
UFOs invading military airspace multiple times a month, but public won't be told - emptybits
https://www.newsweek.com/ufo-sightings-2019-us-military-tic-tac-pentagon-navy-unidentified-aerial-1412272
======
inflatableDodo
>"We know a little more about the UFO itself. It is described as “wingless,
white, and shaped like an oblong pill. It was 24-30 (40 in the NYT article)
feet long and had no visible markings or glass. The USS Princeton was able to
faintly track the “capsule” via its SPY-1B radar system, but the fighters were
not able to get a radar lock on the object. The “capsule” was not only more
maneuverable than the Hornets but also much faster —for it to have reached the
CAP point ahead of the Navy fighters it would have had to have flown in excess
of 2,400 miles an hour. According to FighterSweep.com, which published a
detailed chronicle of the event in 2015, the object did not emit hot jet
exhaust typical of ordinary aircraft."

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a14456936/that-
tim...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/a14456936/that-time-the-us-
navy-had-a-close-encounter-with-a-ufo/)

~~~
mrob
This lists three possibilities: Malfunction of equipment and/or crew, US
government operating a real UFO, or aliens operating a real UFO.

I can think of one more which seems more likely: US government testing secret
radar spoofing tech (probably operated from a submarine).

~~~
inflatableDodo
I mentioned another possibility in one of my other comments; a UV laser on a
satellite (or some other suitable platform with a view of the entire flight
volume, or multiple overlapping platforms) being focused to create a movable
plasmaball.

~~~
JulianMorrison
If somebody has a laser that big, with batteries that good, that's an issue in
itself.

~~~
inflatableDodo
True, it does seem pretty unlikely. But if the reports are in any way
accurate, then the explanation will be probably something that seems pretty
unlikely.

------
steve19
Presumably some or many ufo sightings are highly classified military tests
that any random military pilot or radar operator is not ever going know about
or even be told about after they sighted it.

Its even possible tests are done knowing other military pilots are in vicinity
to guage their reaction to it.

To me this is the simplest explanation (if weather balloons and drones are
ruled out).

~~~
adrianN
The UFOs display fantastical properties that are lightyears ahead of state of
the art fighters. I find it a bit hard to believe that some secret project can
be that much better than what the public knows without the knowledge leaking
somehow.

~~~
Pyxl101
Fighters are all designed to carry humans. Humans fall unconscious under high
G-forces. Imagine a drone fighter. It could turn tighter and accelerate
drastically faster than a human-carrying fighter.

The US has lots of boring drones, but perhaps there is a secret drone fighter
program. It would surprise me somewhat if the US weren't working on something
like this, perhaps with a goal of keeping it secret until it needs to be
deployed operationally. Plenty of military technologies have been kept secret
for decades, such as the SR-71 and the spy satellites on which the Hubble
Space Telescope was based. On that note, did you know that the Hubble was
basically an extra spy satellite donated to NASA by the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the US had a _fleet_ of them pointed
downwards toward earth? For more on this, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-11_Kennen)

So, consider: what kind of reconnaissance satellites does the US have today,
that resulted in the retirement of the "Crystal" series? (Obviously something
digital) Did the US's investment in supersonic spycraft end with the SR-71? If
the US were going to design such a craft today, would it have a pilot or would
it be autonomous?

On the other hand, if this were a top secret US technology, then I suspect all
of the people who observed these phenomena would simply have been sworn to
secrecy. I doubt it would be treated as a UFO and I doubt these officers would
be speaking publicly about it. Unless this is all some kind of cover for the
program. Who knows!

~~~
narag
_Humans fall unconscious under high G-forces._

That's a little misleading. Acceleration hasn't any effects on human body. You
can't sense gravity: free fall is the same as ingravity. What you can feel is
forces being transmitted by matter contact.

If you can create a field that transmits a force similar to gravity
_uniformly_ , there would be no pressure.

~~~
mkl
It's not misleading. The high G-forces are transmitted by matter contact. Can
you think of a way to accelerate a person at greater than 1G _without_ contact
with something made of matter?

~~~
narag
Of course. Let the poor guy fall on the Sun.

