'U.S. Navy Says UFOs Are Real, UFO Hunters Are Thrilled' (vice.com) 441
dryriver writes: Vice/Motherboard writes that since the U.S. Navy admitted that its pilots encounter unidentified flying objects all the time, and mainstream news outlets like the New York Times have devoted coverage to Navy Pilots' UFO encounter stories, old UFO hunters around the world feel vindicated, and many new younger people are taking an interest in the phenomenon.
For decades people who believe in UFOs, UFO lore and take UFO sightings and UFO encounters seriously have been widely ridiculed as stupid, uneducated, gullible, deluded or crazy. Now that highly trained military pilots are talking about encountering UFOs all the time and mainstream media doesn't ridicule UFO sightings anymore — this only took a few decades — a fundamental taboo appears to have been broken. UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations, people mistaking clouds for aliens or people spreading fake news to sell books, seminars and videos.
The question is, why, for so long, did mainstream media systematically ignore and ridicule a phenomenon just about everybody around the world has some knowledge of and had some exposure to? And if UFOs are "officially not crazy" now, what else that still is ridiculed by the MSM may also turn out to be "officially not crazy" in the future?
As a counterpoint, long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. argues that "UFO's are real, they are unidentified flying objects. There is absolutely no evidence that they are Aliens.
"If people continue to equate them with little green men then they can still expect to be ridiculed."
For decades people who believe in UFOs, UFO lore and take UFO sightings and UFO encounters seriously have been widely ridiculed as stupid, uneducated, gullible, deluded or crazy. Now that highly trained military pilots are talking about encountering UFOs all the time and mainstream media doesn't ridicule UFO sightings anymore — this only took a few decades — a fundamental taboo appears to have been broken. UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations, people mistaking clouds for aliens or people spreading fake news to sell books, seminars and videos.
The question is, why, for so long, did mainstream media systematically ignore and ridicule a phenomenon just about everybody around the world has some knowledge of and had some exposure to? And if UFOs are "officially not crazy" now, what else that still is ridiculed by the MSM may also turn out to be "officially not crazy" in the future?
As a counterpoint, long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. argues that "UFO's are real, they are unidentified flying objects. There is absolutely no evidence that they are Aliens.
"If people continue to equate them with little green men then they can still expect to be ridiculed."
Terms (Score:5, Informative)
I don't ridicule people who see UFOs because it happens all of the time. A UFO is merely an Unidentified Flying Object.
I DO ridicule people who claim to see alien spaceships, flying saucers and extraterrestrials.
Re:Terms (Score:5, Insightful)
Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."
Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"
We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.
Re:Terms (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic.
Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."
Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"
It's not just "see things they can't clearly identify." It's seeing flying discrete objects they cannot identify, not fog in the distance. Navy pilots with the fastest jets, the latest technology right up close to these flying discrete objects, and they, or their command, are unable to identify. Then, the New York Times ran a story about it:
These last few months have seen a surge in media outlets covering the UFO phenomenon. This week, the New York Times ran a story about two Navy fighter pilots who had multiple encounters with strange objects which seemed to perform impossible maneuvers. In one dramatic case, the pilots recounted a story of an object that looked like a “sphere encasing a cube” that flew in-between two fighter jets cruising in tandem just 100 feet apart.
I have no idea what they're seeing. But these are credible sources, in some instances catching the scenes on aircraft video. I'm not saying LGM's, but it could still be something rather weird. What that is would be worthwhile to investigate. This is not Cletus, hallucinating on moonshine, making up stories. Liars and imbeciles have poisoned this field, but it seems there might be something real beneath the nonsense.
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Identifying things in the air is much harder than you think though. Even today with radar, radio, IFF etc friendly aircraft in combat still shoot each other down. A few years ago the Russian's managed to shoot down one of their own on a training mission. With that in mind, that pilots can have trouble identifying their own buddies, flying in aircraft types they are intimately familiar with is it really all that surprising that they see stuff they can't identify all the time? I don't think so. Any aircraft f
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In the NY times article more than one pilot was discussing first what they were seeing and then managing to track on radar.
Most of these skeptical arguments become very poor when there are not only multiple credible witnesses but instrumentation backing their accounts.
