Moontanman

1 hour ago, swansont said:

You might notice I was referring to the ice layer you suggested, which won’t work, since the interior heat has to escape the container.

You might notice the ice layer I suggested had nothing to do with stopping interior heat from escaping. 

1 hour ago, swansont said:

 

That wasn’t clear, and I don’t agree that we can easily generate strong magnetic fields on the scale necessary. We can generate strong fields on a scale of several meters. 

If we used ice to protect the inner rotating structure from radiation w wouldn't need the magnetic field. 

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

The heat has to escape somehow. Making the outer later be ice just makes the interior hotter, at the cost of a lot of energy.

??? I was speaking about how to protect the inhabitants from radiation in space. How is using scraps material to but a shell around the habitat a cost of a lot of energy? 

20 minutes ago, swansont said:

 

Which has no effect on the emission EM radiation 

I wouldn't expect it to, I was speaking about the problem of particle radiation in space.  

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

I remember feeling a sad twinge when I learned that the Niven Ring wasn't practical - I think it was from an interview with Larry himself where he mentioned all the engineers who had contacted him over the years, alerting him to Ringworld's inherent instability.  Given that the Dyson Shell is also a no-go, that leaves the Dyson Swarm as the most viable of the large-scale builds.  I think there's been speculation as to their visibility to large telescopes, and how difficult it might be to spot telltales of such.  An unusually bright IR spectral profile might be one indicator.

As far as I know no potential dyson Swarms have been detected but if controlled fusion is possible th eneed for a dyson swarm evaporates.  

1 hour ago, TheVat said:

The question of can habitats, for widespread use, might also focus on biosphere engineering problems.  Artificial ecosystems might prove really hard to maintain (natural ones are certainly proving to be pretty fragile) and some species might have beliefs that reject them.  Or longterm buffers against hard radiation might be impossible in some stellar systems without a planetary magnetic field and thick atmosphere.  So many unknowns at present.

An artificial biosphere might require the occasional "topping up" of volities and trace elements. The problems really present when you are trying to maintain a biosphere over very long time frames. 

Radiation can be controlled by placing your habitat inside a shell constructed of the waste materials left over after constructing your habitat, a thick non rotating ice shell should do quite well and we can generate quite powerful magnetic fields as well. 

Unregulated, unchained, Capitalism. 

9 hours ago, exchemist said:

“Fictional habitats”

The first three are scientifically accurate portrayals of what is possible with our current technology. The others were indeed fictional but I did point that out. The fictional habitats were inspired by the possible reality of the others. We, as a species, need to dream, need inspiration, the fictional habitats may not be possible, the Niven Ring is definitely not possible but is a concept taken to its absolute limit. A simple can shaped object a few kilometers across and rotating for artificial gravity on its inside surface is well within the realms of possibility and is the only practical way to generate artificial gravity we know of.  

9 hours ago, exchemist said:

“Fictional habitats”

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, Ultimately it's a message in a bottle, if the bottle is properly corked.

For instance, as previously discussed, we've been sending out radio waves for X number of year's, none of which is discernable by Voyager, because the universe is full of noise...

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Our other great strength is ability to distinguish between imagination and reality. It is not a good sign when this ability is compromised.

2 hours ago, StringJunky said:

If one reads about something that has a basically nebulous level of evidence too much, one can end up believing it. The brain has a fantastic capacity for filling in the gaps in ways that may appear plausible, but ultimately don't stand up to scrutiny. Imagination is our great strength, but it is also a vulnerability if it's not checked.

I think there are many reasons planets would not be in demand and possibly ignored completely except as raw materials. Artificial habitats make much more sense. Millions of times the surface area of the Earth could be created using artificial habitats like O'Neill Cylinders , Stanford Torus , McKendree Cylinders  or just can shaped shaped habitats lighted from the inside rotated for artificial gravity and even have natural esque type habitats on the inner surface of these objects.

These or other artificial habitats could be manipulated to the heart's content of who ever creates them and only have familiar life forms on board.  

