
The day UFOs stopped play - schrofer
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29342407
======
adeptus
For those that might have an interest in the _real_ UFO phenomenon and serious
investigations into the matter:

1) 2001 Disclosure project:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vyVe-6YdUk)

2) 2013 Ex-CIA deathbed confession:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CSeWkJvdbQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CSeWkJvdbQ)

3) Confessions of 4 USA Astronaults on UFOs:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KyxLM2eqkk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KyxLM2eqkk)

4) After Disclosure:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlhy3_akb_s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlhy3_akb_s)

5) Citizen's Hearing on Disclosure - Testifying before former congress
witnesses:
[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=citizens+hearing...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=citizens+hearing+on+disclosure+2013+complete+series+)

~~~
acqq
To balance those links to videos, a text from "the other" point of view:

[http://badufos.blogspot.co.at/2013/04/that-citizen-
hearing-o...](http://badufos.blogspot.co.at/2013/04/that-citizen-hearing-on-
ufo-disclosure.html)

"To lobby for "disclosure" implies that there is something to "disclose,"
which is highly dubious. And to hold a valid "hearing" implies that witnesses
are queried under oath, which of course will not be the case, leaving them
free to fabricate as much as they please without fear of repercussions. The
five former members of Congress are being paid a reported $20,000 each by
Paradigm to participate in this circus."

For some other views, see my other comments here.

~~~
adeptus
I stopped reading at .."To lobby for disclosure implies that there is
something to disclose, which is highly dubious."... just like how it was
highly dubious that the NSA wasn't spying on everyone, right? come on. This
thing, if it's real is 100 times BIGGER than any previous government scandal -
all the more reason to not disclose it (yes I know, circular argument). But
the proper counter arguement is to watch the 2001 Disclosure video - in there
you have dozens of Ex-military, NASA and US government employees (many of them
high ranking) _ready and willing_ to testify before congress on the matter.

Think about it, admitting aliens exist and are visiting us means:

1) They likely know how to travel across entire galaxies in their life-times
(likely hours/days)

2) They have invisibility technology: UFOs are often reported to appear out of
thin air and disappear back into thin air.

3) Their propulsion technologies completely baffle us. Tens of thousands of
UFO witnesses (including many hundreds confirmed on radar) have reported to
have travelled thousands of miles per second, to then stop on a dime or do 90
degree turns and carry on as if gravity could be ignored.

4) If even a single abduction story is real, they have the ability to paralyze
any human being and teleport them through walls and ceilings. They also have
the ability to find any single human anywhere on Earth as many self-confessed
abductees have reported they tried to move across the country, yet the aliens
always found them and just continued abducting them. It also begs to question
their agenda and morality - WTF are they doing with humans they abduct?

5) If any of the military UFO stories are real, they can out maneuver every
single fighter jet humanity has ever created - exactly zero UFOs have been
shot down by military planes, despite hundreds of chases having been
documented by pilots and radar operators. Roswell UFO crash is rumored to have
been taken down by experimental military radar tests, not intentional military
weapons.

6) Consider for a moment aliens are real and they are thousands of years more
technologically advanced than us. What can we do about it? Nothing - we can do
exactly nothing. Our "powerful" government leaders and best militaries would
be exactly powerless to do anything. It would be full-on wide-spread global
panic.

My personal theory is that given how vast the Universe is, it is entirely
possible that some (millions?) planets were formed before Earth and at least
many dozens/hundreds/thousands (?) evolved life to the point of human
intelligence or greater, THOUSANDS of years before humans ever walked our
Earth. This would translate to there being X number of alien civilizations out
there far more advanced than humans technologically and more than likely
biologically advanced (think brain power x 100+).

Consider how we've gone from horse and carriage to putting a man on the moon
and creating space crafts that can travel 20,000 km/hour (in space) in a mere
300 years. Now imagine the capabilities (if you can) of what an alien species
only 10,000 years more advanced than us might have. What about 100,000 years?
1 Million ? Their technology would be like magic to us - completely
unimaginable ... you know like travelling across entire galaxies in mere
hours, teleporting through walls, having invisible craft, shooting paralyzing
beams, erasing memories of (some) human abductees etc.

