Moontanman

19 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Unless you are planning on staging a fake "alien" landing so that a "more advanced authority" can tell humans what to do. Doing the bidding of god seems to be losing some of its attraction. 

Or using UAPs as a political distraction or to justify more money for "the space command". It bothers me that the very people we know are dishonest sacks of steaming monkey shit, ie Trumpers, are now suddenly telling the truth about something as ethereal and in need of real study as UAPs. 

I don't buy it, nothing but smoke and mirrors, keep your eye on the money!  

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

I remember Vallee.  Seems like one problem was his hypothesis wasn't much of a hypothesis.  The alleged beings appeared to be three-dimensional and possess craft that would require time to construct and have bodies that would require time to evolve, so it's hard to see them coming from "beyond space-time."  Not clear what is meant by multidimensional visitation.  I just got up and went to the bathroom.  The bathroom was multidimensional and I visited it.  Not terribly anomalous.

I didn't mention dimensions, I said plane of existence... get with the program 🙃 and don't forget the time travelers. Yeah, I'm having a crisis of faith in UAPs, this whole "gush" of sudden info about UAP just doesn't ring true to me. 

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

Conditions like us imagining things?  If something is like a fairy or angel, then it's also like a unicorn.  

Unicorns are real, it's our image of them that is wrong. 

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

No, I was trying to illustrate why a cover up would be unlikely, and hence the visits by aliens would also be an unlikely scenario. 

If alien visits WERE known by the government, that would mean they've indulged in a hugely elaborate cover up including paying for pointless research into alien life on Mars and exoplanets.

On the other hand the idea of aliens is not the only explanation on the table and the way the idea of aliens is often danced around has made many wonder if the explanation is something else. From secret Earth technology to travelers from other planes of existence to even time travelers (wouldn't it be ironic if we found out that travel to other planes of existence is easier than star travel?) since this is all speculation by definition why leave out these possibilities? Since all evidence so far presented is just eyewitness, hearsay, and or of unknown or undocumented origin why bother? It's no better than myths about fairies, trolls, angels, and or gods, in fact Jacques Vallée, protege of J. Allen Hynek had caused Hynek and others to begin to consider that UFOs were a manifestation of the same conditions that brought about mythological beings like fairies, trolls and such. 

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

Quote

In the mid-1960s, like many other UFO researchers, Vallée initially attempted to validate the popular Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (or ETH).

However, by 1969, Vallée's conclusions had changed, and he publicly stated that the ETH was too narrow and ignored too much data. Vallée began exploring the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, demons, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena. His speculation about these potential links was first detailed in his third UFO book, Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers.[4]

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time; thus they could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected.

Vallée's opposition to the popular ETH was not well received by prominent U.S. ufologists, hence he was viewed as something of an outcast. Indeed, Vallée refers to himself as a "heretic among heretics".

Vallée's opposition to the ETH theory is summarised in his paper, "Five Arguments Against the Extraterrestrial Origin of Unidentified Flying Objects", Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1990:

Scientific opinion has generally followed public opinion in the belief that unidentified flying objects either do not exist (the "natural phenomena hypothesis") or, if they do, must represent evidence of a visitation by some advanced race of space travellers (the extraterrestrial hypothesis or "ETH"). It is the view of the author that research on UFOs need not be restricted to these two alternatives. On the contrary, the accumulated data base exhibits several patterns tending to indicate that UFOs are real, represent a previously unrecognized phenomenon, and that the facts do not support the common concept of "space visitors". Five specific arguments articulated here contradict the ETH:

unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth;

the humanoid body structure of the alleged "aliens" is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel;

the reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race;

the extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded human history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and

the apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives.

Personally I don't believe the guy who has been made famous by his disclosure of UAP information, David Grusch, is either a pawn or a liar or both. He comes across like a bad used car salesman to me. Just IMHO.  

19 hours ago, Genady said:

Because they hit you sometimes, or something else?

Because they hit us sometimes... I hate hurricanes! 

I watch them but for more practical reasons. 

