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CIA releases its own X-Files 112

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-the-paranormal dept.
Ewen writes "The Daily Telegraph in England reports that the CIA has 'released a secret history of its investigations into UFO sightings, revealing that there was more truth in the popular television series The X-Files than is often believed.' Read the full story at The Telegraph. " Truth, that is, that agents screw up and some believe and some don't. The CIA ultimately concludes that the probability of contact with extra-terrestrial life is slim. But, then again, they would, wouldn't they? /impish grin/
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CIA releases its own X-Files More

CIA releases its own X-Files

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  • They may be out there.
    As a youngster growing up in the city of NY, I was an astronomy enthusiast, skyglow and all. One night I was out with my 60mm refractor, and my friend.
    (We were about 10. I had not experimented with marijuana yet, so that's not it.)
    I was looking at Jupiter, and he goes....
    Larry, put the telescope on that!!!
    It was red, kind of saucer shaped, and its flight behavior was not of the earthly type.
    It was moving to quickly to get the scope on it.
    And it was only a few seconds before it zipped away.

    They are out there.

  • Arrgghhh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Do not click the link in this story. If you do the CIA will know about it, come round and visit you in your sleep and suck your brains out through your bottom. Off to buy 'Catcher in the Rye' now.
  • Why don't they just give us lay people a chance to fly the cool ships? They are just selfish and want all the fun...

    I want a turn to
  • The closest I've had to a UFO sighting was seeing about 3 triangular-shaped things glowing a very dim green/white in the night sky when we were driving home one night. I was 10 at the time so the memory has probably been tinkered with by father time but still :)

  • It is interesting to note that UFO sightings increased significantly when the Close Encounter flicks were out. To most people, UFO sightings are a fashionable "me too" thing. Usually a good litmus test is to see if the "sighter" believes in numerous conspiracy theories.

    If life is out there, it's either much more primitive than us, or much more advanced. SETI hasn't turned up didley, so either life out there (within our reach) hasn't discovered radio waves, or they've moved on to another medium that we haven't discovered yet.

    Everything in this world is explainable, you just don't have all the information. (Except for that new Coke flavor thing they created awhile back...why did they do that ? :-)

  • Maybe the UFO's are avoiding me since I live outside Dayton. That sucks, because I'm a bit skeptical but would definitely believe if there were hard evidence in the sky above me.

    Nice coincidence that this story surfaces the week Fox re-runs the "Truth is Finally Here" episodes of the X-Files.

    It does worry me that the CIA is now admitting thay were covering this up all along. It makes me wonder what else they are currently covering up-- it boggles the mind. I'm usually an optimist, thinking our gov. is being fairly honest with us. Now I'm less sure.
  • I am 30 now, and I know what you mean by what time would do to memories.
    The friend I witnessed it with moved to Florida, (From NY). I did not see him for many years. Funny , when I was about 25, I took a bus. He was the bus driver. (Small world.) One of the first things he brought up while we were catching up is the UFO.
    The UFO is one thing of a few that I do remember like it happened yesterday.
  • Find a library that has the New York
    Times on microfilm. Read the front pages
    from June 1947 to August 1947. Get a feel
    for the coverage of the UFO "flap" that
    lead to the "Roswell Story".

    Oh, after July 9th you have to look past the
    front page to find the stories. Sorry.
  • Maybe Windows is an alien attempt to redirect Terran Computer technology from useful things into endless squabbles over which program is more ethically pleasing. *sigh* If they did exist, why in the heck would they _want_ to visit here?
  • Why?

    Ever been to an amusement park?

    Ever seen a really funny movie?

    This place has to be the Six Flags of the
    galaxy!
  • If we can make a fighter jet that is virtually invisible to the naked eye (F-22) and on radar, then I think aliens would have the ingenuity to not let you see them. Plus, if they wanted to be seen and known about, they could just as easily drop onto the lawn of the White House and open their doors and make some "meep-meep" noises. Besides, judging by the amount of radio emmissions we have from TV/Radio/etc. I think if there were another civilization out there with the same amount (or superior) intelligence that they'd be glowing in the radio spectrum. Of course there is always the possibility that the light hasn't reached us, or already reached us, but I doubt it.

  • If life does exist on other planets, I hope (for their sake) that we never meet them.

    --CS Lewis (roughly quoted ;) reflecting on Europe's encounters with indigenous peoples.

  • Actually the F-22 is quite vivble to the naked eye. As to the radar characteristics of US "stealth" airplanes they merely have reduced radar crossections when illuminated from certain angles. None are remotely "invisible" to radar. The F-117 for instance looks like a 747 on radar when its bomb bay doors are open. Its unlikely that the terrestrial radio emmisions would stick out even a mere 50 light years away with out prolonged study. So just because SETI hasn't seen radio signals from another civilization, doesn't mean they aren't out there. (I don't think they've even covered the entire sky yet anyway)
  • > *sigh* If they did exist, why in the heck would they _want_ to visit here?

    I can think of a couple of reasons.

    Elle Macpherson.

    Terri Hatcher.

    Daisy Fuentes.

    Claudia Schiffer.

    (Favored in no particular order, I just went with who I thought of first.)

  • What you really saw was the planet Venus. ;) Nothing to see, everybody move on...
  • First, I don't know what you excactly mean by 'radio spectrum.' But anyway, whatever that means, our radio waves are only a few decades worth of light years in space. I assume they would have been 'broadcasting' a lot longer, but, if they are 300 million light years (not that long in Space) their radio waves might not be here yet. Hmm...they would also have to go (?faster then?) the speed of light (or 300,000Kmph), this would allow them to overcome the distance. (note: It also might not be any disadvantage to them if we see them, so they don't really care).

    That's my 1/50 of $1.00 US
    JM
    Big Brother is watching, vote Libertarian!!
  • As you say, "To most people" UFO sightings are a fashionable thing. That doesn't say anything about the people for whom it is not.

    As for life "our there" being either more primative or more advanced than us, why not assume both? As for them using radio waves, maybe they've already learned that radio waves make you something of a beacon and, for reasons we can't yet verify, that may be a bad idea. In any event, they are kinda hard to pick up more than 10 miles out of town where I live.

    Everything in the world is expainable in theory. That doesn't preclude other theories nor does it guarantee which, if any, are correct. Or, to put it more personally, just because I can explain away anything -- except new coke -- with a theory that is possible doesn't make me right.

    In any event we are out there and we haven't contacted any otherworldly beings yet either. I wonder if they have concluded that we don't exist because of that. ;-)
  • Perhaps, regarding conspiracy, he meant the alleged plots that many enthusiasts seem to believe regarding the Groom Lake AFB. Apparently, many would rather interpret the rabid security regarding that installation as pointing towards possession and concealment of alien corpses rather than the development of "stealth" aircraft and so forth... and there are those that suspect the Gov't of massive conspiracies t'ween the CIA and the USAF. {shrug}
  • >The first radio waves produced by this world probably haven`t reached the nearest solar system to ours yet so this argument in particular is flawed.

