BS: UFOs in the news

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: olddude
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 10:00 AM

Are we talking about William Shatner again here ... dang guy is always in the news on Mudcat

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 05:03 AM

I'm a Nuclear Missile Launch Officer ... and I'm soooo bored! I suppose that the 'babies' in the silo might come in 'useful' one day - but not much action at the moment.

What shall I do today? I suppose that I ought to go and count them again - but first, I think I'll make myself a cup of coffee.

Right, one, two, three ... twenty nine, thirty. Yes, they're all there. But what's this? That damn Engineering Officer has got oily fingerprints all over number 17's warhead. Better climb up these step- ladders and polish it. Whoops! Damn - I've spilt coffee in the air inlet ... what am I going to do? I know I'll ring Tony, over in England; he'll know what to do.

"Hi Tony - it's Bob."

"Hi, Bob - what can I do for you?"

"I've just spilt coffee in number 17's air inlet - I think it's f***ed."

"Weird coincidence, Bob - I was just 'inspecting' our number 28 yesterday, and I thought that the nuclear flange bracket looked to be a bit out of alignment."

"So what did you do, Tony."

"I hit it with a hammer and it snapped off - I knew that I shouldn't have done any such thing - but I was soooo bored."

"Yeah - I know how you feel, Tony!"

"So, what are we going to do?"

Pause ...

"It's a bit off a long shot, Bob ... but do you think the 'brass hats' will believe there's a plague of UFOs which hover over nuclear missile bases and damage the 'birds' with mysterious rays ...?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 02:53 AM

I'm watching a YouTube presentation at the National Press Club from November 12, 2007, where I think the event took place. It is moderated by Fife Symington a familiar family name in American politics. Symington mentioned each attendee had a copy of a letter - signed by all of the speakers- requesting that the investigation into UFOs be re-opened.

The first man, Wilfred de Browier, recounted his experience in Belgium where for more than a year UFOs were frequently sighted. He held up a clear enhanced photo of one of them- it was triangular, rather than saucer or cigar shaped.

Parviz Jafari, retired general of the Iranian Air Force also spoke. He was squadron commander at the time in 1978 when a UFO was seen above Tehran. The first pilot sent up returned when his communications failed. Then Jafari was sent up. The object looked like a star but bigger and brighter. Four objects, differently shaped from the first one, separated from the main one. Once when one came at him, he thought it was a missile, and tried to activate his (waponry, I think) but his equipment failed. Sometimes the light was so bright he couldn't make out the body. The lights were red, green, orange and blue, as bright as strobe lights. Whenever they came too close his communications systems were garbled. One followed him down when he descended. This went on for a couple of days in several parts of Iran. One landed and the lights were so big and bright they could see the sand beneath the object.

I'm bookmarking this website and will listen to all of them later.

Back in 2007- What Happened to the Report?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 01:57 AM

Amos, I am very glad to see someone...anyone...posting on this subject and, for a change, giving it the respect it deserves.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 01:16 AM

Sorry, I don't, Eb. It seems electrifying in a way, though.

A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Ebbie
Date: 24 Sep 10 - 12:06 AM

"Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention..."

Wow. That's an exciting article, Amos. Do you know which National Press Club meeting this is planned for? I know they have it at least annually but I don't know the actual date(s).

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 23 Sep 10 - 05:15 AM

I suppose that messing with nuclear weapons is a slightly more plausible activity for aliens than anally probing inhabitants of the American Mid-West.

But, to change, the drift of this posting a bit. All speculation on aliens seems to assume that there is just one species of alien 'out there'. Given the sheer scale of the galaxy (not to mention the wider universe) there could be millions of different species - all with different dispositions and motivations (which, I suppose, could include a desire to mess with nuclear weapons or even to anally probe inhabitants of the American Mid-West). Some might be benign and some might be extremely aggressive and war-like. I would guess, though, that most would find interstellar travel extremely difficult (it might actually turn out to be impossible). There might not be many nearby species with interstellar travel capabilities at this particular stage of galactic evolution. We had better hope that, if they exist, our local spacefarers are of the benign variety.