~~~
mkl
We're talking about aircraft operating in Earth's atmosphere.

~~~
narag
I try not to assume bad faith in your responses, but you're making it very
difficult. My original comment was very clear that it was assuming a
technology that we don't currently own. And then you put arbitrary
restrictions to the conjecture to force it wrong.

Now you're moving again goal posts just "to be right". That's incredibly
childish.

Of course you haven't adressed my core point, possibly because you can't
understand it.

Edit: try stating my point and we'll see what's on your mind.

~~~
mkl
I don't mind being wrong (I like learning!), and "winning" is not my goal
here. I don't believe that I'm moving goal posts or being childish, and so it
seems like we're inadvertently talking past each other.

I believe your core point is that humans can't detect a force which acts
identically on their whole body. Have I understood? This statement is true, of
course, but does not seem relevant in context, as it seems to ignore all but
the one sentence you quoted, which itself is true _in its own context_. I
don't consider Pyxl101's ignoring of magical-seeming hypothetical technology
to be misleading.

Pyxl101's comment [1], which you replied to, is all about practical
technology. In that context, your comment seems like an irrelevant
technicality (I think this is why you got downvoted), as no practical mode of
transport can move someone without physical contact, which transfers force
unevenly (just to the parts of the body in contact with the vehicle).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19805808](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19805808)

~~~
narag
_I believe your core point is that humans can 't detect a force which acts
identically on their whole body._

More than "detect", a uniform force simply doesn't affect us.

 _This statement is true, of course, but does not seem relevant in context..._

On the contrary, the thread was started discussing if we could be facing a far
superior technology, continued by Pyxl101 speculating UFOs could be drones
because enormous accelerations prevent manned ships, and then I pointed that,
if it's really a futurist technology, acceleration in itself could not be a
problem.

 _... no practical mode of transport can move someone without physical
contact_

The "practical" thing has been inserted by yourself. Also it's not about
"practical" it's about "known by us".

------
jvanderbot
This is probably due to the rise of automated vehicles but not for the reasons
you'd think. I've dealt with the problem of automated contact aquisition and
tracking, esp with Radar, and let me tell you: fast tracks moving at insane
speeds with sometimes-faint signatures are the norm. a perfectly calm sea, esp
near shore, can create 100s or a 1000 spurious tracks if automated tools are
trusted. The incorrect association of signatures to hypothesized contacts can
produce "jumps" in their location, altitude that makes it look like inhuman
maneuverability.

Second, the proliferation of small aircraft does bias operators (and
algorithms) to assume a real contact from small signatures, esp at low
altitudes where noise is greatest.

In a well integrated, multi-vehilce sensor network, a small false positive
rate for _each_ individual recognition and classication module produces enough
bullshit to trick automated trackers into labelling targets. If we cant assume
common sense filtering like "aircraft cant go from hover to mach 3 in one
sweep", then the possible associations of sensor data to hypotheses is
astronomical, and bullshit propegates.

Its a mess when you integrate so many sensors and systems and try to make
sense of the resulting noise.

------
throwaway66666
Thought experiment. If we assume that "alien intelligence is here" in some
form like UFO sightings, why not also assume they are on the internet? I
believe someone would learn so much more about us from reading wikipedia, than
flying a UFO above north carolina at 90k feet. No?

And if they mastered long-distance space flight and life discovery, what stops
them from reverse-engineering how to connect to an unprotected starbucks guest
wifi. Or even posting here like you and me sometimes do.

Do you think they would be more perplexed by the stuff we do to each other in
real life (micro; prisons, crime, violence. and macro; governments, military,
borders). Or with the way we treat each other on line? (scams, trolls,
harassment, narcissism, mistreating privacy data)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
"Any sufficiently advanced alien invasion is indistinguishable from local
politics."

~~~
x3haloed
This is the best thing I've read in a while. Thanks.

------
fuck_off_12345
I know this won't satisfy anyone, but I've followed this subject for years
with varying degrees of interest / belief.

Someone close to me is former military whose position required a top secret
clearance. The work that they did involved analyzing various forms of SIGINT.

