Are UAPs/UFOs finally being taken seriously?

[Moontanman]

The US Government appears to be taking UAPs/UFOs seriously, these papers suggest that the US government is taking Unidentified Objects seriously and even suggesting they exhibit technology beyond our own. There papers dance around UAPs being extraterrestrial but do suggest they might be extraordinary events at the very least. The video is short but explains the premise. I still have to come down on the side of these objects being most likely drones from adversary nations but this is almost as disturbing as the extraterrestrial hypothesis.  

 https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/highly-classified-nro-system-captures-possible-tic-tac-object-in-2021/

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf

http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_aaas_69.pdf

 

[Intoscience]

They should take them seriously.

Whether they are of alien origin remains to be seen, but regardless. Anything that is unidentified and especially so if it appears to be of some technology, then it needs investigating at the highest level, with the most qualified persons working on it.  

[Sensei]

17 hours ago, Moontanman said:

The US Government appears to be taking UAPs/UFOs seriously,

Not as seriously as you.. the all your threads, I can remember, are about it..

 

[exchemist]

19 hours ago, Moontanman said:

The US Government appears to be taking UAPs/UFOs seriously, these papers suggest that the US government is taking Unidentified Objects seriously and even suggesting they exhibit technology beyond our own. There papers dance around UAPs being extraterrestrial but do suggest they might be extraordinary events at the very least. The video is short but explains the premise. I still have to come down on the side of these objects being most likely drones from adversary nations but this is almost as disturbing as the extraterrestrial hypothesis.  

 https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Unclassified-2022-Annual-Report-UAP.pdf

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/highly-classified-nro-system-captures-possible-tic-tac-object-in-2021/

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/LK1.pdf

http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_aaas_69.pdf

 

You don't really encourage other people to take this seriously by linking a YouTube video, with a silly opening shot of little green men landing in a clearing in a forest.

This stuff has been going on since the 1950s, with zero progress to show for it. Wake me up when somebody actually discovers something. 

 

[Moontanman]

14 minutes ago, exchemist said:

You don't really encourage other people to take this seriously by linking a YouTube video, with a silly opening shot of little green men landing in a clearing in a forest.

This stuff has been going on since the 1950s, with zero progress to show for it. Wake me up when somebody actually discovers something. 

 

I guess you didn't read the papers? The little green men were just a thumb nail to attract attention. 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I guess you didn't read the papers? 

I read several of them.

The dni papers make zero claim about aliens. They do mention that UAPs are a potential hazard since a lot of them turn out to be actual objects (almost half of the ones that are later identified are balloons) are potentially hazards to aerial navigation. No evidence from UAP sightings were shared. 

The Loeb and Kirkpatric research paper is dubious- they claim a light sail could reach c, but the paper they cite says nothing of the sort. I think we’ve discussed the limitations of light sails before.

 

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I guess you didn't read the papers? The little green men were just a thumb nail to attract attention. 

I started on the first one, was underwhelmed by its careful language and lack of conclusions, and didn't go any further.  

[Externet]

In the news : ---> https://nypost.com/2023/03/15/pentagon-officials-suggest-alien-mothership-in-our-solar-system-could-send-mini-probes-to-earth/

[Moontanman]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

I read several of them.

The dni papers make zero claim about aliens. They do mention that UAPs are a potential hazard since a lot of them turn out to be actual objects (almost half of the ones that are later identified are balloons) are potentially hazards to aerial navigation. No evidence from UAP sightings were shared. 

The Loeb and Kirkpatric research paper is dubious- they claim a light sail could reach c, but the paper they cite says nothing of the sort. I think we’ve discussed the limitations of light sails before.

 

Loeb and Kirkpatric do seem to over step in their paper, thank you for pointing that out. As for claims of aliens, the "other" category is about as close to such a claim as would be justified. To actually claim any of these sightings were caused by ET would be premature and inflammatory. How ever the papers admitted that some of the objects did demonstrate unusual flight characteristics that could not be explained and needed further investigation. 
 

I never suggested these objects were ETs, I did in fact suggest the most likely explanation was drones from adversary nations. I did also suggest that some of them had no current explanation and that this "danced around" the issue of ETs. I would not expect any scientific paper to flat out suggest ETs and neither should anyone else until one lands on the Whitehouse lawn.

Barring that unlikely revelation these papers come closest to suggesting something is going on that cannot be explained with current technology. Whether this represents adversarial technology or unknown civilian technology the fact remains that objects exhibiting unknown technology exist and the government is acknowledging this and doing their due diligence to find out what is going on. Instead of simply poo pooing the entire thing as hoaxes or mistaken identity. 

