The UFO thread

[SoulMonster]

1 minute ago, EvanG said:

People are wrong about things all the time. And of course there are loonies who lie about these type of things because they are either crazy, they crave the attention, or they think they can make some money out of it. But does that mean everyone of them is like that? I doubt it.

I doubt that too, but I also included "fooled by something they actually [saw] but weren't aliens, were victims of mass suggestion and other psychological phenomena (like mass psychoses), etc". There are just too many ways we humans are wrong about stuff. And human history is full of examples of people, also in groups, being spectacularly wrong about stuff.

So it doesn't all have to be people deliberately lying (and just remember Hanlon's Razor), although in the case of claimed UFO sightings, I believe the majority is from people willfully lying for attention, money and to fuck with others.

[EvanG]

53 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

I doubt that too, but I also included "fooled by something they actually [saw] but weren't aliens, were victims of mass suggestion and other psychological phenomena (like mass psychoses), etc". There are just too many ways we humans are wrong about stuff. And human history is full of examples of people, also in groups, being spectacularly wrong about stuff.

So it doesn't all have to be people deliberately lying (and just remember Hanlon's Razor), although in the case of claimed UFO sightings, I believe the majority is from people willfully lying for attention, money and to fuck with others.

I don't think with this example it is mass psychoses. A lot of people experienced something very strange at different locations in the town without knowing each other. Again, I don't know what happened, but it's interesting and I don't want to rule anything out regardless of how crazy it may sound.

https://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Berkshire_UFO

Edited May 26, 2021 by EvanG

[Tom2112]

1 hour ago, SoulMonster said:

They categorically denied that an element with atomic number 115 would exist? Hasn't it been one of the theorized elements for a long time before it was experimentally synthesized? What is interesting about Lazar and moscovium (the element's proper name) is not that he said it was real, but that he claims aliens use it to propel their crafts (which, of course, hasn't been shown to be true and seems extremely unlikely based on what we know of moscovium and its rapid decay).

They just what was said. Do you write for sceptic magazine?😋

He never said Aliens, he said an alien ship. I appreciate that sounds like the vanilla ice 'it's not the same song" but it's worth noting.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

7 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

It is not really unexplainable if the explanation is that people were lying for fame or to sell their stories, for attention, were fooled by something they actually but weren't aliens, were victims of mass suggestion and other psychological phenomena (like mass psychoses), etc. In short, it is not exactly uncommon that people are wrong about things.

I don't vouch for Lazar, so I won't comment on him.

But I'm just curious which documented cases of mass suggestion or mass pyschoses you're using for comparison sake?

[SoulMonster]

7 hours ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

I don't vouch for Lazar, so I won't comment on him.

But I'm just curious which documented cases of mass suggestion or mass pyschoses you're using for comparison sake?

I wasn't using any specific documented cases for comparison, I was proposing mass suggestion and mass psychoses as possible explanations because these are known and studied aspect of the human mind.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

1 hour ago, SoulMonster said:

I wasn't using any specific documented cases for comparison, I was proposing mass suggestion and mass psychoses as possible explanations because these are known and studied aspect of the human mind.

The actual hypothesized cases may not be a very good comparison to the UFO phenomenon. And mass hysteria technically can be based imaginary or real threats or events.

[Ixtlan]

Neil Tyson was on Rogan recently and the recent UFO news was talked about at length and Tyson just does not believe it’s aliens. His reason, much like Soulmonster, just make too much sense. 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

1 hour ago, Ixtlan said:

Neil Tyson was on Rogan recently and the recent UFO news was talked about at length and Tyson just does not believe it’s aliens. His reason, much like Soulmonster, just make too much sense. 

What did he say?

[Jakey Styley]

13 hours ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

What did he say?

A big thing for him is the fact that our camera quality has become exponentially better than it once was, with huge numbers of people having a very good camera in their pocket, yet our footage of UFOs hasn't gotten any better. He also said, with regards to the Navy's sensors detecting objects moving from 50,000 feet in altitude to 50 feet in a couple seconds (or whatever), that sensors just get it wrong sometimes (along with a famous example of a sensor incorrectly detecting a mysterious gravitational pull on Uranus that sent scientists on a wild goose hunt for a "Planet X" for decades).

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

https://heavy.com/news/joe-rogan/neil-degrasse-tyson-ufos/

Ok I found the segment.

My running commentary:

2:45 if we were being visited someone would have some good footage: fair point, but there's a lot of videos out there purporting to be of UFO's. We have no way of verifying if any of those are legit or they are all bunk. There might some legit mixed in with all the bunk, we literally wouldn't know. That's why the military stuff is so much more important for this topic, at least with those, we can be pretty confident those are legitimate videos showing something real. 

