UFO evidence and aliens.

[Moontanman]

In a recent thread there seemed to be some confusion as to what would constitute Evidence in regards to UFOs and aliens. I am a bit unsure myself, so I ask exactly what evidence would make you have to consider aliens as the cause of a UFO incident? Would there have to be a landing on the white house lawn? Or would a good film be enough to make considering aliens reasonable. 

Now days, with things like cgi, photoshop, drones, and military tech I would think it would come close to requiring a landing in times square during the new years eve celebration. But is it reasonable to require that much evidence before aliens are a reasonable consideration? 

Past sightings are in the past and while I know of many past sightings that make me wonder passing down info from the past is subject to the "chinese whispers" problem. Taken at face value I would say some reports from the past scream something of high strangeness at least but we cannot be sure of how accurately the sighting was reported then or how accurately it was passed down. 

So lets limit ourselves to modern standards of evidence taking all the possible mundan possibilities into account and try to keep from rehashing sightings that occured in the past we cannot really be sure of. 

[Sensei]

Extraterrestrial intelligent life forms on the Earth, are like humans in the jungle exploring it. Biologists who want to learn about species in their natural environment. Biologists do everything to cover against being noticed by animals under observation, as it scares them, and changes natural behavior.

Humans also tries to keep the last South America tribes unaware about the world..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

 

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, Sensei said:

Extraterrestrial intelligent life forms on the Earth, are like humans in the jungle exploring it. Biologists who want to learn about species in their natural environment. Biologists do everything to cover against being noticed by animals under observation, as it scares them, and changes natural behavior.

Humans also tries to keep the last South America tribes unaware about the world..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples

 

So we are unlikely to have real evidence unless the aliens want us to? 

[Sensei]

Just now, Moontanman said:

So we are unlikely to have real evidence unless the aliens want us to? 

Do you think: are you ready for it.. ?

 

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, Sensei said:

Do you think: are you ready for it.. ?

 

I doubt it would change my life very much if at all. I would love to read their literature, history, or natural history of their planet. The first thing I would want to know is "are there anymore of us out there"

[Phi for All]

7 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

In a recent thread there seemed to be some confusion as to what would constitute Evidence in regards to UFOs and aliens.

The radar signatures mentioned in that thread displaying non-standard/unrecognized behavior are only evidence in support of UFOs. They don't support alien existence any more than they support the existence of flying reindeer.

 

14 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

 I am a bit unsure myself, so I ask exactly what evidence would make you have to consider aliens as the cause of a UFO incident?

I would accept evidence suggesting some kind of non-terrestrial biosignature as being supportive of alien involvement. Do we currently have the technology to detect matter in our atmosphere that may have been introduced by travelers from offplanet (discounting anything prebiotic)? If we can rule out any mundane reasons why such biological material is present, that might suggest support for alien visitors.

[Sensei]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

I doubt it would change my life very much if at all. I would love to read their literature, history, or natural history of their planet. The first thing I would want to know is "are there anymore of us out there"

..you are waiting for extraterrestrial knowledge given on "golden plate" for you to acquire..

..like US military officers..

 

[Moontanman]

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

The radar signatures mentioned in that thread displaying non-standard/unrecognized behavior are only evidence in support of UFOs. They don't support alien existence any more than they support the existence of flying reindeer.

You don't think that an aircraft flying in ways impossible for our tech is suspicious in anyway of something anomalous at least?  

2 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I would accept evidence suggesting some kind of non-terrestrial biosignature as being supportive of alien involvement. Do we currently have the technology to detect matter in our atmosphere that may have been introduced by travelers from offplanet (discounting anything prebiotic)? If we can rule out any mundane reasons why such biological material is present, that might suggest support for alien visitors.

Wouldn't ruling out any mundane reason be true for all possible evidence? 

1 minute ago, Sensei said:

..you are waiting for extraterrestrial knowledge given on "golden plate" for you to acquire..

..like US military officers..

 

Not at all, I would be amazed if they shared technology to any large degree, in fact I would hope they do not but things like history, biology, and literature would be very interesting to me..  

