UAP - Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

nimic

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My question about the videos the Navy have, I don't believe its aliens and must be a cover up for something like in the Area 51 but will a radar track and lock a bird? I'm sure they use the infrared mixed with their radar systems and we should see how fast the "things" are moving. Also why the aliens only show up to the American military and not to for example Spain or any other country outside the 5 Eyes and Ruskies and china? (I wouldn't trust them)
One did show up for the Chilean military, and they concluded it was a genuine unidentifiable object. And then a week later the internet proved that it was a passenger jet.
 

Buster15

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What I found most interesting was the massive variation in what each said of the likely number of planets in our galaxy. Varied from 2 trillion to 100 million.
Anyway, the most significant issue was the sheer distances between stars. Something I have frequently mentioned.
You are extremely unlikely to go to the effort of travelling countless light years to explore our tiny planet without an incredibly important reason, just to flit around the skies.
Compare that with what we have been and are doing to other planets and moons in our solar system.
 

nickm

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What I found most interesting was the massive variation in what each said of the likely number of planets in our galaxy. Varied from 2 trillion to 100 million.
Anyway, the most significant issue was the sheer distances between stars. Something I have frequently mentioned.
You are extremely unlikely to go to the effort of travelling countless light years to explore our tiny planet without an incredibly important reason, just to flit around the skies.
Compare that with what we have been and are doing to other planets and moons in our solar system.
People don’t appreciate the gigantic difficulties involved with traversing interstellar distances, even at sub light speeds. You have to really have a good reason to want to make the effort and expend the resources.
 

LilyWhiteSpur

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My question about the videos the Navy have, I don't believe its aliens and must be a cover up for something like in the Area 51 but will a radar track and lock a bird? I'm sure they use the infrared mixed with their radar systems and we should see how fast the "things" are moving. Also why the aliens only show up to the American military and not to for example Spain or any other country outside the 5 Eyes and Ruskies and china? (I wouldn't trust them)
The US Airforce is simple much, much, much larger and more advanced than any other on the planet. I think there have been reports of UFOs from Spanish pilots and British pilots.
 

sun_tzu

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People don’t appreciate the gigantic difficulties involved with traversing interstellar distances, even at sub light speeds. You have to really have a good reason to want to make the effort and expend the resources.
For us at our current technological state of advance yes... Firstly its beyind us, secondly it would take many many generations of people to travel that far and would probably require a large % of our resources committed to such a venture

For some other type of lifeform or some AI type of non biological being then perhaps its the equivalent a gentle afternoon stroll

but yeah to quote douglas adams

“Space [...] is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space
 

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The US Airforce is simple much, much, much larger and more advanced than any other on the planet. I think there have been reports of UFOs from Spanish pilots and British pilots.
Yes but when they say they keep having encounters every day for 2 years I believe the military would be on red code and they would incorporate the most sophisticate equipment to try to shutdown the "invader", that's America we are talking about they would love to put their hands on Alien technology.
 

VorZakone

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Could the Americans be testing some new equipment? See how their pilots react?
 

nickm

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For us at our current technological state of advance yes... Firstly its beyind us, secondly it would take many many generations of people to travel that far and would probably require a large % of our resources committed to such a venture

For some other type of lifeform or some AI type of non biological being then perhaps its the equivalent a gentle afternoon stroll

but yeah to quote douglas adams
You'd think any civilisation able to solve the distance and energy problem - and afford the cost - must have vast solar system spanning resources available... That we should be able to detect.

Otherwise whats being proposed is magic spaceships from invisible civilisations coming here for no apparent reason.

On reflection you are right to quote Douglas Adams, I'm pretty sure there was a line in Hitchhikers about a species that did just that for kicks.
 
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stevoc

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You'd think any civilisation able to solve the distance and energy problem - and afford the cost - must have vast solar system spanning resources available... That we should be able to detect.

Otherwise whats being proposed is magic spaceships from invisible civilisations coming here for no apparent reason.

On reflection you are right to quote Douglas Adams, I'm pretty sure there was a line in Hitchhikers about a species that did just that for kicks.
Should we be able to detect them though?

I'm genuinely interested by what means we would detect an advanced civilisation on the other side of the Galaxy with, my knowledge on the subject is admittedly pretty small. But from everything I understand our ability to detect planets is somewhat limited. We can either measure their size by how much light they block out if the plane of their orbit is in direct line of sight or by observing over a number of years the affect their gravity has on the movement of their parent star.