Problems would be encountered on real planets.

Planets would have problems ranging from viri to bacteria to fungus but more likely the possibility of environmental poisons like trace elements, too much of some minor gas in the atmosphere or too much environmental toxins like mercury or arsenic or some other poison that would affect them we don't know of. Life is amazingly well evolved to fit its habitat and colonising a strange hut natural world would be fraught by hazards an artificial habitat would not have to worry about.  

Is this better? 

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

Well yes. When you say "colonise", it implies taking over territory that was not previously theirs. 

I think there are many reasons planets would not be in demand and possibly ignored completely except as raw materials. Artificial habitats make much more sense. Millions of times the surface area of the Earth could be created using artificial habitats like O'Neill Cylinders , Stanford Torus , McKendree Cylinders  or just can shaped shaped habitats lighted from the inside rotated for artificial gravity and even have natural esque type habitats on the inner surface of these objects.

These or other artificial habitats could be manipulated to the heart's content of who ever creates them and only have familiar life forms on board.  

"There are fictional habitats that are beyond our capabilities but more advanced. Banks Orbitals , Bishop Ring, or if you really want to step outside reality a Niven Ring. None of these are possible with our own limited science and are probably not possible at all."

Banks Orbital

Bishop Ring

Niven Ring 

Lot of fun to speculate about but real problems would be encountered on real planets.

Planets would have problems ranging from viri to bacteria to fungus but more likely the possibility of environmental poisons like trace elements, too much of some minor gas in the atmosphere or too much environmental toxins like mercury or arsenic or some other poison that would affect them we don't know of. Life is amazingly well evolved to fit its habitat and colonising a strange hut natural world would be fraught by hazards an artificial habitat would not have to worry about.  

This is so funny and it never gets old! 

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

For colonisers they don't seem to be doing a very good job. Unless David Icke is right about the Lizard People, I suppose. 

Are you expecting them to colonise planets? There could be thousands of artificial colonies orbiting our sun and we would be unaware of them.  

3 hours ago, Alex_Krycek said:

They've been taken seriously for a long time, by the right people.

Interesting, I'll have to check that out. I am aware of Jacques Vallee and his work with J. Allen Hynek I wasn't aware of this book. 

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Oh yes, the Invisible College is quite correct, a race of sinister reptilian humanoids that appear like normal people are indeed controlling mankind.  They're sometimes called "capitalists," or more specific terms like "hedge fund managers," "CEOs," "PAC managers," "oligarchs," etc.  

I let my IC membership lapse last year, and now they keep sending me these renewal notices that offer me a free Invisible College tote bag or coffee mug if I go with the Premium membership.

Really? Denigrating a comment instead of giving some data to suggest it is wrong in some way is how we should be rolling here? 

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

Oh that's interesting - I hadn't heard about the elemental rarity aspect in that broader sense.  Will look that up.  But, as I asked back there, isn't it possible alien genetic code could be strung along something other than a phosphate backbone?  Or maybe you just need phosphorus and nothing else will do?  

Not that they couldn't have other element bottlenecks.  

Arsenic has been suggested as a replacement but much like carbon other possibilities suffer from problems due to simply being similar doesn't mean able to replace. 

14 hours ago, TheVat said:

A pessimistic one, for sure.  The problem of recovery (stop agri runoff, recycle livestock waste, human "peecycling," corpse recycling, change detergent formulas, etc) seems solvable.  And it's possible alien genetic code could be strung along something other than a phosphate backbone, so they would have other element bottlenecks perhaps.  

It's unfortunate that our main phosphorus source in the States is a state currently being governed by a would-be fascist idiot with a terrible environmental track record.  

Pretty cool.   Stop eutrophication and recover phosphorus.  Nice work if you can get it.  

Not what I meant, the rarity of phosphorus in the universe is what I was referring to. We have an unusually high amount of phosphorus in our neck of the space woods. 

6 hours ago, Intoscience said:

Yes, agreed.

