[HN Gopher] NSA UFO Documents Index
___________________________________________________________________
NSA UFO Documents Index
Author : jolincost
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-01-13 16:20 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nsa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nsa.gov)
| orliesaurus wrote:
| If there's something out there, I hope it gets "officially"
| announced in my life-time.
| justinclift wrote:
| Wouldn't that depend on how it's done?
|
| eg A "War of the Worlds" style announcement probably isn't
| something to hope for ;)
| biolurker1 wrote:
| Chinese drones are amazing these days huh
| avl999 wrote:
| At this point the existence of the UFO phenomenon is undeniable.
| The fact that congress attached to the covid relief bill that the
| intelligence services must present a report of everything they
| know about ufos within a 180 days tells you that something is up
| and they are trying to force the hand of the intelligence
| service. I also find it interesting that since retiring Harry
| Read has openly talked about the existence of UFOs.
|
| Congress must force the government agency to immediately release
| all ufo related info to the public. The public has the right to
| know.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Agree, you have the pentagon with its task force looking into
| ufos/uaps under a formerly secret program -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_Aerial_Phenomena_...
|
| You have Commander Fravor and other decorated US fighter pilots
| with both eyewitness accounts, video evidence, and radar
| evidence on numerous encounters with unidentified craft(NYTimes
| reported on these videos as well) -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
|
| As for the 180 days to release everything about UFO's it is
| mentioned in this CNN article -
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/us/ufo-report-emergency-relie...
| swebs wrote:
| >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_UFO_videos
|
| There's more in better info in the original USS Nimitz UFO
| Incident page. But Wikipedia authors scrubbed it when they
| merged the pages for whatever reason.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=USS_Nimitz_UFO_in.
| ..
| gnopgnip wrote:
| It wasn't a covid relief bill, it was the yearly appropriations
| bill that included covid relief. It also included an update to
| the Intelligence Authorization act.
|
| It doesn't require anyone to provide a report on everything
| they know about ufos, or report anything previously classified
| to the public. There is a broad change to reduce duplication
| and waste by sharing information on unidentified aerial
| phenomena between intelligence departments, and make a report
| on how this info is shared to the senate.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| > I also find it interesting that since retiring Harry Read has
| openly talked about the existence of UFOs.
|
| This is the truly interesting point, you can question the
| material presented in document releases, but this is strange
| and obviously a clearly stated belief from someone well-aware
| of things behind the scenes beyond the knowledge of the general
| public.
| diegocg wrote:
| Harry Reid funded the "Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification
| Program" with 22$ millions per year from 2007 to 2012 to
| research UFOs.
|
| And most of that money went to Robert Bigelow. Which happens to
| be friend of Harry Reid, is interested in UFOs and has donated
| money to Reid's campaigns (what a coincidence!)
|
| But the program was secret. Because, you know, aliens. And
| national security. Until its existence was revealed in 2017 -
| the year Reid retired from politics.
|
| I remember thinking how blatant and ingenious this corruption
| scheme was when I first heard of it. He gave money to his
| friends and even when it's publicly known nobody associates it
| with corruption because of "aliens"
| swebs wrote:
| If its that open-and-shut, why hasn't he been arrested?
| bhk wrote:
| There's no law against a member of Congress introducing or
| voting for legislation that benefits friends or donors. If
| there were, they'd all be in jail.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Because the legal system is designed and run by people in
| power and people in power aren't interested in prosecuting
| their own crimes.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| > The public has the right to know.
|
| Why? Some of the UFOs are undoubtedly military projects. Making
| them public reveals their existence to other countries.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| > congress attached to the covid relief bill
|
| They did? Got a link? I tried a Google search but found
| nothing.
| brianskarda wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/us/ufo-report-emergency-
| relie...
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Thanks!
| franksvalli wrote:
| It can be found in the Committee Comments portion of the
| Intelligence Authorization Act (IAA) for Fiscal Year 2021
| (search for "unidentified aerial phenomena"): https://www.int
| elligence.senate.gov/publications/intelligenc...
|
| Via Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/180-day-
| countdown-ufo/
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| Thanks!
| NationalPark wrote:
| I think we can pretty summarily dismiss all of this with,
| "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Given
| that every inch of the developed world is now covered with high
| resolution cameras, and UFO sightings via these devices have
| suspiciously _not_ exploded in number, it 's pretty clear that
| these reports were misidentifications, lies, and
| counterintelligence operations.
|
| Would it be cool if aliens were hanging out with us? Probably.
| Is it happening? Almost certainly not.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| I challenge you to take one of these high resolution cameras
| and take a photo of the moon. Then take one and take a photo
| of a jetliner where the make of the jet is comprehensible.
|
| Yes we all carry around cameras but the sensor and lens sizes
| are all so small they are next to useless at night without a
| huge helping hand of ML based photo retouching or similar.
| techdragon wrote:
| And the finest in government scan-of-a-photocopy-of-a-
| photocopy documents such as the COMSECNAVGRU one definitely
| don't count as extra-ordinary evidence... heck some of the
| documents are barely legible evidence at best!
| Pyramus wrote:
| You are confusing two crucial things: UFOs doesn't mean
| aliens, it's simply unidentified objects. Unless you really
| do want to speculate about aliens ...
