Public UFO Hearing

[Vegas82]

Congress is holding its first public UFO hearing in 50 years in about 40 minutes. After the public portion they’ll be holding a closed classified briefing. Should be at least mildly entertaining.

Few things capture the public imagination quite like UFOs and sci-fi suggestions that aliens might be vacationing on our humble little planet. And on Tuesday, May 17, the US House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee plans to shed some light on UFOs -- more formally known as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP -- with an open hearing.

Among those presenting information on these elusive objects will be Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, and Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence. In the days leading up to the hearing, others involved definitely haven't shied away from heightening the anticipation.

"Americans need to know more about these unexplained occurrences," tweeted Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, who will chair the proceedings.

https://www.cnet.com/science/space/c...-how-to-watch/

[Unlimited Power]

I mean UFOs are just that - Unexplained phenomena.

While I'm certain life exists elsewhere in the universe, I very much doubt intelligent life has ever visited earth in any real capacity.

I'm more of a believer in The Great Filter. If intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, they're either unaware of our presence or we're deemed unworthy of communication.

If there was a civilization advanced enough for FTL spaceflight, we would be but ants to them.

[DarkAmbient]

One of the following must be true:

A) The craft belong to the US government and the footage is both a boast and a warning to other powers that they are technologically outmatched by an order of magnitude
B) The craft belong to the US government and the footage was never intended for release, and 'unidentified aerial phenomena' is just a cover
C) The craft belong to a foreign power that is trolling other militaries with their superior tech
D) The craft are alien in origin
E) The craft are unexplained natural phenomena or observational errors

I would like to believe it's D, but it's probably A or B. It could be C and the US govt doesn't want to admit that another power has more advanced tech.

[Magical Mudcrab]

If there was a civilization advanced enough for FTL spaceflight, we would be but ants to them.

There's also two more crucial questions:
1) If aliens were sufficiently advanced to have FTL travel, or any technology that enables them to fly lightyears through space, and they didn't want to be seen, why are we able to detect them?
2) If aliens were sufficiently advanced to have FTL travel, or any technology that enables them to fly lightyears through space, and they didn't care if they were going to be seen, why are they not more visible and only "seen" by unreliable narrators or in circumstances that can't be fully verified?

It just seems insane to me that people think that aliens either care about being seen but are incompetent enough to accidentally be seen or don't care about being seen but only act when very few people will see them.

[Endus]

One of the following must be true:

A) The craft belong to the US government and the footage is both a boast and a warning to other powers that they are technologically outmatched by an order of magnitude
B) The craft belong to the US government and the footage was never intended for release, and 'unidentified aerial phenomena' is just a cover
C) The craft belong to a foreign power that is trolling other militaries with their superior tech
D) The craft are alien in origin
E) The craft are unexplained natural phenomena

I would like to believe it's D, but it's probably A or B. It could be C and the US govt doesn't want to admit that another power has more advanced tech.

Also F> equipment malfunction/bug; there was at least one of the recent releases where a military plane's camera was tracking an object, and it appeared to stay static and then suddenly zip off-screen, but what actually happened there is that the camera had auto-tracking but not full range of motion, so the camera tracked the blip until it hit its maximum orientation, and then . . . stopped tracking, letting the object "suddenly" zip away. The camera stopped moving, the object didn't accelerate. Plus, later analysis said it was probably an albatross or other large bird and a bit of parallax leading to it appearing to travel way faster than it actually was.

The best evidence against "UFOs" is how everyone's carrying high-quality high-resolution cameras in their pockets these days, ready to take a thousand photos at a moment's notice and not limited by film at all, even able in many cases to take similar-quality full-motion video, and yet, possible UFO sightings have plummeted in number over prior eras. Because when you get a higher-quality shot or footage from multiple angles, the sightings generally get way more explainable as natural phenomena or tricks of the light. Oh, yeah, G> tricks of the light or optical illusions.

There isn't a single detailed photograph of any alien vessel under any conditions anywhere. It's always "but you can't say this fuzzy blob ISN'T an alien spaceship!" I also can't say it's not Superman. Or a whale that's somehow been translocated into the sky. Or the emergent expression of a monstrous Elder One inserting a portion of itself into our lower plane, seeking a reality to devour. The default answer isn't "must be aliens", fer crissakes.

