The Conundrum of UFOs, by BabelFish

JBS Haldane: 

"I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

How does a professional pilot, civilian or military, set themselves up to be treated like leper? Yes. Report an encounter with a UFO! Even worse, bring back proof, like a military sensor video recording.

There have been consistent reports from Navy pilots, flying off both coasts of America, of things on their radar, things seen visually and tracked by camera, on both coasts, that fall smack dab into realm of being a UFO. There are tantalizing bits of information. When equipped with a new radar, Hornet pilots began picking up tracks of objects that behaved unlike objects normally observed. What does that mean? A software fault? Any number of natural phenomena? Pilot physiology?

Generalizing, a pilot observed UFO usually displays non-natural actions. It moves in non-ballistic courses, seemingly defying Professor Newton. It can make true 90 degree turns while flying at a very high rate of speed.  It can hover at any altitude. It can accelerate/decelerate at speeds that put on enough G-forces to crush a human pilot. And they appear to do this for hours, using energy at a rate far in excess of the jets that are tracking them. They get picked up by radar but do not generate plumes of infrared energy that can picked up by a FLIR sensor, as would be the case with a combustion powered aircraft.

We should be skeptical about all this. Good science is based on skeptical reasoning. That being said, perhaps being cynical does not obtain. These pilots do not appear to be fools or charlatans. While I can’t bring myself to believe we are being visited, that is primarily due the science involved, not because I believe we are alone.

Here is Dr. Michio Kaku, a popular science explainer and physicist, on the subject.

"When discussing the possibility of interstellar travel, there is something called “the giggle factor.” Some scientists tend to scoff at the idea of interstellar travel because of the enormous distances that separate the stars. According to Special Relativity (1905), no usable information can travel faster than light locally, and hence it would take centuries to millennia for an extra-terrestrial civilization to travel between the stars. Even the familiar stars we see at night are about 50 to 100 light years from us, and our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. The nearest galaxy is 2 million light years from us. The critics say that the universe is simply too big for interstellar travel to be practical.

Similarly, investigations into UFO’s that may originate from another planet are sometimes the “third rail” of someone’s scientific career. There is no funding for anyone seriously looking at unidentified objects in space, and one’s reputation may suffer if one pursues an interest in these unorthodox matters. In addition, perhaps 99% of all sightings of UFO’s can be dismissed as being caused by familiar phenomena, such as the planet Venus, swamp gas (which can glow in the dark under certain conditions), meteors, satellites, weather balloons, even radar echoes that bounce off mountains. (What is disturbing, to a physicist however, is the remaining 1% of these sightings, which are multiple sightings made by multiple methods of observations. Some of the most intriguing sightings have been made by seasoned pilots and passengers aboard air line flights which have also been tracked by radar and have been videotaped. Sightings like this are harder to dismiss.)"

Just as a teaser, we can also discuss the Kardashev Scale. 

“Nikolai Kardashev, a Soviet astrophysicist born in 1932, devised a method of rating advanced civilizations. Technological advances, according to Kardashev, could theoretically create conditions where a society could maximize use of energy: first, maximizing the energy striking a planet from its local star; second, maximizing all the energy emitted by a local star, not just that which falls on that civilization’s planet; third, maximizing the energy derived from all the stars in that civilization’s galaxy; and fourth, maximizing the energy from all the galaxies and intergalactic medium within the entire Universe. He categorized each of these stages as Type 1 through Type 4.

Based on Kardashev’s speculations where does our civilization sit today? We are Type 0, somewhere between 0.7 and 0.72 producing 15 Terawatts of energy, a mere fraction of the energy a Type 1 would harvest from the physical world. The renowned theoretical physicist, Michio Kaku, has speculated on Kardashev’s scale and believes humanity will attain Type 1 status within a century or two, How? Through harnessing of fusion, and antimatter.” 

