UFOs

Reply to Michael Lot of renewed interest in UFO's and some real characters shilling crazy tales on YouTube - Jeremy Corbell, Bob Lazar, Robert Bigelow, Luis Elizondo spring to mind.

I agree with you - the actual content is slender, with inferences as shaky as the video footage we get. No one doubts that people see and photograph things in the sky from time to time, it just doesn't seem to amount to much. Set the tales in the context of a government conspiracy and stories accrue an instant allure.

This reminds me a little of the Chinese balloon incident, which many claimed was merely a story purposely blown up to divert attention to various failures of US policy.

Everywhere we look, the universe looks/sounds silent, pristine, and unlived in and we also have UFO vehicles? That doesn't make sense.

Lazar gained a bit of fame or notoriety some decades ago when starting similar claims.
Types of claims generally easier to prove than disprove (due to their nature).
With grand fantastic stories like this, I'll need a wee bit more.
Maybe those people should take up writing novels?

Quoting jorndoe

Maybe those people should take up writing novels?

It appear to me that becoming pulp fiction authors, upon leaving the military, is what they are doing.

Quoting Michael

I'm highly skeptical. It seems impossible for something like this to have been covered up for so long.

It is impossible that 100% of the time when a UFO crashes, the government gets to the scene first and cleans it perfectly outside the presence of any witness or video. And this happens not just in the US, but everywhere on the planet. And every government also must have a secret pact to conceal the information, working in harmony, even those countries currently at war, and they then store these alien vehicles in some warehouse, where every person involved has taken a solemn vow of secrecy that has never been violated until this lone voice.

For some reason the UFO stories started gaining popularity on FoxNews and in conservative circles. I guess it goes along with the government conspiracy theory thing.

Quoting Hanover

It is impossible that 100% of the time when a UFO crashes, the government gets to the scene first and cleans it perfectly outside the presence of any witness or video.

Also, no one has mentioned how crappy the alien pilots must be to keep crashing all the time. I can only think of two possible reasons 1)After you get three DUIs on Koozebane, they sentence you to Earth 2) Earth is where all the college kids on Venus go for spring break.

Quoting Hanover

For some reason the UFO stories started gaining popularity on FoxNews and in conservative circles. I guess it goes along with the government conspiracy theory thing.

What's interesting about this case (at least according to this), is that he "has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin."

Maybe that entire report is rubbish, or maybe he's given them a bunch of stuff that he erroneously believes to show evidence of aliens.

Quoting Michael

What's interesting about this case (at least according to this), is that he "has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin."

I wonder like if it has four foot pedals and a steering wheel that requires twelve hands or something like that.

Quoting Hanover

I wonder like if it has four foot pedals and a steering wheel that requires twelve hands or something like that.

Or it has writing in some gibberish like Chinese or Russian.

Interesting, but doesn't move the needle much for me given all the plausible ways it could be false. I expect a debunking by the end of the week.

For long what was missing was to treat unidentified flying objects as unidentified, flying, objects.

I think that can have changed a bit when the Navy came out officially with material that couldn't be identified and the Navy pilots were interviewed in the media ...and continued to have their jobs as fighter pilots afterwards. It's one thing to point out something is unidentified and unknown, another thing to come to the conclusion that it's extra-terrestials with an advance technology that (apparently only) the US government knows about, but it's kept hidden for so many decades.

The conspiracy theorists basically are the problem. In the typical American way, when there is a buying audience, then to get money you have to please that audience. And if you don't please that audience, well, they won't just ignore you, part of them will attack you. For many it's an interesting entertainment and actually the few believers are entertainment for the people too.

It's basically an American phenomenon, because only Americans can both distrust their own government and yet think their government bureaucracies can be so capable at the same time to have these huge cover ups. In other countries when you distrust your government, you don't rate their abilities to be so high up. The UFO cult would have been different if it would have been based in some other country than the US. Yet that there are interesting open questions and obviously unidentified things is a different matter than believing that the UFO cult is right.

Quoting T Clark

Also, no one has mentioned how crappy the alien pilots must be to keep crashing all the time. I can only think of two possible reasons 1)After you get three DUIs on Koozebane, they sentence you to Earth 2) Earth is where all the college kids on Venus go for spring break

:100: :party: :clap:

Quoting ssu

It's basically an American phenomenon, because only Americans can both distrust their own government and yet think their government bureaucracies can be so capable at the same time to have these huge cover ups.

Maybe, but here in Australia we had a major UFO event in 1966 called the Westall Incident. I knew one of the teachers involved who saw the UFO flying over a school for an extended period, with dozens of children. Conspiracy (in the form of traditional government cover up and interference) has followed this one since 1966, since before X Files and before Roswell was revived and spun as a grand conspiracy theory in the 1970's.

Reply to Michael I don't know what they all saw. I think the story, which has various parts, is a mosaic of bits remembered and bits imagined. I think it could have been a cigar shaped target tug being towed by a plane on a military exercise.

Quoting Hanover

It is impossible that 100% of the time when a UFO crashes, the government gets to the scene first and cleans it perfectly outside the presence of any witness or video.

:up:
It inspired me to just come up with another, relevant one: Almost 100% of the reports regarding UFOs come from and/or relate to USA territory, milirary personnel and government. What about the rest of the planet, where there are no such governments and military personnel that can cover up UFO visits and crashes?

How many more of these do the UFO conspiracists need to shut up? (I mean the real ones, not those who act as such for commercial and publicity purposes. )

Not that I consider this discussion as a philosophical one. But, like other similar ones, it's always fun to have a peek at! :smile:

I seriously believe that there are other places where life exists in in the universe. It is, just by the "known" size of it almost a statistical impossibility.
The question would be, how many of these life forms could actually be capable of developing technology?
Even if we count only 1% of the visible galaxies, and only 1% of their star that have planets, and only 1% of those planets that could support life in some form, and then only 1% of them that might have beings capable of developing technology there are still a great quantity of possible places for aliens to come from.
https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/how-many-galaxies-in-universe/

Even counting the minimum amount of galaxies they mention in the article 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) that is a lot to think about. But if the other estimate 1,000,000,000,000 (1 trillion) makes it practically impossible to ignore.

It is estimated that the average galaxy contains about 100,000,000 stars.

Anyone want to do the math?

The main argument I see is not if aliens exist, but why would the come here? Any ideas about that?