After years of me prying, this person admitted to me:

1\. Within the Navy (and presumably other armed forces) the UFO stuff is an
open secret.

2\. The 'official line' used internally is that the craft are extraterrestrial
(or at least origin unknown), and ...

3\. They're official labelled drones, i.e., there is no reason to believe that
they're "manned"

In other words, it's fairly well known within the military (at least where
people are likely to encounter them) and the official position is somewhere
along the lines of "they're here but not here".

Personally I've never seen anything I'd label a UFO. But the prevailing
narrative -- uptick in UFO sightings following the Manhattan Project, interest
in our weapons / energy capabilities -- I'm 100% comfortable with.

If it is a military psy-op, it's one playing out on a massive scale over a
vast timeframe. That in and of itself is mind boggling.

~~~
dogma1138
Am a former military intelligence officer of an MNNA nation, had SIGINT and
VISINT postings during my career including in the aerospace command which is
integrated with the national air and strategic missile defence systems and
while we could track loose bird flocks with OTH Radar probably as far as the
Indian subcontinent we've never seen aliens.

Don't get me wrong some of these are really fucked up and can't be dismissed
as a weather balloon or a sensor error easily, but saying that UFOs are an
open secret is simply wrong.

So either the US is unique in the of attention they get or that UFOs ignore
the area between the Straights of Gibraltar and the Straights of Aden like a
plague which would also contradict the first assumption given the sheer number
of US assets in the area.

~~~
lovetocode
I also have over a decade of SIGINT experience and can confirm that this
persons friend was pulling a hilarious fast one.

~~~
y4mi
We are living in the age of misinformation.

Having people confirm or deny such allegations doesn't really mean anything
anymore.

If "they" do exist, have enough technology to travel to this planet, control
somewhat stealthy drones in our atmosphere which are detected every so often,
And don't want to interfer publicly with humanity as proven by their lack of
public appearances...

Honestly, it's just beyond unlikely. But if they did exist: what does it
matter? We wouldn't be able to do anything about it so worrying about them is
pointless

~~~
dogma1138
It's not about denying that UFOs exists or that they are non-terrestrial in
origin but rather about the notion that UFOs are an open secret in the
military which is simply laughable, getting security clearance isn't
particularly difficult in the US military if you serve long enough you'll
likely to get it.

However simply having a clearance isn't the same as being read into a specific
program, security clearance just means you can be trusted with secret
information it does not grant you access to all classified information
matching your clearance.

There are 100,000's of radio and radar operators and while a lot of them seen
some shit in their life they aren't come out in droves saying yeah the USAF or
NAVY thinks knows about UFOs and they are definitely real.

Like seriously just think about how many sailors have rotated in and out of
CIC duty on say an Arleigh Burke class missile destroyer each of which has
probably some of the most advanced tracking radar and sensors developed and
they aren't tracking UFOs periodically and when they do they sure as hell
aren't treating them as LGM.

------
YjSe2GMQ
UFO is a very potent story. And the US government had used it in the past as
decoys (allegedly):

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#The_Truth...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation#The_Truth_Is_Out_There)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bennewitz](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bennewitz)

Wouldn't be surprised if this is a sequel.

~~~
eof
I definitely buy the core the thesis of HyperNormalisation, but I find it
equally likely the CIA/deepstate would push a narrative that all those UFOs
that started popping up right around the time we were getting nuclear off the
ground was totally just the super awesome USA government's super secret
technology.

~~~
overthemoon
Yeah--that after discarding the alien theory people gravitate to US
technological tests is pretty flattering to a government that spent record-
setting amounts of money on the F-35.

------
almost_usual
Is this video legit? Why are they turning the same direction constantly?

Are most of these UFO sightings witnessed by a pilot and co-pilot? Is radar
data recorded so it can be replayed later?

The skeptic in me thinks these experiences might seem ‘real’ but aren’t. If
there is some measurable and documented proof then there can be an
investigation.

------
viach
There are probably checklists in news sites articles release planning
workbook:

...

345\. Topics to consider on Fridays and periods with no really important news.

