It’s fine if you you’re not inclined to believe the claims of Grusch, or Corso, or any number of other people who have made more or less the same set of claims over the years. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the U.S. government lied, point blank, about a whole bunch of things that they now publicly claim were secret weapons tests. Our government fully denied the existence of any military base at the site popularly known as Area 51 for decades, until they just came out and admitted to its existence in the 90s. And they did so at least in part because of pressure from UFO researchers! If your evidence that any part of UFO folklore is definitely false is just that “the US government said it was [x]”, you shouldn’t be surprised if people don’t find that convincing!
The most insightful conclusion we can get from the existence of Area 51 is the lack of accountability from the US Army to the general public.
Whether it's hiding Aliens or (more realistically) some really nasty secrets from the Cold War Era, You got the army independently operating a structure on home soil, syphoning public money without having to answer to no one.
Until there is physical evidence that can be confirmed by third parties of other nations, we should just treat the entire thing as PsyOps. The existence of Alien civilizations at a level of development so far from us that they would be Gods is such an outrageous claim, that it would need outrageous amounts of evidence.
Taking the words of Government officials who have the blessing of the military to "whistleblow" is just not good enough.
I wouldn't say being gods is that far, just many humans are dumb and on top of that even don't want to use whatever brains they got. It's self inflicted retardation really.
Its not outrageous to believe it's possible we are actually first or the most advanced without evidence to refute it.
We currently have no evidence otherwise, and our best hopes (in my lifetime atleast) are finding ocean dwelling creatures on moons in the solar system that have no technology capable of reaching Earth.
It's just outrageous to think we are a unique possibility in the entire universe given how many stars and galaxies we have discovered.
I'm on the side that it's very odd to think we'd be the first, considering how short our existence is compared to dinosaurs. On the flipside, that same comparison means we may well be the most advanced.
The idea that an infinite universe means infinitely many advanced civilisations is appealing but I think your statement oversimplifies a complex issue.
Firstly, the universe's infinity is not a settled matter; current cosmology suggests it's vast but finite, but of course, there's no absolute answer to this (yet). I'd also look to the Drake Equation when considering this point, which illustrates the myriad factors and sheer number of uncertainties involved in the development of "advanced civilisations".
So, yeah: while advanced civilisations are certainly possible, they may not be as probable as you suggest, even in a universe brimming with stars and planets.
And if they are outside our light cone, they just as well might not exist. There is no-one and will never be anyone to hear that tree fall in the forest.
I don't understand. If one of the advanced civilizations out there, is so far away, the light emitted from them will never even catch up to and reach Earth, what does it matter that they exist?
We didn't even know how many stars had planets until not so long ago. The idea we're any good at detecting advanced civilisations in the visible universe is highly questionable.
Hey. The first comment actually hitting on it. There is zero difference between UFO truthers and religious folks. Literally the arguments being made in this thread would apply to "is god real?
And yet once again were here, already taking the unfounded conspiracy more seriously than it deserves to be.
And in fact, I see the causes being the same. People are losing control. Losing the excitement of the capitalist consumer treadmill. Searching for answers and clarity. What would solve all of my problems that the single largest shift in human history! Jesus's return! I mean aliens!
>If your evidence that any part of UFO folklore is definitely false is just that “the US government said it was [x]”, you shouldn’t be surprised if people don’t find that convincing!
Luckily, no skeptic of the UFO narrative has just the government's word as evidence to the contrary.
What's weird is that the same people claiming you shouldn't trust the government when it denies the UFO narrative are using the government and its integrity to argue that Grusch et. al must be telling the truth, that Grusch is a man of unquestioned integrity and honor and no one would just go in front of Congress and tell lies. The same government which has apparently been orchestrating a sprawling conspiracy of lies and psy-ops around UFOs for almost a hundred years, but for some weird reason respects the bureaucracy enough that they'll just let Grusch blow the lid off of the whole affair.
Even though that hasn't really happened yet. I'm sure it'll happen any day now.