Re:Terms (Score:4, Insightful)
"Historically, black projects like Lockheed Skunkworks used 'aliens' as a cover story... They are still at work, and still responsible for a majority of UFO sightings"
That is fair enough although the appropriate word would be "many" not "the majority" since the difference is purely speculation.
Personally I just get annoyed by knee jerk negative response on certain topics. It isn't that I'm advocating one way or another it is that I oppose a strong unfounded bias. Extraordinary claims don't require extraordinary evidence because the vast majority of the time extraordinary is not an objective criteria but a strong subjective bias that is antithesis to the spirit and principals of science.
There is a sort of elitism pervasive not only in science but in academia, a nasty sort of rot upon the genitals of these en devours that has nothing to do with learning or science and everything to do with their historical roots as a luxury of the aristocracy. These taboo areas of investigation and study called "extraordinary" serve as nothing but yet another excuse to believe in ones own enlightenment and superiority relative to others while simultaneously paying lip service to concepts incompatible with that attitude. There is nothing superior about dismissing possibilities or starting from a conclusion and "debunking" relative to believing in those possibilities with little or poor evidence, all of the above is applied ignorance and anti-scientific and no set of credentials will save someone who holds these views from being more of an ignorant crackpot than a gas station attendant with no opinion on the matter whatsoever because that attendant has at least kept the kind of open mind a scientist should ever strive for.
Not only is there at least some evidence worthy of further investigation in many of these areas but those who fail to suspend disbelief during their investigations are actively corrupting the results with their extreme bias. It is a crime that tainting results in these areas with extreme negative bias is not only not called out by the community but actively encouraged and supported.
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Yes. Your powerful argument of "nuh uh" or "your stupid and wrong" relative to my reasoned argument filled with logical support humbles me.
No, I didn't say "your [sic] stupid and wrong", I said if you honestly hold the view the scoffing at a moron is the same as being a moron, it is only because you are a moron. It's a statement of position. One I think is quite reasonable. You seem to have a habit of re-framing peoples words as fallacious arguments. I wonder if you realize that is... well, fallacious.
An entirely subjective gulf, reasonable is a subjective criteria.
You are actually right about this. The little-green-men chasers represent one side of the spectrum, I represent the median, and orthodox religio
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The navy aircraft are also flying at high speed, they have very limited time to eyeball what might be a very small object.
Also their equipment is set up to detect threatening objects like other aircraft and missiles, it won't do so well at detecting a balloon or a plastic bag blowing around in the wind.
Could you identify a piece of trash on the side of the road when driving past at 60mph? Now imagine flying past at 600+ mph...
Re:Terms (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing to remember is that the USAF and USN (and probably other major air powers) routinely prescribe amphetamines [nih.gov] to pilots during tactical and training operations. This is not a secret. It's also not a secret that amphetamines increase the risk of hallucinations [nih.gov]. Specifically, the research on stimulant-induced-psychosis suggests that hyper stimulation of the brain causes it to become overly eager at pattern-matching, essentially overfitting visual stimuli.
It's also known that sensory deprivation also causes the same kind of overly-eager pattern matching [mentalfloss.com] in which the sensory cortex strains to find some kind of order. Fun personal story, I once got a chance to sit for a few minutes in an isolated anechoic chamber and you will literally start hearing shit out of nowhere. No matter how much my conscious brain tried to insist that there is literally, scientifically, no sound in the room, as measured by a super expensive and calibrated/certified instrument, the sensory cortex was like "nope bro, definitely hearing shit".
So putting it all together, we have pilots on stimulants known to cause hallucinations, flying over barren ocean with no signifiers or terrain, which is mildly monotonic/deprived, that all of a sudden report seeing objects with unreal physical properties. The most economical explanation is that they saw something real, and pattern matched it to a flying object. It's not a question of seeing things that are not there, it's a question of seeing something that is there and deciding whether it's actually a flying vehicle of sorts.
[ None of this is to denigrate the pilots professionalism or credibility in a personal sense. These are external factors that would, as I reckon, cause just about anyone to start looking at things funny. ]
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That said, there still is no evidence that these UFOs are extraterrestrial in nature.
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As a teenager I stayed awake in excess of 3 days a few times, only using caffeine. For various irrelevant reasons.
My experience was that serious hallucinations began the third night. Judging from subjective feelings of tiredness, it would be easy to predict similar hallucinations from chronic lack of sleep such as military pilots intentionally undergo as part of both training and operations.