[Shadowferal]

If there's something to this I'd say it was by accident.
Chance..luck..or if you want to reference "chaos" well, to me it's all a thing.

[DarkAmbient]

snip

Yeah, good points, hadn't considered the malfunction angle. It is funny isn't it how these craft are never filmed hovering outside a busy McDonalds in glorious HD. I guess an argument against that could be that aliens who've been observing us might be using our propulsion technology as a yardstick to measure our progress or even our potential threat as a species, and their intervention is a way of prodding us to see how we react. In the end though, the truth is probably disappointingly mundane.

[jonnysensible]

Also F> equipment malfunction/bug; there was at least one of the recent releases where a military plane's camera was tracking an object, and it appeared to stay static and then suddenly zip off-screen, but what actually happened there is that the camera had auto-tracking but not full range of motion, so the camera tracked the blip until it hit its maximum orientation, and then . . . stopped tracking, letting the object "suddenly" zip away. The camera stopped moving, the object didn't accelerate. Plus, later analysis said it was probably an albatross or other large bird and a bit of parallax leading to it appearing to travel way faster than it actually was.

The best evidence against "UFOs" is how everyone's carrying high-quality high-resolution cameras in their pockets these days, ready to take a thousand photos at a moment's notice and not limited by film at all, even able in many cases to take similar-quality full-motion video, and yet, possible UFO sightings have plummeted in number over prior eras. Because when you get a higher-quality shot or footage from multiple angles, the sightings generally get way more explainable as natural phenomena or tricks of the light. Oh, yeah, G> tricks of the light or optical illusions.

There isn't a single detailed photograph of any alien vessel under any conditions anywhere. It's always "but you can't say this fuzzy blob ISN'T an alien spaceship!" I also can't say it's not Superman. Or a whale that's somehow been translocated into the sky. Or the emergent expression of a monstrous Elder One inserting a portion of itself into our lower plane, seeking a reality to devour. The default answer isn't "must be aliens", fer crissakes.

arent we a bit past that, the navy saying the sightings are frequent and continuous' and the whole getting the hearing stages. There is obviously something they keep seeing.

[Endus]

arent we a bit past that, the navy saying the sightings are frequent and continuous' and the whole getting the hearing stages. There is obviously something they keep seeing.

Not really, no. Not when some of this stuff gets released and then nearly immediately debunked by people with more expertise than the flyboy who really doesn't have the relevant expertise to identify shit.

Like I said; in the last release of a few videos, one of them was pretty infamously debunked as "just a bird", and the speed it was travelling at was explained by "the pilot forgot that his tracking camera doesn't go 360 degrees" and "parallax", both factors the pilot should have understood. But didn't.

Most "UFOs" are just "this is something blurry that we can't immediately identify because of the lack of clarity", not "this is something inexplicable".

[Tuor]

There are so many uneplained phenomena, watch this video has an example...


I don't believe in aliens visiting Earth.

[PrimiOne]

If we read between lines Navy's goal is asking for more money by presenting this phenomena as a national security risk so we could question the real motivation of this sudden interest in UFOs. Sure they are not gonna sell you aliens, they are gonna sell you Chinese prototypes and such but ultimately....don't blindly trust the motivation of people asking for money.

We have been seeing "things" ( in the most abstract definition of the term) we can't explain since we are humans ( and probably our antecessor species too).

In each age we just apply our conceptual framework to the unexplainable so in the II b.c. it's Hermes or a Perseid, in the XII a.d. it's an angel or a demon and in the present it's alien life ( the moment we start dreaming with travelling to other worlds , and we finally do it - the moon , the inmediate inference it's thinking that could happen to us, someone can travel here).

We give it a coating of Science when there's nothing more than faith but as opposed to other systems of belief that are actually based on Science ( like the Church of Reality) it's a religion ( yeah, Ufology it's a religion) based on pseudoscience.

Science study events that are reproducible,verifiable and can be labelled and none of this can be applied to ufology.

It's suggesting I know, that's why the interest persist over the decades but critical thinking can not accept the fundamental paradox of ufology:"We don't know what that light was...so it must be aliens"....ummmmm....I thought the premise was "We don't know".......

[Kaleredar]

Aliens are Like ghosts.