|
| > "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"
|
| The evidence gathered by David Fraser et al. is actually
| quite compelling. Definitly there seem to be natural
| phenomena that can't be explained by our current scientific
| understanding.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| It's really not, its almost completely eyewitness based and
| regardless of their "expertise," eyewitnesses are almost
| completely worthless and certainly do not qualify as
| "compelling evidence" in the arena of Science.
| anewaccount2021 wrote:
| If you say there are civilizations thriving somewhere in the
| galaxy, you're Carl Sagan.
|
| If you say our solar system may have had aliens pass by, you're
| an eccentric.
|
| If you say aliens landed on earth, you're a crank.
|
| Why is the sanity of the claimant inversely proportional to the
| distance of aliens from Earth?
| jasperry wrote:
| The larger the volume of space considered, the higher
| probability there is that a thing exists somewhere in it. Plus,
| if aliens have landed on earth, you also need to postulate a
| cover-up that has successfully prevented almost everyone from
| finding out.
|
| It's not about sanity, it's just about understanding how much
| evidence certain claims require to be considered likely.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > If you say there are civilizations thriving somewhere in the
| galaxy, you're Carl Sagan.
|
| Modern thinking is it's more likely there were civs that
| thrived, but they are all dead now. -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9kbcGfX35M
|
| https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-spacecraft-discovers-the-univ...
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Thanks a lot! The youtube link is fantastic.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Briefly put: the speed of light.
|
| It takes a long, long time to get anywhere, because light moves
| at a relative crawl compared to the distances between stars, so
| it would be a long and energy-intensive process to visit
| another planet, especially given how hard it would be to detect
| a civilization there before you departed. The Earth didn't emit
| much of a signal on radio waves until about 1900, so even if
| the aliens were only sixty light years away and could move at
| the speed of light, they'd have had to launch just as soon as
| they got some signals.
|
| Ah, but FTL, you say. But nothing. FTL implies Closed Timelike
| Curves: time travel, or the informational equivalent, with all
| of the logical paradoxes that can entail. I'd sooner believe in
| breaking the conservation of mass-energy than beating the speed
| of light.
| subsubzero wrote:
| The speed of light is a constant but we are still very behind
| in terms of understanding the universe and physics, we still
| do not have a unified theory which bridges general relativity
| to quantum mechanics. We know next to nothing about dark
| matter(haven't found any yet), also in terms of energy
| production we have not achieved - room temperature
| superconducting and fusion reactors. We can barely get
| rockets outside of earths orbits, let alone to our closest
| celestial neighbor the moon. That being said, I think given
| our current technological shortcomings we are in no position
| to rule out 100% possibility of life from another world being
| here.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| In literally every protracted discussion I've had about FTL
| since before I got my physics degree, someone has brought
| up the "science doesn't know everything yet" angle. Here's
| the thing: science is never done, it will never know for
| finally and for certain. And yet two of my objections will
| remain unaddressed:
|
| 1) FTL implies CTCs, that means paradoxes. How are those
| going to be resolved? Because the Cosmic Censor stuff never
| quite makes sense -- exactly _what_ mechanism is going to
| forbid you from opening the message that says, "Do not
| send this message back in time?"
|
| 2) Again allowing for FTL ... where are the self-
| replicating machines spreading across the cosmos? Pop to
| another star system, pop to another galaxy, or even a local
| cluster. They should have already been there. The universe
| is vast. Most species will realize that this is a terrible
| ass idea, but there's always a lunatic in a large enough
| crowd, and it'll be a pretty large crowd.
|
| Nobody ever deals with these points. People _want_ FTL to
| be true because, well, Star Trek (or Star Wars, or
| Farscape, take your pick). It 's a bit dull, plodding along
| at some small fraction of _c_ , but the universe doesn't
| have to be exciting for us. And I'm not going to bet
| otherwise.
| ikrenji wrote:
| 1, without having a mechanism for FTL how can we say for
| certain that it implies CTCs? maybe relativity is an
| approximation of a more complete theory which allows FTLs
| without CTCs...
|
| 2, didn't the universe itself expand faster than light
| during inflation? what does relativity have to say about
| that? if we can't use relativity to explain inflation,
| why do we so comfortably use it to forbid FTL?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| 1) Oh, it turns out that the mechanism for getting CTCs
| out of FTL is completely irrelevant. Construct your light
| cones, see the results. Warp drive, wormholes, whatever,
| they all produce CTCs. You can look into it if you don't
| believe me.
|
| 2) None of the _matter_ in the universe was expanding,
| the _spacetime_ was. You 're not the first person to
| think of this. Probably the first question that popped
| into anyone's mind when variants of the concept were
| being kicked around. Anyway, the expansion doesn't
| generate CTCs because there's no information and/or
| matter to circle around, it's just the stretch between
| these.
|
| Now, you'll probably ask about -- well, why can't we
| shrink spacetime selectively to get around all of that?
| Ah, that requires some exotic matter, matter with
| negative mass-energy. No, anti-matter does not have
| negative mass-energy (first thing people reach for). In
| fact, we've never found anything with negative mass-
| energy and that concept itself raises a ton of fun
| paradoxes which I could get into. And you still get CTCs.
|
| There's probably a large tree of arguments out there on
| the Internet somewhere which addresses all of these
| common objections.
| ikrenji wrote:
| sure for the mechanisms we have come up with so far.
| doesn't say anything about things we come up in the
| future. we don't know what we don't know.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| My stock response to that is that we don't _know_ that I
| can 't make a time machine out of some chewing gum
| wrappers, a rubber band, three transistors, six pipe
| cleaners, a AAA battery, and it only works while I wear a
| red hat.
|
| We also don't _know_ that I can 't use that device to go
| back in time to the start of the universe and change all
| of the physical laws so that the previous contraption
| cannot work.
|
| But what are the odds? What would you bet on?