Do I think these phenomena are “real?” Yes I do. Do I think we are clever enough to know or figure out what they are? I think not yet. Is it worth pursuing a solid answer. Emphatically yes!  I hold that our positive advancement in technology and science has been fueled by those who ignore the cynics and refuse to surrender to “we just don’t know.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html

Comments

[JJackson]

The Chinese seem to have shown an entanglement experiment between a ground based and orbiting pair which seems to show useful information can travel faster than light but not that a mass can be accelerated above c.
Dark Energy is assumed to provide the anti-gravity required to balance the force of gravity coming from matter and Dark Matter to produce a universe that behaves as ours does. We can not 'see' either with photons, and do not have any other tools yet, and so ~96% is undiscovered. A whole range of technologically advance civilizations may live in and use the 96% and know how to dip into our tiny 4%.
I too go for a healthy dose of skepticism but dismissing something because we can not thing of an explanation smacks of hubris. Newton was unchallenged for 400 years but Einstein then Bohr showed it only be true under certain limited conditions - which just happened to true in our vicinity and time. Then again Einstein and Bohr would not be relevant to inflationary conditions - all assuming the Standard Model is somewhere near the truth.

[Barbara Ann]

Great post BabelFish, I was not aware of the Kardashev Scale.

Re interstellar travel: Extrapolating technological advances following the exponential pace of development thus far is a reasonable thing to do. Fusion power has seemed around the corner since the 1950's and perhaps we'll even harness matter/antimatter energy creation at some point.

My only beef with forecasts of inexorable progress towards what today seems far beyond the limits of physics as we currently understand it is progress in our understanding of physics itself. We passed the centenary of General Relativity a few years ago and the last great leap in our understanding of the universe; quantum physics, is approaching a similar age.

Is the decay of our education system, much lamented a few posts back, to blame? When will the next Newton or Einstein declare themselves and upend all conventional wisdom once more?

Practical interstellar (i.e. faster than light) travel is not an engineering problem just requiring more power from extant dilithium crystals. It simply defies the laws of physics as known to us right now. We need some new ones.

Our hope therefore must surely lie in cultivating brilliant, creative minds able to understand how we came to our current state of understanding and yet bold enough to junk it all in favor of a wholly new view of reality. Perhaps then we can build ourselves an Infinite Improbability Drive, that would be a hoot.

[BabelFish]

In would be happy with a new Douglas Adams! I caught a comment from a physicist lamenting that we collectively may not be smart enough to figure this whole thing out. Given the progress from Einstein forward, that was eye opening humility.

[Barbara Ann]

If you will indulge me, a follow up comment on UFOs:

I share your “we just don’t know.” attitude towards UFO phenomena. However, I am skeptical that these are manifestations of alien visits. We are all too unimaginative as a rule and I think it more likely 'first contact' will be a more alarming affair altogether and certainly not on such a familiar scale. Trillions of nanobots appearing from another dimension to terraform our planet (not accompanied by Keanu Reeves). Or maybe our galaxy will be hoovered into the intake ports of a Type III civilization space ship as it speeds past.

[Steve Ogle]

What a fascinating topic. There's an excellent movie called UFO.
https://www.space.com/41688-ufo-movie-navigation-exclusive-clip.htmle
It goes straight to the topic of discussion and is absolutely fascinating.
This is a topic of interest to me from Betty and Barney Hill and the UFO days of Look magazine when I was a little kid. I look at those photos from Hubble and I know and feel a connection with the universe. I don't need the consent of another belief system (science/religion)to tell me that what I feel is true. I'm an artist....go figure.

[Harlan Easley]

Time to screw up our courage before we enter the Brave New World. I believe my eyes via the video released and the testimony of the pilots. If it ain't human then it is Aliens. It's that simple.

https://dpo.tothestarsacademy.com/

[The Twisted Genius]

There is another method of travel that appears to transcend all barriers of distance and time... the little understood field of remote viewing. Remote viewing, for the most part, is a field that is avoided to at least the same extent as UFOs and intelligent life beyond Earth. I learned enough of it to prove to myself that there is something to this. I was always open to this since my anthropological study of shamanic ecstacy pointed me in that direction.

