Moontanman

A TV show is not evidence, show me scientific evidence of ghosts.

Don't bother

The 'why' is of course also speculative. But I would like to apply one of the 'derivatives' of Ockham's Razor. I gave already an example of that: there are experiments with new flying technologies. Getting people not to take too much interest in 'flying anomalies' them could help the interest in them low. This is also speculative of course, but it needs no additional, improbable hypotheses, like 'aliens', alien technology, or what else. Nope. Didn't you read my posting till the end before reacting? Of course, if it is possible. If, taking all data of a UFO sighting together do not lead to a conclusion what it was, then it is unexplained. Full stop. But for goodness, yes, we should investigate UFO sightings that cannot be explained easily (Jupiter, weather balloon, etc). I did not say anything like that. I hope it is not a willfully wrong interpretation of what I wrote. He won't get it from me. Trying to exclude all kinds of noise from your measurements is normal scientific practice. Taking the vibrations of a passing truck as some significant event, is a scientific sin. Did he admit his mistake and correct it or sit and insist he was correct despite the evidence? AFAIK making a mistake in science is not a sin. But taking the observation of a solar balloon from a plane as some proof of an (alien) UFO, or secret AF or NASA technology, as the majority of the comments under that video, shows a terrible naivety from the side of UFO fanatics. Hay, I once saw a UFO! Meaning, that all possible explanations I could think of did not quite fit. Yes, it was just a red light, nearly standing still close to the horizon, no smoke visible, so not very impressive. But fact is that I did not know what it was (no, it was not Mars). And if I see how many auxiliary hypotheses are needed about technologies that we even do not know can exist, to make it at least probable that aliens are visiting us, then, no thanks. I'll wait for real empirical evidence, and so my default is 'unexplained means unexplained'. Yes, once again, investigate UFO sightings! But if the data do not positively point to aliens visiting us, then, yes, unexplained means unexplained. @Eise Just because I agree with some of the stuff being proposed to suggest how aliens could be here doesn't mean I am convinced they are here. I have been looking into the for decades, I started out as a kid who just read books never questioning the sources. After many years I realized that sources mattered and my surety that aliens were visiting declined to zero. Then I found out what a scam the gov was really running, they weren't trying to explain anything, they were desperately trying to convince people UFOs were anything except unexplained even if the explanations were so silly as to be ridiculous. The Condon Report pretty much galvanized my resolve to find out what was really going on. I found out that there were many sightings that were not "lights in the sky" but actual sightings of structured objects, often at close range in broad daylight, radar sightings, multiple independent radar detections, multiple independent witnesses, and the witnesses were not always ignorant rednecks getting anal Probes. Some sightings are credible, possibly not from the stand point of scientific rigor but when is a scientist equipped with certified instruments on hand for a random event? If that is the standard required then nothing is evidence at all. Show me evidence that ghosts are real, don't do your usual gas lighting, show your evidence that ghosts are real, just a drive by post making a silly claim is not what I am doing. Why are you doing that or is your goal simply chaos?

I have no clue as to which one is more probable but knowing there are multiple ways this could be done shows me it is likely possible to star travel. The idea that this is something so improbable as to be not worth looking into might be justified if there was no way possible for it to happen. We have no way of knowing how resources are used in an advanced civilization, quite possibly they have system better than unchained capitalism controlled by oligarchs whose desire for money is greater than their desire for civilization to continue. IOW trying to predict what an alien civilization might do and why is not a winning strategy, they may not even exist and the Air Force might release info that shows they were just trying to keep military secrets and the need for secrecy just got out of hand and resulted in the gov lying and deceiving us to just keep out of date secrets! Actually I think that would be pretty cool, imagine a gov who tells you the truth.. go figure.

Why only one possibility?

I would be happy to just find out that research ls being done on UAPs... and no spending time and money hunting ghosts on Skin Walker Ranch is not UAP research.

I have to say that even I keep getting off course on this, all I am saying, in a nut shell, is that sitting around until a meteorite hits you on the head is not a viable way to show rocks fall from the sky. We have to devise ways to actually investigate, short of the military coughing up some of their data they have to show some sort of reasonable explanation that doesn't include "trust us" due to past lies and deception. I see no path forward but sitting and waiting for "them" to tell us they are here. No amount of data gathered by a layman on this subject would ever be accepted, and this a totally random phenomenon , the closest thing we have to scientific evidence is the Mt Palomar Telescope images that show mysterious lights, possibly in Earth orbit the night of the July 1962 Washington DC sightings but I know that old data has noting to learn from. I hate auto correct! How could you possibly expect a conformation from other sources in such a scenario? There was radar confirmation for the object from ground radar but I guess that means nothing?