On 5/22/2023 at 1:58 AM, exchemist said:

They don’t, though, do they? I thought the fusion fuel surrounded the fission fuel that sets it off. 

14 hours ago, Steve81 said:

I don’t believe the initiator is in the center (but I’m open to being corrected).

In a modern warhead, the (relatively small amount) of fusion fuel is piped into the pit. Better to store it outside when the nuke is sitting on a shelf, as it makes maintenance easier (tritium decay and all).

The pit is encased in low-sensitivity explosive lenses (polymer bonded explosives as an example), and modern weapons utilize a multi-point initiation system setting off those explosives as a fail safe. Explosives go boom, pit implodes, and the fun begins.

AFAIK, that was applicable to the second stage of a thermonuclear warhead. They channeled the X-rays down to the second stage which contains far more fusion fuel, and potentially a tamper made of fissile material for even more destruction.

A fun fact for those unfamiliar with it, Tsar Bomba, the largest thermonuclear weapon ever tested, utilized a lead tamper to limit fallout. With a uranium tamper, yield would have supposedly doubled.

Here is a link to the design of thermonuclear weapons. 

Quote

The secondary is usually shown as a column of fusion fuel and other components wrapped in many layers. Around the column is first a "pusher-tamper", a heavy layer of uranium-238 (238
U
) or lead that helps compress the fusion fuel (and, in the case of uranium, may eventually undergo fission itself). Inside this is the fusion fuel itself, usually a form of lithium deuteride, which is used because it is easier to weaponize than liquefied tritium/deuterium gas. This dry fuel, when bombarded by neutrons, produces tritium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen that can undergo nuclear fusion, along with the deuterium present in the mixture. (See the article on nuclear fusion for a more detailed technical discussion of fusion reactions.) Inside the layer of fuel is the "spark plug", a hollow column of fissile material (239
Pu
 or 235
U
) often boosted by deuterium gas. The spark plug, when compressed, can itself undergo nuclear fission (because of the shape, it is not a critical mass without compression). The tertiary, if one is present, would

Deuterium and Tritium are used as lithium deuteride instead of solid or gaseous Deuterium and Tritium. 

Quote

Foam plasma mechanism firing sequence.

1. Warhead before firing; primary (fission bomb) at top, secondary (fusion fuel) at bottom, all suspended in polystyrene foam.
2. High-explosive fires in primary, compressing plutonium core into supercriticality and beginning a fission reaction.
3. Fission primary emits X-rays that are scattered along the inside of the casing, irradiating the polystyrene foam.
4. Polystyrene foam becomes plasma, compressing secondary, and plutonium sparkplug begins to fission.
5. Compressed and heated, lithium-6 deuteride fuel produces tritium (³
   H
   ) and begins the fusion reaction. The neutron flux produced causes the ²³⁸
   U
    tamper to fission. A fireball starts to form.

Cool Worlds Is a great channel and he giving references as well. 

Best stuntman in the world! 

On 7/19/2023 at 10:38 AM, TheVat said:

Glad to hear that!  I visited The Naked Scientists forum (UK based) for a little while a couple years ago.  It was well-run, but I preferred SFN for its wide range of discussions and transparent structure.

As for the evil twin website (scienceforums.com), best to avoid.  I'm sure some here have visited there by accident when they were on a different computer and had to type in the URL.  It is a shithole.

On 7/19/2023 at 12:31 PM, Phi for All said:

Yeah, that site is unfortunate. NOT to be confused with thescienceforum.org, another good site, which many of our members also frequent.

Yeah, I am trying to bring SF.com back up to some sort of reasonable standard but it's difficult to do alone. 

"I bought a box of powdered water... I didn't know what to add."

                                                                                        Steven Wright

I prefer Ophiuchus, the serpent bearer, has to be an inappropriate joke in there someplace. 

Could it be that watching naked girls dance around a bonfire is more fun than listening to a preacher tell you how badly you are going to burn in hell if you don't stop watching naked girls dance around a fire? 

21 hours ago, Sensei said:

..no "X Files" anymore.. ? 😮

 

I honestly only watched a couple episodes of X files back in the day, I didn't like the show. 

iZombie!