I agree, this is all we have to go on that is rigorous. 

There are scientists who are considering hypothesis which sit outside the constraints of Relativity. Was it Eric Weinstein who said something along the lines of "Einstein's jail". 

Ok, we can all let our imaginations run wild and speculate on wormholes and warp drives and so on... this is all sci-fi, pseudo science and/or at best conjecture. So i'm in agreement that we should consider possibilities that fit within our current understanding of physical laws. 

Based on this both you and String Junky have very logical and valid points.  

The idea of Clark Tech, FTL is chief among them, suggests that we already know enough about how the universe works to be able to limit what aliens can do. I tend to agree with this, the idea of magical tech and or super beings doesn't sit well with me of course not more than a century or so ago we thought a great many things were impossible or simply unknown to us. Known unknowns and unknown unknowns, sometimes referred to as black swan events. 

Looking outside the box shouldn't mean we know enough to flatly know where the box begins and ends or even if there is a box. 

6 hours ago, StringJunky said:

No hypothesis or theory can be be conceived in a vacuum without reference to, and agreement with, what we already know.

A hypothesis is your idea, and a theory is what you use to test it via principles contained within it.

I'm not sure that is justified, sometimes serendipity plays a big part in science. I don't think anyone was expecting photographic plates to result in the finding of radioactivity.   

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

The furthest indication of our presence is from when the wireless was invented. Our aliens can't be any more than about 130lyrs from Earth  (1894 wireless invented) otherwise we are undetectable. We now need to think about the probability of there being aliens in that 130lyr radius. I would say our ability to detect objects up to that distance is pretty good. How many 130lyrs spheres can you fit in 100 000 lyr galaxy, like ours? We are in just one of those spheres. Beyond that sphere, evidence of our presence is unavailable by the rules of Relativity.

There are ?? stars within 100 light years of Earth, with a google search I seem to be getting a wide array of answers from 76 to 5900, I'm not sure which is accurate. 

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

I'm quoting Douglas Adams but the point is a serious one. The distances involved are vast and massive bodies such as spacecraft can only travel at a fraction of c*. Physical travel from one habitable planet to another would take centuries, and centuries more to get back, and to what end?

My own view is that intelligent life from elsewhere would have long ago realised it would be a colossal waste of time and instead would put their efforts into remote sensing - if they were interested in our planet at all. (It fact, it may be just arrogance on our part to imagine we would be that interesting.)    

 

* If it is proposed that alien civilisations may have found out how to travel faster than light, my response is that is unjustified, whimsical, wish-driven speculation rather than science. There is no objective reason so far to distrust Relativity.  

You are assuming a Star Trek type pattern of exploring/colonising the galaxy. A more rational method would be either sending out intelligent machines to do the job or sending out colonizers who get to a new star system, colonise with artificial habitats and then send out their own colonizers to new star systems. Habitable planets are not required and maybe even ignored completely except for a few specialists looking to study life and or aliens. It might take several million years but that is a blink of the eye in deep time. 

15 hours ago, TheVat said:

I have wondered, re the AFB sightings, what sane ET would approach a planet full of aggressive and xenophobic beings that's bristling with nuclear weapons and say, hey, I know, let's go buzz an Air Force Base!   

 

Good question but it's also possible that to them our weapons are no more dangerous than thrown rocks to one of our own weapons systems. 

16 hours ago, swansont said:

That doesn’t change the fact that we are actively looking at the skies. At the very least we look for objects that might collide with the earth, and if the objects are too small/faint to see, you can’t write it off as being passive - it’s a technical limitation.

My point exactly, we need to step up our game on detecting small faint IR targets. 

16 hours ago, swansont said:

Which should show up in IR viewing, and it doesn’t depend on reflection of sunlight. What does it say that we don’t see anything? Multiple IR telescopes have been in operation since the late 70s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_telescope#Infrared_telescopes

Are any of them really meant to detect tiny faint objects inside our solar system? 

