Topic: UAPs over America: real or balloons??

[lobsterboy]

All fair points.

As I posted, I always try to keep an open mind - and I love the idea that 'we are not alone'.

And yes, I wasn't suggesting 'we' were first - but given what we know about how violent the Earth's formation was and the billions of years it took to 'settle down' enough for single cells to emerge - I'm assuming other planets would have similar 'timeframes' - but not exactly the same of course.

I just find it difficult to get my head around it.

its highly likely there is other life out there but space is vast, mind boggling in size and also incredibly hostile to life as we know it.
So the chances of highly civilised lifeforms with the ability to cross unimaginable distances is probably quite limited.
More likely experimental military drones etc. and the UFO stuff is simply good cover.

UAP - under age pensioner?

Judging by many American accounts, Unwanted Anal Probe?

[lionel_messias]

its highly likely there is other life out there but space is vast, mind boggling in size and also incredibly hostile to life as we know it.
So the chances of highly civilised lifeforms with the ability to cross unimaginable distances is probably quite limited.
More likely experimental military drones etc. and the UFO stuff is simply good cover.

Seems like there is more than enough evidence to suggest it can't all be drones, even very clever ones. A couple of the expert aviators on Merged podcast would dissuade you of that.

I'm sure there have been drones and balloons wrongly mistaken for UAP though.

[lobsterboy]

Still more likely than aliens.
Not saying they don't exist but again the distances and energy requirements involved with interstellar travel are immense.

[lionel_messias]

Still more likely than aliens.
Not saying they don't exist but again the distances and energy requirements involved with interstellar travel are immense.

They are certainly immense and vast.

But think of an average Victorian Briton, sitting there minding their own business, and then you hand them an iPhone 14 with ChatGPT on it. Vastly immense wizardy they could not dare comprehend, and built by humans not that many generations from them!

[A Red Abroad]

So the chances of highly civilised lifeforms with the ability to cross unimaginable distances is probably quite limited.

Written more succinctly than I did.

[lionel_messias]

With people on large distances across the Galaxy and further.


~On sightings and video of UAP/UFOs from the United States alone, there is enough evidence to investigate further.


You won't find a person more credible or capable than former F18 pilot, Ryan Graves. Worth Googling. Whenever he talks about his squadron over Virginia being buzzed, every night by "objects" do pretty extraordinary manuovres he could not sound less impressed, he is just calm and factual and technical on what they recorded and saw.

There is now famous video of this but listening to him is more convincing still, this guy did not want to part of the UAP thing, he teaches aviation safety and just wants more awareness and research on this phenomenon. Senators are being briefed in congress by credible pilots like him and Biden signed a law protecting whistle-blowers in the military who want to report such incidents.


Could we be about to hear much more or even something major from the US over the next 18 months??

[A Red Abroad]

With people on large distances across the Galaxy and further.


~On sightings and video of UAP/UFOs from the United States alone, there is enough evidence to investigate further.


You won't find a person more credible or capable than former F18 pilot, Ryan Graves. Worth Googling. Whenever he talks about his squadron over Virginia being buzzed, every night by "objects" do pretty extraordinary manuovres he could not sound less impressed, he is just calm and factual and technical on what they recorded and saw.

There is now famous video of this but listening to him is more convincing still, this guy did not want to part of the UAP thing, he teaches aviation safety and just wants more awareness and research on this phenomenon. Senators are being briefed in congress by credible pilots like him and Biden signed a law protecting whistle-blowers in the military who want to report such incidents.


Could we be about to hear much more or even something major from the US over the next 18 months??

Maybe.

I reckon Biden might be a Trekkie. 

[lionel_messias]

Maybe.

I reckon Biden might be a Trekkie. 

He looks like an FBI G-man from the 1960s for sure!

Plus the guy is 80, what does he have to lose?

[TSC]

Maybe.

I reckon Biden might be a Trekkie. 

Beam me up Trumpie

[[new username under construction]]

I always liked the idea of a space based race, with the ability to travel close to or past the speed of light. With time being relative that's why we would always see the same shaped craft decades apart

["Bobber" Thanks :)]

With people on large distances across the Galaxy and further.


~On sightings and video of UAP/UFOs from the United States alone, there is enough evidence to investigate further.