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Agreed but to be fair - mass-energy is not conserved across
| intergalactic scales.
| cgriswald wrote:
| I think your sibling poster has it right: lack of evidence.
|
| All the speed of light problems can be ameliorated. The
| entire galaxy could be visited (if not colonized) in a
| relatively short amount of time by something like a Von
| Neumann probe at even 0.01 _c_. The 'aliens' needn't be
| biological.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Went through the CIA one as well, and it's almost designed to be
| opaque and vague. UFO's create interesting ethical questions and
| can be useful thought experiments for contemporary issues.
|
| A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization to
| see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the
| amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any
| other civilization these recent space arrivers might find. The
| question is whether they're going to pose a threat to the
| regional galactic order, and if they haven't got their cultural
| act together, do you let them?
|
| Second, if you do intervene, does their new knowledge of the
| intervention of an intermediate power harm their social and
| ethical development, given their entire political economy and
| ethics will switch from discovered principles, to merely
| competing to appeal to the most powerful force they can? (I think
| this would make them impossible to trust.) Could it recover and
| develop on its own if you arrived and chose some of them for
| benefits but not others? Do you pick the most dominant, or the
| species with the most suitability to become part of the space
| faring community.
|
| It costs them nothing to wipe us out and spare the universe the
| trouble, so what must they believe about life, the universe, and
| everything to not do so. Economics may be universal, etc. I don't
| think these are dumb questions at all, and they resemble ones
| that state dept's make very day, so I don't dismiss people
| interested in UFOs as they are interested in some pretty useful
| questions.
| resu_nimda wrote:
| _I don 't think these are dumb questions at all_
|
| They're not, but they're also somewhat orthogonal to "UFO
| culture." You're describing a philosophical/sociopolitical
| discussion that isn't really informed by a blip on a grainy
| video frame.
|
| The question that's more relevant to UFOs, in my opinion, is
| "Why would these aliens, with their unimaginably superior
| technology, travel all the way here and reveal themselves in
| such asinine ways?" Did they intend to come all this way to do
| some cryptic and spooky display for a small number of people?
| Did they simply slip up and briefly drop their cover?
|
| I just don't see it. I fully believe that, if there were aliens
| out there with such capabilities, and they came to earth, they
| would either conceal themselves fully or reveal themselves
| intentionally (and not just to a handful of people in a remote
| area).
| jablongo wrote:
| Your last point is a good one, but there are a many ways that
| you could be wrong. To name one: The Von Neumann probe is a
| compelling model and it is more likely that we would see
| something fitting that description rather than the original
| form of an extraterrestrial intelligence. We have no good
| reason to think that such an advanced civilization would have
| mastered faster than light communication either. So the
| behavior of these cylinders, assuming they are VN probes, may
| only be simplistic surveying routines which have been running
| for tens of thousands of years and were not at all designed
| for interacting with humans. There may also be resource
| constraint issues present in the construction of self
| replicating Von Neumann probes that make the type of
| interaction you are hoping for infeasible, in terms of
| compute, agenda, or something else we aren't aware of.
| vageli wrote:
| > I just don't see it. I fully believe that, if there were
| aliens out there with such capabilities, and they came to
| earth, they would either conceal themselves fully or reveal
| themselves intentionally (and not just to a handful of people
| in a remote area).
|
| After having read Roadside Picnic, I'm inclined to disagree.
| If sufficiently advanced aliens ever happened upon us they
| might treat us as we treat ants in our backyards--that is,
| they don't really notice or care for us at all.
| resu_nimda wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the book, but
|
| 1) I don't think the analogy of ambling around our
| backyards holds for space travel. Space is vast and largely
| empty, it would be astronomically unlikely for anyone to
| casually wander over to earth from another star or galaxy.
|
| 2) We only treat ants that way because we already know
| about them. People have noticed them and studied them at
| great length. A person who doesn't know that other animals
| exist on earth would probably be incredibly fascinated by
| them and likely try to communicate with them.
| tmn wrote:
| I've been looking through these ufo threads and haven't seen
| anyone address the third explanation. I'm somewhat
| impulsively replying to you as your might receive this well.
| Most of the credible ufo phenomenon is likely a psyop. I
| won't get into why the cia or other would put forth such
| efforts beyond reciting the quote "We'll know our
| disinformation program is complete when everything the
| American public believes is false". It's "controversial" if
| William Casey actually said that, but this fills in the gaps
| that can't be explained away by witness confusion or
| delusion, without requiring a belief in some unseen
| technology that's always conveniently dangled out of sight.
| The cia also says they've been doing telepathy, astral
| projection, and the like. The disinformation program is
| definitely real.