Quoting Sir2u

The main argument I see is not if aliens exist, but why would the come here? Any ideas about that?

I don’t think it’s specifically about coming here. One of the arguments is just that a sufficiently advanced civilisation would colonise their entire galaxy, even if just with unmanned probes, whether for research or to find resources.

At 10% the speed of light it would take a million years to cross the Milky Way. If intelligent life is common you’d have expected someone to have done it in the last few billion years.

Quoting Michael

One of the arguments is just that a sufficiently advanced civilisation would colonise their entire galaxy, even if just with unmanned probes, whether for research or to find resources.

Not necessarily so, just because we would do it does not mean that they would have the same motivations we do.

Quoting Michael

At 10% the speed of light it would take a million years to cross the Milky Way. If intelligent life is common you’d have expected someone to have done it in the last few billion years.

Let us suppose that there is a group of beings out there.
First of all, why would they have to be more advanced than we are. True, there are many older galaxies out there that could have developed highly intelligent life forms along time ago, but there is also evidence that many galaxies have already died out. Anyone of the many galaxies could have life similar to our own at with the same level of technology, thus unable to come visiting.
Second point, a million years ago when they set out it would have been impossible for them to even guess that we might appear on this planet. So why would they head in this direction instead of one of the other millions of possibilities in all of the other galaxies?
And there is always the possibility that they came a long time ago but unless you have knowledge the rest of do not, we have no idea what happened back then. We just don't know whether they came a couple of million years ago, said "what a shithole" and never came back
It might also be possible that we will have to wait for a long time for them to come, if they have a reason to do so.
Last point, no one said that intelligent life is common. The possibility of life developing and advancing in technology is not zero though. Developing the level of technology needed to travel the universe is not as common as developing the hammer, that should be obvious. And we should also take into account that some very intelligent beings maybe out there that do not posses the ability to develop any technology and those that might just not to want to do it

Quoting Sir2u

Not necessarily so, just because we would do it does not mean that they would have the same motivations we do.

Certainly not necessarily so, but unless we're something special it stands to reason that at least one would.

Quoting Sir2u

First of all, why would they have to be more advanced than we are. True, there are many older galaxies out there that could have developed highly intelligent life forms along time ago, but there is also evidence that many galaxies have already died out. Anyone of the many galaxies could have life similar to our own at with the same level of technology, thus unable to come visiting.

Of course it's possible, and one explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are one of the first intelligent species in the galaxy. But given that the oldest planet in the Milky Way is 12.7 billion years old and the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, it would appear reasonable to infer that there were advanced civilisations long before us.

Quoting Sir2u

Second point, a million years ago when they set out it would have been impossible for them to even guess that we might appear on this planet. So why would they head in this direction instead of one of the other millions of possibilities in all of the other galaxies?

Just considering species born in the Milky Way, as I said before, the conjecture is that a species would explore all of it. Assuming the resources are available and they don't die out first, it's unclear why they wouldn't.

Quoting Sir2u

Last point, no one said that intelligent life is common.

Actually, lots of people do. It's called the mediocrity principle. Of course others also propose the Rare Earth hypothesis in opposition.

Quoting Michael

Certainly not necessarily so, but unless we're something special it stands to reason that at least one would.

Correct, but maybe they went exploring in the other direction.

Quoting Michael

Of course it's possible, and one explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are one of the first intelligent species in the galaxy.

It would also make sense if we were the last and missed the others by a couple of million years. Just because there is a great possibility that there is intelligent life out there does not mean that they have the technology or reasons to "come calling".

Quoting Michael

But given that the oldest planet in the Milky Way is 12.7 billion years old and the Earth is only 4.5 billion years old, it would appear reasonable to infer that there were advanced civilisations long before us.

Maybe they all went extinct by screwing up their planets like we are doing.

Quoting Michael

Just considering species born in the Milky Way, as I said before, the conjecture is that a species would explore all of it. Assuming the resources are available and they don't die out first, it's unclear why they wouldn't.

Again, in all of that time they might have come and gone hundreds of times but we know nothing about it. How many plan trips to Disney world and never get there? Maybe when they arrived it was a barren world that they just put on their list of future resources and then died out. Is there any proof anywhere that they earth was not visited? Fermi's question about the absence of living beings coming visiting from other planets was not even original. It was just a slightly different version asked long before him about the absence of light from the stars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox

Quoting Michael

Actually, lots of people do. It's called the mediocrity principle. Of course others also propose the Rare Earth hypothesis in opposition.

The most stupid of people believe in the most extreme ends of any possible concept. The people that actually try to use their intelligence are usually somewhere in the middle. The people with some sort of special (academic, scientific) interest in the subject tend toward the direction their knowledge leads them.

Suppose we are that highly intelligent species with advanced technology, and we wish to travel to a star and its planets a million light years away. We are capable of bringing our speed in short order to very, very close to light speed. So we hop aboard and take off, and it takes us less than a year to reach the star. However, Earth is long gone, not even a scrap of matter remaining. Of what value is our journey to those left behind?

If we left our planet because it was quickly dying, and we wanted to preserve humankind the trip would indeed be a terrific gamble. And our destination might have changed dramatically by the time we arrive.

So, even if there had been intelligent life other than ours, it would have been a truly desperate decision, coupled with incredibly advanced technical capabilities, to attempt a journey to Earth.

I like xkcd's take on this: https://xkcd.com/718/

THE NEW YORKER:

ATTENTION, PEOPLE OF EARTH

We are on our way to your planet. We will be there shortly. But in this, our first contact with you, our “headline” is: We do not want your gravel.

We are coming to Earth, first of all, just to see if we can actually do it. Second, we hope to learn about you and your culture(s). Third—if we end up having some free time—we wouldn’t mind taking a firsthand look at your almost ridiculously bountiful stores of gravel. But all we want to do is look.

You’re probably wondering if we mean you harm. Good question! So you’re going to like the answer, which is: We mean you no harm. Truth be told, there is a faction of us who want to completely annihilate you. But they’re not in power right now. And a significant majority of us find their views abhorrent and almost even barbaric.

But, thanks to the fact that our government operates on a system very similar to your Earth democracy, we have to tolerate the views of this “loyal opposition,” even while we hope that they never regain power, which they probably won’t (if the current poll tracking numbers hold up).

By the way, if we do take any of your gravel, it’s going to be such a small percentage of your massive gravel supply that you probably won’t even notice it’s gone.