You won't find a person more credible or capable than former F18 pilot, Ryan Graves. Worth Googling. Whenever he talks about his squadron over Virginia being buzzed, every night by "objects" do pretty extraordinary manuovres he could not sound less impressed, he is just calm and factual and technical on what they recorded and saw.

There is now famous video of this but listening to him is more convincing still, this guy did not want to part of the UAP thing, he teaches aviation safety and just wants more awareness and research on this phenomenon. Senators are being briefed in congress by credible pilots like him and Biden signed a law protecting whistle-blowers in the military who want to report such incidents.


Could we be about to hear much more or even something major from the US over the next 18 months??

He is very impressive but then I find listening to most pilots are. He has a new podcast called Merged Podcast where he talks with other pilots who have seen unusual phenomena whilst flying

His chat with pilot Gary Voorhis is really good and Gary’s encounter last year of the “race track” is absolutely fascinating, where he describes objects going round in a circular race track pattern at 80k feet and then further objects dropping down and joining the “race”. All this happened whilst he himself was travelling at 500mph at 40k feet and the objects stayed with him in his view at the 10 o’clock position above him for 30 mins, racing round in this race track like pattern. He gives various reasons why it couldn’t have satellites of other aircraft. Other pilots flying at the same time witnessed this too.

I think with what’s happening in the US congress and the bills that were passed to protect and allow witnesses under NDAs to testify to congress without fear, which will begin happening in the near future will be worth keeping an eye on, and likely we will know a lot more in the next 12-18 months. Some people believe we are about to see disclosure over this period and the process has already started.

[A Red Abroad]

Beam me up Trumpie

It's life Donald, but not as we know it.

[BER]

It's all a grift and/or a distraction.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/jHDlfIaBEqw&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/jHDlfIaBEqw&amp;</a>

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Still more likely than aliens.
Not saying they don't exist but again the distances and energy requirements involved with interstellar travel are immense.

Well that really depends on whether reality is what we think it is.

For instance, if different realities or dimensions were possible then distance might not be the thing we think it is.

Einstein's 'Spooky Action at a Distance' (or quantum entanglement) suggests that we don't have all the answers and mankind seems on the verge of another paradigm shift into new theories.

Look at the impact of Galileo, Newton, Einstein and others. Who knows when the next breakthrough might come and those were done in about a thousand years.

If you did have some alien culture that had been around for 1,000,0000 years or 1,000,000,000 years then you'd imagine that this timeframe would allow them to discover stuff beyond their first couple of thousands of years of reason.

As Arthur C. Clarke opined “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

[[new username under construction]]

It's all a grift and/or a distraction.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/jHDlfIaBEqw&amp;" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/jHDlfIaBEqw&amp;</a>

Yeah that channel likes to think they are experts in CGI but do some terrible stuff

[Alan_X]

My guess is the sheer maths suggests there must be other civilisations in the vastness of our galaxy and many others too. Some may have reached our technological level millions of years ago.

I'll come back to some of the other points but I think this is a massively anthropocentric and Developed-world-centric view of the Universe. It assumes that evolution has somehow been geared towards the development of human beings (on Earth) and that technology is an extension of evolution that automatically follows.

That's using a single datapoint (humans) and extrapolating across the entire Universe. There are 8-9 million species on Earth and 99 percent that have ever existed are now extinct. 800,000,000 species and only one has developed language and technology.

And the development of technology was the result of a series of very specific circumstances. Human civilisations existed for thousands of years with developments in farming, cereal cultivation, domestication of animals, the development of writing, mathematics, construction etc but it was the avialbility of fossil fuels (first coal, then oil) that fueled the indiustrial revolution and kick-started the technological revolution.

Coal was laid down 300 million years ago. Millions of years of rainforest growth covering most of the Earth's landmass was gradually turned into coal. Forget about advanced technology for a moment, could industry develop without an available source of energy dense fuel? And would the Indiustrial Revolution have happened without the expansion of the textile industry and the slave trade?

I could go on but we as a species didn't progress from hominid ancestors to owners of iPhones and Twitter handles because it's an automatic process. There are so many variables (I think the Drake equation is simplistic nonsense) and so many moments in the development that led to modern humans that could have gone diferently that the development of a technological civilisation Earth is a multi-million to one chance.

At some point in the past, the population of our human ancestors was reduced to between 10,000 and 30,000. Suppose that small population had been reduced to zero by some event. Which alternative species would have stepped up, started developing agriculture, seafaring, mathematics and building with stone?  Which ape, reptile or insect would now be manning the radiotelescopes scanning the skies for first contact with their alien kin?