| fpgaminer wrote:
| I think this is a bit like us diving into the ocean to observe
| algae. We don't do it because we're concerned about its
| imminent sentience and potential to "cause trouble". We just do
| it because we're curious; we want a better understanding of our
| world and universe.
|
| We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands
| orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed
| "visitors". Us being a threat is unlikely to be even a single
| virtual particle of thought in their intragalactic quantum
| brains.
| joombaga wrote:
| > We're likely to be approximately several tens of thousands
| orders of magnitude below the advancement of any supposed
| "visitors".
|
| What's feeding your intuition here? I wouldnt have thought
| they'd likely be _that_ advanced. But I'm not sure where tens
| of thousands of orders of magnitude puts them on e.g. the
| Kardashev scale, and I'm sure being a huge Star Trek fan has
| affected my own intuitions :)
| fpgaminer wrote:
| I love Star Trek, and that being a possible future is nice
| to entertain, but doesn't take into account an AI
| singularity. The latter, to some approximation, seems more
| likely to me. And that puts a Moore's law on intelligence.
| Not just for us, but for any potential space faring race.
| And it doesn't have to be just "AI"; as soon as a race has
| the capability to recursively improve their own
| intelligence they'll hit that exponential curve too.
|
| So by the time a race gets space faring and solves FTL
| travel, it's likely they're at least a good step onto that
| exponential intelligence curve. Hence a vague estimate of
| "tens of thousands of orders of magnitude".
|
| For example, as is we should be capable of building a GPT-
| human within 20 years (1). About the same time frame that,
| if we put all our effort into it, it would take for us to
| barely colonize another planet in our solar system. Given
| another 20 years and we've got an AI that's 1000x more
| intelligent than us.
|
| I see our trajectory as hitting that exponential curve
| before we even get out of this solar system. So I just
| imagine any potential "visitors" to our planet are much
| further along.
|
| (1) This is calculated using Moore's law: how many doubles
| of compute will it take before GPT-3 can be naively scaled
| to the estimated number of parameters of a human brain.
| That doesn't necessarily imply human level intelligence,
| but our studies so far indicate that there's strong reason
| to believe that GPT-human will be something approximating
| 1000x smarter than GPT-3. Human or not, that's terrifyingly
| intelligent. Remember that Transformer like architectures
| are the ones that "solved" protein folding last year. And
| none of this calculation takes into account the potential
| for continued improvements to architectures and efficiency
| over that time span. So while I don't think GPT-human will
| start an AI apocalypse in 20 years, I do think GPT-human
| will be better than every other human on this planet at
| doing ... AI research. And that's where the spark of
| singularity begins.
| scj wrote:
| A species on a planet with low gravity or the ability to
| hibernate might have a different tech tree than humanity.
|
| That being said, my bet is on the side that _most_
| species send AI to different solar systems before
| biological ones arrive.
| remir wrote:
| _It costs them nothing to wipe us out and spare the universe
| the trouble, so what must they believe about life, the
| universe, and everything to not do so. Economics may be
| universal, etc._
|
| Perhaps the world is highly valued in terms of its bio-
| diversity and life-supporting resources. There's a possibility
| that native civilization like us are being monitored and on
| some level "protected" from conquests if they show they're
| responsible and take care of their own world.
|
| But if the native civilization continue to destroy their own
| world, then all bets are off. More responsible and structured
| civilizations could be granted the right to intervene and
| potentially take over.
|
| In other words, the more self-sufficient, ecologically
| responsible and wise we are, the more a civilization like us
| would be able to avoid this intervention.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| My pet theory is they're already here and don't care at all
| about environmental issues. Planets like this are a dime-a-
| dozen to them.
|
| However, nowhere else in the universe have they come across
| music like ours. They are madly obsessed with it and dare not
| intervene in our affairs, lest they taint the source.
|
| I have absolutely no evidence for this. I just like the idea
| that Freddie Mercury just might have been an intergalactic
| superstar.
| infradig wrote:
| Then Narabedla Ltd is the book for you then.
| asdff wrote:
| We don't stop the lion from eating the gazelle. Maybe
| exploiting our planet to the point of our extinction is the
| natural order of things. We could pollute all we want and while
| life as we know it will change, life on earth will continue as
| it has all these billions of years. This is a planet that gets
| shaken by asteroids and cataclysmic volcanic eruptions that
| make the entire industrial revolution look like a cigarette
| idling in an ash tray in comparison.
|
| If anything, we live in a galactic nature preserve.
| rebuilder wrote:
| I don't mean to be a pedant, but you mean when you say 'UFOs'
| you mean extra-terrestrial visitors, don't you? It's an
| important distinction because even if you assume any given UFO
| sighting was not just a hallucination or misinterpretation but
| something real and unprecedented, assuming it's aliens from
| space is still a wild leap. A leap people tend to make because
| we're so primed to think "aliens" when we hear "UFO".
| justinclift wrote:
| > Second, if you do intervene ...
|
| Bear in mind that intervention doesn't have to be obvious. In
| our current networked world, there's a lot which a more-
| advanced-than-us group or civilisation could do without needing
| to reveal themselves as such. ;)
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| how many of us have met a congressmen, senator, media
| personality in person?
|
| How hard would it be for a super advanced society to insert a
| media network that's all basically ai-generated people? We
| already have deep fakes, imagine the tech they might have
| that's deep fakes after 50 generations...
|
| They could control us from a small satellite without needing
| to come anywhere near us,just by controlling what we see,
| think, or hear on the television.