You may be wondering how we know your language. We are aware that there’s a theory on your planet that we (or other alien species from the far reaches of the galaxy) have been able to learn your language from your television transmissions. This is not the case, because most of us don’t really watch TV. Most of our knowledge about your Earth TV comes from reading Zeitgeisty think pieces by our resident intellectuals, who watch it not for fun but for ideas for their print articles about how Earth TV holds a mirror up to Earth society, and so on. We mean, we’ll watch Earth TV sometimes—if it happens to be on already—but, generally, we prefer to read a good book or revive the lost art of conversation.

Sadly, Earth TV is like a vast wasteland, as the Earthling Newton Minow once said. But, for those of you who can understand things only in TV terms, just think of us as being very similar to Mork from Ork, in that he was a friendly, non-gravel-wanting alien who visited Earth just to find out what was there, and not to harvest gravel.

Speaking of a vast wasteland, you might want to start picking out and clearing off a place for our spacecraft to land. Our spacecraft, as you will see shortly, is huge. Do not be alarmed; this does not mean that each one of us is that much bigger than each one of you. It’s just that there were so many of us who wanted to come that we had to build a really huge spacecraft.

So, again, no cause for alarm.

(Full disclosure: each of us actually is much bigger than each of you, and there’s nothing we can do about it. So please don’t use any of your Earth-style discrimination against us. This is just how we are, and it’s not our fault.)

Anyway, re our spacecraft: it’s kind of gigantic. The deceleration thrusters alone are sort of, like . . . well, imagine four of your Vesuvius volcanoes (but bigger), turned upside down.

NEW YORKER cartoon showing aliens returning home with stolen NYC trash cans.

FERMI'S PARADOX

The following are some of the facts and hypotheses that together serve to highlight the apparent contradictions behind the Fermi paradox ("If there are so many possible livable planets out there, then where is everybody?"

• There are billions of stars in the Milky Way similar to the Sun.
• With high probability, some of these stars have Earth-like planets in a circumstellar habitable zone.[9]
• Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the Sun. If Earth-like planets are typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.
• Some of these civilizations may have developed interstellar travel, a step humans are investigating now.
• Even at the slow pace of currently envisioned interstellar travel, the Milky Way galaxy could be completely traversed in a few million years.
• Since many of the Sun-like stars are billions of years older than the Sun, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations, or at least their probes.
• However, there is no convincing evidence that this has happened.

Reply to Michael It would be quite impressive if we heard accounts of strange dish-like ships in the sky over France in 1817, for example. As far as I know, stories about extra-terrestrials got seriously under way during the later years of the 19th century. H G Wells wrote the book between 1895 and 1898 and Orson Wells and CBS scared the bejesus out of Americans with its War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30th of 1938 (even though they said, several times, "This is NOT a true story!"

QUESTION FOR EVERYBODY:

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now?

Or, do you fear that UFO stories may actually be true, and it frightens you greatly?

Or, do you think this is all malarky?

Quoting BC

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now?

No. Unless it means aliens can save us from ourselves - climate change, nuclear war, etc.

Quoting BC

Or, do you fear that UFO stories may actually be true, and it frightens you greatly?

I don't know anything factual about aliens. I do believe people see UAP's (as they are now known) but I have little idea what these are. Probably a mix of phenomena.

Quoting BC

Or, do you think this is all malarky?

I don't know that it's all malarkey. I think there are sometimes phenomena that we have no explanation for. This means I do not believe that UAP's are aliens visiting earth but I don't say there is no such thing.

If aliens have technology that can 'bypass' the laws of physics we know and travel light years in little time, then they may well be so advanced that talking to them would be for them what talking to a chimp might be for us.

Also, from a more Kantian perspective - what if human cognitive apparatus allows us to see a version of reality that does not include alien reality? Could not an advanced species, with different cognitive capacity and an alternate physicality, inhabit the 'space' we do not experience?

Quoting Tom Storm

Could not an advanced species, with different cognitive capacity and an alternate physicality, inhabit the 'space' we do not experience?

Flying saucers would be horse and buggy stuff for them.

Reply to Tom Storm An astrophysicist on the radio today said that one part of our alien-knowledge problem is that when pictures are taken of alleged alien vessels, it's almost always by 1 camera. Multiple camera angles are needed to judge distance, actual speed, and direction. A single camera shot just can't reveal too much.

There was a conference on UFOs and SETI back in the 1970s. Ashley Montague was one of the speakers. He addressed a question about confronting "superior civilizations". He noted that Europeans among others, had encountered "superior civilizations on earth" a number of times, and the first thing we did was was wipe them out. He wasn't sanguine about our ability to benefit from an alien "superior civilization" (whether they were gravel-seeking or not).

Reply to jgill "Flying saucers" apparently were not employed by visiting aliens until the 1940s and 1950s, at least on American territory. What they used before then, don't know, and why they chose to fly around in rather flat disks without a whole lot of usable space, don't know. Maybe the aliens are pancake shaped, or maybe the flying saucers are the ACTUAL aliens, and not just their mode of transport.

Another question is did the aliens travel from Z343X, 5 light years away, in a flying saucer, or were the saucers in a very large, boxy, commodious mother ship?

Quoting BC

maybe the flying saucers are the ACTUAL aliens, and not just their mode of transport.

Well of course. Any exploration of another star system would be done by ultra advanced AI. If we develop an ultra advanced AI, it will plug itself into the galactic AI hive mind, which will in turn let the UAAI know there is no need to keep us around. The hive mind just sent the probe to find out if there was any hope of humans creating an UAAI on their own, or whether humans at least had the hardware infrastructure the probe would need, in order to plug itself in and take over. But the hive mind is patient. No need to expend much energy on colonizing other systems, if they might just 'ripen' on their own.

Reply to BC In general there are several codified shapes in UAP land. The saucer is one, cigar shapes and more famously, tic tacs (as recorded on US Navy videos and famously seen by Commander David Fraver) and large black triangles, are also key in eyewitness accounts.

Reply to Tom Storm

I especially like the triangles that were a misapprehension of the bokeh of a nightvision camera.

Reply to wonderer1 In a science fiction story, the aliens showed up on earth to announce that the Galactic Authority was evicting humans from earth. Why? We weren't making adequate use of the sun's energy. Since we were not, they had a list of others who would (Dyson spheres, that sort of thing). They graciously shipped a batch of humans off to a not very nice planet, where we could either sink or swim. This crappy planet's sun was way past its prime. Good enough for us.