It's all so anthropocentric. We see ourselves as the pinnacle of evolution so the pinnacle of evolution (assuming evolution is a thing for alien life) must be some form of "us" or if not "us" then a more advanced version of "us".

In fact it's even more sad than that. Not only do we want alen life to be a version of us - but they also have to have a massive obsession with us that makes them travel across vast distances just to have a look at us.

[Alan_X]

Yeah that channel likes to think they are experts in CGI but do some terrible stuff


Their analysis was spot on. When someone posts yet another blurry 'triangular UFO' the reaction should be oh for fucks sake, it's an out of focus light shot through a cheap three-blade diaphragm.





Many UFO/UAP sightings are unexplained... That's unsurprising when the quality of information is something like this:



A vague blur with no scale or context, that is clearly some kind of camera artefact.

The second one is spot on - it's almost certainly a parallax effect. I found this example of parallax with a quick search.

https://st2.depositphotos.com/4885551/11231/v/600/depositphotos_112318688-stock-video-hot-air-balloons-in-the.mp4

The balloon looks like it's moving against the backgroundbut it's actually stationary and the appearance of movement is created by the movement of the camera.

And the last one - they pick up the key points - the 'changes in attitude' of the blur match the rotation of the camera indicating it's a camera effect not real movement and the movement against the clouds is another example of parallax.

Of course they could be alien spacecraft but so could anything. Occam's Razor suggests they're something more mundane.

[lionel_messias]

He is very impressive but then I find listening to most pilots are. He has a new podcast called Merged Podcast where he talks with other pilots who have seen unusual phenomena whilst flying

His chat with pilot Gary Voorhis is really good and Gary’s encounter last year of the “race track” is absolutely fascinating, where he describes objects going round in a circular race track pattern at 80k feet and then further objects dropping down and joining the “race”. All this happened whilst he himself was travelling at 500mph at 40k feet and the objects stayed with him in his view at the 10 o’clock position above him for 30 mins, racing round in this race track like pattern. He gives various reasons why it couldn’t have satellites of other aircraft. Other pilots flying at the same time witnessed this too.

I think with what’s happening in the US congress and the bills that were passed to protect and allow witnesses under NDAs to testify to congress without fear, which will begin happening in the near future will be worth keeping an eye on, and likely we will know a lot more in the next 12-18 months. Some people believe we are about to see disclosure over this period and the process has already started.

I share your summary there. It seems like there are moves on Capitol Hill, you could struggle to
believe what's happening but it is real. Bottom line is: if you train an intelligence person for 20 years
to be a fighter pilot and they tell you what they have seen, that their Radar picked up; best to listen and investigate further.

On Merged, The Mark Hulsey episode is interesting too. I'm guessing what we're waiting for is even better/clearer and more compelling evidence to be seen, verified by scientists and then what, taken to Joe Biden? Guessing it will have to be irrefutable otherwise you can already guess the Republican attacks that Joe has gone senile.

One way or another, it will be fascinating. Kind of feels that with the rise of AI and chatbot technology aw well, BIG change is a coming....

[Dr. Beaker]

I'll come back to some of the other points but I think this is a massively anthropocentric.........

In fact it's even more sad than that. Not only do we want alen life to be a version of us - but they also have to have a massive obsession with us that makes them travel across vast distances just to have a look at us.

It's hard to get away from anthropocentrism though because that's all we've got to go on. I read something by the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees and he said something along the lines of us being more likely to encounter technological entities rather than biological entities because the the biological phase may only last a few thousand years (which probably won't coincide with our few thousand years) but their robotic offspring will last for millions (if not eternity).

Great (if scary) theory, but painfully anthropocentric.

The bit in bold is even scarier because it's as though we have a need to seek out intergalactic Evertonians.

[A Red Abroad]

It's hard to get away from anthropocentrism though because that's all we've got to go on. I read something by the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees and he said something along the lines of us being more likely to encounter technological entities rather than biological entities because the the biological phase may only last a few thousand years (which probably won't coincide with our few thousand years) but their robotic offspring will last for millions (if not eternity).

Great (if scary) theory, but painfully anthropocentric.

The bit in bold is even scarier because it's as though we have a need to seek out intergalactic Evertonians.