One recent hypothesis is that once a species discovers radio it is on the road to creating artificial intelligence - and once it does so the artificial 'species' replaces the biological one. These super-intelligent, self-reproducing, immortal 'robots' then head off for an energy rich area of the universe like the centre of a galaxy and pass beyond the ken of mere biological intelligence.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 22 Sep 10 - 11:43 PM

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects
PR Newswire

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15

Ex-military men say unknown intruders have monitored and even tampered with American nuclear missiles

Group to call on U.S. Government to reveal the facts

WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.

One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded.

Captain Salas notes, "The U.S. Air Force is lying about the national security implications of unidentified aerial objects at nuclear bases and we can prove it." Col. Halt adds, "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attemptedÑboth then and nowÑto subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practiced methods of disinformation."

The group of witnesses and a leading researcher, who has brought them together for the first time, will discuss the national security implications of these and other alarmingly similar incidents and will urge the government to reveal all information about them. This is a public-awareness issue.

Declassified U.S. government documents, to be distributed at the event, now substantiate the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites extending back to 1948. The press conference will also address present-day concerns about the abuse of government secrecy as well as the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons.

WHO: Dwynne Arneson, USAF Lt. Col. Ret., communications center officer-in-charge

Bruce Fenstermacher, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

Charles Halt, USAF Col. Ret., former deputy base commander

Robert Hastings, researcher and author

Robert Jamison, former USAF nuclear missile targeting officer

Patrick McDonough, former USAF nuclear missile site geodetic surveyor

Jerome Nelson, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

Robert Salas, former USAF nuclear missile launch officer

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: gnu
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 06:44 PM

froggy - it wasn't much of a leap. But, for decorum... you decorum as you seeum.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 06:25 PM

Methinks the reasonable stance to take if one encounters aliens is, "All communication channels open. But shields up."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,josep
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 05:34 PM

Cortez did not decimate the Maya, it was the Aztec. They did not think he was a god, he merely stated it in his letter to the crown that they thus regarded him. There is no evidence that they did. In fact, Moctezuma II did not like him and sought to learn the weaknesses of the Spaniards and crush them. But the Spaniard's committed a massacre in Cortez's absence and now there was a rebellion. Cortez returned and tried to stop it by allying with Moctezuma who was promptly killed by his own people and Cortez and his party were chased out and many of them killed. The only thing that saved him was getting reinforcements from Cuba whereupon he choked off supply lines to the Aztec and eventually destroyed their empire.

So this whole line of reasoning about how so-called aliens regard us is BS.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: frogprince
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 05:18 PM

LOL; Gnu, I actually thought you wrote what you meant the first time, as in "self-abuse"="pleasuring oneself"

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: gnu
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 03:59 PM

aMuse yourself

>;-)

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: gnu
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 03:58 PM

Just click on your name, Bill D and you can abuse yourself for hours.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 03:15 PM

And mine. *g*

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 03:13 PM

It sure has been interesting re-reading (most of) this thread.

I gotta trace it, so I can have quick access to so many of my own clever and insightful comments. ☺

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 02:37 PM

I've recounted this on the Mudcat before- I am still bemused by the experience.

In Dayton, Oregon (this would have been in the late 70s or early 80s, I no longer remember), one evening about 10 o'clock there was the roar of fast but low-flying jets overhead.

This was not totally unusual - the Air Force base at Tillamook on the Oregon Coast is not that far away by air, and fighter jets on occasion do training exercises. The unusual thing about this night was that I felt fear. Fear that did not appear to be coming from me but from outside. Enough fear that it made my knees weak.

The next paper (McMinnville's News Register) said that there had been unidentified flying objects in the sky and the jets were deployed to investigate.

I dunno.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: gnu
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 02:10 PM

Stephen Hawking musta saw this movie.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: gnu
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 01:34 PM

If your are limited by the UFO Hotline to one call per day, you might be a redneck... Jeff Foxworthy

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 16 Jul 10 - 01:00 PM

"Coincidentally, in 2006, a UFO was sighted over Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Unlike the Chinese authorities, the US Federal Aviation Administration declined to conduct an investigation into that incident and airport workers were ordered to refrain from speaking with the media.

According to The Chicago Tribune:

A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes?