    
    
        1. UFO
    
        2. Yetti
    
        ...
    
        549. Advances in AI
    
        550. Tesla
    
        ....
    
    

...

/s

------
tzfld
Many wrongly think UFOs being equivalent to alien flying saucers. No, it is an
unidentified object, which means that they can be a bird or a plane, until
it's identified.

------
GlennS
I feel like a lot of the people commenting on this thread would really benefit
from reading The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan (who was himself once a UFO
believer).

He has a really good section on UFO sightings, which he compares to stories
about abduction by demons from Medieval times.

His main explanation for the increase in UFO stories in the second half of the
20th century is the decline in other forms of abduction myths, like the demon
one. People report seeing what they're expecting to see based on the stories
they've been exposed to.

The massive increase in aircraft obviously helped too.

~~~
nprateem
And when the "demons" show up on radar simultaneously to being witnessed?

------
erik_landerholm
Look it’s the greatest reality show ever. Sometime in the future we invent
time travel and we send drones back to look at stuff. People have found them
and decided, “hey, this obviously works let’s ‘invent’ it.”

So of course they cover it up, they don’t want competition, for the idea they
stole, from the future.

Just assume time travel is possible, what makes more sense, traveling back to
our own planet or some other super advanced civilization inventing FTL,
finding us, and giving a shit to buzz around and mess with us?

Who doesn’t want a sweet 21st century photo to post on future Instagram!

------
ilaksh
I would really like to believe in alien spacecraft. But so far the only
"evidence" I've ever seen has been incredibly poor quality images and video
that could be pretty much anything as far as I can tell.

Anyway I believe that people may sometimes see something, but its much more
likely its secret military aircraft. But if there was a good recording of
something really fantastical then maybe.

Also, Newsweek is the kind of publication that happily publishes whatever the
military asks them to.

------
yohann305
What’s funny is that UFOs always look and behave like the tech of the time era
it was recorded at !

------
djsumdog
This has been going on for a very long time. Peter Jennings did a famous UFO
documentary in 2005 that's worth watching. It goes into decades worth of
reports.

------
nwrk
Foia Man in Black's department

CIA records here: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/ufos-
fact...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/ufos-fact-or-
fiction)

------
nabla9
There are few very high profile UFO cranks, Sen. Harry Reid and Robert
Bigelow, who give support for these narratives in the US and are able to lobby
government money for UFO issues.

That whole 2004 incident with a video is just one man's story that nobody else
in the scene saw the same way. It was not seen as worth of report or anything.
One airman in the videos even says "It's a drone".

[https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a...](https://skepticalinquirer.org/2018/05/navy_pilots_2004_ufo_a_comedy_of_errors/)

~~~
inflatableDodo
>That whole 2004 incident with a video is just one man's story

This Newsweek article quotes Gary Voorhis, whereas the pilot in previous
reports was Dave Fravor.

“At a certain point, there ended up being multiple objects that we were
tracking,” Petty Officer Gary Voorhis, stationed aboard the Princeton missile
cruiser escorting the USS Nimitz, testified. “They all generally zoomed around
at ridiculous speeds, and angles and trajectories and then eventually they all
bugged out faster than our radars.”

~~~
nabla9
He is basically describing normal encounter with drones but using so vague
language that it generates hype (there is movie coming).

------
verytrivial
I've seen this and similar videos before. They're presented usually without
any context or commentary. In particular I've only ever seen heard people
describing what they see live on the infrared camera display, not via eyeballs
or other sensors.

By my eyeballs this looks like a CMOS or whatever sensor clipping or
processing artifact caused by sunlight glint on the camera housing dome.
Google "blackmagic black sun" for a visible light example -- it happens and
looks like an issue fixable (or caused) in software.

The white extensions beyond the black blob are where the glinting is below the
over-powering threshold. The "rotation" is where the camera and/or dome are
rotating relative to the sun as the aircraft orientation changes and
cleaning/buffing streaks in the dome are picking up the glint. The camera is
clearly not pointing directly forward/aft during the footage, but I'm not sure
where it is pointing.

Note how the object stays dead-center below the tracking annotations --
autotracking is good, but I'm not sure it is _that_ good, which again makes me
think that the location is determined by camera geometry and is not something
flying outside the aircraft.