Then there is unlikely to ever be enough data to determine anything to do with UFOs short of them landing on the white house lawn, we will remain ignorant until they or what ever this phenomena is decides we should know. I personally think this is one of the few phenomena that requires such high standards of evidence to even be looked at seriously. Anything else with that much data would have sparked a serious investigation and efforts to figure out how to find more info... not an "Oh well nothing definite to see here move along" Everything I said so far is my analysis or my best attempt at it, exactly what were you expecting me to say as you guys trotted out all the old bs about time and distance which I pointed out as false dilemmas.

Ok, it would be nice to know why but that would mean actually considering what Dr McDonald had to say in detail, I won't bother you to do that. Dr McDonald was probably the most qualified person to ever be in charge of anything to to do with UFOs, he was an expert in atmospheric physics/phenomena. While his is not the end all be all of anything his contributions were significant even if he disagreed with the main stream.

Then we are done, if you can't actually look at what I am proposing them I see no reason to take you seriously either.

I've considered the info you gave, how about you do me the same favor and look at what I supplied. @MigL @swansont @Mordred http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_fsr_16_3_2_70.pdf

Why is this a problem for star travel? The self replicating probe scenario solves the problem of distance, one probe could "probe", reproduce and re-probe the entire galaxy in a few million years at worst, sending out millions of self replicating probes would cut that time down to hundreds of thousands of years. Restrictions of likelihood make no sense in this scenario, while I personally think any civilization that wanted to explore and even colonies the entire galaxy would be likely to use this method even one using it would be enough to make a probe in our solar system likely. this idea reminds me of the series of books by John Varley Often called the Gaea Trilogy, a self replicating probe is found in our solar system and of course all hell breaks lose in the series but the premise is sound. This all nice to speculate about but we, IMHO, cannot define the phenomena into existence, until we establish the reality of what is happening we can speculate until the cows come home. Now how about we discuss the paper I listed a few posts ago that describes a sighting by the military of a highly anomalous object by a military aircraft that is probably the very plane all of us wished would encounter a UFO!

Quite the contrary I think they speak to how it could done easily by an advanced civilization, Von Neumann Probes are just an easy solution, the motivations of a million year old civilization is as beyond our comprehension as our civilization would be to a Neanderthal. The parts we do comprehend, assuming for the moment UAP are part of our limited comprehension, require a civilization outside the box we try to shove our own into. If civilizations never make it beyond what we can comprehend then there are no UAP aliens and its something else... which would be fine with me.

The concept of a Von Neumann probe negates all that. The time factor is only a viable criticism if you insist on the experiment not being able to outlive the experimenter, in a short lived civilization like ours that is a reasonable complaint but in a civilization a Million years old where biological beings might have practical immortality or even be an intermittent part in or not be present at all in a million year old civilization. waiting a few thousand years for data might not be a problem at all especially when the data inflow involves millions of Probes sending back data as they gain knowledge of the system they were sent to. No reason to sit around and twiddle your thumbs waiting on data from a single probe when it comes in continuously from millions of probes. Such Probes would reproduce and head out for more stars to rinse and repeat.

I didn't suggest aliens had to be close by, why do you think they need to be close by? I see no reason for new physics to attain star travel.

No, data can be transmitted at c, no need for a biological being to make the trip, quite possibly no need for biological beings at all during the trip or the exploration. Even we primitive humans see the need for Probes over biological beings in our exploration of just our solar system.

Turn around time has no bearing on the possibility of star travel, it only relates to the biological individuals involved. There doesn't need to be biological beings involved in the transfer from one start to another.

I have to agree, near light speed travel is problematic for many reasons... why does this negate star travel? What we need to do is justify thinking near c travel is necessary for star travel.

On any subject but UFOs I would agree with you. Let's do it!

Humans are the we, our society assigns motivations and emotions to our perception of the world. The idea we would be interesting is indeed a human assessment, I have to admit I would visit an alien planet if I could and while it might be difficult for us to imagine, an advanced civilization might grant researchers who specialize in primitive cultures exclusive rights to study a new civilization. Such a study might take millenia and all the while we are being studied they do not officially contact us to prevent the study itself from influencing our behaviors as much as possible. They may share our desire to acquire knowledge and a small fraction of them study newly emerging civilizations. The reasons why they visit could be anything, indeed they could be reasons we couldn't understand, they are aliens btw. Hell there are humans who specialize in studying animal excrement... maybe that is why they anal probe so many 💩 Trying to discern their motivations is secondary at best to figuring out if this is going on at all. There is no reason to debate the whys and hows until we know if its actually happening and we can't know that until we start seriously looking at the data we have instead f dismissing it because we just can't imagine how it could be possible. Traveling slower than c is no barrier to star travel, I honestly don't see why anyone would think that, if our own civilization wanted to star travel it is conceivable. I kinda doubt you'd find anyone who wanted to spend that much money to do it but that is a capitalist view point. Not all civilizations will necessarily be motivated by profit. Personally I think the best motivator would be desire for knowledge. That one thing has motivated humans to do some really dangerous crazy stuff.. like the Moon landing.