… "To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said O'Hare controller and union official Craig Burzych.

Renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking suggested in April that it's likely aliens exist, given the vastness of the universe, and they're probably hostile.

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach," he said. "If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the native Americans."
..."

(From a CSM article on recent UFO sightings in China)

A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 12:11 PM

Donuel,

Going out on a Pohl, aren't you?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 11:18 AM

"Suppose a civilization discovered ..." etc....

Yep...with enough 'supposes', we can have some amazing imagery and stories....

why, they might even invent an entire genré for it! They could call it...oh.. Science-Fiction.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: freda underhill
Date: 14 Oct 08 - 05:21 AM

I guess I noticed this article for a couple of reasons. First, it was so shocking when it happened 30 years ago, it was just hard to believe. And Frederick Valentich flew from Moorabin airport (an Air Force base) and as my father was in the AirForce we used to live near there, so it was very close to home....

freda

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 08:58 PM

Suppose a civilization discovered the technology of a craft capable of near relativistic speed. Suppose they did this 100 or 1000 million years ago. All they need do is park their craft near a black hole and allow time to race past them while they reamined in a slow orbit near a black hole horizon. They leave orbit after a year and ZOOM the rest of the universe is a million or more years into the future.

My point is...

The craft we see could be from an extreme antiquity while they seem quite futuristic to us.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: freda underhill
Date: 13 Oct 08 - 04:29 PM

and they're in thye news again. It's 30 years after young Australian pilot Frederick Valentich disappeared while flying over Bass Strait (between the Australian mainland and Tasmania..)

30 years on: UFO mystery still vivid
Mark Russell; October 12, 2008, The Age

It was Victoria's very own X-File: a world-famous mystery that remains unsolved 30 years after a young pilot disappeared over Bass Strait. Steve Robey remembers it like it was yesterday. The now-retired air traffic controller was working the night shift at the Melbourne Flight Service Unit on Saturday, October 21, 1978, when the call came in at 7.06pm.

Pilot Frederick Valentich, flying from Moorabbin Airport to King Island to pick up some crayfish, reported that a strange aircraft was "playing a game with him" and he wanted to know if any military planes were in the area. Both men were puzzled as there was no known air traffic in the vicinity apart from the 20-year-old RAAF air training corp instructor's plane.

Mr Valentich reported that the unknown aircraft had four bright lights and had buzzed him a number of times at great speed. He told Mr Robey the object was orbiting on top of him and "it's got a green light and is sort of metallic, like it's all shiny on the outside".

Then it vanished.

Mr Valentich, who had had his pilot's licence for two years, said his plane's engines began rough idling and coughing when the object reappeared. He told Mr Robey he planned to continue flying to King Island. Then came the message that the object had suddenly reappeared above him. "That strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again … it is hovering and it's not an aircraft."

They were Mr Valentich's last words. A still unidentified metallic noise came over the radio during the next 17 seconds, then the transmission ended abruptly. Mr Valentich and his single-engine Cessna 182L were never seen again, despite an exhaustive seven-day land and sea search. A Department of Transport investigation concluded that the disappearance could not be explained.

Mr Robey, now 61, told The Sunday Age that Mr Valentich was obviously distressed. While not prepared to say he believed Mr Valentich had been abducted by aliens, Mr Robey said he still could not explain the incident.

Asked if he believed in UFOs, Mr Robey said: "Yes, I suppose I do, but not in the definition of spaceships and little green men. I mean, you've got to have an open mind about these things."

On the night Mr Valentich disappeared, there were hundreds of UFO sightings reported from Geelong, Frankston, Cape Otway and Brighton. Some people described the object as brilliantly lit, oblong in shape, and moving quickly. A woman at Queenscliff said she saw what appeared to be a ferris wheel spinning in the sky less than two hours after Mr Valentich's plane disappeared.

The Valentich case became world news and the pilot's family - father Guido, mother Alberta, brother Richard (12 at the time) and twin sisters Olivia and Lara (aged 4) - were thrust into a media frenzy.

Mr Robey, who befriended Guido, said the incident devastated the family.