3:30 Joe brings up a lot of these military sightings are done on the ocean. Yes there have been a lot of military sightings over the ocean. Tyson says that's a just-so story. Not necessarily, Joe also left out the sightings military have had on land, and some of them over sensitive nuclear sites.

5:50 Tyson makes an odd point that our probes on Mars are not targeting the Martian military. Ok? Odd joke. Mars is seemingly a dead planet my man.

6:30 in regards to the Tic Tac, Tyson makes sure to say this is what their sensors told them. Well yes, but what makes this case special is that at least 6 pilots, and maybe more on the deck of the ship, had eyeballs on the craft and saw it making crazy maneuvers. Pilot David Fravor compared it to watching a ping pong ball in action. And also, there were multiple sensors picking this stuff up, not just one. Rogan does a bad job explaining the incident. Ok later Rogan brings up they had visual, good save Joe. They didn't see it at 80,000 feet no, but again, multiple sensors Neil, not just one.

8:10 Tyson then talks about the scrutiny scientists put on eachothers work. Sure, but you don't think this same type of scrutiny didn't go into AATIP's analysis? The team itself would have been scrutinizing eachother, and eventually this info made it all the way up to Obama (and Trump). So thus multiple layers of bureaucracy would have been scrutinizing this, since they usually don't waste a President's time with bunk.

9:33 Tyson says Uranus in a way I'd never heard before. Interesting aside.

Big long segment on Planet X, my point from 8:10 stands. If only one sensor caught this stuff, then great story. But they reportedly had multiple sensors picking this up at the same time, corroborating eachother, as well as multiple eyes on the object, and on top that, scrutinization of everything back at the office before it moved up the chain of command. And reportedly, there are many cases like this, not just one. More is probably going to be coming out, especially after the UAPTF report this month.

Overall I rate Tyson's debunking attempt a 3/10.

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by Basic_GnR_Fan

[Ixtlan]

4 hours ago, Jakey Styley said:

A big thing for him is the fact that our camera quality has become exponentially better than it once was, with huge numbers of people having a very good camera in their pocket, yet our footage of UFOs hasn't gotten any better. He also said, with regards to the Navy's sensors detecting objects moving from 50,000 feet in altitude to 50 feet in a couple seconds (or whatever), that sensors just get it wrong sometimes (along with a famous example of a sensor incorrectly detecting a mysterious gravitational pull on Uranus that sent scientists on a wild goose hunt for a "Planet X" for decades).

Thank you. 

[Ixtlan]

2 hours ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

https://heavy.com/news/joe-rogan/neil-degrasse-tyson-ufos/

Ok I found the segment.

My running commentary:

2:45 if we were being visited someone would have some good footage: fair point, but there's a lot of videos out there purporting to be of UFO's. We have no way of verifying if any of those are legit or they are all bunk. There might some legit mixed in with all the bunk, we literally wouldn't know. That's why the military stuff is so much more important for this topic, at least with those, we can be pretty confident those are legitimate videos showing something real. 

3:30 Joe brings up a lot of these military sightings are done on the ocean. Yes there have been a lot of military sightings over the ocean. Tyson says that's a just-so story. Not necessarily, Joe also left out the sightings military have had on land, and some of them over sensitive nuclear sites.

5:50 Tyson makes an odd point that our probes on Mars are not targeting the Martian military. Ok? Odd joke. Mars is seemingly a dead planet my man.

6:30 in regards to the Tic Tac, Tyson makes sure to say this is what their sensors told them. Well yes, but what makes this case special is that at least 6 pilots, and maybe more on the deck of the ship, had eyeballs on the craft and saw it making crazy maneuvers. Pilot David Fravor compared it to watching a ping pong ball in action. And also, there were multiple sensors picking this stuff up, not just one. Rogan does a bad job explaining the incident. Ok later Rogan brings up they had visual, good save Joe. They didn't see it at 80,000 feet no, but again, multiple sensors Neil, not just one.

8:10 Tyson then talks about the scrutiny scientists put on eachothers work. Sure, but you don't think this same type of scrutiny didn't go into AATIP's analysis? The team itself would have been scrutinizing eachother, and eventually this info made it all the way up to Obama (and Trump). So thus multiple layers of bureaucracy would have been scrutinizing this, since they usually don't waste a President's time with bunk.

9:33 Tyson says Uranus in a way I'd never heard before. Interesting aside.