How would we detect another civilization?
 

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You'd think any civilisation able to solve the distance and energy problem - and afford the cost - must have vast solar system spanning resources available... That we should be able to detect.

Otherwise whats being proposed is magic spaceships from invisible civilisations coming here for no apparent reason.

On reflection you are right to quote Douglas Adams, I'm pretty sure there was a line in Hitchhikers about a species that did just that for kicks.
It's a very reasonable point. Given the age of the universe, prior existent civilisations could easily have traversed our galaxy by now. Summed up in the fermi paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox Where is everyone, essentially.

Maybe we're fundamentally misunderstanding what existence itself and the universe are.
 

nickm

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Should we be able to detect them though?

I'm genuinely interested by what means we would detect an advanced civilisation on the other side of the Galaxy with, my knowledge on the subject is admittedly pretty small. But from everything I understand our ability to detect planets is somewhat limited. We can either measure their size by how much light they block out if the plane of their orbit is in direct line of sight or by observing over a number of years the affect their gravity has on the movement of their parent star.

How would we detect another civilization?
Lots of potential ways, here’s a couple. Slightly more exotic one. Some others. Maybe this.
 
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nickm

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If the US genuinely believed UFOs were alien, SETI would have a $200bn budget. Rather than the tiny sum of $10m.
 

The Firestarter

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If the US genuinely believed UFOs were alien, SETI would have a $200bn budget and NASA $100bn. Rather than the tiny sums of $10m and $22bn respectively.
Hypothetically , if they believed these were ET, do you really think any of these public organisations would be dealing with them ?
 

luke511

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What I found most interesting was the massive variation in what each said of the likely number of planets in our galaxy. Varied from 2 trillion to 100 million.
Anyway, the most significant issue was the sheer distances between stars. Something I have frequently mentioned.
You are extremely unlikely to go to the effort of travelling countless light years to explore our tiny planet without an incredibly important reason, just to flit around the skies.
Compare that with what we have been and are doing to other planets and moons in our solar system.
Deploying a highly advanced AI drone to monitor an extraterrestrial alpha species on another planet from afar would be more that just "flittering around in the skies". It's immensely valuable on so many levels scientifically, it would make sense for a species with these sort of capabilities to send in a drone in every direction you know there's life on that planet by looking at the atmosphere. That is definitely something we'd do if we had the capabilities, the longer they're left undisturbed, the more valuable the data, natural evolution. That could've been done in our galaxy a long time ago.
 

nimic

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Deploying a highly advanced AI drone to monitor an extraterrestrial alpha species on another planet from afar would be more that just "flittering around in the skies". It's immensely valuable on so many levels scientifically, it would make sense for a species with these sort of capabilities to send in a drone in every direction you know there's life on that planet by looking at the atmosphere. That is definitely something we'd do if we had the capabilities, the longer they're left undisturbed, the more valuable the data, natural evolution. That could've been done in our galaxy a long time ago.
But why would they let their highly advanced AI monitor drones get spotted literally thousands of times? At that point you're actively interfering in the evolution of said alpha species, which would go against what would pretty much always be the prime directive for any such venture.
 

luke511

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But why would they let their highly advanced AI monitor drones get spotted literally thousands of times? At that point you're actively interfering in the evolution of said alpha species, which would go against what would pretty much always be the prime directive for any such venture.
Not really, it seems they've done a good job staying out of reach so far, if it's really that. Right now is a very interesting time in Earth's history with everything that's going on, no wonder it's hot.
 

nimic

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Not really, it seems they've done a good job staying out of reach so far, if it's really that. Right now is a very interesting time in Earth's history with everything that's going on, no wonder it's hot.
If we're assuming some UFOs are actual aliens, then they must have been spotted a lot of times. Honestly though, it's a miracle that they haven't been spotted more, considering we've gone from cameras being rarely on hand to damn near literally every person on Earth having a camera in their pocket.

 

luke511

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If we're assuming some UFOs are actual aliens, then they must have been spotted a lot of times. Honestly though, it's a miracle that they haven't been spotted more, considering we've gone from cameras being rarely on hand to damn near literally every person on Earth having a camera in their pocket.

