Moontanman

I was just paraphrasing something I read many years ago that suggested that given fissile material a low yield bomb could have been made as far back as the middle ages. I thought it outrageous at the time but over the years the reality of the control of fissile material, as you say, is the key, the tech isn't all that complicated. After looking into it since I read that article I've found many detailed drawings of nukes in the literature and the most mysterious part of them was the "trigger" eventually I found out what that was as well. I don't want to die of radiation poisoning from hubris. I discussed this with swansont, the US is not the end all be all of UFO reports, many countries have their own sightings and some even have their own investigation programs. It has been suggested that that many smaller countries as in South and Central America defer to the US to the point of letting the US military into their country when a sighting needs to be investigated. Nothing but anecdotal reports on this but countries like Great Briton, Australia, Canada and NATO have been suggested to be inside the US control when UFOs are involved, again nothing official I am aware of. Russia certainly has their own program, as does France which of course goes against the claim of NATO deferring to the US. Almost certainly most of what I see and hear is filtered by the influence of the US gov. Anyone can be fooled by optical phenomena. Though I had in my younger days interests in photography, astronomy, and various optical phenomena, I was utterly baffled one foggy night going down a quiet country road as a cluster of red glowing balls appeared ahead and slowly rose into the air as I moved towards them. It took a while for my WTF moment to give way to comprehension. If they had been flashing, and there hadn't been fog, I would have understood right away that I was approaching a wind turbine farm. But there was some glitch that night in the electronics that set the normal strobe rate (30/m). So the FAA-required beacons were stuck on, shining continuously. So what would normally be flashing red dots atop distinguishable turbine towers were turned by fog into slowly ascending glowing red balls. A few years later the utility company, in response to complaints from farmers, put in Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems (ADLS), which use radar systems that only turn on turbine lights when an aircraft is approaching the wind farm. That is a cool way to deal with the issue!

A fission "bamboo" (this is auto correct at work, I ducking hate auto correct) is not to difficult to make, I bet money if I was given a metal work shop and enough plutonium I could make a low yield device. Devastate a few city blocks at least. I'd die from radioactive contamination but if a man can use a screw driver to cause a almost detonation that killed him I think could do it as well. Uranium might be easier to do, I'd have to go back a reread the papers I've read to be sure. The trigger would be the hardest part to replecate but given enough uranium 235 I bet I could do it. shit shit shit, now I hear the black helicopters coming!

There are videos being shown that detail how a nuclear bomb works, even fusion bombs, the excuse used is that the info is already in the public domain and yes these vids are approved by the gov. It's possible that the info is no longer considered classified as well. I'm not talking about leakers either, I am saying specifically that the gov should come out and admit to being behind specific UFO sightings by declassifying the source behind specific sightings. If military tech is behind UFO sightings then let us know which sightings exactly, I can think of a couple right off the top of my head that would shake the idea of aliens off the ledger. Stepping up and admitting responsibility for specific encounters would go a long way to convincing people like me for sure. I have read of the SR71 black bird being responsible for a hand full of specific sightings in the south eastern US due to maneuvers the black bird engaged in to gain speed for its flights. I saw one of them and I don't say it was a UFO die to that revelation. It was impressive btw. I was surf fishing with a few of my buddies, it was after dark and the sky was lit up with an aircraft that was traveling south along the coast almost directly over head. It lit up like a glowing UFO would be expected to. You could see the fire trails it let as it speed over head going from horizon to horizon in just a couple minutes. It was just after it had become completely dark. One of my Buddies had been a mechanic in the Aur force and his job had been maintenance of the SR71 for several years. He immediately recognized it as an SR71, or so he said later. SR71 was what I thought of immediately as well but I am quite critical of what I see and most of the others just thought they'ed seen an alien space craft. A few years later this maneuver was released to the public in a not well know paper at the time but I read it and when I talked to my buddy about it sad he had recognized the SR71 and like me thought it was flying so high it was still in sunlight as it traveled at the edge of the atmosphere. He had remembers his security oath and had, at the time, not told any of us what he suspected. Turned out we were both right and we also told the guys were had been fishing with what we found out as well. This sighting had been the talk of the guys we had been fishing with for several years... I talked about it less than a year ago with one of the guy who had been there. It made a big impression on all of us.