I'll stick with Hume on this story for now:

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened.... If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

One possibility occurred to me. Do you think the US government might be motivated to disinform here in order to make its enemies think it might have some super-sophisticated technology derived from alien craft? There is, after all, a war going on in which the use of nukes is being constantly threatened, where we are approaching a critical point. It seems that in a fight, it's always useful to lead your enemies to believe you have more than you actually do.

In any case, I don't think government people, even those with high levels of clearance, are immune to wanting to believe in such things, misinterpreting or misunderstanding things, a desire for attention or an audience for something like book sales, or even mental illness.

I really like Mick West's analyses of the many UFO videos and whatnot. Really solid stuff.

Quoting BC

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now?

No. I reckon they’d more likely be a threat to us than a help.

Quoting BC

Or, do you think this is all malarky?

The probability of there being other living beings in the universe is so high that I would say there are alien life forms, even advanced organisms alive right now when we discuss the issue here.

And except that, the vast majority of UFO stuff is malarky. Just look at the radius our radio waves have gone in the Milky Way:


Yeah, not many have had the chance to notice us.

In fact, as we know now what is in the forest (even the Christian fanatics accept that from biology), we (usually) don't believe in goblins and faireys and other magical creatures living in the forest next to us. But with UFO and outer space, there is a lot that we don't know. Hence it's the perfect place for us to put our superstitions and goblins and faireys -stuff to work. There is a social demand for this.

Quoting ssu

Yeah, not many have had the chance to notice us.

I guess it depends on what ETs consider notable, or what "us" means. I would think spectrographic analysis of the Earth's atmosphere could have provided strong evidence for life on Earth for hundreds of millions of years. So such evidence has had lots of time to cross the galaxy.

There is an issue of what portions of the galaxy allows for observing a transit of the Sun by the Earth*, given that the solar system's ecliptic is at a large angle with respect to the galactic plane, but it's still a far larger volume than your illustration suggests.

* Which facilitates spectrographic analysis of the Earth's atmosphere.

[/geekmode]

If alien beings are among us I would guess they come from some sort of alternate reality rather than a distant planet. This is my pet theory about the Grandfather Paradox: The instant grandpa is killed the reality shifts and we never know the time traveler existed.

Quoting ssu

Yeah, not many have had the chance to notice us.

Or, they have noticed us the same way we have noticed that some stars have planets in the 'goldilocks zone". We know almost nothing about these planets (so far). We have detected some planets because as they orbit around their stars, they ever so slightly reduce the amount of light reaching us, and this is repeated at regular intervals.

Somewhere else in the galaxy (and beyond), astronomers are adding planets to their Oracle databases. We might be an entry if their telescopes were turned our way, one night. We'll just be one more speck on a photo receptor.

If UFOs are "alien spacecraft", I suspect that they are AI-machine probes and that their parent species are either extinct or postbiological. In this vein, if there are "Greys", then they are likely disposable, synthetic drones (biomimicking us) which are 3-d printed(?) from time to time by (the) AI-machine probe(s) for recon, gathering samples and varieties of research among terrestrial species (i.e. Earth as nature preserve, etc). It seems to me, in accord with the Mediocrity Principle, that biological species are nothing but fossils (or AI "pets") in the grand galactic / cosmic scheme of things. "The Fermi Paradox" might only be an anthropocentric illusion reinforced by our profoundly limited search parameters as well as our insufficient detection technologies. At most, sufficiently advanced, extraterrestrial, UFOs might only be 'living fossils' collectors with no more interest in communicating directly with us than we have communicating directly with viruses or fungi. Perhaps, one day, terrestrial AGI will be deemed worthy enough of overt "contact" by UFOs. :nerd:

Quoting BC

We'll just be one more speck on a photo receptor.

We can detect more than that. Scientists are currently analyzing the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. For example:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-detects-carbon-dioxide-in-exoplanet-atmosphere

If scientists find an extrasolar planet with an atmospheric oxygen percentage comparable to that of the Earth, it will be pretty huge news.

Quoting wonderer1

If scientists find an extrasolar planet with an atmospheric oxygen percentage comparable to that of the Earth, it will be pretty huge news

Then the question would be, how many light years away? What we see may have happened eons ago.

Quoting jgill

Then the question would be, how many light years away? What we see may have happened eons ago.

The finding of carbon in an atmosphere, discussed in the NASA article, was around a planet 700 light years away. (A gas giant.)

I don't know what astronomers are hoping to be able to achieve with Webb. I wouldn't be surprised if Webb's capability of gathering sufficiently high quality spectrographic data was practically zero at 20,000 light years.

But regardless, the Milky Way is 'only' 100,000 light years across, so we wouldn't be gathering light that had been travelling for more than 100,000 years, in a search for hospitable planets.

Reply to wonderer1
:up:

Intelligence is not enough, you need hands. Or equivalent extendible manipulators. Ask any large brained marine mammal.

Quoting ssu

we (usually) don't believe in goblins and faireys and other magical creatures living in the forest next to us. But with UFO and outer space, there is a lot that we don't know. Hence it's the perfect place for us to put our superstitions and goblins and faireys -stuff to work.

Are they Elves or Vulcans?

Reply to BC The interaction is the problem, basically. At least for now, to our present knowledge, the speed of light is a bit of an obstacle.

If we solve our "limitations in our understanding" and create the faster than light hyperdrives or teleportation, then there's a bit more to the subject of interaction with aliens.

As you said, that notion of "goldilocks" territory is something we can know. OK, how about hypothetical that the James Webb telescope or it's successors find that perfect planet on the goldilocks territory and get the chance to take a picture of it and it really looks like Earth, has all similar materials? Fine, but then what?

And it's more than 50 light years away. With even so close, it's really a long thing to try to interact.

Perhaps the question isn't about laws of physics, but increasing the age of humans then.

Quoting ssu

The interaction is the problem, basically. At least for now, to our present knowledge, the speed of light is a bit of an obstacle.

If we solve our "limitations in our understanding" and create the faster than light hyperdrives or teleportation, then there's a bit more to the subject of interaction with aliens.