16 hours ago, swansont said:

 

(and this is the sort of technical discussion that has a basis in science, so kudos to you for engaging in that direction)

 

Not a new direction for me, this is something I've been suggesting for many years off and on. 

6 hours ago, StringJunky said:

The furthest indication of our presence is from when the wireless was invented. Our aliens can't be any more than about 130lyrs from Earth  (1894 wireless invented) otherwise we are undetectable. We now need to think about the probability of there being aliens in that 130lyr radius. I would say our ability to detect objects up to that distance is pretty good. How many 130lyrs spheres can you fit in 100 000 lyr galaxy, like ours? We are in just one of those spheres. Beyond that sphere, evidence of our presence is unavailable by the rules of Relativity.

Are you assuming that Aliens would need to detect "us" to be here? A galaxy wide civilization (not really possible IMHO) might just be slowly colonising the galaxy via artificial space habitats. This could be done in a few million years, planets in general of inhabited planets specifically might be ignored except for individuals or groups having an interest in rising primitives. 

The Earth a been detectable for billions of years via spectrographic studies of our atmosphere via telescopes.  

6 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Regardless of the technology c is c. Anything faster is magic at this point.

Clark Tech. 

Again I would suggest checking out these papers/reports from 1968 very suggestive of something highly unusual happening at Minot Air Force Base in 1968. 

1 minute ago, Genady said:

It appears that your suggestion is to look for a needle in a haystack without knowing anything about the needle or the haystack.

It has to start someplace if it's going to start at all. All we can know is that under the laws of physics we know an object that uses energy has to give off waste heat. A spacecraft powered by nuclear energy would be difficult to really hide due to it giving off waste heat as part of it's operation of homeostasis if not direct propulsion. 

I am sure it might give off other sources of energy such as neutrinos but I don't think we have the capability to detect those from a distance and at such low levels as even controlled fusion might release them. I see no reason why infrared should be impossible, difficult possibly but not impossible. 

5 hours ago, Genady said:

I still don't understand what your suggestion is. To look for infra-red sources in the Kuiper Belt?

Yeah, it would be more difficult that you might think, most of our infrared telescopes are looking for planetary sized bodies not tiny low level sources. I'm sure there are other ways, this one is just my own dog and pony show. 

4 hours ago, swansont said:

As if we aren’t already scanning everywhere in all available frequency bands where we might expect a signal.

Yes but the ability to actually pinpoint a source varies greatly. A planet is much easier to see than a tiny object in terms of raw power output. Just like seeing Jupiter is easier than seeing one of Jupiter's tiny moons in visible light. 

I spent most of the night trying to find out where I got the debunking and how or why i inserted it into the Science Channel video. I couldn't find it, I am truly sorry, but I stand behind the rest of what I posted in this thread including the Minot Base papers about the UFO seen from a 52 bomber and tracked on radar. 

I also stand behind my contention that we will not credible evidence by passively waiting.  

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

And you are assuming that the world is greater than an island, in a world full of islands... 

I am assuming that a civilization capable of star travel will be beyond us technologically a similar amount as we are beyond a stone age culture isolated on a island. We are a couple thousand years beyond the island culture and just as isolated from the greater galaxy as the islanders are from us. A galaxy spanning culture would be by necessity as much as a million years beyond us and have motivations and capabilities we can not conceive of any more than the islanders can conceive of our motivations and or capabilities.   

Their knowledge of us is dictated almost completely by us as our knowledge of an advanced civilization would be dictated by them.  

3 hours ago, swansont said:

You posted the video. You posted “it is what an alien colony space station would look like” and “The object was rotating too fast to be made out of rock and ice”

You can’t abdicate this responsibility. If you aren’t prepared to defend the claims you post, don’t post them. Otherwise it’s like “ring and run”

 

This is moot, since there’s nothing of sufficient strength trying to break it apart.

I have to admit I didn't know what the video showed, I had seen the full episode about a year ago and I swear I thought it showed the idea of the object being sensationalized and then debunked. This is a common theme for these videos NASA's Unexplained Videos.