Once on the third night there two of us, and we both clearly heard sounds from the roof of an animal walking, we could
Re:Terms (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is why as in the NY times article they often have video to go along with their witness accounts.
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I've also seen articles breathlessly talking about how the UFOs were tracked on the latest and greatest radars. Someone here may correct me, but I don't believe these latest (and possibly greatest) radars work the same way the radars (and the radar repeaters, i.e. the "scopes" we used) worked on the DDG I was on back in the early 70s. Those radars sent out pulses, and the repeaters displayed analog representations of what was reflected back. They could be fooled by certain things, like heavy waves, but b
Re:Terms (Score:5, Funny)
What was said. "Of course we have a number of unidentified flying objects at sea. Some of them turn out to be aircraft, and some objects reentereing the atmosphere."
What was heard. "UFO are flying saucers piloted by little green men."
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Give these people credit.
They don't think Extraterrestrial Life are Little Green Men, but Little Gray Men. Keep up.
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Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic. Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify." Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!" We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.
I'm not so sure. Yes, we have more cameras than ever before, but do you see the images from those cameras? For the most part, no, you don't. We only see what is elevated by the media, or goes "viral" on social media. And even then, we only see the images or video. What does it depict? We can all see the evidence but disagree on its meaning. We didn't know about this until the Navy decided to tell us. Otherwise we would have no knowledge of it, even though it exists.
Some of these Navy pilots have see
Re:Terms (Score:4, Informative)
Some of these Navy pilots have seen things like balls of light, with no wings or IR exhaust signature, doing things that are way beyond our understanding of state-of-the-art technology.
It's called ball lightning and it's quite real. There's quality digital video of the phenomenon along with 0.78 seconds of high speed video, plus spectrographic recordings of the same incident. It's a thin plasma of vaporized silicon, calcium, iron, nitrogen, and oxygen. Basically vaporized dirt in air. Reasonably good artificial ball lightning was created in 2007 by intentionally vaporizing silicon with high voltages.
There may be more than one type of ball lightning. There are a raft of different theories and exactly why some ground strikes generate it but most don't is unclear. It certainly exists though. That covers a great many incidents. It's not an unexplained technology. It's a not-very-well-explained natural phenomenon.
Re:Terms (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness we do have pictures and video all the time, if this were 30 years ago we would "know" that they're here.
Nobody believes in video and pictures anymore and chances are that skepticism has risen so high that even a government sponsored tour of an alien wreckage would be believed to be a hoax and propaganda.
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And nobody would believe that either.
I'm not saying there are little green men. But the question of whether or not there are little green always raises one of my big pet peeves.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
There is no logical basis for this. The problem is that what is or is not extraordinary is defined by bias and nothing more.
In many cases the subjects which draw this standard aren't particularly extraordinary at all. A given object being little green men might be statistically ex
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"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
There is no logical basis for this. The problem is that what is or is not extraordinary is defined by bias and nothing more.
What sort of idiot conflates the existence of inherent human bias with the absence of anything other than bias?
Oh. Dude, that's pathetic.
It simply makes no logical sense to arbitrarily raise or lower the bar for claims as a function of community bias.
OK then why do you run all the way to one of the extremes when measuring bias? Why are you so affected by it, if you understand your own words? I think perhaps you repeated the words without internalizing the semantic details. (aka, the meaning)
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Yeah, this whole discussion is so moronic.
Navy: "Our pilots see things they can't clearly identify."
Everybody else: "Oh my god, the Navy just confirmed that aliens are zipping around in our skies constantly!"
We now have more people with more cameras than ever in human history. If there were aliens zipping around our skies, and they were inept enough that Navy pilots can see them all the time, we'd have pictures. We'd *know* that they're here.
This is a good general principe to sort the wheat from the chaff as far as rare events go, prior to omnipresent cameras.
Tornados, tsunamis, plane crashes, train crashes, car crashes murders, very few films, but nowadays many video instances. (Oh look! Tsunamis aren't a 100 foot giant crashing wave Superman can freeze, but rather a 30 foot swell that rolls in and in and in.)
Aliens, UFOs (qua alien space ships), fairies, demons, ghosts, chupacabrasziz, Big Feets, Nessie, etc. Nuthin'! Or ultra grainy pictu
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I see UFO all the time.