[Sensei]

5 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

You don't think that an aircraft flying in ways impossible for our tech is suspicious in anyway of something anomalous at least?   

....but remote controlled or automatically controlled flying object can exceed speeds and accelerations possible for aircraft with human being on board..

It does not have to be extraterrestrial at all.

 

5 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Not at all, I would be amazed if they shared technology to any large degree,

...are you sharing knowledge with chimps.. ?

I am still waiting for decoding animal languages by humans...

 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Sensei

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, Sensei said:

....but remote controlled or automatically controlled flying object can excess speeds and accelerations possible for aircraft with human being on board..

It does not have to be extraterrestrial at all.

 

While that is a bit of a fly in the ointment some things are impossible for even those supersonic highly maneuverable drones. Dropping down from extreme altitude and or climbing back up with no exhaust or heat buildup is more than a bit odd. 

But I am not arguing the quality of specific evidence, just asking what would it take. I have a feeling that this is a very difficult question to answer. Almost anything short of the landing on the white house lawn can be nit picked apart... 

[Phi for All]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

You don't think that an aircraft flying in ways impossible for our tech is suspicious in anyway of something anomalous at least?  

Of course I do. But there are at least three other mundane explanations that have far greater probability of being correct than aliens. If we even had one alien artifact to test, I'd bump aliens up a notch or two. But alas, all those pesky government coverups grabbed every single one of them.

8 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Wouldn't ruling out any mundane reason be true for all possible evidence? 

Sure. That's why most of the arguments I see for aliens fall short. There's almost always a normal reason for what gets reported. It's about sensory sightings, or abnormalities, or one-off situations that can't be tested or debunked. That's why checking for non-terrestrial biosignatures would be better. It removes ALL the mundane reasons when you find some.

What about these encounters goes above and beyond what secret government budgeting is capable of? I would be pretty shocked to find out our government (or Russia's, or China's, or any wealthy nation's) didn't have some secret weapons they've been working on. 

10 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Almost anything short of the landing on the white house lawn can be nit picked apart... 

Landing on the White House lawn wouldn't convince me. Again, if it's terrestrial tech, I'm sure it could be made to look very convincing.

We HAVE to be able to study something and determine beyond doubt its non-Earth origins. We can tell what part of the planet various organic and inorganic material is from, so we should be able to identify something not from here.

[Moontanman]

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

Of course I do. But there are at least three other mundane explanations that have far greater probability of being correct than aliens. If we even had one alien artifact to test, I'd bump aliens up a notch or two. But alas, all those pesky government coverups grabbed every single one of them.

Sure. That's why most of the arguments I see for aliens fall short. There's almost always a normal reason for what gets reported. It's about sensory sightings, or abnormalities, or one-off situations that can't be tested or debunked. That's why checking for non-terrestrial biosignatures would be better. It removes ALL the mundane reasons when you find some.

What about these encounters goes above and beyond what secret government budgeting is capable of? I would be pretty shocked to find out our government (or Russia's, or China's, or any wealthy nation's) didn't have some secret weapons they've been working on. 

Depends on how serious you take the report of the two aircraft that encountered the "tic tacs" before the ones who took the FLIR images. The initial report was of objects capable of hypersonic flight extreme altitudes and hovering over the ocean, radar tapes and sonar detections. The FLIR images are not indicative at all and could easily be disinformation but you do make a good point. 

I would be very surprised if Russia or China were testing super drones just off the coast of the US but it's not out of the bounds of possibility. I think I said this in another thread but these sighting have human tech written all over them but if it is human then a phase change in aerial warfare equal to or exceeding stealth is taking place... 

[Phi for All]

22 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Depends on how serious you take the report of the two aircraft that encountered the "tic tacs" before the ones who took the FLIR images. The initial report was of objects capable of hypersonic flight extreme altitudes and hovering over the ocean, radar tapes and sonar detections. The FLIR images are not indicative at all and could easily be disinformation but you do make a good point. 