Would an alien civilization that possesses technology to travel the stars, and that doesn't want to be detected, not have some sort of visual stealth technology, or at least, radar stealth technology, like we already have ? Maybe we should then stick to more probable terrestrial phenomena. And I know you're feeling a little 'ganged-up' on, and maybe getting a little irritated,but I think you missed the point of Dimreepr's post. There are similarly many unexplained phenomena which some people attribute to ghosts. that these phenomena actually involve ghosts is equally unlikely. Or are you suggesting we should also investigate ghosts, as they remain unexplained ? With respect to US military ( DARPA ) secrets, in the 1980s the military began investigating stealth technology that eventually resulted in the L-M F-117/F-22/F-35, and the N-G B-2/YF-23/B21. These involved demonstrator projects, and since stealth tech was in its infancy, it involved crude, almost non-flyable shapes that were optimized for as much stealth as they could get. The L-M Have Blue demonstrator had a diamond shaped planform, with all angles optimizwd for least reflection, and would have been unflyable if not for computer-controlled fly-by-wire. The N-G Tacit Blue demonstrator had an inverted bathtub shape to the fuselage, but normal wings/control surfaces, as N-G was interested in the flying wing/blended body approach to their B-2 design. Both are now declassified, and you can google pics of both. I wonder how either of those would have looked to a crop-duster pilot who happened to spot one ? And would the military have admitted what it was ? Th If that happened wouldn't have been better to tell that crop duster what his sighting actually was once the stealth aircraft was declassified instead of perpetrating the deception of UFOs? To be honest I hadn't been following Avi very closely of late, but if you are correct then I withdraw my exception to ridiculing Avi Loeb I am not talking about whistle blowers, although there are plenty of them, I was talking about the gov declassifying them officially. 80 years is a long time for a tech secret to kept, wow can't reveal how to make a nuclear bomb... oh wait it's on YouTube and actually allowed by the the gov... wow UFOs must be some strong secrets.

Yes they take national security so seriously they would rather allow rumors of aliens to spread instead of revealing old sightings that were really the Air Force but since it was deemed secret 60 years ago it must still be kept secret today. I know my mind could be changed if the military came out and showed us these things that do not need to be secret any longer and keeping them secret today is still important enough to lie and deceive even decades after the secret is no longer worth keeping.

I see your point.

But how can you eliminate it by listing it as a reasonable cause?

I understand that effect, but in many cases the people involved never got any fame or popularity out of it either in fact some of them were sorry they ever reported the sighting due to negative effects the attention gave them. BTW, I am not limited to the internet, YouTube is not reality, I read I've read dozens of books, and scientific papers about this subject way before the internet was a gleam in Al Gores eye 💩 The assumption of anyone who had a sighting that could not be explained had to be a liar was well established back in the 1950's, I rejected it when I encountered it in the 1960's I reject it now.

Does it not bother you to assume things like the oxygen flow could make multiple individuals across multiple aircraft see the same hallucinations at the same time? To be honest I think something like Saint Elmo's Fire is the best explanation or none alien explanation but that is just speculation as well. I just threw in Foo Fighters as an obvious example of something that could not have been human technology, there are many sightings that are either hoaxes or alien space craft. Admittedly most have turned out to be hoaxes but that does not mean all of them are or are even more likely to be hoaxes, Each case is separate from each other case unless you can connect them and being unidentified is not a significant connection. Assuming a hoax due to aliens being less probable just doesn't sit well with me, mistake yes but to assume a hoax... maybe I trust too much. Yeah and there are pictures as well in many of these cases. I know a picture can be faked but to what end, most of these people never made a dime or any significant fame from these "Hoaxes" yet the stigma of being labeled a liar remains or anyone foolish enough to make a report. Be skeptical? Yes please do so , but assuming a hoax or a lie out of hand due to something being improbable is simply not the path to knowledge IMHO

You make a good point, secret human tech is more probable than aliens, especially with modern tech being advanced enough to be mistaken for out of this world technology, that being said... in WW2 glowing balls of light were being seen with some regularity by allied pilots, these objects darted among the bombers and were often shot at by gunners. It turned out the Axis powers were seeing the same things and they though they were our and we though they were theirs. Not human tech, and there are many others in that time frame that simply could not have been unknown human tech. This idea of misidentified human tech was dismissed by Project Sign in favor of at least some UFOs being interplanetary space craft, The Chiles-Whitted case this sighting solidified the idea of interplanetary space craft, of course this estimate of the situation was rejected and probably justifiably so due to lack of scientific rigor in the collection of data if nothing else.