Either I am simply misremembering or they intentionally edited this to advertise their channel and try and get people to buy the entire episode. I am sorry, I do not know what to say, I distinctly remember the build up and then the admission of how it was all hype and they explained in some detail why it was hype but this short video only shows the build up.

I am genuinely at a loss, I watched parts of this video and even remember the way they slowly debunked the entire thing going into great detail about the rotation rates not being as fast as claimed and how the communications disruption was due to a software glitch and how this had resulted in the entire alien claims.

I hope I am just remembering the entire video and mistakenly inserted bit of the whole video into this one accidentally from memory... either that or I have slipped a cog. 

I am embarrassed, I do not blame you guys for doubting my credibility, hell I doubt my credibility, I see no way forward on this at this time. 

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

Phosphogeddon!

https://books.google.com/books/about/Phosphorus.html?id=nqkPEAAAQBAJ

 

The book is also mentioned in the March 6 issue of The New Yorker.

https://www.magzter.com/stories/culture/The-New-Yorker/ELEMENTAL-NEED

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/06/phosphorus-saved-our-way-of-life-and-now-threatens-to-end-it

The phosphorus problem has been suggested as a resolution to the Fermi Paradox. 

7 hours ago, Phi for All said:

He's a book-banning kidnapper from The Hate State, and wants to be our president. Out of two evils, the jury is still out whether he's the lesser. If he wins in 2024, he wants to have the letters C, R, and T removed from all the alphabet soup. 

I saw a car yesterday here in my home state of NC covered by various right wing stickers verifying the the subhuman intelligence of the driver and most prevalent was "Desantis 2024" stickers... it was a small compact car and I drive a large 4X4... deliver me from temptation o lord.  

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

Indeed I am assuming that, since we know it to be the case.

How do we know this to be the case? 

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

And I'm afraid you do accept these stories uncritically. We've established the Arawn story is rot. You could have questioned it. After all, its rotation period is less than 6 times that of the Earth, a far bigger body.

I will not continue to defend that which i wasn't defending to begin with, the earth is held together mainly by gravity, a small body like arawn is not held together by it's gravity alone any more than a glacier is held together by its own gravity. 

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

 

And nowhere on the internet is there any support for the idea it could not be naturally stable. If you had checked that, it should have rung some alarm bells. But no, you just pushed it out as evidence of aliens (suitable hedged with caveats, but that is what you meant).

I really wish you would actually read what I am posting instead of reading what you want to see into my posts. 

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

Have you learnt from the Arawn story that the source you used for that cannot be trusted?  

Have you realized i never suggest the Arawan story was true but that it resembled what we might expect to find if aliens were currently present in our solar system? The reason so many tried to suggest it was alien is the assumed oddness of it but it wasn't enough to make that assertion. Only hype by people who had an agenda made those claims. I said this, several times now, please adjust your jets to the reality of the situation. 

3 hours ago, Genady said:

Just for fun, I've decided to run a little exercise in Bayesian inference.

Let's say I am open-minded and believe that there is 1% chance of a UFO siting to be alien related. This is my "prior", P(A).

Let's say about 90% of all UFO sitings have natural explanations. This is P(E).

Let's say that even an alien related siting has 50% chance to be explained naturally. This is P(E/A).

Now somebody reports a new siting, and somebody else points out a natural explanation to it. My new, updated believe in a chance of a UFO siting to be alien related is,

P(A/E) = P(E/A)*P(A)/P(E) = 0.5*0.01/0.9 = 0.0056

So, I'm still open-minded but my confidence in alien related UFOs went down from 1% to 0.56%.

And yet we have many tens of thousands of sightings/reports, many hundreds if not thousands at least are completely inexplicable. If you go by standards released by the US Air force this number should be in the 10% range, you would have to extrapolate from the numbers of sightings investigated just by the US gov and apply those percentages to the world wide reports. The raw numbers are impressive, I doubt the true number of unknown unknowns is that high but it still has to be significant. Even one real alien sighting is world changing. 