    So we invented radio in like 1994 then? Funny I don't remember hearing anything about it at the time.

    And more to the point, it doesn't really matter when the stuff was sent out. If we listen to the sky for ten years, we will hear ten years worth of radio waves form every planet newer in years then lightyear distance to it. Since we cannot visit the ETs anyways, it hardly matters whether they created the waves now or 2 billion years ago...

    A better argument would be, that if someone pointed a radio telescope at earth, the chances are one in 50,000,000 that the radio waves reaching them from earth at that time would be those from when humans were creating "intelligent" radio.

    Of course, Aliens that were alive 2 billion years ago aren't likely to be kidnapping rednecks and farm animals.
  • Never hitch a ride from an alien with fuzzy dice hanging from it's rear view mirror and an anal probe rack in the back window. Just trust me on this one....
  • Well the F-22 has luminecent panels on the bottom of it that mimic the amount of light above it. This actually started during WWII when they used lights on the belly's of the bombers to try to make them look like the sky. The project then was a failure, however during the 80's (I think) they re-instated this project when they flew a drone with luminecent panels on its belly. From that point on the project was classified. The F-22 has been reported to have this type of technology according to Air & Space magazine.
    As for the radio emissions reaching 50 light years, thats probably true since 50 years ago radio was still in its infancy, however if there were UFO's flying around our planet, they are also limited by the speed of light. If they got here, then their light has already reached us. And for all you who feel like responding with "warp!", "hyperspace!" I say phewy! No evidence such a thing is possible. Eistein said himself that the only way to get past the speed of light is if you were to pass through a black hole, in which case you'd become part of the black hole and never escape anyways.
  • Whether or not UFO's (from another planet) exist, who in their right minds would expect the CIA to tell us if they did! This isn't paranoia, but just basic common sense. The government needs to maintain the appearance of being in control, which would hardly be helped if they admitted (if it were true) that we were being visited by another life form who had technology way beyond anything we do.

    If the CIA is convinced there are NOT any UFO's, then perhaps they would write an article like this as a PR exercise, or for some other reason, but if they DID have any proof there are UFO's, they could be expected to write the exact same type of article....

    Conclusion: It's meaningless.

  • UFOs (Score:3)

    by eponymous cohort ( 8637 ) on Tuesday August 17, 1999 @03:48AM (#1743208)
    If we had the technology to visit other worlds, and we discovered a more primitive life form, what would we do?

    Would we abduct some of them as specimins to examine? I'm sure that we would. And we would do what we could to supress their memories of the encounters, because we wouldn't want to disrupt their natural course of evolution too much.

    It's exactly what the alledged aliens here are accused of doing.

    Now I can't say for sure if it's really happening, I've never encountered anything that made me say "That has to be a UFO". But I think it is certainly possible.

    Sure there is a lot of BS out there, but sometimes a given UFO event is much more plausable than the explaination given by skeptics. Example:

    "The silver ball flying around the trees was simply the planet Saturn being refracted through ice crystals in the atmosphere. The light that came from the silver ball was caused by ignited swamp gases that drifted from the nearby (10 mile away) swamp. The aliens were a form of mass hallucination, and the 20 foot, perfectly round charred grass were the craft was alleged to have landed was caused by the heat of the swamp gases, and the perfect circle is just a coincidence, case closed!"

    While that's not an actual debunker statement, it is similar, and as far fetched as some I've seen. It's easier to believe in UFOs than in that!
  • I say phewy, read this post [slashdot.org].
  • While I've seen a few hard-to-explain lights in the sky from my amateur astronomy days, the most impressive "evidence" I've seen for UFO's was a photograph.

    When I was about 14 years old my friend Ronnie brought in a photograph that he claimed his grandmother had taken. Ron's grandmother lived in a trailer-park in the Appalachicola National Forest. Her neighborhood consisted of a clearing about 1-2 acres in size with a street light in the middle and a ring of 5 or 6 trailers around it. The photograph was a perfectly focused, night shot of a classic UFO hovering over the street light. There was another source of light from above the street light illuminating the clearing so that you could clearly see a couple of the trailers and the dark forest in the background. Ron said that there had been another UFO hovering above the first one and beaming light down on the clearing. Weird.
  • I'm sure a more advanced would find radio signals a primitive technology.

    I don't have a deep understanding of Quantam Mechanics/Physics, but from what I do understand, you can have two particles, separated by distance that "mirror each other" in other words if one starts to spin, the other does as well.

    If my understanding is correct, then it seems that you could build transmitters based on this, and these transmitters would not leave tell-tail signals.

    I know some Quantum Physicist is going to flame me for my post, but my point is, we have not yet discovered everything. Just because we use radio waves for communication doesn't mean an advanced civilization would.

  • "Probably 99.9% of sightings are explainable, but that still leaves a small fraction that are not so easily explained."

    I say there are .1% cases that are lacking information.

    Also the first radio waves from earth are around 70 lys out from Earth right now. The closest solar system that we know of is, I think, 10 lys and has a jupiter-sized planet about the same distance from its star as mercury is. The only reason why it was detected was because of its significant gravitational influence on its star. Now saying that there aren't nicely sized planets around Alpha Centauri would be false, because we can't resolve them with our telescopes. I say the best place to look for or assume life exists is within our own neighborhood. The chemical makeup of the local neighborhood of stars is very similar in content because of a star that exploded before the Sun formed and scattered heavy elements througout the local area.
  • INteresting. I was aware of the light research they had done during the War, but i didn't know they were putting it into the F-22. It must be said that despite what Einstein said, he may be wrong! The theory of Relativity does check out pretty well empiricaly (as far as we can test that sort of thing) but then Newtonian physics check out in its time, but was later superceded by Einsteinian physics. So its possible that we're missing something fundamental about the nature of the universe.

    Personaly i doubt very much that the Earth is being visited by aliens, but I doubt very much that some form of intelligent life ISN'T out there somewhere.
  • I remember reading somewhere last year, that the CIA wanted the appearance of a coverup, including rumors about their secret bases out west as good propaganda against Russia in the cold war. They wanted the Russians to believe we actually had some alien high tech weapons at our disposal. They went as far as planting stories to generate news. Whether the Russians believed it or not, I don't know.
  • Why do our scientists travel deep into the jungle, and put tags on the native wildlife?
  • 2 years ago I saw a funny fake press release concerning the Mars Probe Pathfinder in which the Martian Airforce spokes-thing denied rumors of a giant ball landing on mars, which then deflated and released a robot, putting it down to delusional concpracy theorists and swamp gas.
  • But this stuff really didn't take off until the cold war was about over.