Why is it so hard to imagine and believe that other intelligent civilizations
on other planets exist and that they might be thousands if not millions of
years ahead of us?

~~~
ceejayoz
> Now imagine the capabilities (if you can) of what an alien species only
> 10,000 years more advanced than us might have. What about 100,000 years? 1
> Million ? Their technology would be like magic to us - completely
> unimaginable ... you know like travelling across entire galaxies in mere
> hours, teleporting through walls, having invisible craft, shooting
> paralyzing beams, erasing memories of (some) human abductees etc.

And yet, they use technology that's similar to what the current era's science
fiction talks about, use all that power to anally probe redneck farmers and
abduct people from the woods, and they can't even get the memory wipes right
all the time.

~~~
acqq
Actually, there was a force which did abduct the people and forced them to do
different things:

[http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/23/the-legacy-of-the-
cias...](http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/23/the-legacy-of-the-cias-secret-
lsd-experiments-on-america/)

It turns out, it was funded by the taxpayers! The victims most probably
preferred to tell they were abducted by "aliens."

------
revscat
One of the most common objections to UFOs-as-extraterrestrials that I see is
that the distances between solar systems, and the amount of time required to
travel between them is so large, even at light speed, that any such visitors
are simply impossible. This objection is usually backed up with relativity,
and the increasing amount of energy required as C is approached.

My objection to this is orangutans.

Orangutans are amazing creatures. Placid but intelligent, social and all in
all an interesting specimen from nature. But you cannot teach them calculus.
It's simply impossible. Their brains are not capable of dealing with concepts
that are necessary.

What does this have to do with UFOs? There is a chance that there are concepts
in the universe of which our brains are unable to conceive, just like
orangutans and calculus. These concepts may be necessary to achieve travel
over interstellar distances.

I understand that this is an unprovable statement. It is, nevertheless, a
(admittedly fluffy) rebuttal to the "relativity forbids FTL travel" objection
that is raised when the subject of UFOs is discussed. We have seen glimpses
where savants are able to perform mental tasks that are amazing to "normals",
giving hints that such things might at least be possible.

~~~
arjn
"Simply impossible" is not correct. "Highly unlikely" or "Highly improbable"
is the right phrase to use.

~~~
revscat
Then replace "orangutan" with "mockingbird" if you like. There are tasks that
humans are capable of that other creatures are not. Extrapolate this the other
direction. I do not believe that humanity's current evolutionary state is the
pinnacle of what intelligence can be.

~~~
arjn
I wasnt objecting to your intelligence theory. Its perfectly ok to assume
there may be intelligences in the universe far superior to ours. I was
referring to your comment on the "common objections to UFOs".

------
Udo
By definition there are a lot of UFOs around, the trouble is just that none of
them are commandeered by alien intelligences from beyond the Earth. There is
no credible evidence for it (although I recognize that credibility standards
vary a lot depending on who you talk to).

Personally, I find the absence of aliens surprising. This may one day even
turn out to be problematic. Most HNers are probably aware of the Fermi Paradox
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox)).

One of the most likely answers seems to be that space is big and manipulating
spacetime for FTL travel might be technologically intractable. Maybe we are
living in a galactic dead patch, as a statistical fluke. Maybe technology-
building civilizations are astonishingly rare. In any case, we would expect at
least a few _drones_ zooming by every once in a while.

But the absence of contact might also hint at a severe problem in our galactic
region which we have not yet encountered. Another common scenario is that
technology using species are so unstable as to exterminate themselves in most
cases. It is unclear how such civilizations would _all_ have a tendency
collapse though, as it seems that different types of life forms should have
vastly different behavioral characteristics.

However you turn it, most scenarios mean that more likely than not the galaxy
should _already_ have been colonized many times over, and by rights it should
_at the very least_ contain a lot of artifacts left behind. But apparently it
doesn't. We should be very worried about this, something is not right.