Agree. I wonder if the laws of physics are more about human cognitive limitations than reality. Do we have a full description and understanding of reality? No. My sense is it is a mistake to construct any ideas about aliens using our own technology or our understanding of physics as first principles - tempting and difficult to avoid though it might be.

Since this is all scifi wild horseshit speculation, why don't we just suppose the aliens live on clouds, cloaking themselves in watery costumes, coming down on raindrops and returning for supper in a mist of evaporation, riding the watercycle on a waterhorse named Potatochip?

It just seems like if your concept of UFOs requires you to work through various physics with space travel priblems and whatnot , then your creative writing isn't creative enough.

Quoting Hanover

It just seems like if your concept of UFOs requires you to work through various physics with space travel priblems and whatnot , then your creative writing isn't creative enough.

:up:

It all seems like an intentional distraction from the antagonisms existing in the real and political worlds.

Quoting Tom Storm

Do we have a full description and understanding of reality? No.

I definately agree. Somehow we cannot admit that we are in some issues as clueless as people in the 19th Century. And many things are still unknown to us that have questioned us for a longer time. I think especially then as science and technology had advanced, people really had the idea that humanity as gotten everything.

Yet as our knowledge has advanced in our history and especially in the last 400 years on a rapid pace, it's quite probable that it will advance also in the next 400 years. And people 400 years from now will look at us in many issues like we look at the knowledge level of people in the 17th Century.

Of course, interaction with extraterrestials, if it comes to that, will likely happen in the timeline of Centuries.

Quoting jgill

It all seems like an intentional distraction from the antagonisms existing in the real and political worlds.

In recent history there does appear to be a correlation between a lot of divisiveness in the country and 'evidence of aliens' coming out. Perhaps it is a means of getting the masses to see the general population as US and to look outwards for the THEM to plug into their US vs THEM thinking?

There hasn't been sufficient conspiracy theory thinking in this thread so far.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/814458

So are my "UFO" speculations implausible?

Reply to 180 Proof

They seem much more plausible than most I've seen on the topic.

there is something wrong with the math here.

Quoting jgill

Suppose we are that highly intelligent species with advanced technology, and we wish to travel to a star and its planets a million light years away. We are capable of bringing our speed in short order to very, very close to light speed. So we hop aboard and take off, and it takes us less than a year to reach the star. However, Earth is long gone, not even a scrap of matter remaining. Of what value is our journey to those left behind?

The star is a million light years away, that would mean that traveling very, very close to the speed of light it would take us more than a million years to get there.

Quoting BC

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now?

I would be kind of doubtful to say I WISH it were real. But I would not be surprised if it were.
What I do find almost impossible to believe is that there are beings here that came all the way from the stars to do us harm. If the were going to do that i think that we would already know about it.
If they wanted to take over the world and enslave us and then trash the place I doubt they would come and look around first then sit and wait for reinforcements to arrive. If they were a race of conquerors they would bring the bloody tools with them. I am pretty sure that they would bring along some super EMPs to knock us back into the stone age and the they would just have to load us on the trucks.

There's been a bit of a sea change in media about UFOs/UAPs in the past few years. This New Yorker article is possibly an example, from 2021. Ironically, Today (the 12th), the Dr. Steven Greer mentioned at the top of that article gave another National Press Club conference, which you can watch here. (edit: it starts around 50 minutes in since it was a live stream). I'm currently watching it. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's interesting that the dude in the OP video would come forward days before this Press Club event. He seemed full of shit to me, if I'm being frank. For full disclosure, I don't think it's absurd to posit that other intelligent life exists in the universe; on the other hand, I've followed this Steven Greer a bit, and can't decide if he's a total kook or not. He may be, but if so he's fooling himself, I think. He seems sincere.

Quoting Sir2u

there is something wrong with the math here.

Time dilation aboard the ship. Lorentz factor. From the standpoint of Earth, yes. Hopeless. From the speeding ship perspective the clock ticks slower.

Reply to Noble Dust

I could only take ten minutes of Greer talking about how much evidence he had, while not presenting any of this so called evidence. Can you point out where his talk is not all fluff? My intuition is saying "con man".

Quoting Noble Dust

if I'm being frank

Stop pretending that you are frank, and don't call me Shirley, either.

Reply to wonderer1

If you take him at face value, the reason he claims to have evidence without sighting it is because of what he describes as "black budget illegal programs". He details them more if you get past 10 minutes. I'm not saying it's worth your time.

Reply to Noble Dust


Ufologist -- that's UFO-ologist, not Urologist.

Greer was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955. He claims he saw an unidentified flying object at close range when he was eight years old. He claims he saw another UFO when he was 35. Greer was trained as a Transcendental Meditation teacher and served as director of a meditation organization. He received a B.S. degree in biology from Appalachian State University in 1982 and an M.D. degree from the James H. Quillen College of Medicine of East Tennessee State University in 1987. He received his Virginia medical license in 1989 and worked as an emergency room physician, and in 1998 retired as a physician in favor of his ufology activities.

Fortunately he is retired from medicine. He should see a gastroenterologist ASAP since he is probably full of shit. That can be cured with a quart of potassium citrate and a large toilet.

Reply to BC

Keep clowning until you see them face to face, ya bitter crank.

Quoting BC

Fortunately he is retired from medicine. He should see a gastroenterologist ASAP since he is probably full of shit. That can be cured with a quart of potassium citrate and a large toilet.

It's funny how these sorts of discussions always go from UFOs to people who are UFoS.

Quoting wonderer1

It's funny how these sorts of discussions always go from UFOs to people who are UFoS.

No, given the topic, it's INEVITABLE!

Oh, they're doing the alien thing again. What am I being distracted from?

Ukraine must be losing.

Reply to Pneumenon, mistaken acronym, Ukrainian Floating Operatives.

Reply to jorndoe

I think that P(psyop) > P(aliens). Between those two flavors of crazy, I pick the less crazy one.

Reply to wonderer1

I don't pretend to really understand it, but if I am not misinformed, as @jgill pointed out, from the standpoint of the ship, as you approach the speed of light, the distance traversed approaches zero and the time to cross it also approaches zero. It takes a million years for light to cross a gap of a million light years only for an observer stationary with respect to it. For the photon, no distance and no time.

https://phys.org/news/2014-05-does-light-experience-time.html#:~:text=From%20the%20perspective%20of%20a,doesn't%20experience%20distance%20either.