~~~
keanebean86
Nice try aliens!

"@$^#& Glar you were seen by one of their primitive aircraft! Quick, get on
thier communication network and claim it's lens flairs and cmos artifacts!"

------
ConfusedDog
I feel like a caveman looking at a modern aircraft. There's no reference
whatsoever to associate to with that UFO's observed maneuvers... or it could
be a distortion of infrared spectrum due to something else.

They are so blatantly trespassing US airspace is very unnerving. It means
either doesn't care about being shot down, or simply doesn't think it would
happen. For the god sake, we couldn't even identify what this thing is.

------
coldcode
I won't believe they are real aliens until they post in Hacker News.

In reality how would we even know they are aliens? If you are an advanced
race, you would have the technology to either hide your presence or affect the
human identification in some way. If you didn't care if humans saw you, why
not show up in Times Square? Why would you only show up in the US and only in
ways no one but the military or government can see?

Does not follow Occam's razor.

~~~
usgroup
Real alien here; AMA.

~~~
mcphage
What's with all the cow probing?

~~~
thrill
Practice.

------
Udo
The space nerd in me says, yes, maybe it's time. Maybe the Fermi paradox is
about to be resolved. Maybe we're "just" seeing drones, but at least we're
seeing something.

However, the realist in me has lots of reasons to doubt all aspects of this
reporting - and it's a good default strategy, especially when things seem too
"good" or to spectacular to be true.

In any case, there is not really a lot to go on. Even if this went properly
public, what exactly does the data say?

And coming back to the space nerd perspective, if these sightings are indeed
extraterrestrial, they don't seem to bode well. Why would someone show off
like that but don't leave a message? It's because they either don't care that
we see them or because they want us to know that they're more advanced.

I just hope our civilization hasn't yet reached a threshold of development
where another civilization considers rubbing us out as a preventative measure.

------
forgingahead
Must be Sophons

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
You can't _see_ sophons.

~~~
mkl
They can manipulate your retina to make you see whatever they want you to;
UFOs, if they feel so inclined. But yes, not the particles themselves.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Anyway the shape is like a droplet.

------
smithy76
What sort of physics could explain something that could make such maneuvers?

~~~
JulianMorrison
Something massless (like the dot of a laser pointer against the wall).
Something slinking around the laws of relativity / inertia by moving the grid,
not the object on the grid, Alcubierre warp style.

Or the textbooks are wrong (it wouldn't be the first time).

------
lwansbrough
Is it only the US that’s detecting this stuff? That’s a very important
question IMO because it might provide some insight into its origin
(terrestrial or otherwise) depending on the answer.

~~~
sterlind
I'm too lazy for citations, but these are detected around the world. There's
been military footage released from South America (Brazil I think?), Russia
and many others. I've also heard that other militaries don't have the same
stigma against UFOs that the US does, given our tangled history with Project
Blue Book, experimental aircraft testing and the cold war.

~~~
52-6F-62
A side note to this is the flak the Indian army got this week for proclaiming
they found evidence of a Yeti in the discovery of giant tracks through the
mountain snow.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/adgpi/status/1122911748829270016](https://mobile.twitter.com/adgpi/status/1122911748829270016)

Just to add that the stigma surrounding paranormal occurrences is not
universal.

Unless I'm missing some context here

~~~
Intermernet
I'd like to recommend a book:

My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery by Reinhold
Messner

Yes, that Reinhold Messner. It's a really good book, with an interesting
ending.

------
wintorez
It's possible to keep a technology secret, but how easy it is to keep the
underlying physics/science secret?

