swansont

Yes, that's IFF. Naval vessels are in danger of being sunk, which can happen via a missile launch from a plane. Land-based radars? Not so much. Missiles from a commercial flight? Probably not considered a risk. Not getting a response simply means it is not known that you are a friendly craft. Which raises the question of how often do the military get a non-response from IFF? If it happens on anything close to a daily basis, then I wouldn't expect anyone to scramble jets, especially a country with a relatively small air force (62 combat jets). Some of the projections I've seen indicate that the plane never re-entered Malaysian airspace. It tracked west across Thailand. Why would Malaysia scramble planes for a flight not over its territory? Hindsight is indeed 20/20.

Does the military know what the planned course of a commercial airliner is? Or is it just seeing a blip in the commercial airliner corridor? Are the military folks monitoring the transponders? Or are they just seeing a blip in the commercial airliner corridor?

Then it should be trivial to provide a link or two. I'd read reports that some Malaysian military radars were turned off. That's a somewhat different scenario than previously described; in this case it's not a UFO, is it? You imply they can tell it's the same plane. The most likely explanation for such behavior is an equipment problem. Turning around and coming back is exactly what you'd expect them to do. Why would that be a call to scramble jets? If a jet makes a turn and stays in a commercial flight corridor, as MH370 apparently did (following commercial waypoints), why would you scramble jets? Does military radar keep track of commercial transponder signals?

I'm sorry, when/where was acquisition by Malaysian military radar confirmed? Does the US, UK or other countries routinely scramble jets at every UFO sighting?

anonymousone has been suspended 3 days for refusal to comply with the rules of speculations, specifically running the other way when pressed for specific predictions and/or a model. (And for threatening to drop bombs and missiles.)

HAARPsic has been banned. AFAICT all posts violated rule 7 and/or 8. _________ jduff has left in a huff and will be gone for at least a week, so he won't have to put up with people who disagree with his opinions or can contradict his supposed facts. And we won't have to put up with him.

But the "points" (e.g. galaxies) aren't shrinking. So this is moot. You are "talking to a wall" because your idea is not equivalent to what we observe, nor the model we have to explain what we observe. Galaxies are getting further apart, but they are not changing size.

Yes, the motion is cause by the expansion of space. There is no expansion of objects. This is not scaling.

I don't think that's the issue. The model doesn't say it's an issue of scaling. As I said, it seems that your objection is to something that's not part of the model; it doesn't work the way you want it to work, but that's not an issue with the model.

I'm not seeing why this is the case within the context of the model. 3D objects do not expand or add volume, space does. Why is transportation necessary for this to happen? The model says there is no actual motion, which is a local effect only. It seems that your objection to the model is that it doesn't work in a way it never claims to work. I believe there's already a thread for that discussion.

The volume increases everywhere. So any two points have to be further apart after the volume increases, which looks exactly like they are moving apart.

Ben Banana been banned. Been berry, berry bad. Seriously: insults, foul language and a promise not to change. This was a no-brainer.

stemcellbuff and montrellblundell banned for sockpuppetry and spamming to advertise their journal papers. While we wholeheartedly welcome science discussion, spamming links to your papers does not foster such conversation.

In the US, the laws say basically that a site hosting a discussion is not responsible for what is said by the participants (including things like copyright violations or libel) and also that the site can do whatever it wants regarding commentary posted there. (I'll see if I can dig up the cite when I get home) Even though British law is different (especially with regard to libel) I suspect the overall thrust is similar.

For the record, the topic been brought up by members who are not, in my opinion, trolls. (Trolls and crackpots do raise the issue as well, however)

Since the topic comes up every so often, here's a good summary on why internet moderation (among other things, like boycotts) is not a violation of free speech rights http://xkcd.com/1357/

cells has been suspended for repeatedly advertising a paper. (Also, reckless and escalating use of exclamation points. One per sentence, at most, please)

Schneibster has been banned for being apparently unable to proceed in a civil fashion when involved in a disagreement.

vampares has been suspended a week for some abusive comments, re-opening the discussion of a closed thread and a slew of off-topic or otherwise meaningless posts clogging up discussion