"Losing your son in such strange, controversial circumstances was just unbelievable. Alberta pined for the loss of her son but Guido was the one who really wanted to find out what had happened to him," Mr Robey said. Mr Valentich snr, who died in 2000, joined the Victorian UFO Research Centre and never gave up hope that his son was alive and had been abducted by aliens. He conducted a vigil at Cape Otway every year on the anniversary of his disappearance and erected a memorial plaque there in 1998.

Ric Wilson, an aviation consultant with the Australian UFO Research Network, urged the State Government to conduct a new search for the Valentich plane off Cape Otway to try to solve the mystery.

The Age

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 05:37 PM

Cheif Chaos , your observation is very intuitive and full of excellent imagery of a jet's roar lagging behind yet physicists claim that the light from a speeding craft will stay below the speed of light to both the shuttle and a relative stationary observer.

Amos , I saw several turns by different debris/objects that all seem to have a small slice cut out of them. Notice how the camera makes them pulse with an optical illusion when they pan away.

Anyway the many ufo fakes on you tube are accented by a few very real phenomenon.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 04:57 PM

I understand Doppler shift, and the speed of the shuttle was just a number pulled out of wherever. I just hadn't thought of the actions of light being relative to the actions of sound (with an object moving fater than the speed of sound). I guess if travel at faster than the speed of light were possible. An object would suddenly appear as it dropped below FTL. But would it be followed by a trail of it's image like the roar of a jet following seconds behind the jet travelling at Mach 2?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 02:45 PM

Beg to differ Donuel. If that is space debris it is optically distorted, but it wasn't changing vectors in any unusual way.


A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 01:16 PM

space dbris changing direction and speed

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 01:09 PM

FOX news on the recent Shuttle launch and ufo telvised from the shuttle Atlantis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmbSupnmK8k&feature=related







Macy's day parade?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BG1n4rKgO4&feature=related

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 May 08 - 04:26 PM

Ah. And what is his proposition or theory? I would certainly agree that the Universe is very elegant.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 30 May 08 - 03:08 PM

The author of the Elegant Universe got an award for his work in quantum physics today.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 30 May 08 - 03:07 PM

It would not.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 May 08 - 08:32 AM

"If the shuttle, travelling at 18,000 miles per minute, emitted a beam of light energy at the highest end of the spectrum, would it or would it not travel at (speed of light + 18,000 miles per minute)?"

It's called 'Doppler Shift' - the frequency of the light is shifted. That's where the term 'Red Shift' of far away galaxies speeding away from us comes from.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 May 08 - 07:52 AM

"the shuttle, travelling at 18,000 miles per minute"

.........
"The shuttle must attain an eventual speed of 0.7*(orbital velocity) or roughly 4.5 km/sec. at a height of about 226 Km above the surface of the Earth.
After a two-minute burn, the SRBs (Solid Rocket Boosters) are discarded, and the remaining climb to 7.75 Km/sec at 250 Km is done by hand using the Shuttle engines"

7.75 km/sec x 60 sec/min x 1.6 km/ mile = 744 miles per minute

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:53 AM

He is by far not the only way in quest of a Unified TOE (Theory of Everything).

LH, no-one is asserting EInstein is the "final" anything. It would be anti-scientific. WHat I said was that the issues he raises are still being worked through.

One of the kedge anchors on this whole process is that we are not very good, in the West, at erecting conceptual frameworks that break away from the habit-patterns of perception defined by the body's effort-band perceptions. We're used to Newtonian spacetime, because that is how our bodies perceive and survive, and it becomes a very hard habit to break. I think this is what makes relatavistic frames of reference, and quantum phenomena, so hard for most folks to wrap their wits around (including me).


A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Donuel
Date: 29 May 08 - 11:24 AM

The paper in DC is called the Washington Post.
In Baltimore the paper was the Baltimore Sun.

Discovery channel shows a copy of the front page in their program
Ufos and our Presidents.




Little Hawk
Witten and Green are doing what they can to look deeper than Einstein's contribution on the relativeity of time and the qualities of energy and matter. Green is attempting to unify our understanding of mass and energy, wave and particle, dimensions and space with String Theory.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 May 08 - 10:59 AM

Yes. The question is, was Einstein's work the final word that we will ever hear on the matter?