~~~
krapp
>We should be very worried about this, something is not right.

Should we be worried?

We base our assumptions about what 'right' is, in this case what a universe
containing the presence of life should look like (colonies and trash littered
about,) on a single example of intelligent civilization (our own) with no
knowledge at all of how normative that is, or what the actual technological
capabilites of a truly interstellar civilization would look like.

We can extend our own dependence on fossil fuels exponentially and come up
with the Kardashev Scale, then expect to find evidence of interstellar empires
burning stars as fuel, or come up with clever math like the Drake Equation and
feel confident that life should be abundant - but to quote Han Solo, it's all
simple tricks and nonsense. We don't even know enough to know whether or not
we should be worried.

~~~
Udo
Inevitably we are working with a lot of assumptions. But the Drake equation is
one of the simplest expressions of our reasoning in this area imaginable.
There is nothing contrived about the equation itself. You might choose to put
in different variables, but the result would be the same.

At this point we do have a much better idea about the individual factors than
we had when Frank Drake first wrote it down. We now know that planets are
common. We know that tool-using intelligences arose independently several
times on our planet, our civilization just happens to be the first on the
local stage. We know that AI and nano technology have the potential to vastly
increase the amount of time during which civilizations have a detectable
output (hence the drone argument). We know there is nothing in principle
preventing a civilization from colonizing the galaxy, even if speed-of-light
restrictions always apply. So the argument goes that some species should
already have done that. Given the age of the universe, it also seems unlikely
that we're simply one of the first civilizations to arise.

While you can easily argue that it's all useless speculation as long as we
don't know the exact value of every single factor, the sheer volume of
scenarios pointing to the WTF-ness of the Fermi Paradox should absolutely
bother us. We're not exactly a cautious or rational civilization (yet), so the
odds of us ignoring something fundamental in this area might be quite high.

------
acqq
True story: My ex was a teen as one night she saw from the window of her room
a huge (bigger than more cars) round glowing object in the middle of the
street, standing on three thin feet, producing some strange beams to the
neighbouring house. After she marvelled the sight for unknown time, she run to
her father to tell him. The thing (conveniently for such stories) disappeared.
It was winter, he didn't believe her, but he didn't tell her that, he wanted
that she sees herself. He told her to get her coat, he took his and they went
out to the street. "You know, if the thing was there, the snow would be
missing there where the feet were," he told her, "so where was the first
feet?" She showed him the point, and there it was, the round print in the
snow. "Uh, um, where was the second?" Again, there it was, the second round
print in the snow. "Well somebody could have made them intentionally," he
said, his voice sounding less certain than before. The third print, I don't
know if they haven't looked for it or haven't found it. Still she had never
understood what that could have been. Hallucinations don't leave the marks on
the expected places. She haven't had hallucinations before or after. She was
mostly embarrassed to speak about it afterwards, a few times she attempted to,
others didn't believe her. I also have no idea how to explain that event. And
I'd be the first to doubt other people, however she was never hot on UFO's and
is also very down-to-earth person. Technically it wasn't even an UFO -- she
never saw the thing in the air. But it's quite unexplainable, I can claim,
knowing her. And it has a lot of turns the typical UFO stories are made of.
She calls the event "my UFO observation."

~~~
Spooky23
I had a similar experience when I saw something that appeared to hover over my
neighbor's house. It almost looked like a V-22 osprey, but this was well
before that aircraft existed and silent.

In my case, it was there when I went to get my dad, and we both looked at for
a good 5m until it moved past the tree line.