    Even though Roswell happened in 1947, it was pretty much ignored until 1980, when some people in UFO circles started investigating. I don't think it got mass public attention until around 1990.

  • SETI (Score:2)

    by jd ( 1658 )
    Bear in mind that SETI's attempts, so far, are over a mere handful of frequencies, and with tiny dishes.

    Even Aricebo could only just detect the most powerful military RADAR ever built on Earth at a distance of a few tens of lightyears. Not much of a range.

    SETI is essentially pointless, as a means to detect alien civilisations, until the square kilometer array is completed and online. Only then will we be capable of detecting moderate-strength signals over any kind of distance. To argue any significance to SETI's not having turned up anything is like arguing that Neptune doesn't really exist because you can't see it with the naked eye.

    If you don't have the technology, of course you are going to see nothing!!!

    As for aliens & UFOs, I will give you the same set of questions I gave in an unsolved mysteries class I ran:

    Is it possible to build a craft that can travel through space?

    If not, is it possible for aliens to travel to Earth by any other means?

    If aliens don't need to travel through space to get here, would they need to fly craft at all?

    If they do need craft, and such craft can be built, do the descriptions of UFOs meet the constraints that would exist for such a craft?

    Is there anything such a manned expedition could achieve that could not be done remotely, by radio telescopes?

    How would they relay any information back, in any useful or usable time-frame?

    I don't know if UFOs exist, but I do believe that any alien civilisation capable of building them would have asked itself similar questions.

    If they can't get to where they want, OR can't get any useful data back, OR they can get the data by staying at home, why would they bother going? On the other hand, if it's practical to go, useful data can be collected by that means alone, and the data can be sent back before those funding the expedition die of old age, it would seem an eminently sensible approach.

    We can't answer, definitely, those questions, but we can give some fairly reasonable guesses, and that can tell us a lot about how likely UFOs are to be real, or at least how advanced the technology would need to be, compared to our own, for it to be possible.

  • I'm not saying I don't think there's intelligent life out there, I'm just saying that I don't think its anywhere near us.
    There are 100,000,000,000 Stars in our galaxy.
    There are estimated 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the visible universe.
    So far the ratio for life/star is:
    1/1*10^23
    If we are the only intelligent life in the Universe, then that fact alone is divine.
  • Are you kidding? If you live in Dayton, OH then
    the aliens are in your backyard! Surely you
    haven't lived in Dayton and not heard the
    theories about Wright-Patterson Air Force Base?!?!
    I reserve judgement on whether we've ever
    been visited by E.T.s, but if we have you are
    living in the heart of the coverup. Dayton is a
    lot more fun if you remember that. :)
  • Do you really believe that there is any agency in the federal government capable of competently carrying out any kind of conspiracy. Every single bureau i've ever seen has been filled with morons that sit at their computer and play solitaire all day long.

    As well, who are we to define life as only what we see from ourselves. Biologists define life as a cellular, self-replicating entity (more or less), but couldn't life be anything created with an iterative process? Cellular life uses an incredible iterative process, as molecules iterate over DNA and create proteins. But is that the only iterative process that can create life?
  • You should never fall into the "I can't explain it so it must be a UFO" trap. My point was not to try to prove the existance of Alien craft, but rather to say that sometimes the debunkers and skeptics ask you to believe is more far-fetched than what they are trying to debunk.

  • Of course radio waves travel at the speed of sound. Television waves travel at the speed of light though, right?

    We should have new units of speed.
    1 AmosnAndy = ~1*10^6 m/h
    1 ILoveLucy = ~3*10^8 m/s
  • > Do you really believe that there is any agency
    > in the federal government capable of
    > competently carrying out any kind of
    > conspiracy. Every single bureau i've ever
    > seen has been filled with morons that sit
    > at their computer and play solitaire all day
    > long.

    See, you've gone and bought their cover story. Those are specially-trained morons who spend years watching government training videos to reach a state of moronhood that will convince even the most skeptical observer. Meanwhile, the real operatives work behind the scenes, unfettered and unobserved, covering up UFO sightings with carefully-worded obfuscation posted on forums like Slashdot. BTW, I am not one of them, so you can trust that what I say is true.

    > Biologists define life as a cellular, self-
    > replicating entity (more or less)

    Well, here in the Agency, we don't make any assumptions about alien life. You should see some of the critters we've captured! Uh-oh, I've said too much, gotta go...

  • And microwaves travel at whatever speed you select on the front panel....1 minute, 20 seconds, whatever you need!
  • > they're going to make us breeding grounds for aliens, and they're all gonna look like Julia Roberts.

    And how, exactly, is this a bad thing? :)
  • That's just the beaureaus you've seen. There have been more. THere was project Blue Book in the 50s. (I think i got that name right) That was shut down because they had no findings to report to congress. However many conspiracy theorists believe that after blue book was shut down a more elite and secret organization called Majestic 12 was formed to investigate these phenomena.

    My take on all this though is that the CIA, or perhaps another such organization, is the biggest conspiracy theorist of all, leaking cover stories to feed the paranoia of the masses, and distract people from the truth, whatever that may be. I think the apparent ineptitude is intentional to make it look like they're hiding something. They are, but nobody knows what.

    I have no theories as to what is really being covered up, and i doubt i ever will. I believe in aliens, but i doubt they go around mutilating cattle and abducting people. i just don't believe the lies of the governement.

    (Jesus, i seem like a crackpot now that it's written down in front of me...)
  • Why would they need to cover it up? Those same morons can produce so much junk that the signal/noise ratio would make Usenet seem the heights of sanity.

    With no means of finding the reality, through all the nonsense and garbage, how could anyone hope to determine what's going on?

    However, some departments ARE fairly competent at cover-ups. The Roswell story was claimed to be a "weather balloon", but was recently admitted to having been a "Project Mogul balloon", for detecting Soviet nuclear tests. And we've only their word for it that this time they're telling the truth. (They've apparently destroyed all the paperwork relating to it.)

    Most people knew they were covering something up. I can't blame anyone for getting paranoid, or thinking it was ET. That the skeptics, EACH TIME, took the Government at face-value, even after the Government acknowledged that it had lied in the matter, is a farce. Skeptics NEED to be skeptical of ALL groups, not just ones with pointy ears.

  • Everything in this world is explainable, you just don't have all the information. (Except for that new Coke flavor thing they created awhile back...why did they do that ? :-)

    Well... The best theory I heard was this. The expensive part of soda is the syrup, not the sugared, carbonated water. If you've had older sodas, you'll notice that there is a much higher syrup to water ratio. Coke and Pepsi have been slowly decreasing the syrup to water ratio over decades to lower costs. New Coke was an attempt to speed up the process. They spent a lot of money on a marketting campagne to convince people that they liked a lower syrup to water ratio. But when people compared Old Coke with New Coke, it was clear that more syrup just tasted better.

