get some fairly strong evidence to the contrary.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Bravo. You still think it's possible, but not highly so. That is the rational conclusion.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
"Of course there will only proof beyond reasonable doubt when an actual alien spaceship lands on the Pentagon Lawn and they come out, laughing their asses off at how stupid and primitive we are."
Laughter is the first thing to go when you learn to travel faster than the speed of light. Removing causality makes every punchline predictable and gauche.
Seriously though, if "more intelligent" life than us inhabits this universe it is most likely of a magnitude that would put our ego driven ant-like city-building and resource consumption on the same level as, well, ants. Certainly, if creatures possess both the ability and the desire to control the energies necessary for interstellar travel they would find us and our monstrous, ever-expanding consumption-based society ridiculous. Hopefully. If they looked at us as the seeds of an all-consuming irresponsible shit show, you know like we are, they could decide to flame the planet.
Keep in mind that anything they could project from their own solar system to ours would inadvertently be a weapon capable of sterilizing our entire solar system with just its exhaust. And, having to play your exhaust apertures across inhabited worlds repeatedly to keep the universe free from stupid, irresponsible creatures will also kill your sense of humor as well. Again no laughing aliens. Sorry.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
It's Martians returning from their relativistically time dilated forays into the universe. They left Mars millions of years ago, but their subjective time means its been like two weeks for them. They head back to Mars and its become a shithole, all their friends are dead, and their world is a cooked-off rust ball.
They check the inner system, see some activity on Earth, and decide to take a look. They get a little glimpse of what Earth has to offer and after dicking with a couple of pilots and checking the local TV stations. Once they realize what has replaced their once great empire there's not much else to do other than aim their ship into the Sun.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Yeah, but your knowledge is destroying my dreams.
I can travel FTL, and you can't stop me.
Really? Around here it usually refers to small creatures with feathers, smaller creatures that bite and sheets of fabric tethered to a small boy with string.
All of which are objects and may or may not be identified.
Laughter is the first thing to go when you learn to travel faster than the speed of light. Removing causality makes every punchline predictable and gauche.
Oh please. The laughter died once it was possible to arrive with the punch line before the sound of the setup could make it. ... Yeager's been spoiling the joke ever since.
Don't let atheists hear you say that.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Why? There is proof that that God doesn't exist, so being an atheist is not incongruent with this approach. There may be some other force, but God as described in the Bible clearly does not exist.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Please stop being that guy who always has to explain what UFO means.
Yes, it can mean any unidentified flying object.
But it also specifically means non-terrestrial alien-made spacecraft. Even after one were fully identified, or it stopped flying e.g. by landing, people would still call it a UFO.
This is called a "homonym". Look it up. Then learn to see from context which definition is being discussed. Playing Miss Smartypants by purposefully confusing homonyms brings nothing useful to a discussion.
Once identified it's no longer a UFO; it would be an extraterrestrial craft. The general populous can't distinguish UFO from flying saucer, but the difference exists.
Why? There is proof that that God doesn't exist, so being an atheist is not incongruent with this approach. There may be some other force, but God as described in the Bible clearly does not exist.
What proof is there that God doesn't exist? I can reasonably accept that someone says there's not evidence of God's existence, but proof of non-existence? I've had personal experiences which are sufficient to convince me that God does exist, but such evidence does not qualify as empirical so it may not apply to others.