------
thb567
Too simplistic reasoning here,if aliens are actually here, motivation and
drive could also be completely alien to us. Toying with hardware near some
primitive military infrastructure could be just about anything, tests for an
invasion or maybe they are just collecting samples from the jets exhaust or
anything

------
oldway
Why don't we consider in the supernatural like angels instead of aliens

[https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/04/space-angels-
aliens-o...](https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2012/04/space-angels-aliens-or-
sign-of-the-apocalypse/)

~~~
YjSe2GMQ
Because it's the same thing. Angel, alien - what's the difference? "Holy
books" will likely be exactly useless.

If one can't tell the difference then one can't tell the difference.

------
nprateem
For people who don't believe in UFOs - surely you've got to admit that there's
something pretty odd about detailed descriptions of flying machines
("Vimanas") being written about thousands of years ago by the Indians in the
Mahabarata?

------
bartimus
It's probably the Russians playing around with their Gyroscopic Inertial
Thruster drones.

------
RappingBoomer
likely earthlights...little understood plasma/ball lightning phenomenon...they
can move very fast at times...my aunt (a former bank VP) saw one in san
antonio decades ago...in her kitchen...

~~~
BrissyCoder
Well if she's a former bank VP...

~~~
tomjakubowski
then she's one of the extraterrestrials!

------
ggm
"Military admits it can't control drone incursions"

------
LinuxBender
Are we saying that the military can't shoot down some prototype that some
company is trying to show off? If so, then I would suggest the demo was a
success.

------
ed
Source Washington Post article
[https://outline.com/sXxw5V](https://outline.com/sXxw5V)

------
neilv
If Newsweek considers this an important story, why not assign it to someone
who's spent decades cultivating Pentagon sources, etc.?

------
RickJWagner
Huh. Well, I thought Newsweek jumped the shark, but it seems a number of
publications are giving this serious coverage.

Interesting.

------
SideburnsOfDoom
What if some of these are optical effects? Like sunlight glinting off water or
windshield? The "bright spot" can move from one position in the field of view
to another with enormous apparent velocity, because there is no large distant
physical object moving about.

~~~
obituary_latte
What accounts for the radar signatures then?

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
IDK, but whenI hear "moves with ridiculous speeds, and angles and
trajectories, with no visible means of propulsion"; then my first thought is
that seems more akin to lens flare than it seems like an aeroplane.

Which is more likely in Occam's razor: a new source of refracted light, or a
new kind of aircraft?

~~~
postalrat
Occam's razor only works until it doesn't.

------
erlangNewb
The video looks like a spot of debris on a camera lense.

------
newnewpdro
If these things are real, and they aren't a secret US Military/R&D project, it
sounds like American air superiority has come to an end and things are going
to get real interesting in the next major conflict.

~~~
fit2rule
Americans can still have their air superiority over other humans - maybe the
aliens will just stand by and watch while we destroy each other in the next
conflict. With such technology one can imagine they'd have the best seat in
the house for such a show...

~~~
newnewpdro
I was thinking more along the lines of a sophisticated terrestrial US
adversary, like Russia or China, not aliens.

But it's probably just the US military testing something secret, or just a
complete fabrication, either way leaked to project magical capabilities.

~~~
lwansbrough
The US spends more on defence than the next 10 countries combined and hosts
many of the brightest aerospace engineers in the world. I’m not saying what
you’re suggesting isn’t possible, but with those numbers stacked against them,
it would be a very lucky innovation. And how kind of them to test their
technology on US military instead of their own military in private...

~~~
newnewpdro
I meant the US military, we're in agreement.

------
PavlikPaja
>$?? million aircraft >mic made of rotten potato

~~~
LoSboccacc
well being strapped to two jets engines makes for a very noisy environment

------
cs702
As XKCD points outs, _billions_ of people are carrying cameras everywhere they
go, every waking moment of their lives:

[https://xkcd.com/1235/](https://xkcd.com/1235/)

Where are the millions of sightings of flying saucers?

~~~
postalrat
Some night try to take a good picture of the Moon with you phone.

I'm sure a UFO would be much harder to capture.

------
blackflame7000
SR-72 in testing maybe?

------
myrandomcomment
I am 100% sure there is no proof of aliens visiting us known by the US
government because if there was Trump would have tweeted it by now.

I will be here all day!

------
satokema_work
to quote the video from a previous UFO article

"it's a [bleep]ing drone, bro"

------
_lol
Did newsweek get hacked?