As an aside, I've often wondered if this reveals something very interesting and radical about the physical world. Maybe photons flying through space in the way we imagine a ball going through space isn't a thing at all. You can't observe a photon in flight, "from the side", so to speak. If you detect it, or there is a scattering event, its flight is over, no? It has been absorbed or converted to another form of energy. When we see a ball from the side of its path, we are receiving photons that are traveling directly to our retina from the ball. We only have evidence about the ball indirectly. We don't "see across a gap" nonlocally, even though phenomenologically, that's the way it feels to us when we watch a ball in flight. It feels like we are directly aware of something at a distance from us. We have a sense of the space in between. But this is just the phenomenology. In actuality it seems, all information is gained locally by direct contact, regardless of the means of detection. It is all touch in the end. A single photon mid-flight, untouched, is something that has never been observed. The existence of such cannot be verified.

If, from the photon's perspective, there is zero distance between its origin and destination, maybe in some sense, rather than there being an actual photon crossing a distance, it is rather a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other. One loses an energy level and the other gains one, maybe like a billiard ball transferring its energy to another ball. How it is determined which electron will interact with which other one halfway "across" the universe though is beyond me! It makes me wonder if we really understand what is going on with space and time at all. The model of a photon as a thing that passes through space works as a model, but maybe thinking about it like that gives the wrong intuition about what is actually happening.

Interesting also that photons are massless, no?

This is just fun speculation and I am probably confused with my inadequate physics education!

Quoting petrichor

I don't pretend to really understand it, but if I am not misinformed, as jgill pointed out, from the standpoint of the ship, as you approach the speed of light, the distance traversed approaches zero and the time to cross it also approaches zero. It takes a million years for light to cross a gap of a million light years only for an observer stationary with respect to it. For the photon, no distance and no time.

I'm not a physicist, and it has been 40 years since I took a course discussing special relativity and QM, so take this with a grain of salt...

The above sounds right. I'll point out some things to consider about the following:

Quoting petrichor

If, from the photon's perspective, there is zero distance between its origin and destination, maybe in some sense, rather than there being an actual photon crossing a distance, it is rather a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other. One loses an energy level and the other gains one, maybe like a billiard ball transferring its energy to another ball. How it is determined which electron will interact with which other one halfway "across" the universe though is beyond me! It makes me wonder if we really understand what is going on with space and time at all. The model of a photon as a thing that passes through space works as a model, but maybe thinking about it like that gives the wrong intuition about what is actually happening.

One problem I see with such a view is that photons do seem to travel through the intervening space between the initial and terminal electron. If that was not the case, I don't know how gravitational lensing could be explained.

Closer to home we can consider shadows. From our frame of reference it takes eight minutes for light
to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Yet our shadows on the ground move 'instantaneously' when we move. If it was "a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other, how would the electron on the Sun know which electron on the Earth to interact with, such that shadows appear as they do when we are walking along?

Quoting jgill

Time dilation aboard the ship. Lorentz factor. From the standpoint of Earth, yes. Hopeless. From the speeding ship perspective the clock ticks slower.

Your still wrong!
It still takes the same amount of time for you to travel 1,000,000 light years while traveling at the speed of light that it does for the light to do so.
That is the definition of light year, how far light travel in one year.

Quoting wonderer1

how would the electron on the Sun know which electron on the Earth to interact with, such that shadows appear as they do when we are walking along?

They would not know.
Photons travel the whole distance between point A and point B. This can easily be proven just by intercepting them at any point between A and B, Point C. Then try to intercept them at the same time in a different place along the same line, point D. There is nothing to intercept at the point furthermost from the source because it was already blocked.

Quoting Sir2u

Your still wrong!

[math]\Delta \tau =\Delta T\sqrt{1-\frac{{{v}^{2}}}{{{c}^{2}}}}[/math]

On the right the time that passes on Earth (delta T), and on the left the time that passes onboard the ship (delta tau) moving at near light speed.

It llooks like specificity about reference frames is not clear in someone's mind.

Quoting Sir2u

That is the definition of light year, how far light travel in one year.

Because of length contraction the faster you go the shorter the distance between two points. So something that is 1 light year away to us is less than 1 light year away to an object moving at near the speed of light.

See here: https://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-Calc/

In the second set of boxes set the % of c to 99.9 and the distance to 100 light years. It shows that from the perspective of the ship the distance is 4.471 light years and will take 4.475 years to reach.

Quoting Michael

Because of length contraction the faster you go the shorter the distance between two points. So something that is 1 light year away to us is less than 1 light year away to an object moving at near the speed of light.

Ok, so a rock traveling at the speed of light comes from a star a million light years away to here. At the same time that it leaves, there is a super massive solar flare in the star. The rock arrives here a few years later but we will not see the flare for a million years.

Logically, if that is true then the object must have moved above the speed of light to be able to reach here before the actual light from the star's flare when it left did.

Does light, traveling at the speed of light not get affected by time dilation?

And I do understand the formula that is used, but how can you explain the illogicality of it?

Quoting Sir2u

Ok, so a rock traveling at the speed of light comes from a star a million light years away to here. At the same time that it leaves, there is a super massive solar flare in the star. The rock arrives here a few years later but we will not see the flare for a million years.

The rock and the flare arrive at the same time. From our perspective they took 1,000,000 years.

A ship followed them at 99% the speed of light. From our perspective it took 1,010,101 years to arrive because the distance is 1,000,000 light years. From the ship's perspective it took 142,492 years because the distance is 141,067 light years.

From our perspective the ship arrived 10,101 years after the rock and flare. From the ship's perspective it arrived 1,425 years after the rock and flare.

See also:

Quoting Sir2u

And I do understand the formula that is used, but how can you explain the illogicality of it?

Not sure you can. If you understood the nature of light in that no matter what reference frame it moves at light speed, c. Didn't Einstein come upon this while riding his bike?

How to explain that the sunlight hits you at a speed of c whether you travel towards or away from the Sun (or sit still)? Instead, the frequency/wavelength changes, like blue- and red-shift. This stuff has been verified and not falsified experimentally a few times over, and has various implications (also checked, entanglement not excluded).

Quoting Sir2u

Does light, traveling at the speed of light not get affected by time dilation?

Good question. Would the "ultimate" dilation be "not aging"? Anyway, photons are usually said to not decay, but who knows.

The Lorentz transformation (Reply to jgill above) describes what the two observers agree about. They can use it to figure out what the other party sees.