 

[lionel_messias]

I'll come back to some of the other points but I think this is a massively anthropocentric and Developed-world-centric view of the Universe. It assumes that evolution has somehow been geared towards the development of human beings (on Earth) and that technology is an extension of evolution that automatically follows.

That's using a single datapoint (humans) and extrapolating across the entire Universe. There are 8-9 million species on Earth and 99 percent that have ever existed are now extinct. 800,000,000 species and only one has developed language and technology.

This is the kind of quality thinking I wasn't sure we'd get on this thread (I thought it might die day one to be honest).

Point taken, our only reference point is "US". The counter I think is the sheer mathematics of the galaxy and universe. Is it also arrogant to imagine a series of incredibly rare coincidences produced us, as a species and (as you say) preserved us from disaster before we came to iPhone stage?

There is also the theory of Panspermia, which has been around since the 1970s (Fred Hoyle I think) and is still talked of today; that life might be seeded by bacteria that floats around the cosmos. Now, as you've alluded to as well, life is so diverse on this little rock, it would be absurd to imagine it not looking very strange to us in other places.

But did it occur only here, or is there is something in this universe that means the recipe can be thrown together in different but equally fruity ways....elsewhere.

Given that we have ChatGPT 4 now, Dr Beaker's point is chilling: given enough time will the only things left as the universe implodes be bots, that were once produced by flesh and blood beings - the faintest of echos on their quantum displays showing Ian Rush swivelling in the box at Wembley...

Like tears in the rain.









*"The Federation of Technological Civilisations, Tau Ceti: just like being in a foreign country."

[lionel_messias]

Possible NEWS.



Today, after 3pm UK is the Senate hearing, looking into UAP investigations:



https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-mission-activities-oversight-and-budget-of-the-all-domain-anomaly-resolution-office



Will it be revelatory? Unlikely, but it might be a step forward.

[Alan_X]

UFO Twitter was so excited before the Senate hearing. It was going to be earth-shattering...

Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office:

"I want to underscore today that only a very small percentage of UAP reports display signatures that could reasonably be described as 'anomalous,'" Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities.

"The majority of unidentified objects reported to AARO demonstrate mundane characteristics of balloons, unmanned aerial systems, clutter, natural phenomena, or other readily explainable sources," he added.

"I should also state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off-world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics," said Kirkpatrick.

Oh...

Two videos were released for the hearing. The 'South Asian' video was initially described as a fast moving object with air disturbance behind. It's actually an airliner and the 'air disturbance' is an artefact of compression. The 'speed' relative to the drone being filmed is a classic effect of parallax.

The other, filmed in the Middle East, was still described as unknown but when you take account of the fact that it was also filmed by a Reaper drone the likelihood that the object was a balloon or something similar increases. A Reaper drone would be flying at a speed of between 75 and 250mph at a height of up to 50,000ft. The height above the ground gives the impression that the camera is stationary, whereas it's travelling at speed. An object floating in the air between the ground and the drone would appear to be moving against the ground even if it was completely stationary. This is the same effect as the 'tic-tac' footage. When the camera locks on it emphasises the impression of an object moving against the ground. 

As a quick exercise I modelled something similar in CAD and made a movie of the result. It's just the initial phase of the camera at 5,000ft passing over a stationary object at 2,500ft but it looks like it's zooming past.

The problem with so many UFO/UAP believers is that they don't understand things like parallax, relative motion and so on.

They don't understand how a three-blade iris like this:


will create this:


when it captures a light out of focus.

And so on.

[lionel_messias]

Yes, Alan, it is true the hearing yesterday was the dampest of squids. It was like Dr Kirkpatrick walked over to the UAP Twitter crowd and hosed them down with a foam fire extinguisher.

However:


There are expert witnesses. 24 have come forward. Would be interesting to hear folk like Ryan Graves and Commander David Fravor speak under oath. What they have seen is real, it has been recorded and I think it would have an impact on the wider public and politicians if they are allowed to hear it.

The classified version of yesterday's hearing ran first. It ran over time, perhaps we might hear if it had any impact on the senators who were there: most did not bother to attend the "Say nothing" public hearing that followed it.

On balance, yes it is possible to hoax and to misunderstand things but have the last 75 years been witness to the weirdest and most in-depth mass delusion in human history?

Or is there something real to grapple with here...