I don't know If a saw a Meteorite, or an airplane, an odd shaped cloud...
The issue is sometimes it take too much time to identify something, a Navy Pilot if they spent time to Identify that something, they may have already crashed their airplane.
My friends and I saw something unexplainable (Score:5, Insightful)
One evening I was standing outside when I saw just abpve the tree line what seemed to be an aircraft, a light in the sky, moving in ways that planes don't, and can't. (I have some pilot training and aeronautical engineering training). Zipping back and forth, up and down in ways that human-built craft can't do. I pointed it out to my friends, who also saw it. All agreed an airplane made by man doesn't fly that way. Nobody had ever seen anything fly like that.
Then the strange, out-of-this-world object flew *in front* of a tree. It was a lightning bug, also known as a firefly. We had thought it was much further away nowand going much faster. One the problems with objects in the sky is that the eye can't tell how far away it is, and therefore how big it or how fast it's going. Another problem is that when a small light is moving toward or away from you it seems to stop, so a regular airplane can "hover and immediately reverse direction", as seen by the observer who sees only a 2D version of its 3D movement.
Another time, several of my relatives saw a glass of ice tea pushed halfway across the table by a spooky invisible force. Hearing about it, I did some experiments and found that every time you placed some ice tea in that type glass at that side the table, after several minutes condensation would run down the side of the glass. This would very effectively lubricate the interface between the glass and the table top (also glass), allowing the glass to slide across the slightly unlevel table.
I've learned that people see things which can only be explained by aliens, ghosts, or magic. I used to work as a professional magician, so I know magic, which would explain these things, consists of mirrors and misdirection.
Re:My friends and I saw something unexplainable (Score:4, Funny)
I've learned that people see things which can only be explained by aliens, ghosts, or magic. I used to work as a professional magician, so I know magic, which would explain these things, consists of mirrors and misdirection.
One evening I was out in a field in the mountains enjoying my hobby of Amateur Astronomy.
Then in the east this triangular array of lights shows up. I thought - Oh shit, here Mr Skeptic is, seeing the archetype of UFO's.
So the thing continued across the sky in front of me. Strange bankings and other movements Red and white lights, and occasionally a strong beam shot out from it.
So I grab my handy binoculars, and problem solved. This was three Chinooks flying in formation, and the lads were having fun with their searchlights, I suppose. Then the thwocka-thwocka noise showed up and confirmed it. UFO becomes IFO's
I suspect this has happened many times, and the less skeptical just assign it to a UFO.
Re:My friends and I saw something unexplainable (Score:5, Interesting)
One evening I was standing outside when I saw just abpve the tree line what seemed to be an aircraft, a light in the sky, moving in ways that planes don't, and can't. (I have some pilot training and aeronautical engineering training). Zipping back and forth, up and down in ways that human-built craft can't do. I pointed it out to my friends, who also saw it. All agreed an airplane made by man doesn't fly that way. Nobody had ever seen anything fly like that.
Then the strange, out-of-this-world object flew *in front* of a tree. It was a lightning bug, also known as a firefly. We had thought it was much further away nowand going much faster. One the problems with objects in the sky is that the eye can't tell how far away it is, and therefore how big it or how fast it's going. Another problem is that when a small light is moving toward or away from you it seems to stop, so a regular airplane can "hover and immediately reverse direction", as seen by the observer who sees only a 2D version of its 3D movement.
Did your radar lock onto that object? That is what some of these Navy pilots have reported. They have tracked them doing "impossible" maneuvers. They could certainly be experimental drones. But I think you are minimizing what is being reported by relating it to your experience with a firefly.
The radar is very interesting (Score:2)
The radar bit is interesting indeed. What the Navy pilot(s) saw probably wasn't fireflies. No telling what it was.
I say pilot(s) because one pilot says that other pilots saw it.
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So, one night when I was young, my brother, some friends and I were sitting in a truck listening to my friend's new sound system (otherwise known as damaging our hearing) in my father's drive, out in the middle of nowhere. I'm looking out the window, and I see what appears to be an event sized firework launching strait into the sky from just up the road. Like, maybe half a mile. It was a glowing ball of light heading strait up, leaving some smoke behind. Shortly after I pointed it out to my friends, it
I don't have a basement (Score:2)
Yes, some friends taught me to get out of the house and do things. Plus, I can't sit in the basement all day playing video games, because I don't have a basement. :)
Figure you work 40 hours and sleep 50 hours in a week. That leaves 78 hours per week to do other things. Your free time, 78 hours a week, is an equal to two full-time jobs.