    A lot like Micros~1 spending lots of money convincing people that they like Windows 2000 a lot more than whatever else they had, but when you've tried Linux, you know what a real operating system runs like.

    -Ted
  • This experience badly shook me up because before that time I really didn't think such things were worth consideration. Here's what happened:

    Along with two other friends we were driving in a van back from a flea market at around 5pm in the evening -- which in September is still broad daylight. This was right after I had moved to Cincinnati, so I was new to the area.

    We stopped at a gas station whereby one went in to buy gas and get a drink while the other went to the bathroom. I stepped out to smoke a butt (I was a smoker then), and walked away from the van to look around. The gas station was on the right side of the road, while on the other side just after the road a small grass covered valley dropped down and stretched out to tree covered hills several miles away.

    Then I noticed what looked like a silver balloon just hovering maybe a thousand feet over the treetops, its size was about a third of my thumbnail, arms outstretched. At the time I thought it was a balloon, but didn't have anything else to look at while waiting so I paid attention to it. Then it began to slip down, sort of like a pendulum with each swing loosing altitude. I thought that was pretty weird, so while continuing to pay attention I noticed it stop moving outright, and then sort of gyrate like a top spinning in place. There it hovered for a short time, maybe 20 to 30 seconds.

    At this point I was thinking that this was the weirdest balloon I'd ever seen, and was trying to figure out what kind of wind pattern might cause this behavior when the damn thing just instantly shot up and over, turned on a dime, and screamed across the sky from my left to my right side as my head panned to follow. Within less than a second it had moved a good 90 degrees of arc across the sky and went behind some nearby trees. And it didn't make a damn sound.

    There are a couple of things to note:
    • Being alone, there's no way I could triangulate in order to determine distance or size of the object. This means that determining it's speed was also impossible.
    • It happened pretty fast, maybe over 45 seconds or so, which means that while it was happening I didn't have much time to consider what I was watching. In fact, for most of the event I considered this a strange, but prosaic, event. I've never seen anything like it since.
    • It moved with extreme agility. I've never seen anything in the sky which could just turn on a dime, move and then stop in mid-air immediately, or really behave like what I saw. If I hadn't noticed the extreme turn, I probably would have just continued thinking it was a balloon.
    • It didn't make a damn sound, even when it booked out of there. I would have expected at least a sonic boom given how quickly it left the area.
    • There were no other witnesses; I could just be looney. I'd prefer not to believe that explanation, though.

    My dad was a private pilot and he used to own an single engine airplane. I took flying lessons as a kid, landed an airplane, and all that -- almost lived in and out of airports as a kid (once we flew from southern California to Tampa Beach Florida in my dad's Cessna when I was seven). Been in helicopter, seen idiots make dangerous mistakes in ultralights and hangliders... there is absolutely no way what I saw could have been anything like a balloon, helicopter, or other prosaic craft. I'm certain of that.

    But I still don't know what to make of this. I never saw the occupants, no one else witnessed the event, and I have absolutely no proof. I have trouble with the "alien craft" stuff, but I definitely believe, based on what I saw, that some silver disk shaped craft do exist, and display a performance envelope way beyond any kind of common aerodynamic craft. Beyond that, I simply don't know.
  • When I was about 11-12 I went night fishoing on a 20-30 acre lake near my house. It was kindof down between 2 hills with a road running on one side of it. I was fishing near the road (which had VERY little traffic). You could see headlights coming through the trees on the other side of the lake when a car was coming towards you and you could see lights ON the trees on the other side as cars came down the hill behind you. cars coming from behind thelight woud start at the top of the trees and move down as the cars came down the hill. The speed limit was 25MPh so you could see them coming for about 15-30 secs. I saw light ligiting up the tips of the trees demly in the distance and my mind said another car. After about 10 secs without the light moving a figured someone near the top of the hil was parked or a house had their flood lights on. Then the light started moving and brightening. Slowly at first and taking on a greenish hue. Then it sped way up and got REALLY bright.. bright enough to cast light where I was in the pitch dark middle of the night in a rural area during a new moon (I normally went catfishing during a new moon or overcast night had better luck). A BRIGHT round object flew over head extremely fast. Too fast to tell exact altitude or shape but it couldn't have been MORE that 200-400 ft if not lower. it dissapeared behind the tree line and then I heard a loud bang and saw a bright flash through the trees. This all hapened in about the space of 60-120 secs. Scared the living bejesus outta me. Another wierd thing was that all night for about 2 hours I had been catching TONS of catfish they all stopped biting. Right then. Not even a nibble. Wierd Huh?
  • Can't you just summarize it for us?
  • That's funny.. I don't see one mention of the CIA in the constitution.
  • You were smoking at a gas station???
  • Sure. I wasn't pumping the gas, nor was I near the pump. Why not?
  • OK, so the aliens out there are all more advanced than us and don't use Radio.

    All of them? Did they all also just jump in a quantum fashion from pre-industrial to without using Radio at all?

    Or perhaps the aliens sent out Radio waves at one time, but then used their advanced technology to recall all of that Electro-Magnetic Wave pollution. I suppose we will find that EMW pollution is a huge environmental problem when we're ready to join the community of sentient species?

    Maybe the Earth is alone in having such backward creatures to ever play with magnetic fields for communication. All of the other sentient beings use telepathy, which operates on a plane that we cannot begin to comprehend. Well, except for Uri Geller and those beings who operate the Psychic Hotlines.
  • "radio waves travel at the speed of sound not light"

    AAAAAARRRRGGGGHH! Please tell me you're joking...please!!! Nobody's really that stupid, are they?! ACK! Get away from me! You must be sick or somethng!

    First of all, the speed of sound varies. Through a vaccum it's 0. You do know that radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right?!

    By the way, I was under the impression that the nearest discovered planet was about 10 light years away. The nearest star is about 4 and for all we know could have a planet. We're not very good at seeing planets yet.
  • I agree. It's a problem when the only people who are in a position to have the data available are the one group who, by their very nature, cannot reveal that data, even if they posessed it.

    To believe the CIA, or any other organisation, blindly, is folly. To reject what they say as being a "cover-up", even if it's a statement about what someone had for breakfast, is equally stupid. Whatever the reality is, I don't expect to find it out from external organisations.

  • OK, some I'm not a physicist, so if there are some here that can prove me wrong, fine, but in the meantime, there are certain things in UFO sighting stories that make me wonder about the whole thing.

    * Many stories talk about how these things can go from 0 to really, really fast (and vice versa) in a heartbeat. Also hear a lot about 90 degree turns on a dime. With all those rapid/instantaneous changes in direction/speed, wouldn't our friends become green goo inside of their spaceships?

    * No sonic boom?

    * As someone else mentioned, no stealth technology (other than silence)?