I stand by my assertion that just passively collecting data will never result in sufficient evidence to conclude anything. The concept is much further outside our experience/ability for us to ever obtain the indisputable evidence required to accept the idea unless the evidence is granted to us by the "aliens" themselves if we manage to step up our own collection game and obtain evidence outside the current possible parameters of data collection being employed. 

ie Just waiting for the evidence to come to us will not work.    

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

Except that we are not a bunch of primitives and these things have been investigated, on numerous occasions, with nothing to show for it.

What has instead been revealed by many such investigations is the under-appreciated capacity of people to make mistakes in identification, to delude themselves and to fabricate. You, for example, have shown yourself willing to accept, uncritically, a number of stories, at random, with no linking feature, apparently because they support a pre-existing belief in alien visitations. When one of them is shown to be nonsense, it does not give you a moment's pause: you just move smoothly onto the next one, as if the first one had never existed. You never stop to ask yourself why you were fooled, or how to avoid being fooled again. Hence the scepticism of people like me about this stuff, when put forward by people with your sort of mindset.  

You are assuming the "islanders" have the capability to investigate their anomalies in some reasonable manner. Remember the outside "world" is far ahead of the islanders nad in total control of what the islanders can investegate, barring some sort of accident the islanders never get to see anything the world doesn't want them to see. 

I do not accept these stories uncritically, I try to approach them without prejudgment, that means not assuming they are false from the beginning and the only thing left is to show they are false. Each one has no connection to the veracity of the next. Each one by definition stands alone, at least at first blush this is the only honest way to investigate honestly. After investigation the stories can be linked together if there is sufficient reason to do so but not before. You cannot do a fair assessment if you assume they are false to begin with. 

My mindset is to approach was sighting/report as though it is the only one I ever saw or heard of, of course I cannot do this completely but if I do not try then bias slips into the investigation from the last report. If you were collecting data from a crime you wouldn't let data from other crimes influence your current data set. To do so would contaminate the crime scene. Once you have that data you can begin to compare aspects of the crime to see if there are connections but there not being connections cannot be used to show there was no crime. 

BTW, compared to aliens who can weld technologies allowing them to travel in some manner between the stars we are primitives. We might have wooden canoes but the others have boats made of fiberglass composites using technologies we cannot even fathom like internal combustion engines and GPS navigation... we have to look at this from the standpoint of being primitives.

Expecting an advanced technology to simply fall into our laps from the sky is unreasonable even if it is being paraded just beyond our reach. 

We will never passively obtain evidence of such technology we must do our best to obtain it by the most advanced means we have available... at the very least we must be able to study what little is revealed to us even if it is nothing but scraps being presented by accident. 

3 hours ago, Intoscience said:

I totally agree, this is why I remain patient but open minded. 

It's very easy to get over excited and fall into the trap of - it must be extra terrestrial. Which then just adds to the stigma. 

We must do our best to avoid this trap but we must also avoid the trap of it can't be extraterrestrial as well. 

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

 The likelihood is pretty high imo, just not in our neighbourhood.

I don't know if we really can say that with any real confidence, even assuming no "Clark Tech" it would only take a few million years or so for an alien civilization to pretty much explore the entire galaxy

I think we are in the situation of a large island of primitives, we are isolated from the rest of the world and only see glimpses of the outside world. We occasionally see objects over head flying trailing clouds smoke. The tribal elders say these are just illusions, or some might say they are angels, gods or even dragons but there is no way to really know. 

We occasionally see boats way offshore on the horizon, we can see them as boats because we have boats that float and can conceive of such things but they are so far away we cannot see them clearly and there is a lot of debate about who or what they represent but no clear cut way to really know. These "boats" are too fast and too far away for us to catch them. 