In 78 hours per week for 43 years, I've done 174,000 hours of stuff. It's estimated that it takes about 10,000 hours of intentional practice to master a craft, whether that b
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Professional Magician is like Professional Santa Claus.
It is usually a part time, mostly seasonal job. But there is latent supply all year.
Source: My father graduated Santa College at a school that also teaches magic.
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The mere fact that something is "unidentified" means that we don't know what it is, the chance of such an object being alien is extremely small. Most likely they will have reasonable and utterly mundane explanations like balloons or trash being blown around by the wind.
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What it means is that there is a legitimate mystery(s), not necessarily that extraterrestrials are visiting. People often confuse the two.
It's odd because normally such announcement would create major media attention. The military has habilitally denied there was any real mystery for several decades. However, the unusual celebrity in the White House has overshadowed this change of stance.
Maybe that's why they chose to announce it now. If you don't want the bruha of reporters buzzing around, then wait until
real (Score:4, Insightful)
UFO sightings are suddenly real, not a product of overactive imaginations
Just because someone reports a UFO sighting does not mean they don't have an overactive imagination.
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No one claimed they don't.
The part that I quoted claims exactly that, implying that older sightings were the product of imagination, but that something has changed, and that they are "suddenly real".
UFO sightings are just as real now as they were in the 70s. And the explanations for what people saw is still mostly the same.
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'Aspie' is not an insult, is not a diagnosis you're qualified to make and absolutely not relevant to the comment to which you replied.
Stop being a cunt.
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Yet another Aspie who hears "unidentified," immediately pictures little green men and gets riled up and becomes sarcastic.
Unidentified" means unidentified; no more, no less.
What does Asperger's syndrome have to do with this? For what it is worth, my "aspie" friends tend toward the really skeptical end of thought processes.
So do I, Martin S. (Score:5, Insightful)
So do I.
Don't get me wrong: there would be little else I'd like to see than actual starfaring aliens visiting our little planet. It would be the Ultimate Game-changer. But until we've got them right in front of us, irrefutable, it's all speculation and potential delusions. Even when we've got them in front of us there'll still have to be some suspicion that it's some sort of elaborate hoax, and some people won't be convinced even if they shake hands with an alien (Flat Earthers and Moon Landing Deniers, I'm looking at you).
Re:So do I, Martin S. (Score:4, Funny)
> But until we've got them right in front of us, irrefutable, it's all speculation and potential delusions.
NASA's own footage Evidence: The Case For NASA UFOs [youtube.com] says otherwise.
We've already had Full [disclosureproject.org]Disclosure [disclosureproject.org] back in 2001. Everyone stuck their head in the sand and ignored it.
Regardless of how many times people keep ignoring the truth we are not alone you'll get your wish by 2030 when First Contact can no longer be officially denied. It will force this planet of spiritual teenagers to question every basic assumption and dogma we've held onto for the past few thousands years.
i.e. What is their?
* Math
* Science
* Philosophy
* Religion
* Economic
* Politcs
etc.
The ironic thing is that we are aliens to them!
Re:So do I, Martin S. (Score:4, Interesting)
"Not easily explained" does not equate to "not possible", nor to extraterrestrial craft. Something being real does not clarify what that something is. If aliens is where your mind goes, you're just performing a version of the god of the gaps. "I don't understand this, therefore God/Aliens."
It's worth noting how the explosion of camera quality and proliferation has failed to improve upon the good old grainy and out of focus "this is an alien spaceship!" images. Just as improved images of Mars failed to show the earlier proposed network of canals, so has our worldwide army of people carrying high resolution cameras wherever they go failed to show aliens. As awareness and understanding of phenomenon like sleep paralysis has increased, and as the zeitgeist has moved on from all things space being scary and unknown, reports of alien abductions seem to have decreased significantly (not necessarily causation, but the correlation is compelling).
In summary, there seems to be little reason to think that claims of extraterrestrial visitors holds more credibility than any of the other new age superstitions.
