Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:
Everytime I see these I come to the conclusion that it's all the different branches of the US MIL just pranking each other. Mostly because it's exactly what I would do.
I have mentioned this before, but my step father (navy fighter pilot) told the story of how his squadron would practice gun runs on airliners coming out of LAX. You do that at night, and light the afterburner, you get something that looks a lot like some of the UFO sightings.
Along that note, one thing of interest is that the descriptions of UFO's and UFO encounters has very noticeably changed over the years. I guess the alien technology advances just like ours....
Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to RevRico :
I have many issues of my own with the Fermi Paradox - mostly to do with the over-simplification of how it views life and intelligent life - which is purely from a "Western European Greed" perspective.
One "would we recognize life" arguments is we would be able to see the energy output, regardless of the nature of the life created said output. It's an interesting theory.
Don't worry folks, I'm a statistician and I'm here to help 
I think energy output is useful and has a place in detecting intelligent life but a more direct measure is "violation of randomness".
We can objectively differentiate between intelligent signals and random noise through the application of probability theory.
By the way, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been doing this for decades and the methods date back to at least WWII for the purpose of code breaking.
Essentially, as a statistician, I don't need to "speak the language" or recognize life based on my familiarity with what it's like on earth to detect it.
Simply said, information = the violation of randomness...this is how we break codes, this is how we know whales are "talking" to each other, this is how we can detect intelligence even if it's wildly different to our own.
aircooled said:
I guess the alien technology advances just like ours....
Yeah . . . just . . . like . . . ours . . . hmmmm.
ShawnG
UltimaDork
5/21/21 4:31 p.m.
About 10 or 15 years ago, there were "UFO" sightings on multiple evenings over greenhouses in Delta, B.C.
Bright white objects would dart back and forth changing shape and size. There was much fuss.
It turned out to be pigeons flying at dusk and because humans are bad at judging distance, flying toward / away from us and changing direction makes them look really weird.
The bright white light was the light from the greenhouses reflecting off them at dusk.
In reply to ShawnG :
When I was a kid, my dad and I did "night watch" for a kids camp. One night, at about 1 or 2 am a string of about 6 or 7 National Guard UH-1's came along doing some sort of low level flight (probably about 1000 feet off the ground or less). Since it was a training flight, each had all formation and marker lights turned on.
The next morning, sure enough, "UFO Sightings" all over the news. How you miss the whop whop whop of a gaggle of Hueys is beyond me.
All I will say is I'm fascinated and intrigued. How funny would it be if these things are buzzing around constantly but we're all too busy staring at our phones to notice? (He typed...into his little super-computer)
In reply to RX Reven' :
Perhaps. I enjoy these discussions. They are amusing... some day someone will get it right. So far it's rare anyone is even in the same zip code.
FatMongo said:
Next month (June 2021) the Pentagon has to deliver unclassified reports to Congress on UAP's. Either we're about to learn about some serious black-ops stuff the US or an adversary has been doing for decades, or their will be public admittance of extraterrestrial technology. That's what has "aliens" on the news feeds.
Woah Boy,
You are headed for a big disappointment if you think that the DoD report to Congress is going to state either of those things.
In fact, let me save you some reading. The unclassified report will have 3 conclusions:
I.) DoD has determined that UAPs do not pose a threat to U.S. National Security, U.S. persons, or U.S airspace
II.) DoD has identified xyz number of cases that they are unable to identify the origin of the UAP
III.) DoD will continue to investigate UAPs in and maintain awareness
Well,
Pretty much as expected:
Article on UFO Report
"The report finds no evidence that the objects, characterized as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, were the handiwork of alien beings. But in almost all of the 144 cases that a team of government experts examined, a lack of data stymied their efforts to say definitively what they were."
Shadeux said:
I read a few years ago about Area 51 or somewhere out there that was researching energy beams. It seems they could control the distance of the beam (or were trying to) and it would cause an "energy signature" or something like that at a certain point. This was going to be used to give false signals to radar and such. In theory, you could spoof radar to show "planes" flying where there were none. It did cause some sort of visual effect as well. I gather they had some success with this, and then it kind of went away. Either they made it work or it was a dead-end.
With the Tic-Tacks with water boiling under them, or ridiculous speed displays, perhaps directed energy could cause that.
I do think there is a lot of "weather balloons" and such floating around and being unable to identify them.
It's odd to me that the military just shrugs when these things show up. If we genuinely encountered something unknown I'm pretty sure the military would freak out. My take is it's our stuff. Not aliens. (Not that I'm against aliens.)
Why are we discussing this now publicly? I have no idea. Some slow reveal to the rest of the world? Fun subject, though!
Yes this came up again a few years ago, using intersecting laser beams to create plasma flashes that you could then produce aircraft decoys made of many of these flashes created rapidly, like voxels. They would have an infrared and radar signature and could appear to move in ways that would violate the laws of physics if you assumed they were physical objects. I was also wondering if that technology could have anything to do with this, except that there is a limit to how far these can be produced from the emitter. These decoys would either need to show up quite close to an aircraft emitting them (the plan was basically to make the emitting aircraft produce one or two decoys that appear to be other aircraft flying in close formation to confuse incoming missiles), or to produce them in wide open space away from any identifiable source, a gigantic planetary-scale emitter system with mind-boggling energy requirements that could accidentally damage aircraft that happen to get into the beam path would be needed. So I don't think that idea could explain any of the "interesting" UFO reports.
On this note, I've seen "something". In Puerto Rico. Wife and I are doing... marital things... on the balcony of our top story hotel room. As I am... ahem.... thrusting... I happened to look to my right. There, over the ocean, probably 3-5 miles out, I saw a white tic tac. It went from behind a cloud, looped up and then back down in a rapid jerking motion in front of another cloud. And then It was gone. Probably lasted 1-2 seconds. It made me pause, which caused the wife to wonder "is everything ok?". The brief thought was to explain what I saw. Then I said "back to fun." Afterwards I explained what I saw.
about thirty minutes later a military chopper buzzed the beach twice. Coincidence? Likely. Big military operations in Puerto Rico.
what struck me as unusual was that this thing didn't emit any light. The only way I knew it was there was the moon light from behind it illuminating. And this is something that I've often pointed out to people that believe in aliens. They WOULD NOT have lights on the ship. They have no need to signal to other flying craft. They obviously wouldn't want us to see them (if they did they would make a grand entrance with lights and what not).
I started off life as a big alien believer. Over the years I have done countless research on accounts. I no longer believe. Everything leads to a plausible scenario. Old accounts are hysteria. New accounts are Whiners looking for attention, or drug induced "experiences".