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| If you live in the greater Washington DC area it is very
| easy to bump into political figures in real life. It has
| happened to me several times on flights too.
|
| I like the idea of some super advanced society trying to
| manipulate our political process but all they need is the
| ability to wire transfer some cash to actual humans.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >A good one is where, say you are checking in on a civilization
| to see whether it's about to become space faring, and given the
| amount of energy required for it, the tech is dangerous to any
| other civilization these recent space arrivers might find. The
| question is whether they're going to pose a threat to the
| regional galactic order, and if they haven't got their cultural
| act together, do you let them?
|
| Seems a strange position to take. Look at our own case. Do we
| evaluate "un-contacted/lost" tribes in the Amazon to see if
| they may pose a risk to the current Global Order? No, because
| that would be absurd. They are so far behind technologically
| that they pose about as much of a threat as a troop of chimps
| do. For galactic scale civilizations the difference in
| capabilities is probably at least as extreme as that.
| motohagiography wrote:
| You'd think, but we subvert and bomb Iran every time they get
| close to enriching uranium, so there are precedents, if
| perhaps not on the same relative scale.
|
| The other question is why not just domesticate us and what
| kind of evolutionary impact does domestication have on a
| species? As someone who "educates," horses and dogs to live
| in an inescapable human dominion, in doing so, I shape them
| into something other than what they are. They have good lives
| and find joy, but there is a responsibility I have they will
| almost never see. The best I can personally do is evolve my
| own understanding and various virtues and to relieve their
| suffering where I comprehend it. I would hope an alien
| species would be a little further along than most of us on
| that front, but I'd say the analogies are useful.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| The redactions on some of these documents are absolutely
| ridiculous.
|
| What is the point for releasing documents in a state that leaves
| them completely useless.
| me_me_me wrote:
| In order to comply with regulations.
|
| Its pure bureaucracy at work.
|
| You can still infer some info from the context or meta to build
| some kind of picture.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Just a wild stab in the dark here but those redactions might
| have to do with SIGINT. Or in other words, how the UFO report
| came to be.
|
| Because when I saw this headline "NSA UFO Documents Index"
| hosted on nsa.gov, I realized why I don't care about UFO
| theories. Because even the NSA has given up. No sane person
| cares about this stuff. They will readily index it on their
| website to shut those lunatics up.
| specialist wrote:
| > _...to shut those lunatics up._
|
| Does that work?
|
| One of my brothers thinks the world is 6,000 years old and
| intelligent design and so forth. I still have no idea how to
| respond, because he feels I have to learn this truth too, if
| at all.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Agreed; that said, there's an Ancient Aliens tv series that
| acts serious but, I think, is mostly recognized for being
| hilarious...so frivolous I've actually watched it because
| it's just so laughable.
| smolder wrote:
| There are people out there vulnerable to the BS due to
| ignorance that could be shown how to apply skepticism, or
| taught more about science/history, but the bullshit is just
| as prominent and available, or more so. Your peers may be
| the right combination of smart and knowledgeable to be
| immune, but it's best not to assume that it's harmless in
| general to broadcast ancient aliens style junk.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| I was on my honeymoon with my fiancee and at the end of the
| night, we liked to relax by opening a bottle of champagne
| and watching Ancient Aliens. Don't get me wrong, both of us
| believe in the possibility of life in outer space but that
| show was funnier than most modern sitcoms.
|
| Heck, even Monster Quest was more believable.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I don't know how you can't at least find this document
| interesting. It's a first hand account of what was basically
| a dogfight between a US pilot and a UFO over Iran.
|
| https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-
| features/decla...
|
| Even if you assume that whatever he encountered was made on
| Earth, its hard not to have questions or be interested in the
| account.
| INTPenis wrote:
| That's an excellent example. Thanks for finding it.
|
| I'd rather believe this was a combination of natural
| phenomenon and instrumentation failure than an alien
| visiting us from far far away.
|
| After reading the text that doubt is definitely still
| strong.
|
| It starts with conflicting reports from people on the
| ground.
|
| They are never able to identify what it was.
|
| And also the text reads as if it was written by a
| "believer" if you know what I mean.
|
| Take this for example; WHEN THE 'F?4' TURNED FROM THE
| OBJECT AND APPARENTLY WAS NO LONGER A THREAT TO IT THE
| AIRCRAFT REGAINED ALL INSTRUMENTATION
|
| That to me reads like someone who has watched too many
| scifi movies.
|
| And the report goes on to say that a 2nd object came out of
| the original object and was estimated to be "half to one
| third the apparent size of the moon". wtf?
|
| This whole report makes me question the sanity of everyone
| involved. And since it's now declassified why won't any of
| the at least 5 airmen involved step forwards?
|
| And besides all that, what motive would these aliens have
| to come here and fly around with their light shows once a
| decade?
| ikrenji wrote:
| the report is from over 40 years ago and all the involved
| are iranian personnel, not american ~ i wouldn't expect
| any of them to come forward if they are still alive...
|
| there is no natural phenomenon that fits the description.
| one passage says that the UFO landed and illuminated land
| around it in a 2-3km radius. there was a radar return,
| multiple aircraft involved etc.