A TV show is not evidence, show me scientific evidence of ghosts.

Don't bother

The 'why' is of course also speculative. But I would like to apply one of the 'derivatives' of Ockham's Razor. I gave already an example of that: there are experiments with new flying technologies. Getting people not to take too much interest in 'flying anomalies' them could help the interest in them low. This is also speculative of course, but it needs no additional, improbable hypotheses, like 'aliens', alien technology, or what else. Nope. Didn't you read my posting till the end before reacting? Of course, if it is possible. If, taking all data of a UFO sighting together do not lead to a conclusion what it was, then it is unexplained. Full stop. But for goodness, yes, we should investigate UFO sightings that cannot be explained easily (Jupiter, weather balloon, etc). I did not say anything like that. I hope it is not a willfully wrong interpretation of what I wrote. He won't get it from me. Trying to exclude all kinds of noise from your measurements is normal scientific practice. Taking the vibrations of a passing truck as some significant event, is a scientific sin. Did he admit his mistake and correct it or sit and insist he was correct despite the evidence? AFAIK making a mistake in science is not a sin. But taking the observation of a solar balloon from a plane as some proof of an (alien) UFO, or secret AF or NASA technology, as the majority of the comments under that video, shows a terrible naivety from the side of UFO fanatics. Hay, I once saw a UFO! Meaning, that all possible explanations I could think of did not quite fit. Yes, it was just a red light, nearly standing still close to the horizon, no smoke visible, so not very impressive. But fact is that I did not know what it was (no, it was not Mars). And if I see how many auxiliary hypotheses are needed about technologies that we even do not know can exist, to make it at least probable that aliens are visiting us, then, no thanks. I'll wait for real empirical evidence, and so my default is 'unexplained means unexplained'. Yes, once again, investigate UFO sightings! But if the data do not positively point to aliens visiting us, then, yes, unexplained means unexplained. @Eise Just because I agree with some of the stuff being proposed to suggest how aliens could be here doesn't mean I am convinced they are here. I have been looking into the for decades, I started out as a kid who just read books never questioning the sources. After many years I realized that sources mattered and my surety that aliens were visiting declined to zero. Then I found out what a scam the gov was really running, they weren't trying to explain anything, they were desperately trying to convince people UFOs were anything except unexplained even if the explanations were so silly as to be ridiculous. The Condon Report pretty much galvanized my resolve to find out what was really going on. I found out that there were many sightings that were not "lights in the sky" but actual sightings of structured objects, often at close range in broad daylight, radar sightings, multiple independent radar detections, multiple independent witnesses, and the witnesses were not always ignorant rednecks getting anal Probes. Some sightings are credible, possibly not from the stand point of scientific rigor but when is a scientist equipped with certified instruments on hand for a random event? If that is the standard required then nothing is evidence at all. Show me evidence that ghosts are real, don't do your usual gas lighting, show your evidence that ghosts are real, just a drive by post making a silly claim is not what I am doing. Why are you doing that or is your goal simply chaos?

I have no clue as to which one is more probable but knowing there are multiple ways this could be done shows me it is likely possible to star travel. The idea that this is something so improbable as to be not worth looking into might be justified if there was no way possible for it to happen. We have no way of knowing how resources are used in an advanced civilization, quite possibly they have system better than unchained capitalism controlled by oligarchs whose desire for money is greater than their desire for civilization to continue. IOW trying to predict what an alien civilization might do and why is not a winning strategy, they may not even exist and the Air Force might release info that shows they were just trying to keep military secrets and the need for secrecy just got out of hand and resulted in the gov lying and deceiving us to just keep out of date secrets! Actually I think that would be pretty cool, imagine a gov who tells you the truth.. go figure.

Why only one possibility?