I would suggest reading the entire papers and try to identify the trees inside the forest. The more I read scientific research on this subject the closer i get to something extraordinary going on. What this is cannot as of yet be determined but I think we can discuss the data we have without our brains falling out. 

Sorry about the video, the author is one of my favs and I wanted to give him credit for his work. He has interviewed many scientists on a great many topics relating to space and does a great job of listing his sources.  

5 minutes ago, Externet said:

In the news : ---> https://nypost.com/2023/03/15/pentagon-officials-suggest-alien-mothership-in-our-solar-system-could-send-mini-probes-to-earth/

It pains me to say this but the Post seems to be unnecessarily inflating this story, The original paper does say this is a possibility but not a probability.   

[swansont]

8 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

I never suggested these objects were ETs

And yet the subject keeps popping up

Quote

Instead of simply poo pooing the entire thing as hoaxes or mistaken identity. 

And this keeps not happening.

What does happen is a request for scientific evidence, when ET is offered up.

[Moontanman]

I think this paper by James E. McDonald, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences The University of Arizona is extremely interesting coming as it is from 1969 and describing several UFO sightings. 

http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_aaas_69.pdf

13 minutes ago, swansont said:

And yet the subject keeps popping up

And this keeps not happening.

What does happen is a request for scientific evidence, when ET is offered up.

When discussing the "other" category in these papers it would be odd for the idea of ET not to come up. ETs are part of our culture and while not provable many sightings do suggest something extraordinary is going on and the idea of a catch all bin called other is not a sufficient or honest and is often used as an excuse to dismiss these unusual sightings out of hand. 

You have taught me that it's not proper to claim ETs as the source of these sightings so I refrain from doing so but that doesn't make the sightings go away. 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Moontanman

[swansont]

57 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

When discussing the "other" category in these papers it would be odd for the idea of ET not to come up. ETs are part of our culture and while not provable many sightings do suggest something extraordinary is going on and the idea of a catch all bin called other is not a sufficient or honest and is often used as an excuse to dismiss these unusual sightings out of hand. 

It’s called “other” because it’s not airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, government or industry developmental programs, or a foreign adversary system. 

It’s the uncharacterized reports that have the “unusual flight characteristics”

 

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

It pains me to say this but the Post seems to be unnecessarily inflating this story, The original paper does say this is a possibility but not a probability.   

The NY Post is a Murdoch owned tabloid.  It has zero journalistic integrity.  Wall to wall sensationalism.  No one need feel pain questioning its content.    

[mistermack]

"Are UAPs/UFOs finally being taken seriously ?"

To be honest, the notion that the reports are due to extraterrestrials have never been less likely. The number of people who own a modern mobile phone with a camera is now over SEVEN BILLION !! in stark contrast to the situation in the fifties and sixties when the flying saucer myths took off. ( I think )

Still no good pictures of the little green men, or their crafts, or ray weapons.  So the odds of something being "out there" must be just a tiny fraction of what they were fifty years ago. And the odds are getting longer by the day.

[Moontanman]

1 hour ago, swansont said:

It’s called “other” because it’s not airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, government or industry developmental programs, or a foreign adversary system. 

It’s the uncharacterized reports that have the “unusual flight characteristics”

 

You know that drawer in your house where you out odds and ends? The things you can't or won't throw away but still don't know what to do with them? That is what the "other" category is. A place where things go to be forgotten and or ignored, maybe years later when the drawer gets full you might throw the stuff away without much care. The "other" should not be a place where everything goes that has no immediate use to be forgotten. Yes it's the uncategorized reports that have unusual flight characteristics but it's also the place where the silly stuff goes, unknown lights in the sky, something some guy just claimed, anal probes... the possible foreign adversary goes there as well, or unknown industry programs. You can't say something is a foreign adversary if you don't know what it is, you can't say it's a unknown industrial program if you don't know what it is. The "other" category is useless and only serves to hide things you cannot explain regardless of how much data is available. Other is not useful as an explanation unless it is kept out in the light of day where you have to deal with it, hiding it away is worse than debunking it amounts to dismissing the data out of hand. If it displays unusual flight characteristics, then it should go in a classification of "unusual flight characteristics not what is nothing less than a trash file.   

  

7 minutes ago, mistermack said:

"Are UAPs/UFOs finally being taken seriously ?"

