NASA panel: No convincing evidence for extraterrestrial life connected with UAPs
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Exactly what the establishment WANTS you to think!
Danny boy was right, of course.
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This is why I waited for the Ars article without reading the articles I saw on larger sites. No sensationalism, no drama, just a level-headed summary.
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Something like 99% of reported UFOs are eventually identified. So to me, it seems very plausible that the remaining 1% are also something mundane, but that we just lack the data to identify them. The idea that an alien civilization would cross the incredibly vast distances of interstellar space to then buzz credulous humans with their spacecraft is very far-fetched.
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Thank you for the kind words. This is technically my first article about space (I'm usually the AI guy), so I appreciate it.
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UFOs, like Sasquatch and the Yeti, are species nearly brought to extinction by the dissemination of high-rez cameras in people's pockets, and on military aircraft.
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Those are not the experts you need. And the quoted phrase is leading. How do you know they don't have prosaic explanations until you investigate?
This is what I mean. They need "experts" who understand photography and its artifacts, the sensor systems involved, the capabilities of the aircraft containing the observers, as well as the capabilities of aircraft or other objects which could be observed, and the interactions between these various elements. None of these elements are particular to the domain of academic physics or astrobiology.
(Edited to add: some understanding of atmospheric phenomena including weather, and simple astronomy including the positions of planets and major stars would be useful.)
I am reminded of James Randi's investigations of ESP and other paranormal claims. Magicians were often more valuable than scientists, because what was needed for that was to rule out possible cause of trickery.
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The likelihood of non-human intelligent life in the universe? Approximately 100%. The likelihood that it has visited earth? Approximately 0%.
Quite simply, if aliens have been visiting earth in the past 15 years, someone would have caught compelling evidence. Everyone has a cell phone. Security cameras are everywhere. Every airport and every airplane has radar systems. There's any number of data collection tools I'm forgetting. If it was aliens, we simply would have better data.
It's cool that they're looking into this. Not sure I'd want that job though, and they did a pretty good job of explaining why in the quoted material from the article.
Quite simply, if aliens have been visiting earth in the past 15 years, someone would have caught compelling evidence. Everyone has a cell phone. Security cameras are everywhere. Every airport and every airplane has radar systems. There's any number of data collection tools I'm forgetting. If it was aliens, we simply would have better data.
It's cool that they're looking into this. Not sure I'd want that job though, and they did a pretty good job of explaining why in the quoted material from the article.
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A real life Rick Sanchez in a homemade flying saucer is probably a more plausible explanation than aliens.
It would be great if something interesting was eventually discovered but my expectations remain low.
It would be great if something interesting was eventually discovered but my expectations remain low.
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Speculation over at Metabunk that it's just a balloon, but possibly intentionally released as to distract drone cameras.
Middle East 2022 MQ-9 Observed Apparent Spherical UAP (via AARO)
This clip seems to show a very similar phenomenon [to the Mosul Sphere], taken by 'a U.S. military drone in the Middle East'. From ABC News. Source: https://youtu.be/4Bt6_Potk5Q It looks like a real, solid object, somewhere between the drone camera and the ground. If it is a balloon of some...
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I think that's a good argument if the aliens didn't care about being detected.
And the flip side is that if they did care and wanted to hide, presumably they'd be able to do so extremely effectively. So it's also plausible that aliens are constantly monitoring/visiting earth but leaving no evidence.
Either way, the scant, poor quality observational data we can't currently explain is unlikely to be aliens.
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What?
UAP is simply a term that covers when we detect an unexplained phenomena. A camera sees something that isn’t immediately identified and it gets classified as a UAP. Any rational person understands that sometimes this happens and it’s almost certainly NOT aliens.
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Fallacy of the undistributed middle - Wikipedia
Aliens would be unexplained.
Not all unexplained phenomena are aliens.
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Wait. What's wrong with believing that there was, in fact, a historical human named Jesus born to the Jewish tribes, had a cult following, and as a result of his life an embellished tale was spun that resulted in a mythological deification?
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Who is responsible for the stigma? It is not the skeptics. Everything we have seen tells me the skeptics are thoroughly justified in their positions. The stigma is the fault of those who hyped the evidence beyond what it could support for whatever reasons: true belief, profit, etc.
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If you cannot comprehend a brain sensationalizing an unexplained phenomenon to enormous proportions, such that the character described as the son of god in the bible could have actually just referenced the life of a normal human...
Well shit, I guess your whole life is aliens then.
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To have the level of technology necessary to cross the relevant distances, they'd have significant abilities to manipulate physics that are well beyond our understanding. More than sufficient to not be detected by radar or visible light if they so chose.
Which is not to suggest they've been stealthily visiting us. Quite the contrary--if a civilization has said technology, they would also have the technology necessary to observe us with outrageously pristine and minute detail from a distance sufficient that we'd never know. Thus, I would expect there's really no point in "visiting us" unless their intent is to make contact.
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With committees like this, the vast majority of the work is done by the staff. And that would include experts in sensor systems, aircraft capabilities, etc. The actual committee members tend to be there because a lot of people take the report more seriously if they recognize the names (or at least titles) of the people who "wrote" it.
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Disagree: if you've proven it's aliens, you've already explained it.Fallacy of the undistributed middle - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Aliens would be unexplained.
Not all unexplained phenomena are aliens.
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Well, it's highly unlikely his name was Jesus. Jesus is probably what you end up with when you translate the name from Aramaic to Greek, and then from Greek to Latin, and then from Latin to English.
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Um.... so what they are saying is they never did this kind of obvious study of these phenomena before this?
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What the fuck do you want? the overwhelming majority of the UAP data is ALREADY unclassified because intercepts by military of UAP are VERY RARE, and almost always result in an identification. The only reason to classify UAP data would be because of the method or means employed to detect them.
For example, publicly disclosing new radar/optics that spot things previously not easily seen would be verboten, so the encounter would be classified and investigated by the DOD.
It's not the UAP being classified. It's the means of detecting it that are classified.
Because a lot of things were released from the Navy encounter, using high-tech, front-line detection equipment, which, in the data released, did not provide any information on its capabilities.
Project Blue Book was RIFE with security issues based on things like patrol patterns, equipment, personnel, wheres and whens and such that a hostile government of the times would have loved to have had that data. This is why it was so redacted. And in that redacting, imbeciles decided they were trying to hide evidence of aliens on Earth, rather than applying Occam's Razor and just going with they're trying to keep relevant military data out of the hands of hostile nations.
So from a security aspect, it's much better to have the DOD investigate the few times they have encounters with UAP and let NASA handle the civilian-based encounters.
God, you can lead a person to knowledge but you can't make them THINK.
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