|
| im not saying its 100% aliens, but im pretty sure its
| also not swamp gas / weather balloon.
| INTPenis wrote:
| They would be old, which is a perfect time to come
| forwards.
|
| Anyways, I'm not saying I can identify which natural
| phenomenon it is, I'm just using the process of
| elimination.
|
| Because let's assume this was a sentient thing, at least
| sentient enough to know that these aircraft posed a
| danger to it.
|
| Well that's where the paradox starts because this thing
| apparently has the ability to disable the instrumentation
| of a fighter jet with such precision that it does not
| damage the aircraft, it does not damage the aviators and
| it can be restored after leaving its sphere of influence.
|
| So one must ask, why would an object with such power be
| afraid of these aircraft?
|
| So you might say, "it's merely an effect of being near
| the object, not a deployed capability against these
| aircraft".
|
| Ok fine but that's a very specific non-conscious effect
| to be flying around inside Iranian airspace with. If this
| particular object has that effect then why don't all UFOs
| disable all instrumentation in a sphere around them all
| the time?
|
| How come only these particular planes that were heading
| towards it, like in a movie or a novel.
| ikrenji wrote:
| i wouldn't think they would be afraid of human
| aircrafts...
|
| I'm pretty sure they would be able to identify
| threatening aircraft from non threatening, humans can do
| this too.
|
| as for their motivations of floating around random places
| around earth ~ could be literally anything
| INTPenis wrote:
| That's a very human centric view though. If we see them
| as balls of multi-colored light then what makes you think
| they can even grasp what an aircraft is, let alone radio
| signals.
|
| Sure they might have been studying us for centuries, and
| that's how they can disable our instrumentation precisely
| without damaging anything. But then again that raises the
| question, why? Why even let us detect them in the first
| place if they have no message to send.
|
| And if they have a message to send, how come they have
| complete control of our technology but can't convey their
| message?
|
| Nothing adds up here.
|
| To me as a skeptic the only common factor is human
| imagination.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I agree, Countries were even reluctant disclose whether MH370
| was registered on their military radar in order to not reveal
| their capabilities.
| nycdatasci wrote:
| Some of these are interesting. Here's one that is completely
| unredacted: https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-
| features/decla...
| dole wrote:
| This slightly more legible one [1] elsewhere in the thread
| has some redacted parts that this one doesn't.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25766074
|
| Where'd the objects go or what happened to them? Why'd the
| F-4 drop the chase and why didn't they try to scramble more
| jets?
| levmiseri wrote:
| Made a transcription of this one for easier reading:
| https://kvak.io/?n=cpga1l1t1a144
| baryphonic wrote:
| Very difficult to read, but fascinating.
| uhtred wrote:
| That last part with the small farmhouse in the middle of
| nowhere comes across like something out of close encounters.
| Very cool.
| Pyramus wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised by the loss of nuance in this and the CIA HN
| thread.
|
| UFOs doesn't mean aliens, and equating the two limits fruitful
| discussions about the actual phenomena behind them, which in my
| opinion are much more interesting, and, based on your prior, also
| much more likely, e.g.
|
| * yet unexplained physical/weather phenomena (see David Fraser et
| al. evidence)
|
| * secret military technology (see SR-71 sightings)
|
| * ... ?
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| You are currently the only comment in this thread to imply any
| of this is extraterrestrial.
| marc_io wrote:
| Sure, people should at least use the more modern acronym UAP
| (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena), which is less descriptive and
| broader in scope than UFO.
| msdnsditlabs wrote:
| If any UFO actually visible then news will start surrounding in
| every channels. There always some intentions to Wandering off
| from some topic that are going on any country. That is clear
| politics. People always jump on some topics even though they know
| that it's politics.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| It's dangerous to go alone. Take this [1] and this [2] and
| especially this [3].
|
| Area 51 was a radar testing site due to the unique properties of
| the salt on the ground. And they just tested a "silver shiny UFO"
| which was the prototype for the SR-71. And yes, this was exactly
| the same date when people first called radio stations and the
| police for UFO sightings.
|
| The Skunkworks A-12 OXCART research project led to the final
| SR-71 design for the CIA's spy planes. More details on this on
| the CIA website for the Archangel project in the web archive [4].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A12radartesting.jpg
|
| [4]
| http://web.archive.org/web/20201112000409/https://www.cia.go...
| edge17 wrote:
| I'm just going to plug this book because it's so good and adds
| a lot more color to these comments -
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/...
|
| For context, this book covers history on the development of
| these UFOs and was written by Ben Rich, who worked at and
| eventually led the Lockheed division that developed these
| planes. If nothing else, it's a fascinating account of many
| historical events from a totally different vantage point.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > Area 51 was a radar testing site due to the unique properties
| of the salt on the ground. And they just tested a "silver shiny
| UFO" which was the prototype for the SR-71. And yes, this was
| exactly the same date when people first called radio stations
| and the police for UFO sightings.
|
| Assuming Area 51 was just that, you can't disregard the whole
| UFO phenomenon (which has been taken place all over the globe
| for decades) as "the observers didn't know they were looking at
| an Skunk Works aircraft". That implies you haven't even seen
| the tip of the iceberg.