My point is that when we assign human motivations to aliens we have no leg to stand on, in the Star Trek universe all or nearly all of the aliens are humanoid in both stature and motivations. I have to agree yet the devil is in the details. When your attitude is that all sighting are equally improbable you make a good point but this is simply not true. Not all sightings can be dismissed so easily, some cannot be dismissed at all. I few posts ago I posted a scientific paper about a UFO sightings but everyone has ignored it. This sighting is not so easily dismissed... still an unknown but obviously not a hubcap. The Fermi paradox and the Drake equation make some rather easily manipulated assumptions that can be used to predict almost any outcome. There could be reasons we are totally unaware of, from fear of bio contamination to simple laws a space fairing civilization might have about first contact. There is really no way to assert any reason over another. I think that if controlled hydrogen fusion is possible all those other concerns become moot. IN fact I think a pretty good argument can be made that any space fairing civilization would avoid planets and favor space habitats over colonising planets. This could led to the entire galaxy being inhabited by Von Neumann Probes colonising the galaxy via going to a star system and utilizing the asteroids and comets like bodies to build and maintain space habitats. This would also make star travel unnecessary as long as you had a star with debris around it like our Sun. We could realistically use the idea of rotating space habitats to build colonies that would when assed up amount to many times as much space as the surface of the earth. There are so many possibilities that do not limit an intelligence to just one planet but one thing you keep asserting bothers me a bit. You seem to think that Von Neumann Probes and the info they collect wouldn't be useful because ( I am assuming here) that the individual who sent the probe would be dead way before any data could be harvested from the probe. @TheVat explained why your take on this isn't as profound as you seem to think it s The possibilities of technology really do expand this discussion to new areas.

I didn't say it did, the only way we can know alien motivations is for us to ask them!

I just had an endoscopy session... I can't say why so many people seem to enjoy claiming to have had one extra clinically.

Actually yes they are, the idea that aliens are just like us in the needs, wants, and desires department is exactly what Star Trek thinking is, the magical technology is just window dressing for what is essentially just a human story. All we can hope to do is detect the presence of aliens in our solar system, the whys of the issue will have to be answered by any aliens should they prove to exist. My main concern at this time is that the presence of aliens is being ignored for reasons unknown or intentionally covered up for reasons unknown... I know it smacks of conspiracy theory but just because its a conspiracy doesn't mean its not happening. If it is just the gov trying to keep their military secrets then why are they still grimly hanging on to "secrets" from before WW2? If it was just protecting military secrets then revealing them as they lose their reason for being secrete would be a great way to show this whole thing as bs. It would be quite simple to point out that supposed sightings from the 50s could be explained by pointing out the outdated secrete that was being protected by denying a particular sighting. Edward James Ruppelt , director of project Blue Book, has been quoted as saying (not a direct quote) that both Project Sign and Project Grudge were overtly biased and politicized noting that in these investigations doing the standard investigations normally means an unbiased evaluation of intelligence data but it doesn't take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see the standard intelligence procedures were not being followed by Project Grudge (it should be pointed out that Project Sign came to the conclusion that at least some UFOs were interplanetary space craft) Everything was being evaluated on the premise of UFOs (aliens) cannot exist and no matter what you see or hear do not believe it! I still feel its necessary to point out that the US gov is not the end all be all of UFO sightings info, other world governments give the alien hypothesis more credence than the US does at this time but most do tow the US party line. That would be just as silly.

Again, I do not assert UAP are aliens, they are unidentified, aliens is just one remote possibility, time travelers have been suggested as a possible explanation but I have my doubts about time travel as I am sure most people do. They could be visitors from another plane of existence, or as Jacques Vallée has suggested, quite seriously, that the UFO phenomena is connected with things like fairies, gnomes, and other supposed supernatural creatures from lore. The most obvious thing here is that UAP are just misidentification of known or unknown natural objects but the best data we have doesn't support that premise in many cases... it is these outliers that concern me. And no, "It could have been a picture of a hubcap someone threw", is not a viable explanation. As for alien motivations... you make a good point if you are talking about a civilization that is only a few thousand years since it lived in caves. A civilization that has existed for millions of years might have more long-term goals and data can be transmitted at the speed of light. Trying to guess the motivations of aliens is not a winning gambit.