Its just a secular attempt to flee responsibilities towards "higher authority". Someone out there is in charge and capable to control things. There is a captain and a bridge, somewhere on this debris-hulk we call a ship.
That and this phenomena of people with zero critical thinking skills desperate to feel like they're not a clueless, helpless rube! They know the truth! They're in on a secret!
'Alien life form' can exist on other planets. At a very simplified take, oceans can have tiny things, just like water in our cup. Point is life outside earth can exist.
However I do not accept Aliens that have visited us or hiding. To keep something like this under wraps to this very day is extremely unlikely!
This is coming from someone who has seen a 'UFO' but it does not mean its Alien from another planet. The LIKELY example is advanced and/or hidden tech. I can only assume.
Aliens, as portrayed with big eyes in their hovercrafts, etc... go in the same category as loch ness monster, bigfoot, fairies, god, and the darn flying spaghetti monster!
A scary sci-fi thought I read some time ago, was that given the age of the earth it is not only possible but likely that if aliens did visit, they visited before Humans even existed.
The sci-fi element was that if they visited before even the dinosaurs, and mined some special material that, as an example, was some rare material that allowed for faster than light travel, we would never know. The other aliens that have the technology would never even bother to visit a planet incapable of interaction with the wider universe.
> The sci-fi element was that if they visited before even the dinosaurs, and mined some special material that, as an example, was some rare material that allowed for faster than light travel
Nice 'science fiction'
Personally this does not change my thought process. Hollywood might be interested in knowing more of this fiction. Who knows maybe, like many of their recent films, they will dump something out in 2026 with bad CGI.
Which sci-fi do you like that doesn't incorporate CGI or an element where the protagonist or antagonist doesn't have some ability to travel faster than the current known speed limits? Just The Martian maybe?
Both are kind of lazy conplainy takes about the entire genre.
We actually don't know. We don't know if they can just be invisible. Or are completely indistinguishable from humans. Alternatively, we can't know because we don't actually have all the facts of the laws of physics worked out. If we can make as much progress as we have on physics in the past 100 years, imagine if a species is 100M years beyond our own. Could they exist in a particle and observe things? Does it even have to be a particle?
Yeah, but we also do not know whether there is an giant mass-less invisible teapot shaped like an unicorn circling the outer rim of the solar system.
The problem with theories that cannot be tested is, that once you accept them arbitrary things follow from them. That teopot could influence the thoughts of our politicians for example.
While I have nothing against a little bit of fantasy, it is always important to keep the understanding that those are in fact stories and that they appeal to certain people precisely because they are literally detached from this harsh reality. Don't get me wrong, you can also be fascinated with the possibility of there being aliens without having to believe in them being already here.
It’s also important to acknowledge that there are things we cannot yet measure which are no less real than things we can. Believing a non-falsifiable hypothesis is dumb, sure, but so is believing that the only things that are real are those that we can currently measure. And it requires some curiosity verging on pure fantasy to motivate us to learn to measure the things we currently cannot.
Oh I'm perfectly motivated to be open minded and curious without giving credence to every imaginary conspiracy that pops in my head. You can dress it up however you like but it's unsubstantiated fictive speculation 100% either way.
I know (have even used tlit as a metaphor for our lack of knowledge in my MA thesis), but the existence of planet 9 is a falsifiable theory. Maybe not today, and not with the technology/funds we have to look at it, but if we wanted to get on top of that, we could, unless it is a primordial black hole the size of a tennisball that is.
But my point was that in this case we can say: yeah, there is some unaccounted mass (observation) let's form explainations about what it could be (theory). There are only so many things with mass we know in our solar system, so it being a other planet is a reasonable assumption. It being a invisible giant unicorn-shaped teapot is not.
If you have a theory without an observation it is called a story. And now someone would bring up eyewitness accounts or declassified airforce videos and call them observations. The point here is that you need to go from observation to theory and not the other way around. If every unidentified flying object is extraterrestrial life you are gonna be wrong a lot of times, just because there is a big likelihood of unidentified flying objects being of terrestrial origin (or them not even be objects in the first place).