You realise that mobile camera phones are optimised to take photos at an arms length? How many people have you seen carrying one of these around with them?



There's countless mobile photos and videos of apparent UFOs in the sky but 99% of them are worthless because mobile camera phones do a terrible job at capturing detail when taking photos or videos of things in the sky, especially at night.
 

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Considering all the potentially civilization-ending tech in development atm, now would be a good time to be visited by an intelligence who made it through
 

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If we're assuming some UFOs are actual aliens, then they must have been spotted a lot of times. Honestly though, it's a miracle that they haven't been spotted more, considering we've gone from cameras being rarely on hand to damn near literally every person on Earth having a camera in their pocket.


Not to mention a billion cctv cameras.
 

MrMarcello

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What I found most interesting was the massive variation in what each said of the likely number of planets in our galaxy. Varied from 2 trillion to 100 million.
Anyway, the most significant issue was the sheer distances between stars. Something I have frequently mentioned.
You are extremely unlikely to go to the effort of travelling countless light years to explore our tiny planet without an incredibly important reason, just to flit around the skies.
Compare that with what we have been and are doing to other planets and moons in our solar system.
So, you don't think aliens would go for a Sunday drive in the universe?
 

nimic

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You're deliberately underestimating phone cameras, or else you haven't updated your view since 2004. Maybe modern phone cameras don't come with zoom lenses, but they're perfectly capable of taking high resolution pictures of stuff that is fairly far away. They also have increasingly sophisticated software. I'm not saying that most UFO captures wouldn't be low quality in suboptimal conditions, but with the amount of cameras out there, by pure chance a lot of them would happen in good conditions.
 

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They've caught things in the sky as well. They have the same issue as mobile phones unsurprisingly.
They've caught things which are unexplained. Modern CCTV cameras have excellent lenses so I'm pretty sure if aliens were buzzing around in plain sight we'd have far better images than are currently around.
 

luke511

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You're deliberately underestimating phone cameras, or else you haven't updated your view since 2004. Maybe modern phone cameras don't come with zoom lenses, but they're perfectly capable of taking high resolution pictures of stuff that is fairly far away. They also have increasingly sophisticated software. I'm not saying that most UFO captures wouldn't be low quality in suboptimal conditions, but with the amount of cameras out there, by pure chance a lot of them would happen in good conditions.
I could show you plenty of examples of interesting unidentified things in the sky caught by mobile cameras, but I can guarantee you the one thing you will complain about is the lack of true detail caught when filming something in the sky. Why's that? Because it was filmed using a mobile camera and not a proper lens optimised for that sort of capture.
 

nimic

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I could show you plenty of examples of interesting unidentified things in the sky caught by mobile cameras, but I can guarantee you the one thing you will complain about is the lack of true detail caught when filming something in the sky. Why's that? Because it was filmed using a mobile camera and not a proper lens optimised for that sort of capture.
We're seeing the same things, but we have different conclusions. I agree that all pictures or videos of interesting unidentified things (i. e. could be alien) are lacking in detail. But that's because if they were higher quality it would be even more obvious that they have a mundane explanation (and so all the higher quality captures of the same things aren't actually unidentified). Whatever you're left with after that is simply fake, which relies on a lack of detail (though most of them get easily exposed as fake anyway by for example VFX experts).
 

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We're seeing the same things, but we have different conclusions. I agree that all pictures or videos of interesting unidentified things (i. e. could be alien) are lacking in detail. But that's because if they were higher quality it would be even more obvious that they have a mundane explanation (and so all the higher quality captures of the same things aren't actually unidentified). Whatever you're left with after that is simply fake, which relies on a lack of detail (though most of them get easily exposed as fake anyway by for example VFX experts).
What do you think is the motive for security state people and intelligence agency guys, or politicians like Harry Reid to be saying they're very concerned, think its real, etc?
 

nimic

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What do you think is the motive for security state people and intelligence agency guys, or politicians like Harry Reid to be saying they're very concerned, think its real, etc?
They're just people, ultimately. Hitler was into the occult. Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies. There are actual, qualified scientists who don't believe in global warming. Some people who are otherwise intelligent believe in Flat Earth. People have irrational beliefs all the time.
 

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Should we be able to detect them though?

