I see that UFOs are having a moment again. Here's why I continue to dismiss them even though I know nothing about the evidence and don't want to know.
Air Force pilots claim to see UFOs constantly. I'd actually be more likely to believe something was going on if they saw them less frequently. Is it really plausible that these things have been practically blanketing the Earth for decades but still remain unexplained?
Are they alien spacecraft? If they are, then Earth must be the crossroads of the galaxy. What's more, these highly advanced aliens (interstellar travel, cloaking, etc.) are able to keep their existence 100% secret from our best efforts to find them except for the fact that they continually make their spacecraft visible to pilots who are within a few miles of the ground. This makes no sense.
Are UFOs super advanced objects made by China or Russia? Please. I'd buy the alien hypothesis before that. At least then you could explain how these things violate the laws of physics so easily. There are no nations on earth more thoroughly spied on than China and Russia, and it's obvious they have no technology anywhere close to that displayed by UFOs.
That's about it. Lots of blurry sightings—always blurry!—but absolutely no other effects. Sure.
As if the workings of minds infinitely superior to ours would make sense to earthlings! They probably have to become visible as part of the anal probe process.
My take was someone was developing "spoofing" technology. Maybe even us. Testing our spoofing on our own pilots. Aliens know just how infected we are with deadly bugs and are keeping their distance.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCVnqTx_c0P3O2t
Link is to some analysis / explanations of the UFO videos, including bokeh!
I guess we’re due for some interesting debates ahead. Skeptics of the UFO vids vs. skeptics of the debunkings.
Obligatory XKCD link: https://xkcd.com/2156/
Clearly weather control devices intended to make the Earth so hot the dinosaurs melt right out of their fossils.
That's what Godzilla vs Kong is warning us about.
Related
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1235:_Settled
What are UFOs?
I've often thought many of the sightings could be some effect analogous to ball lightning produced by the ocean, but I have no evidence whatsoever to support it.
Remember when Gov. Fife Symington (R - AZ) acknowledged seeing a UFO in 1997 or 1999?
Don't worry: the lamestream media don't either.
... Now, had a Democrat governor suggested such a thing, we would never hear the end of it, & how unserious Democrats clearly are.
Jimmy Carter saw a UFO. Then came the killer rabbit.
Coincidence?
Back during that time my sister had a large black lop-eared rabbit named Dahlia. It lived in her apartment and was potty trained. It considered itself a watch dog and when strangers came to her door she would run up to it an make a loud “uff uff” noise. Invariably they would back off in fear. I was there when it happened a few times, and each time I said “Not laughing at Jimmy Carter now, are you?”
I always thought Watership Down couldn't have been just made up, it's like The Iliad of bunnies.
One of my favorite books!
You've sent me into a middle school reverie...
[sigh] Melissa...
Imagine believing the press is skewed toward the GOP.
Imagine it.
Bob Shieffer, brother of George W. Bush's Texas Rangers co-owner, moderating a 2004 presidential debate. Joe Scarbourough (R - Homicide) is the lead AM talker on MSDNC. Tony Snow went from FOXnews to the Bush-43 White House as press chief.
C'mon, dude. The mainstream press as a whole leans overwhelmingly liberal. The fact that you have to dig down 20 years to find examples of the other way speaks volumes.
Depends what you mean by "leans liberal". When liberals tell the truth and follow science, the mainstream press generally agrees. That is not a bias towards liberals, it is a bias towards reality.
But it is not unusual for the liberals to tell the truth and the conservatives tell lies, and he mainstream media treats them equally. That is a bias towards conservatives, treating them as if they are saying something reasonable when in fact they are not.
All of this is generalities, with plenty of exceptions, but you see my point.
" Lots of blurry sightings"
Flying Sasquatch, like a Bullshit Pegasus.
Right there with you, Kevin. To imagine that these aliens somehow have such advanced technology that they can violate all the laws of physics we know, is the same as to imagine that they are Gods. Sure, maybe they are. But in that case, there's *nothing* we can do to prove conclusively yea-or-nay regarding their existence.
So sure, maybe there are interstellar magicians flying around using physics that is *literally* not an extension of the physics we understand. Sure. Magicians.
I'm with Kevin on this one. 60 Minutes might as well have released that segment on Youtube instead of on their own air. All innuendo and credulous assumption, no proof of anything, and a few pilots and "investigators" saying it's something. I laughed out loud when one of them claimed to have seen a "craft" that descended 80,000 feet in one second! That's 15 miles. In one second. I don't know if that's even physically possible (in our dimension, anyway), but I think the G force would squish any carbon-based life form.
I checked in with my crackpot right wing former preacher friend on Facebook, and he's pretty sure there are ships flying around, sent by... SATAN!. .. and they are here, of course, to kill us. Or they might be Chinese, and Biden is not up to the challenge.
Clearly they have better heat shields then we do--so must be aliens. Or Santa on a summer joy ride.
😉
60 Minutes has been coasting for quite a few years now, a shadow of it's former glory. It really started to go downhill during the War on Terrorism.