~~~
numlocked
Not exactly, but it is owned by folks associated with Olivet university, and
this bizarre scheme:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/27/style/what-
is...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/27/style/what-is-inside-
this-internet-rabbit-hole.html)

------
dave84
Reverse engineering the WiFi wasn’t a problem, it’s the JavaScript interpreter
they’re struggling with.

~~~
booleandilemma
The aliens aboard oumuamua saw JavaScript and kept going.

~~~
usgroup
Muhahaha... Thanks JavaScript, you ruined extraterrestrial encounter.

~~~
DougN7
Or maybe it saved us from annihilation :)

~~~
usgroup
Aliens brought us Lisp years ago; and they are pissed that we still don’t use
it :)

------
mothsonasloth
Until a UFO crash lands on my front garden, I'm going to continue worrying
about; weird weather, extinction of species, privacy and data leaks,
increasing restrictions of freedom by western governments and the price of a
loaf of bread.

~~~
SeanAppleby
I would vote for you to worry about increasing restrictions of freedom by
governments outside of the west, since the overton window for acceptable
policy proposals will be pushed on by what other nations get away with.

If China succeeds in monitoring all of their citizens and manipulating them
into an easy to govern mass of conformity and subservience through their
social credit system, it seems highly likely that that will at least make
people in the west slightly more willing to move in that direction than if the
whole world would just agree that it was far beyond the pale.

~~~
ccrush
If that social credit bullshit makes its way here, they'll be prying the last
bit of freedom out of my cold, dead hands. I don't give a fuck about China or
what those clowns believe in, and if I'll have to risk never visiting their
cement and plastic factory of a shit hole country, it'll be just fine. I'm
never going there with their social credit system, and I bet you all the
world's money isn't either. No one is giving up that much freedom when they're
getting so little in return. It's absurd to anyone that doesn't understand why
it's in place, and once the generations that originated it based on the
ugliness of the recent past, the truth is that it'll go away over and over
again. That, combined with the fact that it's such a fragile system to begin
with (i.e., it takes quite a bit of human involvement to run all aspects of it
including policing and interrogation and incarceration) means that the system
can't survive a generational divide.

~~~
SkyBelow
>If that social credit bullshit makes its way here

What do you think about private companies providing a similar service, for
example to potential employers?

------
modzu
weather balloon

~~~
hieudang9
the one thing truth is no evidence about UFO at least HD quality in 4K era All
are SD quality.

~~~
JulianMorrison
1) Stuff recorded on people's phones is going to have poor resolution,
particularly at night when anything but the most cutting edge phone cameras
produce a grainy mess.

2) The military is not going to give you full-resolution video, they keep
secrets like that reflexively.

~~~
sgt101
If UFO's were "real" (as in actual aliens or other amazing things) then I
would have expected a vast increase in footage and photos over the last five
years as cameraphones and dash cams became pervasive. This has happened for
"fireballs" and meteors - lots of amazing dashcam footage from Siberia and
Canada and so on.

Why not alien spaceships?

Because alien spaceships are not here.

~~~
majkinetor
UFOs must be real because there are no single incidents so far in the universe
as we know it.

Intelligent life happened here, it must happen again somewhere else. This
should be made axiom really. You/we/whatever is not unique in the universe.

So, "If UFO's were real" is not really a question. Whether this was an UFO or
something else is a question.

Your other questions "why not spaceships etc" are antrophorphic in nature and
not relevant at all.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Expecting life on other planets can be justified that way. Expecting
intelligent life can be weakly justified, it only happened once here and seems
to involve a lot of fluke. Expecting UFOs can't rest on that argument alone -
you'd need new physics to get from any A to any B at an interstellar level and
even more new physics to pull right-angle turns at high mach numbers in an
atmosphere.

~~~
majkinetor
> it only happened once here

You don't know that. Maybe there were super intelligent lizards before us.
Lets not be ridiculous. We can't even know if it is a current situation
because anthropomorphic ideas and agendas (or even timeframe) do not
necessarily reflect other life forms - maybe fungi is already connected to
other dimensions like in recent star track episodes ?