When I look at the progress of science over the past 1,000 years or so, let alone the past 300, I would have to say....I doubt it.

I feel reasonably sure that Einstein's theories will presently be modified and changed by further theories. We cannot long rest on our laurels. There will always be further developments and surprises waiting.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 28 May 08 - 11:51 PM

Scientists at present are still working their way through Einstein's statement that E=mc^2. This implies that "c" is a boundary limit because as speed approaches "c" for a particle with any mass, it's mass will increase. The amount of energy needed to accelerate it closer to C approaches infinity.


A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 08 - 10:26 PM

Why...uh...I just skim them, Bill, I note a few lines, I remember that you are likely to not be a 'believer' and then I POUNCE!!! ;-)

What didja think? LOL!

Yeah, sure, I understand your point. I also am uncertain about the FTL thing. I don't know if there is a FTL form of space travel, but I wonder if there might be. I also wonder if "speed" even has anything to do with it, as it may be a form of travel that would better be termed "instantaneous"...therefore speed would not apply.

Many interesting possibilities are out there, all of which remain merely hypothetical.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Bill D
Date: 28 May 08 - 09:45 PM

" But what makes you so sure about faster than light speed capability being impossible. What are you basing that opinion on? Where's your evidence to provide such certainty?"

Ummm..Little Hawk, old boy..do you READ my posts in detail? Or do you just skim them, note a few lines, remember that I am likely to not be a 'believer' and POUNCE? I said nothing about being sure of impossibility!
   My exact quote was "...and I will withhold opinion on FTL drives."
Meaning, I don't see any scientists explaining HOW FTL might happen.

My earlier quote was ""FTL drives" and "wormholes" are great fun for Sci-fi, but like all notions of interstellar travel, the power sources are just as vague."

That is the way skeptics talk! And when you ask ME to provide 'evidence' of MY certainty, you have it backwards. I am very carefully uncertain! I am not making a claim..YOU are. I am **doubtful** of your claim that "aliens are here", and by implication, that FTL must exist.

Geez...I seem to spend as much time correcting the form of the argument as debating the points!

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 28 May 08 - 07:07 PM

I'd seriously like to know,
If the shuttle, travelling at 18,000 miles per minute, emitted a beam of light energy at the highest end of the spectrum, would it or would it not travel at (speed of light + 18,000 miles per minute)?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 08 - 06:55 PM

I'm all for fact-based knowledge, Amos. Always have been. The fact is, I saw what I take to be ETVs in the late 60's. Twice. Another fact is that a hell of a lot of people in Washington D.C. in 1952 and in Phoenix in the 90s saw what they took to be ETVs. Another fact is that some of those ones seen in Washington were tracked on military and FAA radar, and fighters were scrambled to intercept. Another fact is that the base commander at Roswell initially told the press that the army had recovered a crashed flying saucer, and by that term he meant an Alien Flying Vehicle. The next day he changed his story totally. Interesting!

Military officers do not say such things as his initial statement to the press unless they mean them.

Yup, I love fact-based knowledge, and I look for it wherever I can.

I am considering the possibility that there may be a form of space travel known to ETs that is either FTL...or...that doesn't involve speed (as we think of it) at all. It may be a form of time travel or interdimensional travel rather than the way we normally travel from point A to point B in 3 dimensional space. If so, we have neither the science nor the math equations to even guess at how it would work, but that doesn't mean we won't figure it out someday. It just means we don't know it now.

That's a possibility. I see no reason why the consideration of such hypothetical possibilities should scare people or prompt immediate dismissal either. If we don't know, then we simply don't know. So? What's so terrible about that? Is it not possible to live in some uncertainty about these things without experiencing palpitations and sweaty hands?

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Amos
Date: 28 May 08 - 06:27 PM

There are a few important differences in the propositions you are comparing, Little Hawk. Bill is not suggesting you be punished for heretical notions. He is simply pointing out that homo sap does not have a workable model of FTL phenomena except at the quantum level.

There's plenty of theory to support "FTL" influence. For example, one theory has it that in the intricate nanoseconds just after the big bang, massively complex entanglement of subatomic particle such as photons occurred, and that in the expansion of the universe immediately following, entangled pairs of particle were distributed widely all around the expanding sphere of Space. The nature of entanglement seems to be that once a pair is entangled they never become un-entangled--so the whole universe is littered with exchanges of information faster than light speed by its nature.