Re: So do I, Martin S. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly the explosion of camera footage has also produced zero clear videos of any top-secret planes. We know billions of dollars and thousands of engineers are working on exotic avionics but nothing valuable has leaked.
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Burnt pixels on thermal imagers? (Score:2)
Does the burnt pixel on a thermal imager explanation hold up?
The most publicized recent Navy UFO encounter of the Flying Chiclet was seen to the public as a dot on an infrared imaging screen -- something called a FLIR? It was suggested that this dot was an errant pixel and that the bizarre flight behavior of the purported UFO was this pixel staying fixed on the screen as the jet in question maneuvered?
Any strength to this more ordinary explanation? Or are there incidents where two aircraft track the
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camera quality and proliferation has failed to improve upon the good old grainy and out of focus "this is an alien spaceship!"
"I think Bigfoot is blurry. There's a large out-of-focus monster roaming the Pacific Northwest" --Mitch Hedberg
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Until they invent a phone camera capable of taking clear photos of objects at 50 thousand feet, the argument that "everyone has a camera" has zero impact on the discussion of what military pilots encounter in the air.
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You either didn't see it or you are (too) dumb.
Links, or STFU.
I mean of course (Score:4, Insightful)
Was it ever in doubt that UFOs are real? If somebody builds a trebuchet and flings stuff around that is too far away for me to identify, it's a UFO.
That the term is colloquially used to describe alien spaceships doesn't change that fact.
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Technically-technically it would depend on how long you observe it for. Is it long enough to determine it has a ballistic trajectory, or does it simply look like it's moving unaided through the air?
As a German nihilist (Score:2)
People are not being ridiculed for seeing an UFO (Score:2, Informative)
They are being ridiculed for immediately jumping to the conclusions "Aliens!"
The navy is not saying it was aliens... (Score:2, Funny)
but it was aliens
show me the footage (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody is carrying good quality camera phones now, so if there are UFOs flying around, we should also have good footage of them.
Show it.
I remember more footage showing up in the 70s/80s, when virtually nobody carried a camera.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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There was more interest of UFO, like some serials UFO, project UFO too, ant that was a proxy of cold war fears.
Nowadays when sometimes weird happens, like fighter jets suddently take off and fly supersonic at a low height people is thinking OMG terrorists rather than OMG Aliens.
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Everybody is carrying good quality camera phones now, so if there are UFOs flying around, we should also have good footage of them.
No you don't understand. Aliens, bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster only visit the Silent Generation as they don't own fancy cameras.
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The aliens have stepped up their game and developed better stealth technology that prevents modern digital sensors from recording their presence.
However like all technology according to the laws of Hollywood their technology does have a weak point and does not work well on old analogue cameras using film! There they can only affect the optics and make them appear out of focus and blurry. Unfortunately for us humans the prevalence of digital equipment has made it too difficult to get your hands
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This is primarily my argument against Bigfoot, Nessie, ghosts, (alien driven) UFOs and all their ilk. I was staring wide-eyed at the skies coming out of my third consecutive showing of CE3K back in the day, I even briefly considered Chariots of the Gods as a possibility - sure, why not? If you wanted to research something you had to go to the library, seeing Bigfoot glancing back at us while casually walking through the woods required watching a movie or tv show. Information was magnitudes of order more dif
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Just like The Amazing Randi squashing psychic powers, the power of information sharing has eliminated alien conspiracies for any reasonably skeptical thinker. I'm enough of a skeptic to be happy to consider just about anything, but nothing has convinced me yet.
Randi is a fraud, just like those he sought to expose. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cu... [telegraph.co.uk]
Re:show me the footage (Score:4, Insightful)
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In the 70s and 80s, people were also more apt to be looking around them and not looking down at their phones. That's a two edged sword.
Also, it seems to me, not being able to get good footage is a part of this phenomenon. We've got phones with cameras that can give a level of detail that was previously only available to professional photographers, yet the footage appears to capture the exact same amount of detail as it did when people were filming on VHS camcorders. That can't be a coincidence.
Whatever UFOs
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Are fighter pilots carrying their cell phones around? How's the signal up there? Any trouble using it with those gloves on? Do you keep your pictures in "the Cloud"?
My phone''s camera works fine in airplane mode, doesn't yours?