    Am I also the only one to notice that many of these sightings seem to be close to Air Force bases? Coincidence?

    I'm personally of the inclination that most (if not all) of these are DOD experiments.

    For example. What could shine in the sky, hover, move back & forth at incredible speeds, and stop and turn on a dime all silently & without creating a sonic boom?

    Lasers/holograms anyone?
  • I'm sure a more advanced would find radio signals a primitive technology.

    I find spoken language, math and fire primitive, but I still use them. (Not a flame, I'm just sick of the 'for them x would be primitive' argument.)

    If my understanding is correct, then it seems that you could build transmitters based on this, and these transmitters would not leave tell-tail signals.

    Two things wrong with this:

    1: This is absolutely not correct. Even if there is a real effect here, information--in the information theory sense--cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. This is fairly important to QM.

    Very roughly[0], what happens is that two particles (photons seem to be the most popular) may become 'entangled' under special conditions (being emitted from the the same particle at the same time, etc; very special, then). If you measure one of the particles, you will know the state of the other[1]--IIRC they 'balance' out. You cannot influence the attributes of the particles, only measure them[2], so it isn't possible to embed information in them. (There are other reason why you can't do it; this is the simplest, IIRC.)

    2: Even if you could transmit info this way, both parties have to have the particles involved, which necessitates some transmissions.

    Just because we use radio waves for communication doesn't mean an advanced civilization would.

    No, but unless we're missing something increadibly obvious[3], they'd be using *some* kind of EM waves, which we should be able to detect. (Perhaps not via radio telescope, but somehow.)

    [0]: I'm not a physicist, I'm a philosopher, so I'm not going to be 100% accurate here, or even 90%.

    [1]: There is considerable debate over what is happening here. The 'reasonable' explanation is that the particles really do 'balance' when they are emitted, and we are simply discovering which one is which when we measure. The alternative is that the particles are in flux, and when observed instantly communicate with each other, taking on the proper attributes. (There are about a dozen versions of how this works and what's happening; IMO all of them are equally silly.)

    [2]: Of course, measuring them may influence them, which is another debate with some very strange answers.

    [3]: Actually, I can think of several cheats here, but none of them are very likely.
  • Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.....

    http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/ufo.htm [fbi.gov]

    -Derek
  • Unless I've experienced head-trauma recently, Alpha Centauri is our closest neighbor. It is very unlikely, to put it lightly, that there is anything there.

    AC is a trinary system (actually a binary with a third star orbitting way out there). AFAIK, it rather difficult for planets to form in such systems, and even if one did there would be a tremendous amount of radiation, likely preventing life from forming.

    The chemical makeup of the local neighborhood of stars is very similar in content because of a star that exploded before the Sun formed and scattered heavy elements througout the local area.

    Er, what? The makeup of stars is the same everywhere. Hydrogen, helium, some carbon, etc. varying a little by age and class. I don't know of any supernovae large enough to have 'seeded' other stars, esp. in the area you're describing; even if one existed, star don't contain/burn much in the way of heavy elements--they're tricky to fuse--and that has nothing to do with life.
  • Not sure where I saw this, but there was a video being circulated of a 'genuine' alien autopsy. A couple of film guys were watching it and giving a running commentary (like MST3K, but less funny), saying things like, "you can't fake flesh like THAT!" and "Wow, that's great blood, if it's fake." It was a black and white film of two guys taking apart what appeared to be a 5' tall alien, with the big head and huge black eyes, the whole bit. Whether the film guys were paid to say the film was real, sigh, you can beat it to death...
    So - is the govt., indeed, the govt.'s of the world, in some sort of agreement with aliens, as in - you farm, cover your tracks, and we get some technology? Or is it all a hoax by some agency who's farming people, doing DNA experiments, and getting some joy out of the occasional anal probe?
    Who can say...the universe is a BIG place...
    If anybody else remembers seeing that film...what did YOU think?

    The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
  • Of course, the show The X-Files is just a CIA plot to warm the public in a slow and gradual manner to the idea of a CIA/FBI/gov't plot to hide the existence of UFO's so that when the CIA, et al, realease their documents and evidence about the existence of UFO's, everyone will say, "See!? I *knew* it!"

    It's more a PR campaign than an entertaining TV show.

  • It might be that most aliens start encrypting their transmissions early in their development, thereby looking like random noise to the rest of the universe.

    Then there's the somewhat ominous theory that something bad happens to any planet that spams the galaxy with tripe... we probably DON'T want to be RBL'ed. :) Hopefully they have a tolerant policy towards newbies.

    Jim
  • I have no doubt that there are UFO's out there, but only in the textbook-sense of the word UNIDENTIFIED flying objects.

    Seeing something that does not fit in your present frame of reference is indeed alarming, (it's supposed to be, for survival's sake) but doesn't imply anything further than the simple fact that the viewer cannot identify what he or she (or they) have seen.

    I don't think UFO's are of extraterrestrial origin. Here's why:

    I think that if and when beings of extraterrestrial origin arrive in our solar system, we'll know about it in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. No hiding, no cat and mouse, no conspiracies.

    Anyone or anything with the power to arrive here from another system/galaxy will certainly have the power/means to take what they wish, when they wish, without having to resort to politics with political 'power figures' like the CIA or the KGB.

    We'll be as amazed and curious about the ALIENS as the Indians and Aztecs were with Columbus and The Spaniards, and then history will repeat itself as it always has, just with a much larger playing field than any of us imagined.

    We like to think that anyone/thing smarter than us will also be nicer and more benevolent.

    ALL creatures first aim is to further their own existence at ANY cost. I don't think this changes with time and/or technological or spiritual advancement.

  • I think the poster is referring to the abundance of iron, and other metals in our part of the galaxy that makes our planet have such a swell gravity.

    It's been a while since I read this, but I think I recall reading that iron and similar metals arep products of supernovas, and are second or third generation fusion products. Thus, it takes a few cycles of stars for anything but hydrogen and helium to be abundance.

    George

  • "No, but unless we're missing something increadibly obvious[3], they'd be using *some* kind of EM waves, which we should be able to detect. (Perhaps not via radio telescope, but somehow.) "

    One pretty obvious thing is that line-of-sight communication by radio or laser, e.g. is far more power efficient and secure than spherical broadcast waves. Even if you want to broadcast to all stations it might be more efficient or desirable to network on a set of line-of-sight transmitters (or cables on one planet).

    Here on earth, our electromagnetic spectrum from afar was much brighter before cable and satellite TV started replacing broadcast stations, and this is in very few years since the inception of the technology. It's not to hard to imagine all our media being on fibreoptic cable (or better) within a century.