The personal proof involved two separate viewing sessions. In the first I found myself viewing an amusement park on a warm, sunny day. I saw and heard the crowds. I shared their feelings of joy and amusement. I smelled the buttered popcorn. I touched the whitewashed wooden roller coaster and heard the car clacking up the incline. The target was Coney Island sometime prior to WWII. The only clue I was given was the letters POHR-DLMA. In the second instance I was at the scene of a great catastrophe and destruction. I was surrounded by upended and collapsed solid masses, rushing water. I heard loud sirens and claxons, hissing like broken steam pipes and eerie silence. I felt dampness, dust and generl dread. The target was the Bay Bridge immediately after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Again the only clue I had was MVSB-AOGY.

How does this work? I haven't a clue. Others have developed a far greater ability in this than I have. I only dabbled in such things. I don't think this phenomena is just a mind trick taking place in the human brain. Just the name we give it, remote viewing, is probably limiting our understanding of it. It could be far more than that. It probably is far more than that. What we see as UFOs could be the remote viewing manifestation of beings beyond our galaxy or maybe the manifestation of a Yakugir shaman in the Siberian Taiga. Who knows?

[turcopolier]

TTG

I had this in my Budget at DIA.

[The Twisted Genius]

I became friends with one of those viewers who was still an analyst when I was there. We joked about the possible effect of jimson weed on remote viewing. We both agreed we wouldn't try it unless we were about to die.

[BabelFish]

I tend to forget there is another SST correspondent with a degree in Anthropology. We studied the use of sweat lodges and other spiritual trips in both South American and Southwest Indian cultures. Fascinating stuff to research. This was another area where normal beliefs did not explain observed reality.

[turcopolier]

TTG and Babelfish - Ethnology, good stuff.

[Eugene Owens]

There are international sightings. Yesterday people in four Chinese provinces reported a UFO or UFOs.

Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper saw one when flying above West Germany in 1951. He described his encounter as did other pilots, engineers, and reputable witnesses in the documentary "Out Of The Blue". It's from 2003 and on YouTube.

[turcopolier]

HE

I have the feeling that we are being prepped for some major revelation.

[Harlan Easley]

Are you saying that you actually physically touched the roller coaster as in you and I visit Coney Island and touched the roller coaster? Was the experience that real? Or was it more the imagination of the brain and you visualized the roller coaster and touched it?

I believe we are being visited by Aliens because the DOD finally released video evidence in the NY Times article December 2017. Before that I did not and believed we were alone in the Universe. I see the UFOs on the IR sensor like everybody else in the world along with the testimony of the pilots. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

I have much easier time believing UFOs are alien crafts than remote viewing. But Col. Lang also says it was in his budget for DIA and coming from you two guys I can't dismiss it as metaphysical nonsense. And from your two remote viewing sessions it appears the remote viewing was targeted at past events. Is it hypothesized that remote viewing may work in the present or even in the future?

If remote viewing is possible that means from your two sessions man is able to go back into time and witness events? I very much appreciate you sharing this story. And please share more if you can.

[Harlan Easley]

Yes, but from man?

[Eric Newhill]

TTG,
Yes. Time and distance are an illusion. Physical/physics explanations of UFOs are irrelevant because physics is a system limited to a small slice of infinity, but many have been trained to think that small slice is all there is.

Thought, mind, spirit, dreams have no obedience to physics. It is sad that so many are trained to think that they/we are no more than meat robots; which is the logical stance if we deny thought, mind, spirit, dreams, despite, ironically, the fact that that is where we live 24/7.

IMO, UFOs are how our mind interprets encounters with minds that dwell in dimensions of infinity that we are trained to not ordinarily perceive, yet who leak through when our training breaks down.

Once it becomes more acceptable to consensual reality that UFOs exist, they will become more common.

[Mathias Alexander]

Perhaps the sightings only defy Newtonian Physics if you assume they are solid objects. They could be naturaly occuring things along the lines of ball lightning, perhaps there's a number of different types presently unknown to science. An object might look as if its moving away rapidly if it shrinks rapidly but you assume its size is constant.

Did the DIA have a remote viewing budget.