I'm genuinely interested by what means we would detect an advanced civilisation on the other side of the Galaxy with, my knowledge on the subject is admittedly pretty small. But from everything I understand our ability to detect planets is somewhat limited. We can either measure their size by how much light they block out if the plane of their orbit is in direct line of sight or by observing over a number of years the affect their gravity has on the movement of their parent star.

How would we detect another civilization?
Radio waves or other EMR for a start. Hard to totally shield (and why would you) and likely to be detected if civilisations are close enough to travel here.
 
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luke511

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We're seeing the same things, but we have different conclusions. I agree that all pictures or videos of interesting unidentified things (i. e. could be alien) are lacking in detail. But that's because if they were higher quality it would be even more obvious that they have a mundane explanation (and so all the higher quality captures of the same things aren't actually unidentified). Whatever you're left with after that is simply fake, which relies on a lack of detail (though most of them get easily exposed as fake anyway by for example VFX experts).
An example of what I mean:


I'm not saying it's alien in origin but it's an interesting video, there's no way to confirm anything about it though because it's a video taken with a mobile phone lacking in significant detail due to its limitations, hence my point.
 

Wibble

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What do you think is the motive for security state people and intelligence agency guys, or politicians like Harry Reid to be saying they're very concerned, think its real, etc?
The same flaws in logic and getting carried away with an idea to the point where preconception overcomes all that affect most UFO enthusiasts. Harry Reid is a UFO enthusiast who threw $22 million taxpayer dollars at UFOs but achieved nothing apart from employment for other UFO enthusiasts.
 

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An example of what I mean:


I'm not saying it's alien in origin but it's an interesting video, there's no way to confirm anything about it though because it's a video taken with a mobile phone lacking in significant detail due to its limitations, hence my point.
Why is that in any way interesting? It might be a contrail I suppose but from 10 seconds in it looks like a Cessna flying away from the camera.
 

luke511

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Why is that in any way interesting? It might be a contrail I suppose but from 10 seconds in it looks like a Cessna flying away from the camera.
That's the whole point, you can't even tell if it's a contrail or a cessna, and there's no way to confirm it. Hypothetically, if the one time an alien craft of some sort was captured by a mobile camera, there would be no way to officially confirm it due to the limitations in quality, therefore it would not be valued.
 

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But why would they let their highly advanced AI monitor drones get spotted literally thousands of times? At that point you're actively interfering in the evolution of said alpha species, which would go against what would pretty much always be the prime directive for any such venture.
My view exactly.
 

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That's the whole point, you can't even tell if it's a contrail or a cessna, and there's no way to confirm it. Hypothetically, if the one time an alien craft of some sort was captured by a mobile camera, there would be no way to officially confirm it due to the limitations in quality, therefore it would not be valued.
The same argument could be made about it being Santa. It just seems such a waste of time.
 

stevoc

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Lots of potential ways, here’s a couple. Slightly more exotic one. Some others. Maybe this.
There first one sounds interesting but I assume that isn't in place yet if they're only receiving the funding?

Dyson spheres fascinate me, you would imagine any very advanced civilization would be harnessing massive amounts of energy from stars. If I remember correctly a few years ago didn't they think they found what could have been a dyson sphere or some sort of structure that was making a star blink as they were observing it?
 

stevoc

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What I found most interesting was the massive variation in what each said of the likely number of planets in our galaxy. Varied from 2 trillion to 100 million.
Anyway, the most significant issue was the sheer distances between stars. Something I have frequently mentioned.
You are extremely unlikely to go to the effort of travelling countless light years to explore our tiny planet without an incredibly important reason, just to flit around the skies.
Compare that with what we have been and are doing to other planets and moons in our solar system.
I personally doubt these things are Alien probes. But exploration itself is surely a valid enough reason to send probes to another planet. We are doing the same thing on Mars right now.
 

stevoc

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Radio waves or other EMR for a start. Hard to totally shield (and why would you) and likely to be detected if civilisations are close enough to travel here.
Seti's search for radio waves has always seemed a bit of a long shot to me. From everything I've read over the years the chances of ever being able to detect radio waves from another planet are slim given how radio waves dissipate in space. It would have to be a very strong burst directed virtually right at us for us to pick up I'd imagine. We are already broadcasting much less radio waves than in the past with the switch to Digital, so advanced civilizations probably wouldn't use any sort of radio technology at all. There seems to be a consensus that the timeframe that an intelligent civilization would broadcast radio waves into space would be relatively small.
 
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