Very rarely we see things flying in the dark that light up the sky and the ground and even land. The people shoot arrows at them and throw spears but nothing comes of it. They make a huge amount of noise and some even claim that there are men on board. A few say that they have been abducted and brought back after being examined by these flying things but most people do not have this experience and discount it completely even though many clear pictures have been drawn by the people involved and some of the pictures are similar. 

The tribal leaders say that these things cannot be real because there is no physical evidence of any of them, only people seeing things in the sky or in the distance. Sometimes people who insist they are real are ostracised from the tribe. 

But life goes on and the things people claim to have seen seldom if ever make any real difference in the lives of the island people so no one thinks the sightings should be investigated because they cannot be important to the lives of the people. 

So I guess that scientific papers written by real well known and well accredited scientists are no better than photos and the other link to a large file of info about a military sightings with radar data and isn't even enough to be looked at. 

I think some of you get it, others are just stuck in the debunk at all costs phase, and some just can't help thinking it's all silly to begin with. 

The real point of this is that no amount of evidence is ever going to be good enough, no evidence is without doubt no perfect photo, sighting, encounter will ever happen. 

So do we just ignore this phenomena, no real evidence exists, no research can be done, no reason to step up looking for the improbable? 

Most everyone is so quick with the need to debunk they forget that the idea of evidence is not black and white, it is very seldom absolute, and there is no need to make sure all the evidence is false anymore than someone who is a believer needs to make sure all evidence points to something extraordinary.

We are talking about evidence, in a court of law it would be easy to generate a probability of truth but this is science. I know science has a higher standard of evidence but this is not math, no absolutes here, no proofs will be forthcoming. 

All we have to work with is data collected by laymen, some in good conscience some not, we have definite data, radar returns, photos, physical traces but we also have eyewitnesses, interactions with aircraft, civilian and military. Some data is better than others to be sure but none perfect, all we have is what we have, even in science the quality of data varies and the surety of the results vary. What is the sigma value before science considers something to be probably true? Is anything ever proven absolutely? 

Back away from the need to be right and try to see what is most likely, did the person lie? How likely is it that they lied? Are they known for deception? Do they have any reason to have hoaxed the data? It all boils down to a few possibilities, was something seen or did the person lie? Were they mistaken about what they saw? Were they delusional about what they saw? Even radar and other instruments results can be interpreted. 

It was asked where do we go from here, I've given it some thought, either we continue to debate the evidence we have collected by accident from flawed observers, or we step up our game and try and collect data on our terms, with sophisticated instruments, trained observers collecting the data from our instruments.

Or we just conclude it's impossible to collect meaningful data and dismiss the entire thing as silly and go on ignoring the tens of thousands of reports that have come in over the years and still come in daily from people like the homeless guy down the street, to just regular people, to police, to military personal, pilots, and even scientists.

What do we do, try to beat each other down until we agree or bleed out, or do we act like real reasonable humans and at least try to figure out why our fellow men continue to report these anomalous "things" on such a large scale? We may never find aliens but we might find something else important about how the human mind works when it is faced with something unknown.. or it might just be bullshit. Until we really try we'll never even have a chance to actually know. 

Personally I've love to see the data we have, all of it, even what the military has and hides, subjected to statistical analysis, stop treating each and every incident as though it is some sort of unique situation and see if there are similarities and correlations and that can be studied, charted, graphed. I think such an analysis just might reveal some interesting possibilities. 

I've read reports from all over the world, no doubt hundreds if not thousands over the years, some of them are so outrageous that even if not true you have to salute the persons who made them up. This is not a USA phenomena, it's not a western world problem, it's not something confined to advanced societies, it's not even confined to our planet but it does seem to be confined to human beings, possibly we should start by being human beings.   

On 3/26/2023 at 1:42 PM, exchemist said:

Yes but none of the mechanisms being speculated about are artificial. The alien stuff comes into Loeb's article as a throwaway remark at the end and does not reference any hypothesis that is being studied seriously. If indeed the excess acceleration is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the sun, it is directly proportional to the intensity of solar radiation flux experienced by the object. Ockham's Razor would favour a number of natural hypotheses over alien space drives. 