[lobsterboy]

Given that we have ChatGPT 4 now, Dr Beaker's point is chilling: given enough time will the only things left as the universe implodes be bots, that were once produced by flesh and blood beings - the faintest of echos on their quantum displays showing Ian Rush swivelling in the box at Wembley...

Like tears in the rain.

The thing I find chilling or maybe simply sad, is that the universe itself also appears to be expanding far faster than the speed of light.
This is effectively creating an event horizon to our observable universe.
Already there are many, many galaxies we can never see as they have passed beyond this horizon and this number will only increase as everything speeds away from us faster than their light can travel. They will simply redshift out of existence as far as we are concerned.
Meaning, in the extremely unlikely event humanity survives that long, the local bubble our descendants will look upon will be devoid of the myriad of galaxies that we can currently observe!

I think there is undoubtedly other life out there but the chances of galaxy spanning civilisations is quite remote, would take an extraordinary set of circumstances to develop and then the chances of them ever visiting us is even more remote again. And getting constantly more remote.

Its not that I don't want to believe, simply that the science and evidence doesn't support it yet.

[Alan_X]

Yes, Alan, it is true the hearing yesterday was the dampest of squids. It was like Dr Kirkpatrick walked over to the UAP Twitter crowd and hosed them down with a foam fire extinguisher.

However:


There are expert witnesses. 24 have come forward. Would be interesting to hear folk like Ryan Graves and Commander David Fravor speak under oath. What they have seen is real, it has been recorded and I think it would have an impact on the wider public and politicians if they are allowed to hear it.

The classified version of yesterday's hearing ran first. It ran over time, perhaps we might hear if it had any impact on the senators who were there: most did not bother to attend the "Say nothing" public hearing that followed it.

On balance, yes it is possible to hoax and to misunderstand things but have the last 75 years been witness to the weirdest and most in-depth mass delusion in human history?

Or is there something real to grapple with here...

I don't think testifying under oath is relevant. I'm sure they believe what they say but it's a mistake to assume that pilots know what they're looking at. The Chilean Navy UFO was filmed by navy pilots using forward looking radar. It showed two 'orbs' flying in sync and then releasing an unidentified cloud of hot material.



A panel of experts looked at it and couldn't come to a conclusion. Long story short, the information was released publicly and a group of online analysts worked out exactly what it was. The story is here:

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4838

The reason the pilots and panel of experts couldn't identify what was going on was because they were experts in the wrong things and made incorrect assumptions.

You say that what Fravor saw was real but what does that mean?

[lionel_messias]

I don't think testifying under oath is relevant. I'm sure they believe what they say but it's a mistake to assume that pilots know what they're looking at. The Chilean Navy UFO was filmed by navy pilots using forward looking radar. It showed two 'orbs' flying in sync and then releasing an unidentified cloud of hot material.



A panel of experts looked at it and couldn't come to a conclusion. Long story short, the information was released publicly and a group of online analysts worked out exactly what it was. The story is here:

https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4838

The reason the pilots and panel of experts couldn't identify what was going on was because they were experts in the wrong things and made incorrect assumptions.

You say that what Fravor saw was real but what does that mean?

Have a listen to David Fravor's story. Will probably take 20 mins of your time. You might see what I mean.

I'm guessing you are not suggesting every single case reported in either the last 5 years, or 77, is bogus or nothing of interest here?

[lionel_messias]

The thing I find chilling or maybe simply sad, is that the universe itself also appears to be expanding far faster than the speed of light.
This is effectively creating an event horizon to our observable universe.
Already there are many, many galaxies we can never see as they have passed beyond this horizon and this number will only increase as everything speeds away from us faster than their light can travel. They will simply redshift out of existence as far as we are concerned.
Meaning, in the extremely unlikely event humanity survives that long, the local bubble our descendants will look upon will be devoid of the myriad of galaxies that we can currently observe!

I think there is undoubtedly other life out there but the chances of galaxy spanning civilisations is quite remote, would take an extraordinary set of circumstances to develop and then the chances of them ever visiting us is even more remote again. And getting constantly more remote.

Its not that I don't want to believe, simply that the science and evidence doesn't support it yet.

What you are saying here might be the saddest thing I have ever read. Certainly outside of the transfer forum.

We might console ourselves in the bosoms of our fellow human beings, some of them even agreable to us.