If the Chinese had the kind of technology attributed to UFOs, we'd already be studying pinyin and speaking putonghua.
A person who knows I read a lot of science fiction once asked me if I believe in UFOs. I answered "of course". He then asked "what do you think they are"? My answer: "unidentified; if we knew what they are, they would be IFOs".
My thought exactly.
Sadly, I think pointing out "UFO doesn't mean flying saucer" is now seen as similar to "Frankenstein is the doctor".
But I say it's technically correct, the best kind of correct.
If there is really an unexplained phenomenon associated with them, my guess has always been that it is associated with time travel. Has the added benefit that we apparently survive as a species 😉
No worries, when they go by and see how this planet is, they just carry on regardless .
Imagine believing the press is skewed toward the GOP.
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin… of course UFOs are real. They carry interstellar scientists here to study Bigfoot and Sasquatch.
Your disturbing lack of faith means no invitation from the Vulcan ambassador fir you!
Earth has sent a dozen probes to Mars. As our technology advances, we send out significantly more advanced probes. We now have one on Mars that can fly. The world has now sent a couple to asteroids.
In 2050, what kind of probes do you think we'll be sending out into the solar system and galaxy? I think we'll be sending lightweight, flying, AI-based probes that can hover to examine previously undocumented phenomena and detect physical (natural) threats and avoid them.
What makes you think that other species haven't sent out vastly more advanced probes to seek out and explore/document exoplanets?
The planetary probes of 2021 are actually not substantially different from the Moon probes of the 1960's, so there is little reason to think that those of 2050 will be much more advanced. At least no so advanced as to deny the currently-known laws of physics.
They're substantially different.
The Moon probes of the 60s had less than 1/100,000th the computing *and* storage power of those probes from the last decade.
The current Mars probes are mobile. The Moon probes, including the first Mars probes, were fixed.'
Even the instrumentation is vastly more sophisticated, whether the direct science or just the visualization instruments.
What are you thinking?
Vastly more advanced probes can hang out behind the moon and see everything they need to without risking damage, discovery, interference, etc.
I'm with you on this, and I like the way you put it, too. I am not a "UFO believer," but to dismiss them for lack of credible evidence is just, well... no fun at all.
Je suis d'accord. We forget the anthropocentric bias and the very laws of nature when we see things and explain that we're being watched. I forgot where I read it, but UFO's only really became a thing in recent history because our myth of ourselves and our technology has changed. We are just so self-centered, aliens have to be spying on us. And some of the biggest, most conceited, arrogant egos to ever exist sit in cockpits.
I thought bad Jim beat me to the obligatory xkcd. This being xkcd, though, it turns out there are two. (At least).
https://xkcd.com/1235/
Of course there are UFOs. My husband used to see them all the time when he flew fighter jets, and later when he sold small private aircraft. He didn't think they were woowoo, just unidentified things in the sky - maybe weather balloons, flights of birds, maybe weird, unusual weather phenomena, maybe something else. Whatever they were, they were unexplained, which made them interesting, and subject to endless speculation.
One thing I will say - flying at night in a small plane in a thunderstorm with just your husband and baby, and a ball of lightening rolls *through* your plane, that's some eerie stuff.
I think much of this UFO stuff is measurement error, instrument interference, and the like. Also shadows. If it were anything more substantial, reports would be more consistent, less ephemeral, and there would be clear physical evidence. What this shows to me is how easily people revert to superstition and mystification.
I see a lot of ppl are caught up in the "known physics" of our world.
I want to remind all of you that we have barely touched the physics of the quantum and subatomic worlds. We've only just reached the milestone of operable quantum computers and we only just (hopefully!) confirmed muons.
We have drones that can, right now, zoom back and forth and hover over a selected spot for as long as it has power, if only for the purpose of capturing video/photography and light shows -- weight being the restricting factor.
Now, think about where this world will be in 100 or 200 years, assuming the human species hasn't eliminated itself.
High school physics will most certainly not be limited to Newtonian Physics. We certainly won't be flying simple VTOL drones, and we'll most definitely have become an interplanetary species.
Why are people so dismissive of unexplained phenomena, as though all things must be explainable by currently known means or otherwise considered fake?
I'm not dismissive of unexplained phenomena. But I am super dismissive when people jump straight from "unexplained phenomenon" to "aliens" with absolutely zero basis for doing so. (Or to "God," the other popular target for such leaps.)
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but even ordinary evidence would be a step up from what we've got.
That's actually why they are UFOs. We don't know what they are but are rather confident that they are not terrestrial foreign technology because of our spy system and their apparent capabilities.
So think about those guys near India on the island, the one the Indian coast guard has a perimeter around. Occasional aerial and sea patrols to preserve them. Hmm, wonder what that looks like to them?
Finally most sightings do have an explanation but some don't. Nothing is blanketing the planet.
In short, your outright dismissal doesn't make a lot of sense to me based on what you wrote. As for me I think they are ufos. Objects that fly that we cannot identify. And anything more is unknown so we should improve our investigation ability.
Alien organism?
https://www.livescience.com/dinoflagellate-genome-structure.html