    Ok, assume within 1000 years of the invention of radio, civilizations stop wasting energy by sending information in all directions. Assume there have been 1000 planets with technological civilizations within the last 5 billion years. The probability that one of those 1000 year periods overlaps our current time is less than 1 in 5000. It's not that unreasonable to say we have only shown that life off earth is rare, not that it doesn't exist.

    Jim

  • Yes, you can make transmitters based on twin particles. HOWEVER, so far noone has been able to present any credible theories on how to use this for transmitting information...

    It's easy to transmit information with these devices. First, build many many of them, then shoot them out of a giant cannon (finally a real use for all those quasars) at the intended recipient in a pattern that encodes your message.

    You sure lack imagination.

  • Very interesting encounter, and well told.

    I'm not trying to 'explain off' your experience by any means, but wish to pose the idea of something on the surface of your eye, rather than in the sky itself. I've gotten visual glitches before, which are always much more visible against a bright blue/grey sky. They appear to hover until I turn my head, when, of course, they turn with me and (you get the idea).

    I've never mistaken one for a UFO of course, and don't imagine that you're any more likely to do so than I, but it's an idea to play with. Smoke particles? I know, I'm reaching! It's just that when something is 'impossible' in the assumed circumstance (object in the sky) we should look for circumstances wherein it IS possible (object on the surface of the eye or a projected image) instead of immediately rushing off and telling everyone to re-write the science books and whatnot (WHICH, by the way, I am NOT accusing you of doing).

    Just my thoughts, eh?

    Respectfully,
    kent
  • Do you really believe that there is any agency in the federal government capable of competently carrying out any kind of conspiracy. Every single bureau i've ever seen has been filled with morons that sit at their computer and play solitaire all day long.

    I agree completely. Most gov't agencies couldn't cover up a floor with carpet. I don't believe that they are evil organizations whose only goal is to control the public/hide the truth/whatever[0], or that they employ armies of assassins disguised secretaries and accountants[1]. Gov't workers are almost all just normal people doing mundane jobs--most of them probably wouldn't participate in an evil conspiracy even if the opportunity came up. In fact, I trust the gov't more than many private organizations.[2]

    (Want to test the conspiracy? Call both the FBI and SS to report a crime, then watch what happens when the agents arrive. For even more fun, add the BATF.)

    But is that the only iterative process that can create life?

    Well, since that's how we define 'life', yes.

    [0]: Including the NSA, which I actually like quite a bit. IMO, it's all but harmless.

    [1]: Including the the CIA. The only reason they have ninja secretaries is because of clerical errors.

    [2]: Which shouldn't be taken to mean 'a lot', or even 'a little'. I don't think they're evil, but they are incompetent enough that they can do damage.
  • Hopefully they have a tolerant policy towards newbies.

    I'm sorry I spammed the electromagnetic spectrum. I didn't see the FAQ posted anywhere.


  • by the end of June:

    objects seen in all 48 states
    7 countries

    serious front page news

    July 9th: story about "captured flying saucer"
    is really just a weather balloon.
    Weather balloon was flown to Ft. Worth and
    on to Wright Field, Ohio.

    July 10th on: no more front page stories
    stories become jokes and slowly fade away.

    Only lasted a few weeks.

    You should read old papers anyway, check out
    prices and "latest" movies playing.
  • Maybe the Indians saw some ships going by on some of the early explorations, when the Europeans didn't make much contact with the natives. An Indian who saw a European ship would claim that he saw a UFO (Unidentified Floating Object), and everyone else would just say that he had been going a little too heavy on the peace pipe.
    --

  • We'll here's all the goofs of the alien autopsy [trudang.com]

    Great fun to read :-)

  • "What do you MEAN you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake mankind, it's only four light-years away you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't even be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams."
    - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    So Alpha Centauri could be where the FAQ is.
    We should build a spaceship to go there now - or would the aliens laugh at us and call us "rocket kiddies"?
    --
  • One pretty obvious thing is that line-of-sight communication by radio or laser, e.g. is far more power efficient and secure than spherical broadcast waves.

    Obvious, except that you would have to compensate for anywhere from several years to several centuries travel time *and* you have to know where the reciever is. In the case of ships, esp. exploration vehicles, there is no way of knowing exactly where they'll be. (Unless you just shoot them in straight line; not very good exploration, though.)

    In any case, with that much travel time, it's likely that any messeges will be important enough that you'll want everyone to know ("We're extinct!") which is best achieved via omnidirectional transmissions. (Again, you may have unpredictable targets.)

    Then you have the problem of keeping the transmissions undetectable. Lasers are not capable of keeping any significant coherence across several light years. At best you might only light up the whole planet, at worst the beam could be multiple AU wide, or larger.

    It's not to hard to imagine all our media being on fibreoptic cable (or better) within a century.

    Except that you need LOS or direct access for this, which isn't always possible or desirable.

    Ok, assume within 1000 years of the invention of radio, civilizations stop wasting energy by sending information in all directions.

    Which begs the question, why conserve the energy? We'll be able to produce more than enough energy to do cost effective omnidirectional broadcasts within a few centuries, let alone ten.

    It's not that unreasonable to say we have only shown that life off earth is rare, not that it doesn't exist.
  • New Coke was intoduced to cut cost. The deal:

    Coca-Cola used to be made with sweet, yummy sugar. Very expensive compared to the competition, but well, that's why Coke was it.

    The problem: how do we switch to High Fructose Corn Syrup, and get away with it?

    The Solution: Two years of New Coke, Max Headroom, and Catching the wave. Well, Max was ok, but new Coke sucked decidely, and *intentionally*. When the "swirchback" took place, the difference wasn't as obvious.

    You *can* actually still get real Coke, btw. Look for it around Passover. It has a Kosher mark and yellow caps/marking.

    Corn Syrup isn't Kosher for Passover...so they make it with sugar. But you knew that already, didn't ya'?

    So next Spring, stock up.

    -K

  • Yeah, but none of them have six eyes or hard green skin with little nubs all over. Not to mention the fact that they look like accident victims that only have two legs left. I don't see how any alien could possibly find them attractive.

  • If you directly look at something, at a considerable distance and high up, which is moving directly towards or away from you, if it were to slow down, turn gently, and then rapidly accelerate, you'd have absolutely no way of knowing. There would be no frame of reference.

    No sonic boom, eh? I've not heard any convincing evidence that these things are even reported as going faster than Mach 1, so I wouldn't expect a sonic boom. Besides, a sonic boom is a product of the way the air moves over an object travelling at supersonic speeds. If you were to build a ramjet, you'd get a completely different airflow, as much less air would be displaced, by a much smaller distance.

    No stealth technology... Hmmmm... Why would they need it? Stealth is going to inherently take up space, which they'll need for essentials, to travel interstellar distances. It's also totally useless, unless you're familiar with the detection systems used, as you won't know what you're trying to hide -from-. It's also not going to survive interstellar travel very well, due to all the micrometeorites, space debris and space junk.