I'm spitballing here, but don't we have aircraft designed to take measurements on atmospheric conditions sophisticated enough to detect parts per million? Has anyone ever used them to check the region of air where a UFO sighting took place? Again, I don't find fantastic maneuvering and speed capabilities all that outlandish or suggestive of non-human invention. But if we found stuff in the air that suggested these ships are putting offworld ejecta into our atmosphere with their anomalous propulsion systems, we could only conclude that it's aliens, or that humans have been offplanet secretly making experimental spaceships (or some combination of both).

[Moontanman]

21 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

I'm spitballing here, but don't we have aircraft designed to take measurements on atmospheric conditions sophisticated enough to detect parts per million? Has anyone ever used them to check the region of air where a UFO sighting took place? Again, I don't find fantastic maneuvering and speed capabilities all that outlandish or suggestive of non-human invention. But if we found stuff in the air that suggested these ships are putting offworld ejecta into our atmosphere with their anomalous propulsion systems, we could only conclude that it's aliens, or that humans have been offplanet secretly making experimental spaceships (or some combination of both).

"off world ejecta"? Are you talking about DNA? I'm not sure how that would work but I am sure it's not being done and will not be done until some other suspicions direct us in that direction. Until someone takes the possibility of aliens visiting us serious no one will even try to do that...  

this video, if you start it at around 03:40 to get past all the silly intro they put in it is interesting, it's kind of long, but if you get the chance it does give some insight into the whole 2004 Nov. 10th sighting that wasn't told by TV the FLIR stuff starts at around 26:00 and we've seen that on the national news. If you get the chance it is interesting if nothing else due to the possibility it was human tech. Dropping from 28.000 fett to 50 feet at 24,000 mph of course if it's all bs then it's meaningless and that is the key. How do you figure out what is BS and what is real...  500 knots underwater is wild... 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Moontanman

[QuantumT]

What would it take to get a visit from E.T.?

Before we can determine that, we need to know what is required for intelligent life to emerge, and get here.

- A rock planet with a magnetic core
- A large neighbor (like Jupiter) to shield against most large object impacts.
- The right distance to the star
- The right elements and circumstances for life to start
- Preferably a moon to make tides.
- The right timing to make thousands of years of space travel coincide with arriving in our time. Right now!
- Stumbling upon Earth as a one in a gazillion chance. Literally a needle in a huge stack of needles.
- After beating all the odds, being unwilling to show you presence to the general population. Playing hide and seek, despite being superior.

[koti]

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

In a recent thread there seemed to be some confusion as to what would constitute Evidence in regards to UFOs and aliens. I am a bit unsure myself, so I ask exactly what evidence would make you have to consider aliens as the cause of a UFO incident? Would there have to be a landing on the white house lawn? Or would a good film be enough to make considering aliens reasonable. 

Now days, with things like cgi, photoshop, drones, and military tech I would think it would come close to requiring a landing in times square during the new years eve celebration. But is it reasonable to require that much evidence before aliens are a reasonable consideration? 

Past sightings are in the past and while I know of many past sightings that make me wonder passing down info from the past is subject to the "chinese whispers" problem. Taken at face value I would say some reports from the past scream something of high strangeness at least but we cannot be sure of how accurately the sighting was reported then or how accurately it was passed down. 

So lets limit ourselves to modern standards of evidence taking all the possible mundan possibilities into account and try to keep from rehashing sightings that occured in the past we cannot really be sure of. 

I remember reading my Dad’s „Project Blue Book” when I was around 15 years old (I’m 46 now), It was breathtaking. I was overwhelmed untill I was around 20, thats when I first came across with statistics and probability in an entirely other context than UFO’s (it was related to me and my friend smuggling Dr Martens boots from the UK to PL, the London guy was an interesting person) I started to dig down into where I am as a human, on earth, in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the observable universe. I kept my fascination untill I was around 28 when I got interested in politics when I started to work for an add egancy, I think thats when I lost my interest in the UFO phenomena. When I got around Relativity (more or less) around my mid 30’s I completely lost interest in the idea that aliens are visiting Earth. Youre asking what it would take - I’d say some good old juicy evidence. 