|
| These reports not only often come from highly trained fighter
| pilots and engineers, but it also leaves imaging (radar,
| infrared, etc.) records that show that these things, whatever
| they are, can move too fast (and too slow) to be any
| USA/China/Russia/Israel super secret aircraft.
| infradig wrote:
| Hope you're not talking about gimbal/gofast etc, as they are
| poor examples... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7Fqbsrrm8
| uhtred wrote:
| None of those planes look like UFOs and they wouldn't move in
| the same reported ways, either. I don't agree that it makes
| someone stupid to be open minded.
| djmips wrote:
| I have to admit that as a youngster when an SR-71 surprise
| buzzed Vancouver BC circa 1986 that my first thought was that
| it was a UFO (flying saucer). Edge on they look very saucer
| like! It was only when they banked almost vertical that I
| could see the true silhouette.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| > None of those planes look like UFOs and they wouldn't move
| in the same reported ways, either.
|
| Yet today's pop culture conspiracy theorists tried to raid
| Area 51 for their beliefs.
|
| Don't get me wrong: I believe in alien life. But I don't
| believe in conspiracy theorists that are blind to the obvious
| in correlations of evidence.
|
| Scientific theory is about bayesian reasoning, not about
| proving to yourself that you're right; which is a likely
| phenomenon in the thinking nature of conspiracy theorists.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Scientific theory is about bayesian reasoning, not about
| proving to yourself that you're right; which is a likely
| phenomenon in the thinking nature of conspiracy theorists.
|
| For that comment to be true, there would be no science
| without bayesian reasoning. Since bayesian reasoning
| differs from hypothetico-deductive, that is false.
| thotsBgone wrote:
| How do they differ?
| mech422 wrote:
| If by 'today's you mean last year or so...
|
| The Area51 raid was an imgur joke...I think Chuck Norris
| and Shaggy were supposed to lead it. (The 2 most powerful
| memes on the internet...)
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| You should relax and learn how to communicate without
| coming off like an asshole. No one actually intended to
| raid Area 51, it was obviously a joke.
| searine wrote:
| Most of the reports of "UFOs" and their characteristics in
| flight come from untrained, and unreliable sources.
|
| It's not stupid to be open minded, but it is stupid to ignore
| plausible explanations of phenomenon because you are hoping
| to find something new.
| vntok wrote:
| > It's not stupid to be open minded, but it is stupid to
| ignore plausible explanations of phenomenon because you are
| hoping to find something new.
|
| This sentence reads like you are casually dismissing all of
| science..
|
| Surely "The Earth is flat", "Rain spirits make the rain
| fall from the sky" and "We are at the center of the
| universe, being created by God and all" were plausible
| explanations of phenomena that were eventually ignored by
| scientists hoping to find something new.
| searine wrote:
| >This sentence reads like you are casually dismissing all
| of science..
|
| That sentence is the very essence of science. Most
| observations are easily explained by existing theory. If
| you are proposing something new, you need evidence and
| time to upend the consensus.
|
| Flat Earth, rain spirits etc all were disproven because,
| eventually, the most plausible explanation of phenomena
| matched evidence to the contrary rather than what
| existed.
|
| Scientists don't ignore flat earth, they weight it's
| evidence just the same as a globe earth. The reason that
| the globe earth is accepted as the consensus truth, is
| that it has the overwhelming evidence of its veracity, an
| argument for the globe collected over a long period of
| time.
| jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote:
| > Most of the reports of "UFOs" and their characteristics
| in flight come from untrained, and unreliable sources.
|
| Agreed. But when you filter all those, you are left with a
| huge pile of true UFO reports, that come from trained
| personnel, radar operator, astronomers, etc. Look at the
| conclusions of Blue Book.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What does a UFO look like?
| xanax wrote:
| The stereotypical description is a circular object that can
| hover and make sharp directional changes. Usually they're
| described as having lights and sometimes as having no seams
| or visible rivets.
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Exactly.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| It's something up in the sky, that you can't identify. I've
| seen plenty, and if you've ever seen something flying that
| you can't identify then you've seen them too.
|
| I kind of wish Unidentified Flying Object hadn't been
| conflated with space aliens.
| space_ghost wrote:
| A metal lamp shade, obviously. But, I Want to Believe.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Those planes have very unusual forms by the standards the
| public was accustomed to decades ago. In the time since,
| those planes and ones even more exotic have appeared
| countless times in popular media, changing the public's
| perception of what airplanes might look like.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| I linked the picture of the radar test especially because
| of its absurd dimensions. In the bottom left corner you can
| see a full size military jeep standing next to it.
|
| This thing is _huge_ and honestly, it's very reasonable
| people thought it was an alien spaceship.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The A-12 was publicly announced in early 1964. It first
| flew in 1962. The X-3, F-104, B-58 had all flown by the
| mid-50s. If anything, airplanes have been much more
| pedestrian as function and form needs were mostly subsonic.
| stretchcat wrote:
| As far as I am aware, the A-12 was secret until the 90s,
| though the existence of the nearly identical in
| appearance and function YF-12's was indeed made public in
| the 1960s. But how many in the 60s would have recognized
| one if they saw it? Public knowledge and common knowledge
| are not the same thing.