    Then there's the rapid acceleration/deceleration. Maybe an illusion caused by the distance/angle of the observer. Remember, you perceive acceleration by frames of reference, not laser-based range finders. Of course, G suits and proper safety harnesses ups how high you can ramp the G forces. Then, of course, we don't know the gravitational field of any other inhabited world. What if they came from a planet that had 3x Earth's gravity, on top of all the protective gear? If people can survive 9g in Formula 1, for an instant, then someone with three times the strength of skeleton should handle 27g without much trouble.

  • Of course it is. The CIA has been taken over by aliens.
  • "Obvious, except that you would have to compensate for anywhere from several years to several centuries travel time *and* you have to know where the reciever is. In the case of ships, esp. exploration vehicles, there is no way of knowing exactly where they'll be. (Unless you just shoot them in straight line; not very good exploration, though.)"

    I doubt radio would be chosen by a species with the ability to travel interstellar distances practically. That much improvement over our technology would almost require improved communication technologies we can't imagine.

    My comments are more reasonable in terms of planet to planet communications by species unable to transit the distance physically, such as SETI is now trying to accomplish. For communications on any one planet I think broadcast is probably going die fairly early.

    The other issue is that there very well may be predatory species in the galaxy that make broadcasting about as smart as making noise in the jungle at night. Maybe some just don't like noise interfering with their astronomy and have their ways of letting others know.

    "Which begs the question, why conserve the energy? We'll be able to produce more than enough energy to do cost effective omnidirectional broadcasts within a few centuries, let alone ten."

    Use of energy produces unrecoverable waste heat which shortens the usable lifetime of the universe -- it may be considered unneighborly :). It also produces undesirable effects on the planet using the energy (dams, fuel combustion, more expensive energy, global warming). Our technology is working on decreasing the power required to do things, I think it reasonable most sentient species would. Engineers hate waste no matter how many eyes they have -- what can I say?

    If you are TRYING to communicate with other unknown species then an omnidirectional low-tech broadcast IS probably your best bet, I admit. Just not sure what percentage of species would be trying, or what happens to those that do (if anything).

    Jim


  • >* Many stories talk about how these things can go >from 0 to really, really fast (and vice versa) in >a heartbeat. Also hear a lot about 90 degree >turns on a dime. With all those >rapid/instantaneous changes in direction/speed, >wouldn't our friends become green goo inside of >their spaceships?

    My understanding of "warp drive" (which many believe to be a possibility) is that it is not the object that is moving, but the space around the object. If it's just the space around the object that's moving, then might that object have no inertia? It's only the inertia that causes the above problem, yes?

    >* No sonic boom?
    If it's the space that's moving, maybe there's no friction to create the sonic boom? (I think it's the friction that creates it, yes?)
  • It's fake, IMHO. There are very questionable aspects to it, starting with the telephone cord design, the "blood" that was coming out, and the manner of the person doing the autopsy.

    The cord is wrong era, AFAIK. There were only small traces of "blood", despite the procedure being major. The person doing the autopsy seemed to know exactly what to do - no lack of familiarity or uncertainty, despite this being a supposedly alien physiology.

    Then, there are the artifacts. They don't match the description of the material the Roswell witnesses describe, which I'll give an orange flag. The writing uses a slight variation of Indo-European form, which is a bright red flag with red spots on a red background. The "words" on one object came out to "video", so not only was the lettering "modern english", so was the spelling. That, too, gets a red flag. The two hands for the control panel was lifted straight from "Foundation and Earth" (Isaac Asimov), minus the imagination of Asimov.

    Then, there's the matter that the owner of the film won't permit Kodak to test it's age. Even the Shroud of Turin has been tested, by people who had less reason to care what the real age was! (Unless the autopsy film is a hoax.)

    Then there's the matter of the "alien"'s physiology. There ain't no way that independent evolution would produce such a close lifeform. Sorry, not possible.

    Then there's the way the autopsy was filmed. Too much light shining into the camera. Don't tell me the USAF can't handle a camera! If it was important enough to record, it was important enough to record properly. The light obscures details, very very conveniently.

    Then, there's the composition of the objects. Aluminium, from the way the light reflects off them. Aluminium burns, very spectacularly, as the HMS Sheffield found out in the Falklands War. There is no way it would have survived the sort of crash that is said to have occured at Roswell. (The massive burn on the "alien"'s arm fits with the description of a massive crash & fire, but any aluminium controls would have gone up in flames in that case, taking the alien with them.)

    All in all, there seems very little positive to say about the alleged autopsy film, other than to say that whoever hoaxed it has probably got far more for it than most ordinary plebs could dream of.

  • [ post ]

    "sshhh....smell that?"
    ^^^
    Ghostbusters, right? Best movie ever...
  • Considering that "strange objects in the sky" have been around all through recorded history, calling them UFOs is just, IMHO, bad chronoanthromorphism. (i.e. a cultural projection from our time based on human-centered lack of understanding). Now that physicists are beginning to understand that we live in a 10-dimensional (not 4-D) continuum AND that we are not separate from what we perceive, a better explanation is that these -- things -- are cross-sectional intrusions into our culturally determined perceptual space. They may in fact not actually be made of matter (as we understand it) at all. Go back and read "Flatland". Think of *us* as the Flatlanders. A bit of evidence to convince you is that some of these intrusions seem to pass through a rainbow of colors, which is consistent with a energy spectrum shift. Perhaps the Philadelphia experiments during WWII (where bizarre space-time relativistic deformities were observed utilizing high-energy magnetic fields, leading, unfortunately, to psychoses in the volunteers) cut a little too close to the "truth". I do not think that we will ever find a technologically-based solution to the UFO problem -- because the "technology" being used is partly based on non-physical consciousness (the "inner" 6 dimensions), which will never be able to be produced by machines of any kind. I think that Carl Jung's speculations (near the end of his life) that UFOs are mass consciousness projections may be more accurate than a purely technologically-based solution.
  • Your description brings to mind ball lightning. Who knows if that's at all accurate, but it would exlplain a moving bright light near to ground level, the bang, and the catfish vanishing. Catfish are electrically sensitive aren't they? I think I recall that they detect prey, like sharks and duck-billed Platypuses, by detecting the minute electric fields generated by their nervous systems. Then again, it could have just been the light.
  • "[0]: Including the NSA, which I actually like quite a bit. IMO, it's all but harmless. "

    I have no data. But if there is any government agency composed mostly of geeks, NSA has got to be it. Wonder how many read slashdot? :)

    Nay, its their political masters I fear. Pretty much the same way I feel about the military for that matter.

    Jim

  • You could, for example, move a ship by letting it fall towards a small charged black hole that you accelerated with electromagnetic force. (Yes, this is very unrealistic due to the mass necessary in the black hole to produce large gravitational accelerations.)