To be honest, the notion that the reports are due to extraterrestrials have never been less likely. The number of people who own a modern mobile phone with a camera is now over SEVEN BILLION !! in stark contrast to the situation in the fifties and sixties when the flying saucer myths took off. ( I think )

Still no good pictures of the little green men, or their crafts, or ray weapons.  So the odds of something being "out there" must be just a tiny fraction of what they were fifty years ago. And the odds are getting longer by the day.

You couldn't be further from the truth, if anything the camera phone has resulted in a flurry of photos all over the world but since the vast majority are posted as you tube videos or some other place that is not held in high esteem they are ignored. Many photos are quite good and more often than not touted as too good to be true.  

[mistermack]

Depends what you call a "good" picture. Faked pictures are not "good" pictures in my book. There are plenty of them, but I'm not seeing any authentic good pictures. The number that I'm aware of is a big fat zero, but maybe I get different media to you. 

But you can put that right by posting the best ones. It's your thread. 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, Moontanman said:

The "other" category is useless and only serves to hide things you cannot explain regardless of how much data is available.

Yes, everything is a conspiracy. It’s Mulder and Scully, which was totally real and not a fictional show.

Or…

The “other” category is because the military is a hard-core bureaucracy and everything needs to go in a “bin” but also pragmatic enough that they aren’t going to create a category for every one-off incident or try and come up with six unique names for six things not easily described and don’t fall into the other categories.

 

[Intoscience]

There is a stigma around aliens being a consideration for UAP sightings, some may say rightly so since there is no evidence to support the claims. Many hoax's and poor quality imaginary adds to this. 

I think its almost a shame, that "mud sticks" per say. 

My honest opinion I don't think any of the "other" is likely to be ET. But i'm open to the possibility. So i don't think it should ever be ignored.

Show me the evidence! 

[Moontanman]

16 hours ago, swansont said:

Yes, everything is a conspiracy. It’s Mulder and Scully, which was totally real and not a fictional show.

Or…

The “other” category is because the military is a hard-core bureaucracy and everything needs to go in a “bin” but also pragmatic enough that they aren’t going to create a category for every one-off incident or try and come up with six unique names for six things not easily described and don’t fall into the other categories.

 

OK.. good call, I was out of hand in that reply. I apologise. 

54 minutes ago, Intoscience said:

There is a stigma around aliens being a consideration for UAP sightings, some may say rightly so since there is no evidence to support the claims. Many hoax's and poor quality imaginary adds to this. 

I think its almost a shame, that "mud sticks" per say. 

My honest opinion I don't think any of the "other" is likely to be ET. But i'm open to the possibility. So i don't think it should ever be ignored.

Show me the evidence! 

I mostly agree but what would constitute evidence? The only thing I can think of that wouldn't dismissed is a landing on the White House lawn or the equivalent. IMHO this is not what we should be waiting on. There are reports that are truly inexplicable and not from lack of data, waiting on "hard" evidence is likely a fool's errand. All we will ever be able to collect on our own is data that can be interpreted to mean anything. One picture I have posted before was immediately dismissed by this forum as a hub cap being thrown by someone and photographing it... even though the witness who took the photo was someone to be trusted and the photo contained elements that were counter to the idea of a thrown hubcap. I don't know what to think really, any photo is subject to doubt, radar tracings are subject to doubt, eyewitnesses are subject to doubt, physical traces are subject to doubt... how do we remove the doubt? A landing on the white House lawn? If only it were that easy, I wish I had an answer.  

17 hours ago, mistermack said:

Depends what you call a "good" picture. Faked pictures are not "good" pictures in my book. There are plenty of them, but I'm not seeing any authentic good pictures. The number that I'm aware of is a big fat zero, but maybe I get different media to you. 

But you can put that right by posting the best ones. It's your thread. 

What would you call "a good picture"? 

[npts2020]

One thing that might be a "good picture" would be several people photoing or videoing the same event from different angles. 

[Intoscience]

17 hours ago, Moontanman said:

I don't know what to think really, any photo is subject to doubt, radar tracings are subject to doubt, eyewitnesses are subject to doubt, physical traces are subject to doubt... how do we remove the doubt? A landing on the white House lawn? If only it were that easy, I wish I had an answer.  

It's so easy to create very convincing hoaxes, even with good pictures and video evidence, so anything short of a landing on the White House lawn will not suffice. 

The reality is that until we have a physical object within our possession with full public awareness the likelihood of anything being taken seriously as ET is almost zero. And even then, much like the moon landing doubters, and flat earthers, there will always be those skeptics or conspiracy theorists with doubt or in denial. 