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Are fighter pilots carrying their cell phones around? How's the signal up there? Any trouble using it with those gloves on? Do you keep your pictures in "the Cloud"?
My phone''s camera works fine in airplane mode, doesn't yours?
My comment was mostly in jest. However, interceptor pilots aren't flying around with their cell phones handy. And, if you happen to look at the gloves they wear, they're not exactly conducive to using a cell phone's touch screen.
Turning UFOs into IFOs is their job (Score:2)
It is literally many of these pilots' job to identify Unidentified Flying Objects. There is still no evidence that any of the UFOs so far come from space or have anything to do with extraterrestrials.
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If you mean that it's their job to intercept bogies that cross into the ADIZ unidentified, well yes. But, maybe the AF and Navy would get more interest if they put up ads for UFO interceptors.
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I'd go with #1 over #2.
My guess is some advanced, skunkworks type technology that is still in the engineering stage. They can get it to do crazy speeds and maneuvering, but can't figure out how to haul weapons on or otherwise weaponize it. Flying it around the Navy is kind of a beta test as to whether its detectable or identifiable by advanced military weapons systems.
For the Chinese or the Russians, if they were fielding commercial planes good enough to put Boeing and Airbus out of business I might belie
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I'd go with #1 over #2.
My guess is some advanced, skunkworks type technology that is still in the engineering stage. They can get it to do crazy speeds and maneuvering, but can't figure out how to haul weapons on or otherwise weaponize it. Flying it around the Navy is kind of a beta test as to whether its detectable or identifiable by advanced military weapons systems.
For the Chinese or the Russians, if they were fielding commercial planes good enough to put Boeing and Airbus out of business I might believe they had other advanced aerospace capabilities. But they're mostly just copying and stealing US technology and not really demonstrating they're way ahead of the game.
If its not #1 or #2, then there's a lot of questions. Aliens may not be the answer, but non-Earth probes or drones doesn't seem totally impossible with the idea that its likely that advanced aliens would either have gone cybernetic or would be doing a lot of drone/AI based deep space exploration.
If it were secret projects, they would have their own testing equipment. They would not have to fly them by people without need-to-know in order to test them; especially "regularly" as described in the article. I don't know what these things are. Shit's just weird. Earthly possibilities should be considered first. But them being extraterrestrial should not be dismissed either.
Re: (Score:2)
One of the most recent articles (like last week or something) said that these things didn't show up until a recent avionics upgrade.
You could interpret this as some kind of proof that it's just a data processing bug in the radar system, but I'd wager the updated planes (F/A 18 Super Hornets) aren't getting some totally new system, but a retrofit to an existing "new" system that's fairly well established.
It may be that the skunkworks people have their own testing, but do they have the ability to test against
Yeah deifferent definition of UFO (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Yeah deifferent definition of UFO (Score:4, Informative)
So, that leaves three possibilities (in order of probability). 1, it's some type of high-speed previously unknown natural phenomena. 2, it's some non-public unmanned research craft or 3. it's something artificial and not man-made. One possibility I read about is a high-speed missile test. [darpa.mil]
Re: (Score:2)
I can clear this up (Score:4, Funny)
I can clear this up:
If the Navy say It's not aliens then it is aliens.
If the Navy say It is aliens then it is aliens.
Even though it's not aliens. Probably.
You're welcome (especially if you're an alien).
Remember UFO fans, you can't say alien without saying lie ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Illegal or undocumented?
Re: (Score:2)
But they are real! (Score:2)
Clarification (Score:2)
Unidentified/unknown flying objects are real.
Aliens on Earth are not.
Oh, it's a promo... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've no doubt that UFOs have always been real, there's just no evidence that UFOs are aliens.
Amazing how all this "UFOs (aliens) are acceptable now" crapola has come out just in time for the History Channel's new program... Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation.
Wouldn't it be great if they were aliens, though? We could continue to obliterate our planet and there'll still be life in the Universe.
Re: (Score:3)
We could go fuck their planet up for a change of pace.
Re: (Score:2)
You poor, textbook-obsessed Aspie: there are fucking tons of evidence but it's all anecdotal; there's no empirical evidence (not that isn't full of blacked-out redactionsm anyhow) but that isn't remotely the same thing.