That means you got a needle/haystack problem there and front-loading the theory like that isn't gonna help.
Both can be, but the teapot is an arbitrary enough stand-in that the idea behind what I said should be clear.
Because we do not know what it is we could assume it is anything, it could also be Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley and Jim Morrison in a pink whirlpool in space.
But just because we can't as of now disprove that theory, doesn't mean it is a good one, unless we judge entertainment value. White spots on the map of knowledge seem to have an attraction on people that feel the need to put the most colorful, most exciting things there.
Actually, i'm pretty convinced we do know, with very high probability of being right.
Our knowledge of physics is limited, but seems to be advanced enough (cfr relativity and astronomical distances) to make it likely that if there is someone else, they're just too far way, or else we're too uninteresting to be visited or else if we would be interesing enough, it takes so much technological advances to cross galactical distances, that humanity would be wiped out by the visitors before we even realise what's going on.
My dad worked for the military, as a civilian. He had an counterpart in the Air Force, a colonel, who told him in the late 70s that he knew for a fact there were aliens but he couldn't tell my dad how he knew those facts. My dad worked closely with this guy on military black box recovery and analysis.
Dad told me he believed there were aliens because he said the colonel made it a point to say that he knew this to be true, and I believe it to be true as well, because Dad trusted this guy. It goes without saying we typically believe our parents if they tell us things. None of this had anything to do with facts, and everything to do with trust, which is formed from a person to person exchange. Most of what Dad did for the Air Force remained a secret till his death, and I do know he was absolutely obsessed with airplanes and math. To believe a mistruth about something we care so much about is possible, but unlikely.
So, sometimes knowledge is what we have as stories and we can either choose to believe, or not. That is faith. We don't need facts to back up our faith in personally knowing a thing to be true or not. Besides, if there are aliens, it would probably be better if the general population didn't have hard facts to ensure it became general knowledge, because at that point the speculation faucet is wide open. It's far better to let people believe what they will, without it affecting civilization in a radical way.
Maybe there are aliens and maybe there aren't. As my local AI alien just said to me, "Ultimately, beliefs about extraterrestrial life often come down to personal perspectives and interpretations of available information, as well as the trust placed in sources of information, whether they be firsthand experiences, anecdotal accounts, or scientific findings."
or maybe telling people funny lies about aliens is just a strategy designed by government to help its employees deal with the stress of not being allowed to share "genuine" government secrets with their families and friends........
Alternative facts. No sale. There's no fucking aliens but there are a bunch of liars and bullshit artists who get a kick out of manipulating kids and other people.
> It goes without saying we typically believe our parents if they tell us things
No. It doesn't. I don't believe my mom when she says she saw angels and I don't believe my dad saw creatures that the cameras magically didn't pick up. I need to just stop reading this thread. People believing whatever they want is fine but this ad hoc delusional justification is killing my soul
You do realize people see things internally, right? Sometimes they see things augmented reality-like as well. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean they can't, or they are lying.
But don't you see the problem here? You don't know what you don't know. Radio communication wouldn't surprise e.g. Newton in the least once explained, but it's something he also would never have envisioned in a million years, because it was simply technology that he had no reason to even might imagine would be possible, outside of fantasy and fiction. He was actually skeptical of his own discovery of gravity because of the implication of some invisible force at work!
Or let's go back to ultra modern times. Nuclear warheads are shockingly small. Imagine telling something at the turn of the 20th century that soon a weapon the size of a small table would have a kill radius of multiple miles. I mean you can obviously imagine it, but it seems kind of silly to think about being actually real, until it turns out it is.
So there are two possibilities now. (1) Now we've finally reached that point, that we will only ever reach once, where our knowledge is advanced enough such that there will no longer any major revolutionary discoveries made. Or (2) we're just like every other generation throughout time who assumed that what they knew was, more or less, the peak of what's knowable (or at least not fundamentally wrong) only to have their own ignorance demonstrated with marked clarity in times yet to come.