I would be happy to just find out that research ls being done on UAPs... and no spending time and money hunting ghosts on Skin Walker Ranch is not UAP research.

I have to say that even I keep getting off course on this, all I am saying, in a nut shell, is that sitting around until a meteorite hits you on the head is not a viable way to show rocks fall from the sky. We have to devise ways to actually investigate, short of the military coughing up some of their data they have to show some sort of reasonable explanation that doesn't include "trust us" due to past lies and deception. I see no path forward but sitting and waiting for "them" to tell us they are here. No amount of data gathered by a layman on this subject would ever be accepted, and this a totally random phenomenon , the closest thing we have to scientific evidence is the Mt Palomar Telescope images that show mysterious lights, possibly in Earth orbit the night of the July 1962 Washington DC sightings but I know that old data has noting to learn from. I hate auto correct! How could you possibly expect a conformation from other sources in such a scenario? There was radar confirmation for the object from ground radar but I guess that means nothing?

Then there is unlikely to ever be enough data to determine anything to do with UFOs short of them landing on the white house lawn, we will remain ignorant until they or what ever this phenomena is decides we should know. I personally think this is one of the few phenomena that requires such high standards of evidence to even be looked at seriously. Anything else with that much data would have sparked a serious investigation and efforts to figure out how to find more info... not an "Oh well nothing definite to see here move along" Everything I said so far is my analysis or my best attempt at it, exactly what were you expecting me to say as you guys trotted out all the old bs about time and distance which I pointed out as false dilemmas.

Ok, it would be nice to know why but that would mean actually considering what Dr McDonald had to say in detail, I won't bother you to do that. Dr McDonald was probably the most qualified person to ever be in charge of anything to to do with UFOs, he was an expert in atmospheric physics/phenomena. While his is not the end all be all of anything his contributions were significant even if he disagreed with the main stream.

Then we are done, if you can't actually look at what I am proposing them I see no reason to take you seriously either.

I've considered the info you gave, how about you do me the same favor and look at what I supplied. @MigL @swansont @Mordred http://kirkmcd.princeton.edu/JEMcDonald/mcdonald_fsr_16_3_2_70.pdf

Why is this a problem for star travel? The self replicating probe scenario solves the problem of distance, one probe could "probe", reproduce and re-probe the entire galaxy in a few million years at worst, sending out millions of self replicating probes would cut that time down to hundreds of thousands of years. Restrictions of likelihood make no sense in this scenario, while I personally think any civilization that wanted to explore and even colonies the entire galaxy would be likely to use this method even one using it would be enough to make a probe in our solar system likely. this idea reminds me of the series of books by John Varley Often called the Gaea Trilogy, a self replicating probe is found in our solar system and of course all hell breaks lose in the series but the premise is sound. This all nice to speculate about but we, IMHO, cannot define the phenomena into existence, until we establish the reality of what is happening we can speculate until the cows come home. Now how about we discuss the paper I listed a few posts ago that describes a sighting by the military of a highly anomalous object by a military aircraft that is probably the very plane all of us wished would encounter a UFO!

Quite the contrary I think they speak to how it could done easily by an advanced civilization, Von Neumann Probes are just an easy solution, the motivations of a million year old civilization is as beyond our comprehension as our civilization would be to a Neanderthal. The parts we do comprehend, assuming for the moment UAP are part of our limited comprehension, require a civilization outside the box we try to shove our own into. If civilizations never make it beyond what we can comprehend then there are no UAP aliens and its something else... which would be fine with me.

The concept of a Von Neumann probe negates all that. The time factor is only a viable criticism if you insist on the experiment not being able to outlive the experimenter, in a short lived civilization like ours that is a reasonable complaint but in a civilization a Million years old where biological beings might have practical immortality or even be an intermittent part in or not be present at all in a million year old civilization. waiting a few thousand years for data might not be a problem at all especially when the data inflow involves millions of Probes sending back data as they gain knowledge of the system they were sent to. No reason to sit around and twiddle your thumbs waiting on data from a single probe when it comes in continuously from millions of probes. Such Probes would reproduce and head out for more stars to rinse and repeat.

I didn't suggest aliens had to be close by, why do you think they need to be close by? I see no reason for new physics to attain star travel.