I know, Im boring...stuff that I slipped on in my life made me that way. 

Edited June 21, 2019 by koti

[Moontanman]

2 minutes ago, koti said:

I remember reading my Dad’s „Project Blue Book” when I was around 15 years old (I’m 46 now), It was breathtaking. I was overwhelmed it untill I was around 20, thats when I first came across with statistics and probability in an entirely other context than UFO’s (it was related to me be smuggling Dr Martens boots from the UK to PL, the London guy was an interesting person) I started to dig down into where I am as a human, on earth, in the solar system, in the galaxy, in the observable universe. I kept my fascination untill I was around 28 when I got interested in politics when I started to work for an add egancy, I think thats when I lost my interest in the UFO phenomena. When I got around Relativity (more or less) around my mid 30’s I completely lost interest in the idea that aliens are visiting Earth. Youre asking what it would take - I’d say some good old juicy evidence. 

I know, Im boring...stuff that I slipped on in my life made me that way. 

You do realise that distance is not necessarily a limiting factor.. right? I am asking what would that evidence be?  

[Phi for All]

7 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

"off world ejecta"? Are you talking about DNA? I'm not sure how that would work but I am sure it's not being done and will not be done until some other suspicions direct us in that direction. Until someone takes the possibility of aliens visiting us serious no one will even try to do that...  

We often hear about tests that conclude particles (of some material) aren't native to the area where they're found. There's a bunch of stuff in the atmosphere, and I was wondering if we're capable of detecting matter from offworld in it. We can tell where dust from one country has blown into another, so it would seem like the tech is robust enough. If we could detect aluminum particles from aircraft, and determine where that aluminum came from (?), it seems likely that we could also detect if it didn't come from around here. 

[Moontanman]

1 minute ago, Phi for All said:

We often hear about tests that conclude particles (of some material) aren't native to the area where they're found. There's a bunch of stuff in the atmosphere, and I was wondering if we're capable of detecting matter from offworld in it. We can tell where dust from one country has blown into another, so it would seem like the tech is robust enough. If we could detect aluminum particles from aircraft, and determine where that aluminum came from (?), it seems likely that we could also detect if it didn't come from around here. 

It's an interesting concept. I know I've never heard of it being used to detect aliens. 

[koti]

1 minute ago, Moontanman said:

You do realise that distance is not necessarily a limiting factor.. right? I am asking what would that evidence be?  

I think that distance is the limiting factor. The vastness is the main factor, there are hundreds of millions of non Earth lifefoms out there but we are just too far away to make contact (yet).

[Phi for All]

Just now, Moontanman said:

It's an interesting concept. I know I've never heard of it being used to detect aliens. 

The main problem I see is that our current tech is looking for readings on specific things. If we're checking on standard contaminants, would anything from offworld even show up? If we're measuring aluminum particles per million, would aluminum from an alien craft show up differently? 

[Moontanman]

5 minutes ago, koti said:

I think that distance is the limiting factor. The vastness is the main factor, there are hundreds of millions of non Earth lifefoms out there but we are just too far away to make contact (yet).

No, this is a misunderstanding often alluded to but it doesn't hold up without assuming that any travels would be direct from star to star by the same individuals. Slow ships traveling from one oort cloud to another and making use of interstellar objects and dust to top up volatiles and to build even more habitats makes much more sense and is doable if they have controlled fusion as an energy source. No needs for planets at all and any visitors to earth would be the equivalent specialized researchers. The entire galaxy could be smattered by these habitats, rotated for gravity, see  O'Neil cylinders and Mckendrick cylinders and Stanford Torus. 

3 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

The main problem I see is that our current tech is looking for readings on specific things. If we're checking on standard contaminants, would anything from offworld even show up? If we're measuring aluminum particles per million, would aluminum from an alien craft show up differently? 

I don't know of a reason why aluminum from an alien spacecraft would necessarily show up differently. But you have a point about what we are looking for. If what we are looking for is something else then we might not even detect it at all. This has been suggested in the search for a shadow biosphere. We look for DNA from the biosphere we know and wouldn't "see" anything different.. 