Big long segment on Planet X, my point from 8:10 stands. If only one sensor caught this stuff, then great story. But they reportedly had multiple sensors picking this up at the same time, corroborating eachother, as well as multiple eyes on the object, and on top that, scrutinization of everything back at the office before it moved up the chain of command. And reportedly, there are many cases like this, not just one. More is probably going to be coming out, especially after the UAPTF report this month.

Overall I rate Tyson's debunking attempt a 3/10.

 

Nice summary. Tyson makes good points. He’s highly skeptical because he knows what it takes for life to even have a chance to evolve, much less reach a state of advancement that would allow interstellar travel.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

3 hours ago, Ixtlan said:

Nice summary. Tyson makes good points. He’s highly skeptical because he knows what it takes for life to even have a chance to evolve, much less reach a state of advancement that would allow interstellar travel.

I just wish the government would allow influential people like Elon Musk and Neil Tyson to sit in on these briefings that the Senators get with all the AATIP information. No one has come out of those saying 'eh, not convincing.' They've all been very serious about it.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

Sneak peak of the upcoming UAP report out in the NYT right now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/politics/ufos-sighting-alien-spacecraft-pentagon.html

Officials that reviewed it are saying it was ruled out that this was secret US tech being identified in the vast majority of the 120 incidents analyzed in the report. They can't explain essentially anything else, including these craft's acceleration, ability to change direction, fly without wings, submerge underwater, etc. Weather balloons ruled out due to wind speeds. They are leaving the door open to Chinese or Russian tech leapfrogging the US or the alien hypothesis possibly being true. 

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

People still arguing over potential aliens living among us while we even can’t find traces of bacteria outside of our own planet.

If there is anything alive out there (which is possible since all the ingredients are out there as well) I doubt that it will be anything like what we know. Our planet, it’s parent star and a whole lot of terrifying space violence had a lot to do in creating and shaping life as we know it. We don’t know if life can sustain itself in a completely different and more violent environment, with different forces of nature at work. Or what life would look like in these conditions.

My best bet would be to look closer to home for starters. Venus would be a decent bet since it’s a planet that once was very similar to Earth, so it’s smart to start with what we already know. So I’m excited for NASA’s new Venus missions. 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

6 hours ago, YOUCOULDBEMINE. said:

People still arguing over potential aliens living among us while we even can’t find traces of bacteria outside of our own planet.

If there is anything alive out there (which is possible since all the ingredients are out there as well) I doubt that it will be anything like what we know. Our planet, it’s parent star and a whole lot of terrifying space violence had a lot to do in creating and shaping life as we know it. We don’t know if life can sustain itself in a completely different and more violent environment, with different forces of nature at work. Or what life would look like in these conditions.

My best bet would be to look closer to home for starters. Venus would be a decent bet since it’s a planet that once was very similar to Earth, so it’s smart to start with what we already know. So I’m excited for NASA’s new Venus missions. 

We only have a handful of probes that are now outside of our solar system, and we've only sent people to the moon. In terms of space travel, humans are doing baby steps. So just because we haven't found anything, doesn't mean something else hasn't found us!

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

Non paywalled article on recent revelations:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/04/us-government-ufo-report-aliens-navy-pilots

Quote

US intelligence authorities have not found any evidence that unidentified flying objects (UFOs) seen by navy pilots in recent years were otherworldly alien spacecraft– but apparently did not rule it out, either.

Officials cannot explain the strange movements in the skies that continue to baffle the US military and scientific establishment, the New York Times has reported, based on information from senior administration officials who were briefed on the outcome of a much-awaited government assessment about these phenomena.

 

[YOUCOULDBEMINE.]

18 hours ago, Basic_GnR_Fan said:

We only have a handful of probes that are now outside of our solar system, and we've only sent people to the moon. In terms of space travel, humans are doing baby steps. So just because we haven't found anything, doesn't mean something else hasn't found us!

It kinda does. It took billions of years for life on earth to get where it’s at now. And of all the species that ever roamed this planet we are the only ones with such an advanced set of brains. Brains that get affected during space flight. Evolution takes a long time.

Life like on earth happened by accident, and everything had to be just right for this to happen. The chances that the exact same thing happened somewhere else are pretty small, even for the infinity of space.

As much as I like to believe in extraterrestrial life, I’m very skeptical. There might be some bacterial lifeforms, but I really don’t believe that there are beings that have been visiting us and have cloaked spaceships etc.

And lizard people is just a case of bad plastic surgery, they all get the same lizard face and it freaks me the fuck out 

 

[EvanG]

44 minutes ago, YOUCOULDBEMINE. said:

It kinda does. It took billions of years for life on earth to get where it’s at now. And of all the species that ever roamed this planet we are the only ones with such an advanced set of brains. Brains that get affected during space flight. Evolution takes a long time.