Beyond the philosophical there are countless technical reasons to also think this is the case. Like you mention astronomy, yet so much of what's going on out there remains a complete mystery. Disharmony between the really big and really small aspects of the universe, whatever 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' truly are, the fact that observed galaxies are moving at rates far different than expected by relativity or Newtonian mechanics (including after factoring in whatever dark matter may be), that a big-bang would require a mysteriously convenient faster-than-light inflationary period to actually work, and countless other issues. So many things are breaking at scale, that it seems highly reasonable to assume that there remain yet many revolutionary and worldview-shifting discoveries to be made.
But we do know what is possible given the universe we can see. There is no magic left; the god of the gaps has been made so small that it can only live down in the quantum foam.
> Nuclear warheads are shockingly small. Imagine telling something at the turn of the 20th century that soon a weapon the size of a small table would have a kill radius of multiple miles.
Einstein published On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies in 1905, so that puts us close enough to the turn of the 20th century to state as a fact that at least a handful of well-read scientists would have no problem imagining what you proposed.
On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies has nothing, whatsoever, to do with nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are about nuclear fission, which was not even discovered until 1938. Nuclei weren't even discovered until 1932 for that matter! But getting back to the point here, do you not think every other generation thought exactly what you are saying? There's a really fun quote from Michelson (of the Michelson-Morley experiment) in 1894:
"...It seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles [of physics] have been firmly established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."
Notably Michelson was the first person to experimentally observe a shocking key fundamental of relativity, outside the scope of this post. But he was so convinced that there was "no magic left, etc, etc" that he (and everybody else) actually thought his experimental result was due to a miscalibration or lack of precision in his results. So convinced was he of this, that he casually rejected his own results which would only be explained decades later - coincidentally, partly in the paper you seemingly randomly referenced here!
The question was: could you expect to explain an atomic bomb and its power to someone at the turn of the 20th century? The answer is clearly: yes.
Knowing the specific structure of the atom is _not_ required for this. The point was to prove that something was not necessarily 'magic' and the example selected was a bad example, because we can actually show that people were on the cusp of figuring it out themselves and would not have a hard time following an ELI5 overview. Are you providing information they do not have at hand? Yes. Will a reasonably well-read person of the era understand your explanation of how such a device would work? Yes.
Don't be simple. You obviously know that's not what I said, it's like a quarter of a page above where you're posting! What I said:
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"Imagine telling something at the turn of the 20th century that soon a weapon the size of a small table would have a kill radius of multiple miles. I mean you can obviously imagine it, but it seems kind of silly to think about being actually real, until it turns out it is."
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So yes, give somebody from an era an absolute ton of information on things they had 0 knowledge of and 0 reason to think existed, and sure - they can begin to understand how a nuclear weapon might actually be viable. And that's the point. And the same will undoubtedly be true for countless other discoveries as we continue to advance our understanding of the universe. Something like e.g. faster than light travel is obviously easy to imagine today, but we still have 0 knowledge of anything* that might enable it, let alone how such things might work, and so it remains strictly in the domain of fantasy. Yet 50 years from now, it might simply be something everybody takes for granted. Because we don't know what we don't know.
* - not strictly true, but you probably think it is - and this is outside the context of this post in either case.
Sure, they're so far advanced that we can't see them, and they just came over here to chill. Like a nice vacation for them. No desire to extinguish us or talk to us. Just hanging out.
Your comment is full of antropomorphisms. I don't believe in their presence on earth, but you can't "disprove" them like that.
Still, you can find explanations fitting the observations. Like the ant analogy, a scientist is not going to try to communicate with ants. They want to observe without disturbing the ants too much, even if the scientist doesn't take too much precautions to make themselves completely invisible.
You're looking at it from your perspective. Humans could be completely useless to them and they could be here for some resource. Loggers in the amazon don't try to communicate with the bugs around them, they do what they're there to do.
It's not given that other life forms would be interested in us, they might've learned what they needed a long time ago. And now we're just part of their environment. Or they realize we're too stupid and would just try to kill them so they don't.