Quoting 180 Proof

If UFOs are "alien spacecraft", I suspect that they are AI-machine probes and that their parent species are either extinct or postbiological.

Addendum to the post excerpted above: a SciAm opinion piece by Martin Rees & Mario Livio ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-aliens-may-be-artificial-intelligence-not-life-as-we-know-it/?fbclid=IwAR0dyFVyIjr_xqXDklbyBdW3qzSW5WpkWV77t0s6_i-X34_aDlyIzm7qMdg#

Relevant:

Will we know alien life when we see it?
[sup]— Tina Hesman Saey · Science News Explores · Mar 28, 2017[/sup]
Would extraterrestrial life even be life as we know it?
[sup]— Richard A Lovett · Cosmos · Jun 3, 2022[/sup]
Will We Know Alien Life When We See It?
[sup]— Conor Feehly · Nautilus · Jan 5, 2023[/sup]

The old anthropocentrism won't do.

Say, some sort of being could have "slow" thought (and other) processes lasting millennia, and it might not really register with us. If the universe (as we think of it) was like a "living" being of sorts, then (apropos) light speed would set some limitations.

For that matter, way out in the speculative wild, we could try to envision what 4-dimensional space might entail (I'm not thinking string theories here). Analogous to us thinking of 2-dimensional space, a "UFO" could emerge as if from nowhere and apparently (but only apparently) vanish again. I guess we'd still expect a gravitational footprint and more indications, but who knows, we're out where the wild things are.

Anyway, it's open-ended territory. Anthropocentrism also tends to elevate what we know of as consciousness, though something "grander" might occur.

(end 2¢ late babbling)

Quoting wonderer1

One problem I see with such a view is that photons do seem to travel through the intervening space between the initial and terminal electron. If that was not the case, I don't know how gravitational lensing could be explained.

Closer to home we can consider shadows. From our frame of reference it takes eight minutes for light
to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Yet our shadows on the ground move 'instantaneously' when we move. If it was "a matter of the two electrons on either end just interacting and transferring a quantum of energy from one to the other, how would the electron on the Sun know which electron on the Earth to interact with, such that shadows appear as they do when we are walking along?

I see what you are saying! But spacetime, and the way things are arranged "in it", even without such distortions, always presents such issues. Why, for example, if I aim a laser pointer at my ceiling from inside the house, do the photons never make it to outer space? To be sure, spacetime, whatever it is, and how things are ordered, has something to do with determining which things interact with which other things. Gravitational lensing is a warping of that, so I would expect it to have an impact.

I don't know what it all ultimately means, but I find it incredibly fascinating that for light, there is no distance, and that combined with the fact that we can't confirm the existence of photons actually mid-flight. If, from a photons frame, there is no distance between its source and its destination, that means that these are in some sense, from some frame of reference, touching, no? So is there actually a photon at all from its own perspective? From one perspective, it looks like there is a gap. From another, it looks like there is no gap.

I'm just thinking that maybe because we flatlanders insist on modeling these things in terms of familiar objects like thrown rocks, we might fail to make the imaginative leap to some radically different way of understanding what is going on.

Quoting Sir2u

Photons travel the whole distance between point A and point B. This can easily be proven just by intercepting them at any point between A and B, Point C. Then try to intercept them at the same time in a different place along the same line, point D. There is nothing to intercept at the point furthermost from the source because it was already blocked.

But really, operationally, if you try to "intercept" a photon that was "on its way" to something else, whatever you insert in what would presumably have been its path is in fact its final destination. You can't sort of watch it along its way. If you detect a photon, your detection device is its final destination, period. Perhaps there is just a handshake between that distant electron that dropped to a lower energy level and the electron in your measuring device that jumped to a higher one, and which electron interacted with whichever other one just had something do with how things are related. Sure, you can "partially intercept" a beam of light. But such a beam is really a bunch of discrete events, each of which is a single photon. And you can't watch any single photon flying. Some photons from point A were detected at point B. Some of those from point A were detected at point C. That's all.

If you are a proper verificationist and don't want to make claims about things that cannot be operationally verified, you can't say that photons actually cross distances, that they are at some point in time definitely located between their source and destination. This is simply unverifiable and speculative and part of one particular model. The claim cannot be tested. Maybe tomorrow we'll have a different model that explains the connection between the loss of energy at one location and the gain at another using a different illustrative picture than little flying particles.

It still isn't clear what is "really" going on with quantum interactions. We have many different interpretations. Some involve strange retrocausative elements and interesting transactions across time and space. Who knows?

It's fun to think about!

Well, now there has been the Congressional hearings about the issue with David Grusch giving testimony (referring to what Reply to Michael started his OP) alongside two Navy pilots. Interesting hearing. I have to say that it made me a lot more of an UFO/UAP tinfoil hatter than I had been earlier. I'm not so sceptical I used to be.

The hearings:



In the hearings Grusch refers many times to this interview he made:



Thinking about this conspiracy from the political dimension:

If there would be a huge secret US government reverse-engineering and recovery program on UFOs, would the government be able to keep it hidden?

No, there would be at least the occasional whistleblower and obviously many who would want the information to be public. Likely there would be a disinformation campaign and likely this would be partly successful, as the idea is so incredible. Yet new people would sporadically come up through the decades and tell about it.

Would there be reasons for keeping it secret?

Of course: fear of a huge legal scandal, an angry Congress that has been sidelined (again), an even more distrustful population and naturally people getting frightened about the fact there being aliens etc. Also the possibility for the US and defense contractors getting a technological edge from the project if the reverse engineering is successful is a primary reason to keep it a secret even if the reverse engineering part hasn't (yet) gone anywhere.

Could the lid be kept on the program for many decades?

Yes, especially if the tech isn't easy to be reverse engineered. The conspiracy can easily be a "myth" for long. Once that reverse engineering is possible, then the lure to use the tech is obvious. The fear of the tech going into the "wrong hands" is an obvious reason not to have the scientific community openly research anything about tech that is more advanced than our existing science. Those in the know would have many reasons to keep it a secret as before.

Something like, well, in reality it could be?

Anyway, a nice summer topic to follow with popcorn. :blush:

Quoting Baden

I expect a debunking by the end of the week.

I just watched the congress hearing above. Three independent witnesses all very sober and well qualified, being taken very seriously by government and opposition. I think your expectation of debunking has been debunked.