I am not clever enough, or equipped with enough context to argue your point but presumably any extraterrestrial visitor hypothesis now already would need to involve "exotic" propulsion systems enabling pilots (living or AI) to traverse the Galaxy. Expelling fuel out the back of a craft won't get anyone too far in this universe.

[Jiminy Cricket]

Yes, Alan, it is true the hearing yesterday was the dampest of squids. It was like Dr Kirkpatrick walked over to the UAP Twitter crowd and hosed them down with a foam fire extinguisher.

However:

There are expert witnesses. 24 have come forward. Would be interesting to hear folk like Ryan Graves and Commander David Fravor speak under oath. What they have seen is real, it has been recorded and I think it would have an impact on the wider public and politicians if they are allowed to hear it.

I am uncertain of how being an expert in flying a plane makes one an expert in identifying and explaining optical illusions of various kinds.

[lobsterboy]

What you are saying here might be the saddest thing I have ever read. Certainly outside of the transfer forum.

We might console ourselves in the bosoms of our fellow human beings, some of them even agreable to us.

I am not clever enough, or equipped with enough context to argue your point but presumably any extraterrestrial visitor hypothesis now already would need to involve "exotic" propulsion systems enabling pilots (living or AI) to traverse the Galaxy. Expelling fuel out the back of a craft won't get anyone too far in this universe.

There is the anthropomorphic element to this which assumes aliens would follow the same path as us.
The fact is they would be aliens and we cannot assume they would have the same priorities.

Then there is the size, distances and time required. They'd have to find us first. No where near as easy as it sounds. Its a very big galaxy, over 125,000 light years across and around 400 billion stars. 

The exotic propulsion science is the stuff I personally struggle with. We are nowhere near it ourselves, we haven't even set foot on Mars yet.
Meanwhile our own technological advances are bringing our planet to the brink and sending many of the lifeforms who share it with us to extinction.

Maybe that's the answer to the Fermi paradox in the end.
Civilisations that reach a certain level of technological advancement simply wipe themselves out in pursuit of that advancement.

[Alan_X]

Have a listen to David Fravor's story. Will probably take 20 mins of your time. You might see what I mean.

I'm guessing you are not suggesting every single case reported in either the last 5 years, or 77, is bogus or nothing of interest here?

I have heard his story and no doubt he saw something but I don't think he's a great witness. There's a video online of Mick West responding to Fravor and it's apparent Fravor doesn't fully understand the equipment he was using.

Is every case in the last 77 years bogus? It depends on your definition.

Are there real videos with things that are difficult to interpret on first viewing? Yes.
Are there large numbers of fakes? Yes.
Are there videos without enough data to make a definitive statement about what is there? Yes.
Are the vast majority of the video and photos misidentified balloons, planes, birds, clouds etc? Yes.
is there a single one that is conclusive evidence of alien visitation? No.

The quality of work being done by skeptics far exceeds anything producd by believers who come across as credulous and naive.

This is one of Mick West's videos about the 'Gimbal' video that explains beyond doubt for me, exactly what we are seeing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

You can access the model he uses here: https://www.metabunk.org/gimbal/

Go Fast analysis here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-delonges-to-the-stars-academy-bird-balloon.9569/

[Alan_X]

What you are saying here might be the saddest thing I have ever read. Certainly outside of the transfer forum.

We might console ourselves in the bosoms of our fellow human beings, some of them even agreable to us.

I am not clever enough, or equipped with enough context to argue your point but presumably any extraterrestrial visitor hypothesis now already would need to involve "exotic" propulsion systems enabling pilots (living or AI) to traverse the Galaxy. Expelling fuel out the back of a craft won't get anyone too far in this universe.

I think it's likely that we are getting to the end of a period where the first rockets and nuclear power seemed to offer the real possibility that we could reach other planets with ease and travel to the stars. We knew a little of other planets but had never visited them so could imagine Venusians, Martians and Moonmen existed.

We know better now unfortunately. There are no civilisations on our neighbour planets. No Martian canals and no Venusian forests. After the early days of Science Fiction when rockets travelled between the stars, we now have to imagine Warp drives and hibernation to overcome the reality of interstellar travel.

Our closest exoplanet is Proxima Centauri b, just four light years away. At light speed (186,000 miles/sec) it would take four years to get there. The fastest speed by any spacecraft is 100 mps. At ten times that speed (1000 m/s) it would take 7,000 years.