    Since gravity works on all parts of the spaceship and its occupants equally no acceleration would be felt in the ship, any more than in a falling elevator. (Except from the hole's tidal forces.)

    You could survive as much acceleration as the tidal forces would allow this way, probably some hundreds of g's at least.

    Jim
  • Heck, the government has admitted to working on devices which were assumed to be flying saucers and even released the footage from the tests.
    The government just needs to cut their crap and let us in on this stuff. Do we really belive a toilet seat costs $500?
  • Of course because radio is carrying sound and television carries light obviously radio travels at the speed of sound and TV at the speed of light.

    And a pager message of the number zero travels at zero speed, while a three-dimensional TV signal travels at the cube of the speed of light.

    The right answer, of course, is that they all travel at the speed of radio signals, which is approximately the speed of light [colorado.edu] (the speed of light differs between materials, and electromagnetic effects affect signals and the signal path).

  • Sure, greater technical advancement and intelligence would not neccessarily make the aliens nice. On the other hand, what would a species that advanced possibly want that we have? I can't think of any minerals that wouldn't be easier for them to mine from comets, asteroids, or just planets with lower escape velocities. As far as food goes, they could just grow that in space as well.
    About the only things I can really think of that aliens might want from Earth are slave labour and real estate. Understand that when I say slave labour, I'm not suggesting that the aliens would actually need living workers. It would be more a matter of sentimentality. It would basically be about power. If the aliens were anything like human beings, then some of them would enjoy having servants who they can think of as lesser than them. Not very nice, but your whole point was that these aren't very nice aliens. Or, maybe these aliens have read "The Most Dangerous Game" one time too many and want intelligent creatures for bloodsports, hmmmm?
    The reasons the aliens would want real estate are fairly obvious. They would probably have plenty of space to house themselves what with space stations, and terraformed planets or just enclosed cities on other planets. Not to mention the fact that if life is common in the universe, there are probably plenty of planets like earth but with no intelligent species. But, we're assuming that these are fairly decadent evil aliens so individual aliens would probably want as much personal space as they can get. Maybe they'd even want their own little fiefdoms, which neatly merges slave and real estate needs into a pretty little package.
    I personally don't think most advanced species will be quite that bad. On the other hand, maybe they would consider themselves so far beyond us that they would act in the same way. They might want to restrict our activities and our technology in the interests of conservation. So, just replace slave with pet and we have pretty much the same situation as above.
    Well, in any case, I hope not.
  • Sorry for saying this, but you're completely wrong. First of all, the term is "ternary", and there is not a single shred of evidence that planets can't form around ternary or binary systems because our telescopes do not have the resolution power. As for the chemical makeup, the Earth's inner core it made of solid Iron. All the carbon and (relatively) heavy elements of the solar system were formed from a supernova that occurred about a billion years before the sun reached ignition. Stars are made of the same stuff, but if you knew anything about how stars are formed, you'd know that they fuse atoms starting with hydrogen and progressing to iron. When a supernova occurs, it spontaneously fuses atoms up to radioactive elements in small quantities, and scatteres its contents to the local area. There would essentially be no heavy elements orbitting the sun if it were not for this explosion. As for what this has to do with the formation of life, I don't know of a single organic structure that isn't based in part off a carbonic structure.
  • This is nothing new. Our government has been lying to us since at least the 1940s. Sometimes the lies were necessary like in the case of the Manhattan Project, in other cases it was to cover people's asses' like the case of the JFK assassination.

    Nutty or not, I have seen UFOs. I was a kid and that even in many ways shaped my world view. I knew what I saw, yet almost every adult I knew told me that they did not exist. That I did not see what I know I saw.

    Then I found out about Project Blue Book, the military kept records on UFO sigitings. And not even the military could explain all of the Blue Book sighings.

    Throughout human history we have seen these things. In Japan there are ancient records of objects that looked like "flying earthenware vessels". For you christians and jews out there look up the story of Elija. He was taken to heaven on a firey disc.

    Elija never died. He earned a "Get out of death free" card and was directly able to bypass death. So says the mythology, at least.

    I do not know if UFOs are EBEs, remnants of time travel experiments, or natural phenomena that we don't have the science to explain yet but they are very real. Not every witness is mistaken, lying, stupid or insane. There are millions of us going back thousands of years.

    LK
  • http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclas/ufo.html
  • I just love responding when the recipient will never read it.

    First of all, the term is "ternary"

    No, trinary is very much valid. There have been a number of discussions on this in the past on /.; both are correct, it is a matter of preference. I prefer the feel of trinary.

    and there is not a single shred of evidence that planets can't form around ternary or binary systems because our telescopes do not have the resolution power.

    1: We have no empirical verification that there are other planets in any solar systems (since you seem to demand optical telecopes).

    2: I'm discussing gravity which can be effectively and accurately predicted without evidence.

    3: I said it was unlikely, not that it didn't happen. It is, AFAIK, less likely that solid bodies will form, due to gravity, but I definately can occur. (They just found a nice sized gas giant around a binary star.)

    As for the chemical makeup, the Earth's inner core it made of solid Iron.

    Yes, I know. An iron crystal. I seem to recall writing a paper on that some years back, when the original idea was proposed.

    All the carbon and (relatively) heavy elements of the solar system were formed from a supernova that occurred about a billion years before the sun reached ignition.

    Now who's making statements without evidence? There probably was a SN x-billion years ago, but can you honestly claim that you know that formed our solar system?

    In any event, you mistated in your original post; you were referring to star formation, not planets.

    Stars are made of the same stuff, but if you knew anything about how stars are formed, you'd know that they fuse atoms starting with hydrogen and progressing to iron.

    *sigh* Did you read my post? I said 'hydrogen, helium, carbon, etc'. See that word on the end? It means I am omitting other elements to save space. I never said anything regarding iron fusion.

    And once agin, you said that the supernova created the local stars, not planets. Maybe if you read your own arguments people wouldn't question them so often.

    Finally, how can you claim I don't know anyting about stars when you didn't know what our closest neighbor was. Let me guess, you're a physicist who doesn't get out much.

    When a supernova occurs, it spontaneously fuses atoms up to radioactive elements in small quantities, and scatteres its contents to the local area.

    1: Nothing happens spontaneously.

    2: So? We weren't discussing radioactivity.

    There would essentially be no heavy elements orbitting the sun if it were not for this explosion.

    Evidence? Preferrably via telescope, as you're so fond of demanding.

    As for what this has to do with the formation of life, I don't know of a single organic structure that isn't based in part off a carbonic structure.

    What the hell does that have to do with anything? I never said a word about carbon-based life; all I said was that radiation kills living things. Obviously you don't know of any non-carbon derived life: there isn't much here. Which has no bearing on whether it can exist elsewhere.

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