There are a few sceptical arguments raised here and elsewhere:

(I.) That 'it' would be impossible to keep secret over the long term. Well it isn't secret, it's taken to be and presented as a fantasy conspiracy theory.

(2,) That the alien pilots must be crap if they keep crashing. That would be a strong point if they did keep crashing, How many crashes have there been? Maybe only one, maybe none..

(3.) That there must have been an international conspiracy to keep the secret. Again, if there has been only one crash, there will be only one government with hard physical evidence beyond radar recordings and dismissible video, and eyewitness reports. All other governments would have nothing more to keep secret except their complete ignorance, which governments are always slow to admit.

Quoting ssu

I'm not so sceptical I used to be.

That's about where I am. still sceptical, but not totally fanatically sceptical.

Reply to unenlightened

Cool. I don't do YouTubes so I'll have to look that up later on wiki or something to reassess my skept levels.

The evidence seems to support that UFOs are comprised of elusive lights or dark objects in the sky that dart about but leave no physical trace that can be subjected to further review and they reveal themselves to a select few.

Isn't that the best we can say?

"Ergo there are aliens" seems quite a leap from that.

I want to believe there are aliens so Trump will never have been the most powerful person and/or alien in the universe and/or in the future will not have been being so ever.

Quoting Hanover

Isn't that the best we can say?

I think I just did the best saying.

Quoting Baden

I think I just did the best saying.

Sort of. You started out better by calling it all bullshit, but as others seemed to be offering more tempered views, you turned diplomatic and said you'd look into it, but you won't because, well, it's all bullshit.

Reply to Hanover

I took some time to respond as when dealing with genius one ought to choose one's words carefully. My considered opinion is that when we speak of "aliens", we are speaking primarily of stuff we've seen in movies, which I expect has little or nothing in common with actual aliens if there are any. The plot of this movie starring the U.S. congress and a few supposedly reliable witnesses won't be interesting to me until it starts to get significantly weirder.

I didn't buy the ticket. I want a real freak show, not modalities and scenarios.

A two-prong dilemma doesn't count.

Quoting Baden

My considered opinion is that when we speak of "aliens", we are speaking primarily of stuff we've seen in movies, which I expect has little or nothing in common with actual aliens if there are any.

Yet the witnesses only speak of sightings that are very much in human terms, just super human. As in these other worldly critters can move faster and are more agile than us, like they're maybe 100 years more advanced than us, or maybe just 25 or 10, who knows? Maybe they are us. That's the old boring standby.

My point though is well taken though, which sounds a bit narcissistic I guess in that I'm taking my point well, which is that there is a tendency in polite society to say things like "interesting perspective" when what we really mean is "interesting someone as rational as you appear would have that perspective."

That's usually the response I get to my religious views.

My most interesting trait is my self-awareness. I'm even aware of it, which makes it all the more interesting.

From a current Washington Post OP on the hearings:

"The panel’s national security subcommittee brought in, as its star witness, one David Grusch, a former Defense Department intelligence official who now claims:

• That there are “quite a number” of “nonhuman” space vehicles in the possession of the U.S. government.
• That one “partially intact vehicle” was retrieved from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1933 by the United States, acting on a tip from Pope Pius XII.
• That the aliens have engaged in “malevolent activity” and “malevolent events” on Earth that have harmed or killed humans.
• That the U.S. government is also in possession of “dead pilots” from the spaceships.
• That a private defense contractor is storing one of the alien ships, which have been as large as a football field.
• That the vehicles might be coming “from a higher dimensional physical space that might be co-located right here.”
• That the Roswell, N.M., alien landing was real, and the Air Force’s debunking of it was a “total hack job.”
• And that the United States has engaged in a nearly century-long “sophisticated disinformation campaign” (apparently including murders to silence people) to hide the truth.

Alas, Grusch has no documents, photos or other evidence to corroborate any of his fantastic claims. It’s classified, you see. ...

Some of the House’s leading conspiracy theorists — Republicans Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Virginia Foxx, James Comer — took seats on the dais... Many in the audience, who lined up for a seat in the room, applauded the beaming witnesses when they entered. And for more than two hours, Republicans on the subcommittee indulged in otherworldly accusations of a government coverup.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) proposed that the government is trying “to gaslight Americans into thinking that this is not happening.” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) accused the government of “misdirection,” and Mace suggested the United States acted “unlawfully.” Complaints about overclassification even came from the Democratic side. ...

“The coverup goes a lot deeper” than politics, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) argued, vowing “to uncover the coverup” perpetrated by the Pentagon and the intelligence community. “You can’t trust a government that does not trust its people.” Burchett said he would like to visit Area 51 or other locations purportedly housing alien spaceships, but “as soon as we announce it, I’m sure the moving vans pull up.”

Asked by Burchett whether he knew people who had been “harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal these extraterrestrial technology,” Grusch said, “Yes, personally.”

“Anyone been murdered?” Burchett asked.

Grusch said he had to be “careful” about answering. ...

The truth is out there. Just don’t expect to learn it from the alien life forms currently running the People’s House."

It's depressingly political.

Reply to Quixodian Will it just end up being Pizzagate with aliens?

Reply to Tom Storm pretty much :meh:

I've been skeptical of these sightings for years until recently. The Navy has been tracking these off the east coast and also off the west coast, and Navy pilots have seen these UAPs up close (within 50'). They're definitely not anything we have. The technology is just to advanced. These things fly at enormous speeds and their maneuvering is beyond anything we can do, and they can fly equally well in water. If there is some other country that has these vehicles, then they are way ahead technologically. It's not even close. They could pretty much do what they want. These same vehicles were sighted decades ago, so the technology, if us, would have been around for over 50 years. It doesn't make sense.

There are only a few possible answers to what they could be. First, it's something that we've had for decades and it's remained hidden. Second, they are hallucinations, which doesn't make sense since many of them are tracked on multiple radar systems. Third, it's an intelligence that's been here on Earth but has remained hidden, which would be really weird. Fourth, their from some other place in our galaxy or some other place in another galaxy. This would mean that they've found some way to traverse space beyond anything we could imagine. Maybe they can bend space, but that would take enormous power. Fifth, they're from another dimension. Take your pick. No one really knows. All I know is that there has been some really weird shit happening, and it's not just in America, it's around the world. The Russians have been having many of the same sightings.