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Re: UFOs

Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 6:36 pm
by Bird on a Fire
dyqik wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 5:36 pm
The biggest difficulty though is getting politicians, scientists and engineers to fund and work on a problem that they will never see results from, not even incremental results.
There's no way to make some kind of weapon out if it, then?

Re: UFOs

Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 6:42 pm
by dyqik
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 6:36 pm
dyqik wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 5:36 pm
The biggest difficulty though is getting politicians, scientists and engineers to fund and work on a problem that they will never see results from, not even incremental results.
There's no way to make some kind of weapon out if it, then?
Not that they'd see the explosion from.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 9:42 am
by jimbob
dyqik wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 6:42 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 6:36 pm
dyqik wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 5:36 pm
The biggest difficulty though is getting politicians, scientists and engineers to fund and work on a problem that they will never see results from, not even incremental results.
There's no way to make some kind of weapon out if it, then?
Not that they'd see the explosion from.
So you need to get them to invest in massive telescopes in some solar orbit. Firstly to identify a suitable planet and secondly to be able to see the flash if you keep accelerating and don't try to slow down but just hit the planet instead

Re: UFOs

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 10:06 am
by dyqik
jimbob wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 9:42 am
dyqik wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 6:42 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Thu May 27, 2021 6:36 pm


There's no way to make some kind of weapon out if it, then?
Not that they'd see the explosion from.
So you need to get them to invest in massive telescopes in some solar orbit. Firstly to identify a suitable planet and secondly to be able to see the flash if you keep accelerating and don't try to slow down but just hit the planet instead
First they'd have to invest in life-elongation or hibernation technologies.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 10:48 am
by Sciolus
dyqik wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:06 am
First they'd have to invest in life-elongation or hibernation technologies.
That's easily fixable. Get them to give you a zillion dollars to develop hibernation techniques. After a couple of years spending the money wisely on a nice tropical beach somewhere, tell them you've solved it. If the nice politicians would step this way, yes that's right, into the freezer... Yes, it is cold... Yes of course we'll remember to wake you up... Everyone's happy.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 10:58 am
by dyqik
Sciolus wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:48 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:06 am
First they'd have to invest in life-elongation or hibernation technologies.
That's easily fixable. Get them to give you a zillion dollars to develop hibernation techniques. After a couple of years spending the money wisely on a nice tropical beach somewhere, tell them you've solved it. If the nice politicians would step this way, yes that's right, into the freezer... Yes, it is cold... Yes of course we'll remember to wake you up... Everyone's happy.
The trick is to then _not_ ship them off to find another planet, just in case they accidentally find a planet sized computer to land on.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Fri May 28, 2021 2:48 pm
by jimbob
dyqik wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:58 am
Sciolus wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:48 am
dyqik wrote:
Fri May 28, 2021 10:06 am
First they'd have to invest in life-elongation or hibernation technologies.
That's easily fixable. Get them to give you a zillion dollars to develop hibernation techniques. After a couple of years spending the money wisely on a nice tropical beach somewhere, tell them you've solved it. If the nice politicians would step this way, yes that's right, into the freezer... Yes, it is cold... Yes of course we'll remember to wake you up... Everyone's happy.
The trick is to then _not_ ship them off to find another planet, just in case they accidentally find a planet sized computer to land on.
So we're back to the "don't worry about deceleration" in interstellar travel solution

Re: UFOs

Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:28 am
by jimbob
I don't think Randall Munroe is convinced that the explanation isn't mundane.

https://m.xkcd.com/2472/

Re: UFOs

Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 11:21 am
by Woodchopper
jimbob wrote:
Sat Jun 05, 2021 7:28 am
I don't think Randall Munroe is convinced that the explanation isn't mundane.

https://m.xkcd.com/2472/
I stopped being into UFOs after I read The Demon Haunted World. Much like with homeopathy or ghosts, there is a huge amount of weak evidence. But after decades and a huge amount of effort, nothing that is conclusive.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:09 am
by TopBadger
So are we welcoming our new alien overlords or not?