Very true. But if there are countless of planets that are billions of years older than Earth, it shouldn't be that far-fetched that some of them have lifeforms that are more advanced than us. I mean, we can't even comprehend how big the universe is, imagine how many planets with some form of life, whether it's more or less advanced than us, there may be. If it could happen here, why couldn't it happen elsewhere?

Edited June 5, 2021 by EvanG

[SoulMonster]

Now you are deep into Drake's Equation, and I think one can forcefully argue that the evolution of higher intelligence is really rare and might only have happened one time in the history of the Universe, but also argue forcefully that with the huge number of habitable planets in the Universe chances are there are many other examples of intelligent life. It really is impossible to say. That being said, we know higher intelligence can evolve, but we also know it took quite long for that to happen here at earth and it almost came about as an accident. I feel this is one of few examples where we are entirely free to believe what we want because it is so much up in the air still.

Personally, I think there are simply so many planets suitable for life (and this number keeps increasing), that even if the abiogensis of life and the subsequent evolution of higher intelligence is isolated an exceedingly rate event, there will be hundreds or thousands or millions or highly intelligent life forms in this universe. But because this is such a rare thing, it also means the distance between highly intelligent life forms becomes so huge that chances are they will never, ever discover each other and much less communicate with each other. And that's a bit sad to think of, in my opinion.

The only thing we can say for sure, is that there is likely not highly intelligent life forms in a 70-80 light year distance from Earth, because if there were, they would have picked up signals from us by now and we would likely have picked up signals from them, and likely made an attempt at communication (hostile or not). This distance covers the ca 100 closest star systems in our galaxy, with about 100-200 exoplanets, none of which, I believe, are considered particularly habitable or suitable for life. But of course, the Milky Way consists of 100-400 billion (!) stars, so it is way too early to conclude that there are no other planets with intelligent life in our little corner of the Universe 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/upcoming-ufo-report-congress-creating-lots-buzz/story?id=78017649

Quote

And the report will rely on more than just eyewitness recollections of their encounters, it will be focused on the data collected by the highly sensitive sensors used by the U.S. military to detect adversaries.

"This is a data-driven examination of UAPs," the Pentagon official told ABC News. "The more data we have, the better we are able to identify what these UAPs are."

Very good...data, data, data, and the analysis of such should be what everyone is focusing on.

Quote

"These objects appear to exceed our military capabilities," said Mick Mulroy, an ABC News contributor and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense. ""We need to determine who this is and what capabilities they possess. It is never a good thing to discover you are vastly behind in technology."

Exactly, and that's why this report should only be step one. There needs to be a permanent UAP task force, congressional hearings, and more information released to the public so more scientists can get involved and analyze the data made available.

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

New NASA chief on NASA getting in on the UAP game:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/10/nasa-bill-nelson-q-a-493288?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Quote

You have directed your top scientist to investigate military reports of unmanned aerial phenomenon.

A couple of years ago, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, I was briefed on what those Navy pilots saw, and I have talked to the Navy pilots. They are quite convinced. And these are realistic folks. This isn't some UFO tin-foil hat kind. These are pilots who locked their radar on it. They tracked and then they saw it move so fast that they couldn't believe it. And then they went and tracked it again, locked their radar on it in a new position. So there's some phenomenon that we need to explain.

 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

Kind of a funny interview with a congressman on the UAP issue. Funny line about more people believing in ET than that support congress...true!

https://www.tmz.com/2021/06/15/congressman-tim-burchett-ufo-uap-sightings-not-russians-from-another-galaxy-biden-putin-meeting/

 

[Basic_GnR_Fan]

The UAP Report is out!

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/27/politics/ufos-uap-extraterrestrial-life/index.html

Quote

4. "[There were] 144 reports originated from USG sources. Of these, 80 reports involved observation with multiple sensors."

7. "With the exception of the one instance where we determined with high confidence that the reported UAP was airborne clutter, specifically a deflating balloon, we currently lack sufficient information in our dataset to attribute incidents to specific explanations."

So, one time the thing that people thought was a UFO was a "deflating balloon." But, ALL the other times the military and intelligence community can't explain what the heck the UFO actually was. Which, again, BIG DEAL.

 

[SoulMonster]

So in short, "We saw some stuff and we don't know what it was". That's a daily occurrence. 

Where's the evidence for alien spacecrafts on earth? Wasn't there this fellow who claimed materials had been collected that suggested extraterrestrial origins? This report is really not saying anything we didn't know from before.