Then there's the ten-dimensional string space, which seems to define connections of an instantaneous nature across dimensions unmeasurable to man, across which the speed "C" might be meaningless. After all, we have not really defined space itself very well yet, so it may be that the whole paradigm which defines light and its speed is a quaint superstition compared to what we will someday know about space and the "fabric" of what we now call "space-time".

It also seems likely that such an evolution in our paradigms is inevitable because the existing paradigm seems to run into such imponderables, like the quotient of energy of vacuum, the relationship between space and mass, and other difficult boundary topics.
So there's plenty of philosophical room for different views about the physical universe. ANd then doesn't even begin to add in the role of the universe of thought in all this.

But Bill, obstreperous codger that he is, is making a perfectly correct point about the standards of fact-based knowledge. All the hypotheticals in the world will not abide in the face of a couple of good, replicable experiments and a model that explains them, and predicts concrete results which are then observed to occur.

We should never stop striving for a better model and a new view of how things work.

But letting hyptheses run away with our minds is equally counter-productive.

A

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 08 - 06:22 PM

Just as you say, CC.

People's skeptical (and uninformed) denial of the incidents in Washington D.C. in 1952 or over Phoenix in the 90's are indicative of just how reluctant they are to even consider anything that does not dovetail with their already established opinion which is that there are no ETVs and there can't be.

They don't want to hear about any real evidence such as radar contacts, mass sightings, scrambled jets in pursuit of same, eyewitness reports, because it would require them to admit they might be wrong about something. And they won't give any of their valuable time to look seriously at anything along that line. They would rather just keep on being "right" for the rest of their lives, even if that requires remaining ignorant.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 28 May 08 - 06:08 PM

I just meant that as a dig at sceptics saying that the UFOs are our own "secret" air craft. The Air Force / Nasa makes sure that all traffic control centers know that a flight will be taking place to prevent such an incidence. Test pilots as a rule are a strange breed with giant brass cajones but I'm pretty sure they don't really want to take on our other best and brightest involving live ammo.

It really doesn't make sense to me that the Army Air Corps and it's succesor the Air Force would scramble jets for unknown flying objects if someone didn't consider them to be some sort of possible threat which swamp gas and optical illusions aren't. We're talking about things that showed up on radar. Meteors and falling space junk come in and burn up in predictable ways so that rules them out and we never could hope to catch an ICBM. And I'm not talking about possible hostile nation intrusion as there was no way, and as far as we know is still no way, for an aircraft to just suddenly appear in the skies over the heartland of the U.S.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 08 - 05:49 PM

Aw, heck...Earthlings are always shooting at other Earthlings, right? It's a grand old tradition here. ;-)

That's why I'd be damned careful if I was a visiting alien taking a look at planet Earth. In case of capture by the Earthlings, I think I might take along a "suicide" pill that I could down rather than be subjected to the tender mercies of the top secret inner echelons of the defence establishment and its medical personell.

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: GUEST,Chief Chaos
Date: 28 May 08 - 04:49 PM

If they're "ours" it would probably be a bad thing that we have fired on many of them as well!

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 08 - 04:19 PM

I agree about the banana and the axe, Bill. ;-) But what makes you so sure about faster than light speed capability being impossible. What are you basing that opinion on? Where's your evidence to provide such certainty?

I bet if it was 800 years ago you'd be telling me with absolute assurance that the jet airplane, the TV, the telephone, the radio, and the alternating current electrical engine are absolutely nonsensical ideas that can never happen. Completely impossible. After all, nobody known of at that time had ever done any of them, right?

You might even be accusing me of seeing "little green demons" for just suggesting such ridiculous notions. You might be suggesting that I get a tin hat and wear it. You might be comparing me to the village idiot. You might be considering burning me at the stake in order to get me to recant my heretical assertions...

I'm so glad it's not 500 years ago. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: UFOs in the news
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 May 08 - 02:22 PM

http://www.vtol.org/pdf/Vertiflite-VZ9.pdf