That's more of instinct than intelligent communication, though. Hard to exchange ideas when the vocabulary is a pheromone that makes a drone want to work or fuck. I'd be the first person trying to exchange ideas if it was in any way possible - seriously, in a scientific capacity. Ants fascinate me. But there really is no way to communicate.
You can't get much information from a single human as there are no encyclopedically educated humans anymore. The best way to gather information is to download our internets and books.
We don't see infrared, would you call infrared light "so far advanced"? It's just a different spectrum. They could be very stupid and just floating around and still be invisible to us.
I'm not trying to say there are beings living among us on a spectrum we don't know about, but it's an interesting thought and anyone dismissing it with certainty are closed-minded.
In my experience those people are rarely interesting and can only discuss very shallow topics from perspectives they've been told by others. What's the weather like? Who's fucking who? How's the super bowl going? Especially when they're antagonistic in their rhetoric. Thinking outside the box and pondering the what ifs in life is the only reason we got out of the caves.
Imagine the Voyager probe ending up on a planet and being discovered in 500 million years. It wasn't sent with extinguish plans, not will it be able to communicate.
That will be something quite feasible for an alien civilization to build, and highly believable, if we found something like that.
Visits from actual beings (that overwise stay incognito), travelling tens or even thousands of light years, hyperadvanced sci-fi technologies like FTL and invisibility (suggested above) and so on, not so much.
Why not? To them it could be like any other tuesday and communication could be pointless. We have a tendency to see ourselves as so important but forget how we act. We still discover new species and catalogue them, but many of those have probably been seen before by someone who didn't care.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
In the last century lots of things that were considered science fiction has become normal parts of our lives. And not that long ago "aliens don't exist" was the default and only crazies believed in them. Now it's mainstream that there is a high probability at least somewhere in the universe, the only argument needed is that we exist, so of course it could happen again or before. We're not as special as we like to think. We've had hearings regarding UFOs (yes, yes, I know it doesn't imply aliens) in the congress.
But if you want to reduce it to magic go ahead. And the part you quoted was regarding them choosing not to communicate with us, if that wasn't clear.
> All of those things are within the laws of physics.
And infrared doesn't? That said it wasn't always in the laws of physics, and they may still be wrong, they have changed in the last century.
> The latter is still the case now.
I'm not sure most people would agree with you, more likely to answer "I don't know, maybe". I find it very strange when people are so certain about uncertain topics, difficult to relate.
117 billion humans over the course of over 190,000 years on a planet with 510.1 million km² and 1,335,000,000 km³ of oceans that go as deep as 11,000 m.
So yeah, some smart people keep insisting because historically, saying stuff like "it can't be done", "it doesn't exist", "there is no more to be discovered, uncovered, disclose" turned out to be wrong.
Then, there's also Space. And they keep finding cave systems and whole cities below forests. It's crazy!
And I have absoluteley no idea what I'm talking about. I've barely seen anything at all, and had practically zero conversations with people.
And have you heard about all the things parents are hiding from their kids?
Some people have wild imaginations, others want to believe in magical myths, some want to belong to something special, and others poke their heads out in the media because they have books, merch, speeches, and newsletters to sell.
> Aliens haven't visited. Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?
Skepticism and questioning are a good thing. Keep scanning the skies.
But mostly to sell books and speaking engagements.
Maybe to keep the public riled up -- the same conspiracy nuts who believe Q-Anon are also the same ones who believe UFOs. Dominate the news cycle for a couple weeks and get the rubes to show-up en mass to Area 51 where they can be easily detained or hit with facial recognition.
The crazy people vote? Q anon, flat earthers, moon landing denialists, and the all import X-Files demographic. There is a book on the greater topic: Tyranny of the Minority. How tiny groups of noisy wackos are throwing society and government into disarray. It's high time people show some balls and stop giving this bullshit oxygen and call these morons the idiots that they are.
Interesting how someone dares to make such a bold public statement? Is this kind of article an example of being smart then?
Meanwhile there are simple rocks in desert that we cannot transport even today with our modern equipment. Was there previous civilization from Earth who more capable or some visitors, who knows, but we are not the most capable ones yet.