I've only ever seen one UFO / UAP... three weird blobs of light in a line... hung in the air seemingly quite high / far away for about a minute, then vanished. I doubt they were aliens.

But the USAF / USN videos are somewhat interesting... in that its been captured by high tech imaging and was detected by both ship and air based tracking, and by experienced pilots - pretty hard to deceive.

If Aliens are behind this... then they're either benign (phew) or the main assault force is yet to arrive... watch the skies people!

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:24 am
by Martin Y
TopBadger wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:09 am
So are we welcoming our new alien overlords or not?
Umm. Not. Sorry.
But the USAF / USN videos are somewhat interesting... in that its been captured by high tech imaging and was detected by both ship and air based tracking, and by experienced pilots - pretty hard to deceive
Yes but I find they're more interesting when they're explained (like the link I put on page 1 to a YouTuber explaining what they show). The trouble with being sufficiently experienced that you know you're pretty hard to deceive is that on the rarer occasions when you deceive yourself it's hard to accept you did. The "go fast" video is a particularly fine example of an optical illusion where the plane's speed and the object's height makes it look like it's skimming rapidly over the sea when it's actually floating along slowly at about half the plane's altitude. And all the information to work that out is right there in the on-screen data, but the illusion is strong.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 11:57 am
by lpm
The M25 illusion at Heathrow is amazing. Best when driving clockwise for a plane turning south. A massive plane just seems to hang there, just creeping across the sky, then the angle changes and it suddenly speeds off.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:20 pm
by TopBadger
I thought I'd read these things were also picked up by both plane and ship radar... if that is indeed the case then that would seem to rule out optical illusions.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:26 pm
by Martin Y
TopBadger wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:20 pm
I thought I'd read these things were also picked up by both plane and ship radar... if that is indeed the case then that would seem to rule out optical illusions.
It often seems to be the case that UFO fans mix around their stories and don't take care not to confuse one sighting with another so that it becomes unclear whether any particular sighting was actually detected both by pilots and by ground observers and if so whether both were actually looking at the same thing. So it probably depends on exactly what you mean by "these things". The TicTac video for example might have been an airliner 80-100 miles away. It could have also been picked up by ship's radar, I don't know, but the only strange aspect, its weird revolving spinning top shape, was almost certainly an artefact of the camera tracking it, not anything about the object itself.

ETA Yes, the go fast object was, I think, picked up by radar, which suggests it was a weather balloon as those carry small simple radar reflectors. I have no doubt the US Navy are smart enough to realise it was something mundane. The pilot seems to have gained himself a bit of TV fame by declaring it baffling.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2021 6:03 pm
by dyqik
Martin Y wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 4:26 pm
TopBadger wrote:
Tue Jun 08, 2021 3:20 pm
I thought I'd read these things were also picked up by both plane and ship radar... if that is indeed the case then that would seem to rule out optical illusions.
It often seems to be the case that UFO fans mix around their stories and don't take care not to confuse one sighting with another so that it becomes unclear whether any particular sighting was actually detected both by pilots and by ground observers and if so whether both were actually looking at the same thing. So it probably depends on exactly what you mean by "these things". The TicTac video for example might have been an airliner 80-100 miles away. It could have also been picked up by ship's radar, I don't know, but the only strange aspect, its weird revolving spinning top shape, was almost certainly an artefact of the camera tracking it, not anything about the object itself.

ETA Yes, the go fast object was, I think, picked up by radar, which suggests it was a weather balloon as those carry small simple radar reflectors. I have no doubt the US Navy are smart enough to realise it was something mundane. The pilot seems to have gained himself a bit of TV fame by declaring it baffling.
And an assertion that something was picked up and tracked on radar isn't the same thing as saying that radar detected it making sudden and unusual changes in velocity that match the pilot's observations.

Re: UFOs

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2021 12:20 am
by Brightonian

Re: UFOs

Posted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:56 am
by Woodchopper
The US government Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report can be downloaded from here:

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/ ... m/2223-UAP

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/document ... 210625.pdf