[Sensei]

42 minutes ago, Phi for All said:

We often hear about tests that conclude particles (of some material) aren't native to the area where they're found. There's a bunch of stuff in the atmosphere, and I was wondering if we're capable of detecting matter from offworld in it. We can tell where dust from one country has blown into another, so it would seem like the tech is robust enough. If we could detect aluminum particles from aircraft, and determine where that aluminum came from (?), it seems likely that we could also detect if it didn't come from around here.  

Phi, you should be knowledgeable enough to know there is just one stable isotope of Aluminum with 13 protons and 14 protons. To confirm extraterrestrial object there is used isotopes comparison method. If there is different isotopic composition, it's at least "suspicious".. which is by some scientists extrapolated to extraterrestrial origin..

f.e. there are three isotopes of Oxygen O-16, O-17, O-18 (O-19 is decaying to F-19).

We take Earth sample of stuff, and check Oxygen isotopes. And find it is matching "Earth's average".

Take another sample, and find it has extraordinary abundance of O-17 or O-18... Why? Some scientists are interpreting it, that it must be extraterrestrial object, with suspicious isotopic composition, because it does not match Earth's average..

 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Sensei

[Phi for All]

5 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Phi, you should be knowledgeable enough to know there is just one stable isotope of Aluminum with 13 protons and 14 protons. To confirm extraterrestrial object there is used isotopes comparison method. If there is different isotopic composition, it's at least "suspicious".. which is by some scientists extrapolated to extraterrestrial origin..

f.e. there are three isotopes of Oxygen O-16, O-17, O-18 (O-19 is decaying to F-19).

We take Earth sample of stuff, and check Oxygen isotopes. And find it is matching "Earth's average".

Take other sample, and find it has extraordinary abundance of O-17 or O-18... Why? Some scientists are interpreting it, that it must be extraterrestrial object, with suspicious isotopic composition, because it does not match Earth average..

"If you don't know, now you know." -- Panic at the Disco

Excellent, thanks Sensei! So do you think a properly fitted aircraft could fly ASAP to a reported UFO sighting and try to detect samples that don't match what we'd expect to see?

[koti]

37 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

No, this is a misunderstanding often alluded to but it doesn't hold up without assuming that any travels would be direct from star to star by the same individuals. Slow ships traveling from one oort cloud to another and making use of interstellar objects and dust to top up volatiles and to build even more habitats makes much more sense and is doable if they have controlled fusion as an energy source. No needs for planets at all and any visitors to earth would be the equivalent specialized researchers. The entire galaxy could be smattered by these habitats, rotated for gravity, see  O'Neil cylinders and Mckendrick cylinders and Stanford Torus. 

I don't know of a reason why aluminum from an alien spacecraft would necessarily show up differently. But you have a point about what we are looking for. If what we are looking for is something else then we might not even detect it at all. This has been suggested in the search for a shadow biosphere. We look for DNA from the biosphere we know and wouldn't "see" anything different.. 

We've sent first probes into space in the 1950's, I don't see Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or other capable people pursuing your scenario - distance will always be the main factor and a single planet resource will never cope with it (I know, it sucks)

 

17 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Phi, you should be knowledgeable enough to know there is just one stable isotope of Aluminum with 13 protons and 14 protons. To confirm extraterrestrial object there is used isotopes comparison method. If there is different isotopic composition, it's at least "suspicious".. which is by some scientists extrapolated to extraterrestrial origin..

f.e. there are three isotopes of Oxygen O-16, O-17, O-18 (O-19 is decaying to F-19).

We take Earth sample of stuff, and check Oxygen isotopes. And find it is matching "Earth average".

Take other sample, and find it has extraordinary abundance of O-17 or O-18... Why? Some scientists are interpreting it, that it must be extraterrestrial object, with suspicious isotopic composition, because it does not match Earth average..

 

Isotopes, what a surprise!  

Plus apparently there’s one of aluminum with 13 protons and 14 protons, thats some serious alien sh** right there.

Edited June 21, 2019 by koti