Proxima Centauri b's 'year' lasts just 11.2 days and encounters bouts of extreme UV radiation that would strip away hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen from the atmosphere.

UFO believers live in a mid-twentieth century sci-fi world when everything was possible. There were bound to be aliens coming here because by the 21st century we'd be living on the moon and exploring other galaxies.

This was my childhood. Dan Dare:

Isaac Asimov and the illustrations of Chris Foss:

And of course there was this:


Which spawned a new generation of sightings.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Still more likely than aliens.
Not saying they don't exist but again the distances and energy requirements involved with interstellar travel are immense.

If a race had sussed fusion power then their energy provision wouldn't be much of a problem. We're close to it ourselves and we've only been at this sciency thing for a few hundred years. If you had races that were millions of years old and scattered around the cosmos, then it's likely we couldn't even comprehend their technology and they'd probably know a bit about reality

There are also less exotic means of getting to very high velocity. Take a big rock - or preferrably a few and fire rockets and head to somewhere big like Jupiter or the sun. Sling shot around it and point it towards the Earth. No rockets now required. Sling shot around the Earth and point it to whatever destination you want. This rock - or preferrably a few of them need manouvering thrusters from time to time, but don't slow down. Then you get a rocket (Preferrably from the moon) and use the materials there for fuel. Fly up to the rock and catch it up and land on it. Refuel it's thrusters and repeat and repeat. They are actually working on this idea now - basically a very, very fast and very, very cheap way of getting around the solar system and perhaps even further.

This is the idea here..


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/pUjnRW-igtk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/pUjnRW-igtk</a>

[lionel_messias]

I am uncertain of how being an expert in flying a plane makes one an expert in identifying and explaining optical illusions of various kinds.

Fravor and Graves are aviators with decades experience of noticing and identifying objects and phenomena from various cockpits; weather, sattelites, drones, foreign adversaries. They are highly skilled and trained people who are entrusted to fly planes worth $20 million a pop.

While it is wrong to state any of the UAP are extraterrestrials (without "proof") to call them optical illussions is equally wrong, and blanket thinking.

[Alan_X]

Fravor and Graves are aviators with decades experience of noticing and identifying objects and phenomena from various cockpits; weather, sattelites, drones, foreign adversaries. They are highly skilled and trained people who are entrusted to fly planes worth $20 million a pop.

While it is wrong to state any of the UAP are extraterrestrials (without "proof") to call them optical illussions is equally wrong, and blanket thinking.

Fighter pilots are trained to follow orders, accept the evidence of their instruments and to shoot at things. I don't know if you actually watched the Mick West video or the model but what scuppers your argument is that the analysis showing the behaviour of "Gimbal" is an artefact is  based on the information provided by the plane's instruments and technical information about the plane and the camera system. If it's wrong there should be the same level of analysis showing how and why an alien spacecraft behaves exactly as if it was an artefact of the planes gimbal camera system.

The same is true of "Go fast" where the data on the pilot's screen shows that the object is at 13,000ft and not skimming across the ocean at low level. It's no good saying they're experts at identifying things when they got both of these completely wrong.

That's not a criticism of them as pilots doing their job. They just aren't necessarily reliable witnesses. Few of us are, especially when looking at things in the sky where there are few referece points. It's Father Ted's "this is small and those are far away" multiplied tenfold.

I saw one this morning on Twitter - an 'orb' cuting across the flight path of the Red Arrows at the Platinum Jubilee.

In the first instance, there were hundreds of thousands of people watching and no one else saw it. There were hundreds of cameras and just the one picked it up. It was almost certainly a stray balloon and the apparent motion was our old friend parallax. What made me chuckle was UFO Twitter saying it couldn't be a balloon because there weren't any helium balloons at the Platinum Jubille and the RAF would have shot them down.



That's the problem for me - Occam's razor goes out the window and people will cling to the idea that it was evidence of an alien craft rather than the possibility that there was a balloon at a massive celebration in Central London.