| time0ut wrote:
| I've always thought that an interesting theory is that some of
| what people have seen out there is the result of particle beam
| weapon testing. I have no idea how probable that is, but it
| sounded plausible. Here is a gem from the old web [0] laying
| out the argument.
|
| [0] https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-
| strang...
| netdur wrote:
| Someone is reading this and amazed they still have not figured
| out nature of his experiential airplane
| onelovetwo wrote:
| A man made drone would be the easiest things to rule out for
| them
| ForRealsies wrote:
| Project Bluebeam everyone. We are being prepped, and have been
| prepped long before Independence Day (1996) to come together and
| unite as One World against a foreign adversary. Build back better
| levmiseri wrote:
| Transcription of one of the more interesting, but difficult to
| read, document: https://kvak.io/?n=cpga1l1t1a144
| mikewarot wrote:
| The next to last was the most interesting to me... it's gotta be
| an old April Fools in the NSA Technical Journal. It flatly states
| we've received signals from outer space, and posits a decoding of
| them....
|
| https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/decla...
| jerf wrote:
| Intelligence agencies have internal decoding competitions and
| trainings. This sounds like one of them, simply framed around
| an alien transmission, and you're just looking at the answer
| key where it's assumed the reader is familiar with the frame.
|
| The entire "transmission" is at the end. To be honest, of all
| the things we could receive from an alien source, "They
| transmitted basic set theory and a periodic table at us... and
| that's it..." would almost be the weirdest possible outcome.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| >Intelligence agencies have internal decoding competitions
| and trainings.
|
| They've done similar as recruitment initiatives as well, I
| remember one on Twitter.
| lolsal wrote:
| Why would that be the weirdest possible outcome? This
| provides a demonstration of intelligence, intent and
| understanding that starting with objective, science-based
| fundamentals which can be deduced (set theory) and observed
| (elements) seems like an _awesome_ wide net to cast if you're
| trying to communicate.
|
| It's not like they could compress a JPG and beam it over here
| in a way that wouldn't look like garbage.
| stretchcat wrote:
| I think _" and that's it"_ would be the weird part. Maybe
| it's just because I watched Contact, but I would expect the
| basic demonstration of intelligence/etc to precede a more
| interesting message. The basic math and science
| transmission could be used as a Rosetta stone of sorts, to
| bootstrap that more interesting message. Otherwise what's
| the point? Maybe the aliens just want somebody else to know
| they existed I suppose.
| jerf wrote:
| "I think "and that's it" would be the weird part."
|
| Yes, that's my point. You make the presumably-strenuous
| effort to broadcast to the stars, sacrificing any number
| of other priorities in the process, and you basically
| transmit the scientific equivalent of a throat clearing,
| and then stop? Silence is understandable, and a message
| like in the movie Contact is understandable, and a lot of
| other things are understandable, but that would just be
| _weird_.
| lolsal wrote:
| Thank you - I totally missed your point.
| [deleted]
| seanyesmunt wrote:
| Why do you think it is an April Fools prank?
| marcan_42 wrote:
| It's obviously a crypto challenge to anyone who has ever
| played them. It maps way too nicely to human concepts. This
| is what every amateur putting together an "alien challenge"
| without attempting to be scientific about it ends up doing,
| and it's easy to tell. That's fine if you're doing it for
| fun, but it's obviously not real.
|
| And that is confirmed:
|
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a19257/nsa-key-to-
| ext...
|
| I've been here solved that. ACM tried to run an challenge
| about an "alien computer" that was obviously not alien, but
| ended up being very real. I was part of the team that reverse
| engineered it first, but the whole contest collapsed and all
| interest waned after we ended up finding the very-much-not-
| alien chip involved by accident. We did cover the initial
| process, but unfortunately never got around to writing the
| follow-up posts.
|
| https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2012/unprogramming-intro/ https
| ://web.archive.org/web/20160304030848/http://queue.acm....
| captainredbeard wrote:
| It's the Winter 1969 journal, and there Spring/Summer
| Journals, so I don't necessarily buy the April fools
| explanation:
|
| https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-
| documents/tec...
|
| > Key to The Extraterrestrial Messages - Winter 1969 - Vol.
| XIV, No. 1
|
| Additionally, that same link above also contains this from
| the Winter 1966 journal, "Communication with Extraterrestrial
| Intelligence":
|
| https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-
| features/decla...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| If aliens were actually found, it definitely wouldn't be
| announced in an unclassified document shared with everyone at
| NSA. Although I don't think it's a prank per se, just someone
| who wrote a cryptography puzzle and wanted to frame it in a
| cute way.
| 908087 wrote:
| In other words, it will be featured in thousands of conspiracy
| theorist grifter youtube videos as "proof" within hours.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| I know exactly what this is though I can't remember where to
| find the source. It was an exercise they gave to a bunch of
| scientists and mathematicians to see if it was plausible that
| they could even decode the meaning behind an alien message, if
| one were ever found. (And also probably to provide some
| credentials for candidate experts to consult in such a
| scenario.) They did quite well. That said, the code itself was
| created by a human, so I'm not sure it has the value they think
| it does. One thing higher education in STEM taught me was that
| human thinking is actually really easy to spot. We, for the
| most part, really just use the same tired old tricks again and
| again in different contexts.
| imustbeevil wrote:
| It's more likely just a prompt for teaching these concepts.
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