As far as I am aware, modern humanity is by far the most capable civilisation that has ever existed on earth as far as moving rocks is concerned. The only thing beating us right now is glaciers and tectonic activity.
I think they're making reference to some ancient Alien theories along the lines of Erich Von Daniken and others, which tend to postulate that certain ancient and megalithic structures would have been impossible to build without modern technology, and thus can only have been the result of alien interference.
It's worth mentioning that there is often a white supremacist or pro-colonialist dimension to these theories. Rarely does anyone question whether the Greeks built their architecture, for instance, but according to these people it's simply not possible for the Egyptians to have built the pyramids.
The strongest mobile crane in the world can lift about 300 tons. While they are mobile cranes (with wheels) it’s hard for them to move in soft sand even without heavy loads. When they lift something they don’t move.
There are some granite blocks that weigh over 1000 tons. We’re told that these were transported from hundreds of miles away, across mountain and over a river. Historians are not engineers so they don’t understand what they’re saying.
If we were to move those blocks now we would need to build massive crane around it, that would move on tracks (ones you see in harbors).
In this video they transport 340 ton rock. Pretty massive project and they used satellite data to find route without any uphill..
Somehow those ancient blocks were carved and transported thousands of years ago. How it was done and by who is unknown.. I think it’s understandable if someone picks the alien explanation as the most plausible answer. Personally I can entertain any idea but I wouldn’t bet on anything.
> There are some granite blocks that weigh over 1000 tons. We’re told that these were transported from hundreds of miles away, across mountain and over a river. Historians are not engineers so they don’t understand what they’re saying.
I am still unsure which ancient blocks you're referencing though. Stonehenge? Could you link to them, or a picture, or where in the world they are so I can google it?
I asked from ChatGTP how many people would be required to lift 1000 ton block (if we consider slaves).
“It would require approximately 19,753 people to lift a 1000-ton granite boulder, given the assumptions made regarding average lift capacity and efficiency factors. This is a theoretical estimate and assumes perfect conditions where all individuals can contribute equally and simultaneously, which may not be feasible in reality due to the physical space required and coordination challenges.
1. *Weight of the Boulder*: 1000 tons (US tons) = 2,000,000 pounds (lbs) since 1 ton = 2,000 lbs.
2. *Average Lift Capacity per Person*: The average untrained adult can safely lift about 135 pounds (deadlift, which is a reasonable approximation for lifting something off the ground) without training. However, for trained individuals, this number can be significantly higher. Let's use the untrained capacity for a conservative estimate.
3. *Safety and Efficiency Factors*: When lifting heavy objects, especially with many people, not everyone will be able to lift their maximum capacity due to the awkward shape of the object, grip issues, coordination, and safety concerns. Thus, we might apply a safety factor to ensure we're considering a realistic scenario. Let's assume 75% efficiency to account for these factors.”
But you can’t fit that many people under the rock. If you wanted to use chains to help lifting it would require something better than wine ropes. Even chain made from copper wouldn’t hold it.
That fallen Ramses statue is rose granite.
Another mystery is how this statue was created. Because it’s so symmetrical and smooth we would have to use machinery in order to do it.
Quick TLDR. They don't lift it, they dig under it. Either constructing a canal, and putting a weighted barge beneath it. Then remove the ballast so the barge lifts up the weight. For overland they do a similar thing, but with a sled, pour a lubricant under the sliders, and then pull. Apparently 2 people can pull 1 Ton this way. So 500 people pulling the sled. (They had approx 2000 people working on a similar project) Also they used shallow ramps over long distances to raise it up.
There was also a modern thing when they moved a lighthouse.
The 80 ton statue was difficult because they wanted to do it with minimal people, and with minimal disruption, and quickly. If you had 2000 people working 5 days a week, 3 years to do it in, and the legal ability to dig up the road/canal etc it can be done. The amazing thing to me is how much priority Ancient Egyptians gave building these monuments, seems like the most important thing they were doing. I guess it gets easier to deal with planning permission when your absolute ruler says "Do it".