There is also thinking that merging pre-mitochondria with bacteria into more
complex cell giving birth to complex multicelular life was singular event on
this planet and so must be very rare, but its unpprovable really and even if
true just lowers the odds.

> you'd need new physics to get from any A to any B at an interstellar level
> and even more new physics to pull right-angle turns at high mach numbers in
> an atmosphere.

Really ? Aliens having totally different understanding on universe and tech
then us sounds amazing ? Just if you had a time machine and get back lousy
couple centuries would make us look like aliens.

------
paxys
I'm going to guess foreign surveillance drones

~~~
xeromal
Definitely drones. Quiet and exhaust free.

~~~
inflatableDodo
>Quiet and exhaust free.

Which is fairly impressive at the reported velocity of 2400mph.

~~~
ianai
What if it’s a hack? Get the enemy to think they’re seeing UFOs and maybe
they’ll slip up on “mundane” foreign planes? Not a huge effect but it might
only need to work once.

But the news of water ice on titan - and a huge band of it - makes me wonder
if life hasn’t spawned twice (at least) in the solar system.

~~~
inflatableDodo
One thought I had was a plasma ball being generated by focusing high UV from a
satellite. That fits some of the supposed behaviour.

~~~
jacobush
While maybe not exactly _impossible_ that would require some insane UV laser
power from a satellite.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Might not be space, the water disturbances could be projectors submerging.

~~~
jacobush
Well a nuclear sub _might_ have the power needed. Still insane though. :)
Probably you would need several lasers too, intersecting where you want to
have the plasma ball.

~~~
inflatableDodo
Thinking about the current efficiency of big lasers, a sub also has the
benefit of being able to dump heat fast.

------
_of
IMHO, Newsweek has really lowered their journalistic standards.

------
thrwaway190502
Take a look at this:

[https://imgur.com/a/uhFOF9u](https://imgur.com/a/uhFOF9u)

Decide for yourself what you think is being shown there. Okay, ready? This is
what the picture I just linked actually shows: I googled "grainy photo" and
then "first photo ever taken" to get the grainiest one ever. I don't know if
it's the first one ever taken, but this photo is one of the oldest ones we
have. "Taken in 1824, it shows the view outside of a window in Saint-Loup-de-
Varennes France."

How did you do?

~~~
PavlikPaja
>How did you do?

I don't know what I'm supposed to see here, but it looks suspiciously like the
first photo ever taken.

~~~
thrwaway190502
Doubt you guessed that, unless you already happened to be familiar with that
photo. You were supposed to guess before I told you the answer.

~~~
PavlikPaja
Yes, I read about it last week or so. It looked like a plate of asphalt
though, this one is highly enhnanced somehow.

------
TeMPOraL
Come on. How is USS Princeton video not already debunked and classified as
optical effect in camera? If you look at it, you can see how the "UFO" rotates
at rate ~2x faster than the camera, which implies some reflection is
happening. If it was an actual object, why would its rotation be coupled to
the sensor recording the video?

~~~
JulianMorrison
Do you really think the military, with all their technological snazz and
pizazz, is going to be chasing lens flares?

Consider the fact that this was a radar incident too. And that the ships were
using meshed synthesized radar, not just one ship at a time.

~~~
daemin
I would more likely consider it a software bug than anything else. Some sensor
data is feeding in and making it appear that something is there.

~~~
JulianMorrison
A radar bug _and_ a FLIR bug, that exists in 3D space such that multiple
seperate jets maneuvering around it see it as having a position?

That's an issue in itself if so.

~~~
daemin
If all systems are interconnected and transfer data between them, then an
anomalous reading could get carried through like a virus...

~~~
JulianMorrison
Through the meshed radar, conceivably. You wouldn't expect it to affect the
FLIR (which is displaying a sensor's input, not a tactical view) or to have an
effective "position" in space.

~~~
daemin
If it's an image from a radar sensor then it still could be a software bug
because the raw data has to be processed somehow and an image generated from
it.

Complex software systems can have quite bizarre bugs when they interact with
each other.