No idea what it was -- could have been some weird atmospheric thing, but it
was very freaky.

~~~
acqq
More details please! Day or night? Time of the year? Everything you can still
remember.

------
kstenerud
What always gets me is how these beings of superior technology manage to evade
all of our detection systems, yet are spotted by regular eyesight.

They have amazing ships, able to do these seemingly physics-defying feats, yet
they point beams of light at things we could easily detect without resorting
to such wavelengths.

They have antigrav, yet they need to land and rest on tripods, leaving
indentations in the ground (when they're not too busy making crop circles,
that is).

If you're able to use fold travel to get around relativistic limitations, I
should think that avoiding or camouflaging emissions in certain wavelengths
would be child's play by comparison. We already have a primitive form of it
ourselves.

Thus, working under the reasonable assumption that they are able to evade
detection, sightings would indicate that they are not trying to remain hidden,
but instead have travelled countless light years in order to spook rural
families rather than opening up interstellar relations.

I wonder if their home planet knows how their tax dollars are being spent?

~~~
krapp
Before the technology of rocketry became commonplace, UFO sightings were of
mysterious blimps and airships, and the inhabitants claimed to be from Mars or
Venus. Before the grey alien became a common trope, many aliens were reported
as obviously humanlike in appearance. They often seem to use recognizable
things like computers with buttons and viewscreens, sometimes rockets.

It's strange how _not alien_ these aliens and their technology always seem to
be.

------
xnull
What's with the recent uptick in UFO article postings in HN?

~~~
empraptor
Maybe it's marketing for an upcoming UFO movie.

~~~
xnull
Maybe. Hadn't thought of that.

My first though was spooks trying to discredit the reputation of the community
as 'paranoid' and 'fanciful' given all the good and informative conversation
regarding Snowden and other disclosures here lately.

Crossing my fingers a good UFO flick is on the way.

~~~
krapp
>My first though was spooks trying to discredit the reputation of the
community as 'paranoid' and 'fanciful' given all the good and informative
conversation regarding Snowden and other disclosures here lately.

You do realize this is by definition both paranoid and fanciful?

~~~
xnull
Yeah I do. Although it is pretty tame on the spectrum. Certainly it is a more
reasonable speculation than alien contact (low hurtle to jump).

For the record I don't believe this is the case. I do reserve the right to
adknowledge it as a possibility with a small posterior probability in
anticipation of additional priors.

------
ceejayoz
If UFOs were real and as prevalent as they've been claimed to be, someone
would've gotten one on their cameraphone by now.

Unless, of course, they're the ET equivalent of 4chan trolling.

~~~
krapp
It's also likely that if actual UFOs were captured on a cameraphone, no one
would believe the footage for a second. I certainly wouldn't.

~~~
ceejayoz
A mass sighting - fairly common in UFO history
([http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/chasing-
ufos/a...](http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/chasing-
ufos/articles/top-10-mass-sightings-of-ufos/)) - would provide plenty of
vantage points, cross-checking, etc.

~~~
krapp
A mass sighting with hundreds of photos, videos, eyewitness reports and maybe
even physical evidence would be difficult to dismiss. Not necessarily evidence
of aliens, but certainly evidence of _something._

------
valas
Funny how UFO incidents diminished with advent of cellphone video/photo
recording technology.

------
elorant
Neil DeGrasse Tyson debunking UFOs:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o)

------
AustinG08
ehhh... I want to believe?

------
adeptus
News Media logic process on UFO stories:

1) Let's find the most obscure explanation for X UFO sighting that may or may
not be true (aka. large spider webs that fly up to 14,000 feet in the air)
while ignoring the other 100,000 + sightings per year around the world.

2) Let's post a story about a UFO and people who witnessed it, then let's
close it off with witty remarks and laugh it off... because the potential for
real aliens visiting our Earth is way the F __* too scary to contemplate.

~~~
deeviant
There are millions of scientifically minded geeks that have a nerdgasm just
thinking about the possibilities of an extraterrestrial visitation.

If there was any available convincing evidence pointing toward an E.T. visit,
we'd be all over it. Atlas, all the "evidence" out there currently is
unconvincing, at best.

~~~
genwin
But mainly because eyewitness accounts are treated as "evidence" instead of
evidence, no matter their number.