When considering an explanation for something you don’t understand, simply ask “could this literally be anything other than aliens/ghosts, no matter how implausible the mundane explanation seems?”

Because if the answer is “yes,” then it’s not aliens/ghosts. Because so far no mystery that has ever been solved in the history of this earth has had “it was aliens/ghosts” as the explanation.

[Ihavewaffles]

Don't want to derail the thread, but there is a debate atm about two universities trying to broadcast info about the human race and our location to the universe, depresses me how that can be legal, haven't they read three body problem, or watched some sci fi to know that is a very bad idea?

It must be stopped, otherwise we could get an unpleasant visit, that is not some ufo hoax...

[Kaleredar]

Don't want to derail the thread, but there is a debate atm about two universities trying to broadcast info about the human race and our location to the universe, depresses me how that can be legal, haven't they read three body problem, or watched some sci fi to know that is a very bad idea?

It must be stopped, otherwise we could get an unpleasant visit, that is not some ufo hoax...

The fuck kind of law would that violate?

If any species were adequately advanced enough to find that information and discern it they would have already been receiving human radio signals for decades.

[Endus]

Don't want to derail the thread, but there is a debate atm about two universities trying to broadcast info about the human race and our location to the universe, depresses me how that can be legal, haven't they read three body problem, or watched some sci fi to know that is a very bad idea?

It must be stopped, otherwise we could get an unpleasant visit, that is not some ufo hoax...

We've been actively broadcasting into the ether for the better part of a century now.

And the possibility of advanced intelligent life A> detecting our signals and B> responding by moving towards Earth and running into us is so abysmally low it's not worth consideration. Any species advanced enough to trivialize it is also advanced enough to not give a shit about this run-down rock with a bunch of barely-sentient apes banging sticks together.

Plus, if we're talking sci-fi, it's arguably far more likely that we're Space Orcs. We're the Deathworlders, the species so fuckin' scary everything else will panic and leave us the fuck alone and pray we don't notice them.

[Ihavewaffles]

The fuck kind of law would that violate?

If any species were adequately advanced enough to find that information and discern it they would have already been receiving human radio signals for decades.

Nope, those old signals have deteriorated, well before anyone can receive them..but these two universities seem positive about their goals..which makes me nervous..

[Endus]

Nope, those old signals have deteriorated, well before anyone can receive them..but these two universities seem positive about their goals..which makes me nervous..

Radio signals don't "deteriorate" over distance, dude. If you went out 50 light years with sensitive-enough equipment, you could pick up 50-year-old broadcasts.

[Ihavewaffles]

We've been actively broadcasting into the ether for the better part of a century now.

And the possibility of advanced intelligent life A> detecting our signals and B> responding by moving towards Earth and running into us is so abysmally low it's not worth consideration. Any species advanced enough to trivialize it is also advanced enough to not give a shit about this run-down rock with a bunch of barely-sentient apes banging sticks together.

Plus, if we're talking sci-fi, it's arguably far more likely that we're Space Orcs. We're the Deathworlders, the species so fuckin' scary everything else will panic and leave us the fuck alone and pray we don't notice them.

Ever heard about the dark forest?





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Radio signals don't "deteriorate" over distance, dude. If you went out 50 light years with sensitive-enough equipment, you could pick up 50-year-old broadcasts.

I read stuff like this

Here’s the problem. Broadcast towers transmit their signals outward in a sphere, which falls under the inverse square law. The strength of the signal decreases massively over distance. By the time you’ve gone a few light years, the signal is almost non-existent.

[Forogil]

One of the following must be true:

A) The craft belong to the US government and the footage is both a boast and a warning to other powers that they are technologically outmatched by an order of magnitude
B) The craft belong to the US government and the footage was never intended for release, and 'unidentified aerial phenomena' is just a cover
C) The craft belong to a foreign power that is trolling other militaries with their superior tech
D) The craft are alien in origin
E) The craft are unexplained natural phenomena

F/ it is not a craft, but an explained natural phenomena like a large bird.

[FrostyButt]

Is there intelligent life out there in the universe? Yes, we're not the only ones.

Have those intelligent life forms visited Earth? Maybe. I can't say yes or no to that because I don't know. I do think it's possible though, especially if they're millions of years ahead of us in technology.