Nothing more than "Let's cover our asses!" (Score:2, Insightful)
Especially during the 1950's-1960's people were continually being arrested when they reported UFO sightings. Many of which were also forcibly put into psychiatric evaluation. Decades later, many discovered what they saw were prototype military vehicles. Vehicles the powers-that-be said didn't exist. Which meant these people were wrongfully held.
What would happen today if it was found out this attitude of illegal detainment was occurring? One word: Lawsuit.
This statement is being made so the military has pla
Why are they "admitting" this now? (Score:2)
We know how tight lipped any military usually is about giving out any information at all. Now they do explain, that "UFO" just means "Unidentified Flying Object", and that "the possibility of an extraterrestrial cause is so unlikely that it competes with many other low-probability but more mundane explanations." (Leon Golub, astrophysicist), but it's still an admission, that there's things zipping around in US-airspace that the US-military can't explain (and hence not control).
So usually one would expect so
Re: (Score:2)
Pilots often see UFOs, for good reasons (Score:3)
Pilots are generally among the least crazy people we have, and UFO sightings by both pilots at the same time are common.
Most of the time they are illusions triggered by the way pilots think when they are flying their planes. What I mean is that pilots what people are watching for when they look at the sky are objects like other planes, clouds, and maybe large birds. It makes sense, because these are the kinds of objects one has to watch out for in order to safely fly a plane.
What they are not prepared for are things like a bug flying in front of the cockpit window. If it happens fast enough, with no sense of scale, it is easy to mistake for a very fast moving, airplane-size object. If you have read spoiler [wikisource.org], you will probably get the idea.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is the moon. In the proper configuration, it is easy to mistake for a a flying-saucer-like object, a few miles away, because that's the kind of distance pilots expect things of interest to be. In fact, after doing some calculation based on the time, position, and description of the UFO sighting, the moon is often a perfect match.
Why do pilot don't know these things? After all, they are supposed to be smart, right? Simply that their job is to fly a plane, not to do astronomy, so their mind is focused on what's important for the safety of the flight. And mistaking the moon for a UFO is much less of a problem than colliding with an aircraft you misinterpreted as the moon.
Re: Pilots often see UFOs, for good reasons (Score:2)
I don't think there has been a case of someone getting a radar lock on the moon, but that would be one hell of radar system!
Also (Score:2)
Also in keeping, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Trump are real, news is fake.
Remember: Why Navy pilots can fly 12+ hrs! (Score:2)
They have an autopilot and are on speed(drug).
When I would be under such stress and sleep deprevation I would also see white elephants except I would call them U.R.O. Unkown Road Objects.
More airline flights than navy flights. (Score:2)
Aliens are real (Score:2)
They just don't care about us! :)
Just imagine if we actually had up close contact with the occupants of an interstellar craft, and they just..couldn't be bothered, consider us lower than amoeba, and just totally ignore us as we are just not worth their time. .
UFO's are real, but... (Score:2)
...They aren't likely to be aliens. It's most likely one of Uncle Sam's new "silver bullet" planes/drones that are being tested against our conventional fighters to see how they evade detection/intercept.
Though given how resurgent Russia has acted the past few years, it's not out of the question that it's *their* silver bullet. The recent spate of UFO observations is roughly correlated with the recent resurgence in antagonism from Russia. And our military wouldn't like admitting that they could overfly
yeah right (Score:2)
Of course! (Score:2)
I see UFOs every day. I saw one just minutes ago. Clearly an airliner, but otherwise unidentifiable to me personally. One could get a big kick out of this: dumb fucks don't realize what we're really saying, bwahhahahaha!
My theory (Score:2)
Re: My theory (Score:2)
Silly nerds (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just because a bunch of wackjobs try to take a term to mean something else doesn't mean we should accommodate them.
UFO is a UFO
Re: What is next? (Score:2)
Yeah the provision of universal healthcare would instantaneously transform the US into Venezuela just like it has with all the other countries that have implemented it.
Re: What is next? (Score:3)
Why would creatures that have the tech to travel vast distances through space need to use subterfuge to take over? How could we stop them?
Re: (Score:2)
"Perhaps it is possible to travel faster than light can propagate through vacuum"
Nope. Not possible. It has been proven (repeatedly). There is an actual thing called "physics".
Re: (Score:2)
Plus if you knew they were aliens they wouldn't be unidentified anymore...