Some answers to frequently asked questions (or paraphrases of questions) that have come up in moderation efforts or in the Support forum. This will be amended as needed. 1. Someperson is wrong! Why don't the moderators step in and do something? We don't do that. The role of the staff (when acting as staff) is to enforce the rules, so we don't make determinations on who is correct. We do, however, participate in discussions as members of the site, and may weigh in in that capacity, but generally do not mix the roles of enforcing moderation and participation in a discussion. (Some "housekeeping" actions, such as moving posts to a more appropriate area, can still happen while participating) 2. Why was what I posted called a hijack? Or off-topic? The topic of discussion is set by the first post in a thread. If your post is such that it changes the discussion from what the original post(er) (OP) was talking about to what you want to talk about, you are guilty of attempted hijacking. Posting your own pet theory anywhere but in its own thread in the Speculations forum is always considered a hijack. Off-topic is related to this, but this usually arises in the context of commentary on an answer or a subsequent post to the original. Rather than continue the side discussion, a new thread should be made. 3. What is soapboxing? It's when you are simply making a speech, rather than engaging in a discussion. This is what blogs are for. 4. Why was I yelled at for copyright/plagiarism? Copyright is a set of laws that protect things that people write, and mean you can't just paste entire screeds here without permission (and simply existing somewhere on the internet is not permission). Under the provision called Fair Use, you can post small excerpts for review and commentary. Copyright also protects pictures and drawings, so anything posted here should be done with permission or under some form of Creative Commons license. Plagiarism is an ethical violation that occurs when you present material as your own. That is, you have not attributed the work of others. Whenever you are using the creative work of others, you should post an attribution and whenever possible, a link to the source material. 5. What gives you the right to censor me? This is not a public place, and we are not the government, so any such free speech protections do not apply. The price of participation here is that you agree to follow the rules. The people who run the site are well within their authority to remove posts that violate the rules. Moving posts to an appropriate section is not censorship — your words are still there. There are a number of threads where this discussion has taken place. The search function should help you find them. 6. Will you delete my account or remove some post I made? No. We don't delete accounts. If you don't want to participate anymore, it's a simple matter of not coming here. We don't generally remove posts, because doing so after the fact is disruptive to conversations. If you aren't going to stand by something you post, you shouldn't post it. 7. Where is my post? Sometimes posts/threads get moved. Though we try and leave a trail, it doesn't always happen. If you go into your profile, you can click on either the topics or posts box to find your material. If you hover over your user name in a thread, there is a "my content" link. A third option is to use the advanced search function and type in your user name as the only entry, and you will get a list of everything you've posted. 8. Why was my thread locked? Threads are locked if they are duplicates or if the staff decides they have run their course. The latter happens when the thread originator is not engaging in useful discussion — usually by ignoring critiques and simply repeating the same points over and over again. 9. Why was my post moved to Speculations? This has its own FAQ 10. I was expressing my opinion. Why are you asking me for links? This means you probably weren't merely expressing an opinion. An opinion is a personal, subjective view, but if you are asserting a claim as an objective truth, i.e. something that others must accept as truth, then it's not an opinion. And in that case, it's perfectly reasonable for someone to call you on it and ask you to support your claim. Any factual reason(s) you might have given in order to justify your opinion are similarly open to a call for a link to confirm it.

overtone has been suspended for a week for repeatedly berating other discussion participants and for continually refusing to support arguments with any external literature.

That assumes a certain level of military capability. Is there evidence that such capability actually exists? Malaysia had a 2012 defense budget of around US $4.7 billion. Compare with the UK's at $61 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures The Malaysian military has about half as many active duty personnel as the UK (110,000 vs 205,000). I'm guessing that's a huge chunk of the budget right there.

! Moderator Note Do not hijack any more threads with numerology. No more numerology discussion on this thread (including responses to the above post). Do not respond to this modnote.

Yes, which is one of the issues with the so-calld upgrade to the forum software and one of the reasons for the tutorial. To do this you need to follow section 5, and copy/paste or type the quote tags around the sections you wish to quote.

You need a satellite looking there, and in order to resolve something like a plane the image are will be small, so you need to know where to look. I expect satellites are set to pass over as little ocean as possible, because there's no point in surveilling random patches of ocean. So you would have to be lucky. Then, you'd have to search lots of images because you need to be zoomed way in. And I doubt any of "us guys" have access to these images.