Loeb has more than one article about Omuamua.

https://avi-loeb.medium.com/is-oumuamua-a-hydrogen-water-iceberg-a5d815f61c86

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

I was addressing your comment about the rotation rate and the size of the object, in reply to @swansont. That was about Arawn, was it not? 

Ok, Arawn is large part of 1% of the asteroids in size, it's rotation was suggested by the article/video I posted to be at the limit of being able to hold together for an asteroid it's size made of rock and ice. I have to admit I was going only on the video for this information.   

49 minutes ago, swansont said:

But when a scenario that is offered up is later debunked, especially so easily as these Arawn claims, it means it wasn’t vetted in the first place. Just credulous acceptance. There’s no reason to expect that the next example will be any better, and some reason the expect it will be worse, if we’ve been given the most promising examples first.

 I wasn't rating my examples from best to worst, I wasn't just accepting the video's information but I do admit that the idea of NASA and the science channel being responsible for this video, it was part of the NASA mysteries series and included NASA scientists and officials. Most of the time these particular set of videos are quite accurate if somewhat disappointing usually being a bit of sensationalist headlines with much less sensational bottom lines. 

It was my mistake to not be more credulous and my fault that I wasn't more forthcoming with the reason for using this video, it was easier than looking up papers and I really didn't think anyone would mistake this for an actual spacecraft since the end of the video states it wasn't.  

It was just my attempt to show the aspects of an alien spacecraft/base/colony if we were to see one by accident.  I honestly wasn't trying to convince anyone this was an alien artifact, I saw through it easily, there wasn't even close to enough evidence shown to suggest this was an alien spacecraft. I think the closest approach was 66 million miles ( I could be wrong) and the most that could be said, IMHO, is that this asteroid might be worthy of another look if a spacecraft was going it's way in the future or if more info was obtained... like if it was shown to be warmer than it should be this distance from the sun.  

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

You clearly only see what you want to see. Dust stirred up would be shooting out sideways, not rising vertically up. And size matters, because a small item is easy to fake. Not so easy to fake a big space craft. 

In fact, that 'flying' item looks like it's less than a metre in size. It looks to be closer to the camera than the barrel that you have trouble seeing. It's in sharper focus than the distant objects.  

No, I do not see what I want, there is no reason to think the "drive" of an alien probe would spread out in a fan shape like a helicopter might. In fact other sightings have been claimed to have the opposite effect seeming to attract the ground in some manner. The cause of the effect is more important than the way the effect manifests itself.

As for the size, keep in mind this is the early to mid 1960s, no drones as we know them today were in existence. The size might indicate it was a drone of some sort instead of a manned craft I know that this photo has been debated ad nauseum over the years with both sides not being able to really conclusively show it is or is not what is seems to be.

The only real thing we can say is the man who took it was considered to be of good character and to suggest he hoaxed it is inflammatory in the face of no reason to suspect him of such an act. The photo is what he took, if it was a hoax in someway there is no reason to suggest he was part of it and more than one photo was taken.     

Now... does it prove an alien spacecraft/drone passed with a few yards of this man? No it does not, it does indicate something unknown happened and that unknown was real enough to be photographed. 

It bears the stigma of all photographs, there is no way to know what it was, only that it was.  

This thread has become a place to post links to sightings, mostly my fault I am sure, it wasn't intended to be that, only a discussion of what is currently being investigated by well established scientists and whether what is being done is sufficient.

I would really like the groups thoughts on this sighting, quite a bit of data is available and described in this link.

  https://minotb52ufo.com/introduction.php

34 minutes ago, exchemist said:

As far as I can see the rotation rate of Arawn (5.47hrs) doesn't present any issues. Most astronomical objects rotate, either due to past collisions or due to angular momentum of the material from which they condensed.   

No, I was asking about the photo that Mrmack was referring to. 

This one, which I do not see any grass or weeds or a barrel, i see dust stirred up directly under the object. And I do not see why its size would matter.