As I stated in my previous post, I feel it's a shame that such a stigma has been created around Aliens. The reality being that the universe is a vast place full of countless planets so there is good reason to make a plausible case for the possibility of ET intelligence. On the flip, the difficulty comes from the fact that our current understanding of physics and our current level and forecasted level of technology doesn't really allow for interstellar space travel with any meaningful practical, or economical application. Thus along with other factors, like the odds of simultaneous existence, low detection thresholds.... complete with the vast majority of the sightings depicted being somewhat similar to humans, having the ability to travel across vast distances but then crashing on this planet, or easily detectable. The assumption of human motivation, interest in exploration... All makes the likelihood of ET coming to visit seem somewhat absurd and most definitely very unlikely for most reasonably minded people. 

We assume we know enough about physics to dismiss any practical application for travelling interstellar distances, we assume that GR is the underlining model (rightly so because all the current evidence and data suggest this) of space-time.  

However, I do feel we should remain open minded on these matters, but also make no assumptions either way. 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Intoscience
spelling

[mistermack]

21 hours ago, Moontanman said:

What would you call "a good picture"? 

It's hard to define something that has yet to appear. The honest answer is I think I'll know it when I see it. But I'm not holding my breath. And just like everyone else, I can be fooled too. A quality picture, or set of pictures, with massive supporting evidence from several respected sources would be a good start.

Personally, I think there probably are aliens in the universe. Lots of them. But the vastness of space between them and us makes it unlikely that we will ever see signals from them, let alone encounter them. And if they did get here, I think it would be immediately obvious, and not just some fuzzy blurry shakey pictures taken by people with a slightly odd stare. 

[Moontanman]

3 hours ago, mistermack said:

It's hard to define something that has yet to appear. The honest answer is I think I'll know it when I see it. But I'm not holding my breath. And just like everyone else, I can be fooled too. A quality picture, or set of pictures, with massive supporting evidence from several respected sources would be a good start.

Personally, I think there probably are aliens in the universe. Lots of them. But the vastness of space between them and us makes it unlikely that we will ever see signals from them, let alone encounter them. And if they did get here, I think it would be immediately obvious, and not just some fuzzy blurry shakey pictures taken by people with a slightly odd stare. 

Good pictures have been taken but they suffer from the old "too blurry" or "too good to be real", as I have said the supposed "aliens" control the info we get and to think good photos will be that perfect photo of a alien spacecraft landing on the White House lawn in plain view of military civilian, civilians, or the media just ain't gonna happen.

The entire distance problem, IMHO, is a red herring, Aliens, if they are here, are unlikely to be weekenders dropping by to see the humans on a lark. Even without FTL it is quite possible to explore and even colonise the entire galaxy in a few million years. I think they would avoid planets altogether if colonization is part of their plan and build space habitats in places like the Kuiper Belt. There are plenty of resources in that area, of volatiles, of rocks and even small amounts of metals. The ones that visit us are most likely to be specialists who want to study planets with life and maybe even observe emerging civilizations. Our Kuiper Belt could be lousy with alien habitats and we would be completely unaware of them other then a fleeting glimpses of probes dipping occasionally into our atmosphere to obtain close up pics or samples. Of course the idea of them being in our Kuiper Belt is highly speculative but still close enough for us to find out if we wanted to badly enough. 

Another possibility is Von neumann probes  or Bracewell probes which could lurk in a planetary system waiting for sentience to evolve and to report back to their creators. Such probes could print out smaller probes to gather information possibly even build biological beings/robots to help in their exploration. I am sure there are other possibilites that do not require magical technology for aliens to be here. 

[Bufofrog]

32 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

Good pictures have been taken but they suffer from the old "too blurry" or "too good to be real"

Do you have an example of a photo that is too good to be real?

33 minutes ago, Moontanman said:

as I have said the supposed "aliens" control the info we get

Is it your contention that extraterrestrials are controlling the information the public receives?  Do you think aliens are working with the government?

[Moontanman]

46 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Do you have an example of a photo that is too good to be real?

https://www.newsweek.com/best-ufo-picture-calvine-photo-found-30-years-missing-1733673

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/3447508/UFO-sightings-140-years-of-UFO-pictures.html

My personal fav. 

http://www.noufors.com/Rex_Heflin_ufo_photographs.html

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

 

46 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

Is it your contention that extraterrestrials are controlling the information the public receives?  Do you think aliens are working with the government?

Not in the way you seem to be suggesting, I am saying that Alien technology would be so advanced that they could limit our knowledge of them by not allowing themselves to be detected unless they wanted to be detected. 

I would say the prospect of the Gov being in cahoots with aliens is quite small but not non zero. 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Moontanman