[Alan_X]

If a race had sussed fusion power then their energy provision wouldn't be much of a problem. We're close to it ourselves and we've only been at this sciency thing for a few hundred years. If you had races that were millions of years old and scattered around the cosmos, then it's likely we couldn't even comprehend their technology and they'd probably know a bit about reality

There are also less exotic means of getting to very high velocity. Take a big rock - or preferrably a few and fire rockets and head to somewhere big like Jupiter or the sun. Sling shot around it and point it towards the Earth. No rockets now required. Sling shot around the Earth and point it to whatever destination you want. This rock - or preferrably a few of them need manouvering thrusters from time to time, but don't slow down. Then you get a rocket (Preferrably from the moon) and use the materials there for fuel. Fly up to the rock and catch it up and land on it. Refuel it's thrusters and repeat and repeat. They are actually working on this idea now - basically a very, very fast and very, very cheap way of getting around the solar system and perhaps even further.

This is the idea here..


<a href="https://www.youtube.com/v/pUjnRW-igtk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://www.youtube.com/v/pUjnRW-igtk</a>

Andy - the slingshot method was used to achieve the fastest speed by a spacecraft (see previoius post) of 1,000 m/s. That's 7,000 years to get to the nearest exoplanet at Proxima Centauri. I'm a big Sci-Fi fan like you but sadly, the more we've learned, the less likely I think it is that there will be significant travel within or beyond the Solar System.

[lionel_messias]

I have heard his story and no doubt he saw something but I don't think he's a great witness. There's a video online of Mick West responding to Fravor and it's apparent Fravor doesn't fully understand the equipment he was using.

Is every case in the last 77 years bogus? It depends on your definition.

Are there real videos with things that are difficult to interpret on first viewing? Yes.
Are there large numbers of fakes? Yes.
Are there videos without enough data to make a definitive statement about what is there? Yes.
Are the vast majority of the video and photos misidentified balloons, planes, birds, clouds etc? Yes.
is there a single one that is conclusive evidence of alien visitation? No.

The quality of work being done by skeptics far exceeds anything producd by believers who come across as credulous and naive.

This is one of Mick West's videos about the 'Gimbal' video that explains beyond doubt for me, exactly what we are seeing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

You can access the model he uses here: https://www.metabunk.org/gimbal/

Go Fast analysis here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/go-fast-footage-from-tom-delonges-to-the-stars-academy-bird-balloon.9569/

I love how you play massive sceptic and I'm essaying the role of believer in this game.

Heard Mick West (Mick fucking West is a massive debunker.


In reality, I am in the middle with Professor Avi Loeb. He insists everything must be about data. Let's collect more of it and use a framework of known science to try and understand better what is going on. The Galileo project is looking at the skies with a lot of sensors, initially from Harvard and moving to "other locations" later this year.

That's the way to do it, I do not care for hobbyists like Mick West who knows square root of Jack Shit, and has a fixed position of "this is nothing to see at all" and he will not be moving from that position no matter what.

[Alan_X]

Here's a quick video I made showing the effect of parallax. The camera is at 25,000 ft and the red balloon is at 12,500 ft. the focus of the camera is on the far set of 'buildings'. The balloon is completely stationary.

https://i.imgur.com/jxcgQpS.mp4

[lionel_messias]

Here's a quick video I made showing the effect of parallax. The camera is at 25,000 ft and the red balloon is at 12,500 ft. the focus of the camera is on the far set of 'buildings'. The balloon is completely stationary.

https://i.imgur.com/jxcgQpS.mp4

Yeah, that's quite clever stuff.

But you know, I don't hold all my interest only in a few of these videos, in fact I have never seen the Gimbal video.

What we'll need is data and evidence of much higher quality and verification. It is why that first video shown at the hearing was kind of pointless. Yes, it looks interesting but it will never move the world or persuade anyone that we can prove anything out of the ordinary.

We need data. Top end sensor readings and HD and above imagery. I believe there is some sort of billion-pixel telescope camera releasing later this year.

[Andy @ Allerton!]

Andy - the slingshot method was used to achieve the fastest speed by a spacecraft (see previoius post) of 1,000 m/s. That's 7,000 years to get to the nearest exoplanet at Proxima Centauri. I'm a big Sci-Fi fan like you but sadly, the more we've learned, the less likely I think it is that there will be significant travel within or beyond the Solar System.

Well yeah that solution would be more to do with the local system

Fusion would likely be the answer to get more speed. If you accelerate at 1g for 1 year then you would reach a speed of 1.03 times the speed of light (Though obviously not as you can't reach c) - if you had a fusion reactor, then that would seem possible. Plus people could walk about like on Star Trek