[Tidewater]

I think you must know the Hawaii Remote Viewer's Guild. (25th Division?) I don't know if you know about the MacKenzie Cowell Murder case. They took on the case and what they came up with is startling. It can be googled --Forensic Remote Viewing. The Mackenzie Cowell Murder case: by Debra Duggan Takagi , August 25, 2010.

https://hrvg.org/projects/mackenzie/hrvg_mackenzie_cowell.pdf

[Bill H]

I always enjoy the pundits who tell us that they know what UFOs are, whether visitors from alien worlds or from another dimension or time. The weird thing is that they continue to refer to them as UFOs even though, since they have just finished identifying them, they are no longer UFOs but are now, by their own words, presumably IFOs.

[Tidewater]

I've read some of Joseph Chilton Pearce's ' The Crack in the Cosmic Egg.' I have it open before me at the moment to Chapter 6, 'fire-burn.' Pearce starts with an article by Leonard Feinberg in the Atlantic Monthly of May 1959. He was a professor at the University of Ceylon in 1956-57. The chief ceremony held on the island was fire-walking. He made a study of it.

"Preparations for this annual affair, held in honor of the god Kataragama, lasted three months. The applicants lived that entire time under the constant surveillance of the priests of the god, and in the main temple. It was a time of abstinence, vegetarianism, drinking only water, daily baptisms in the holy river, constant sprinklings with holy water, continual religious instruction, prayer, meditation, and communion with the god.

It was a serious undertaking, a 24-hour a day investment of self. If the believer did all these things, he would finally achieve the proper state of mind, an absolute and unquestioning belief in Kataragama, a seizure by the god himself. Then he could walk the fire unafraid and unharmed.

Numerous benefits could be gained from a successful walking: success in business, love, health, forgiveness of sins for oneself and for another, and oneness with the living god. Death, disfigurement, or crippling awaited the failures, and there were enough of those to attest to the seriousness of the venture.

When the end of the long period of asceticism approached, Hindus from all over the island began to arrive. Fire-walking was far more than just a spectacle to these people, Feinberg noted, although he detected a "note of malevolent sadism" in the air. The affair was a concrete symbol of intimate identification with Kataragama, who, within his domain--a fourteen mile radius from his temple--was in absolute, if whimsical and goodnatured, control..."

"At four o'clock in the morning, when the final moments came, Feinberg found it difficult to breathe within ten feet of the incandescent pit,neither could he stand that close for any time.

The drums had built up to a great crescendo when the huge temple doors swung open and the priests and initiates came streaming out, straight into the pit of fire without pause. Eighty people, including ten women, most of whom held hands walked the fire that night. One small, slim man in a white sarong strolled slowly and serenely through the fire, stepping gently onto the earth at the far end. Another danced gaily into the center of the pit, turned, did a wild jig for a few minutes, then danced madly on across the coals and out.

Of the eighty people walking that night twelve failed. Some required lengthy hospitalization and one man was burned to death. The devout dismiss these accidents..."

I have never heard of anyone who had any explanation for how this ceremony, now so widely known as to be almost taken for granted, could be possible.

[walrus]

A certain physicist Alexander Franklin Mayer has been trying to get the world to understand that Einstein made a mistake in his interpretation of his theory and that others (like de sitter) have missed the same thing: time is a local phenomenon because the time dimension is orthogonal to space dimensions. That means that since space is curved, the time dimension is not everywhere the same. Minkowski, Einstein’s math teacher realised this but died tragically before he could elaborate. Einstein called his comments “superfluous erudition “ - they weren’t.

If time is fluid then “impossible acceleration” and similar effects may simply require an extension to current physics. Mayer’s work is not popular because it challenges the current big bang cosmological model.

[irf520]

Entanglement doesn't actually allow information to be transmitted faster than light. The actual result of any measurement (the 'Dirac choice') is random. The entanglement only shows up when you compare the measurements at both ends, which can only happen when the results from one end are transmitted to the other end by normal communication methods which propagate at or below c.

[Barbara Ann]

Remote viewing's pariah status is undeserved in my view. Simply viewing the past presents no fundamental scientific paradoxes, unlike the ability to interact and change it, for example. Déjà vu is more problematic from this standpoint and having experienced several strong episodes myself I can absolutely attest to the ability to occasionally 'see' glimpses of the imminent future, albeit in a seemingly random and un-targeted way. As it happens, I also saw a UFO myself as a child and no amount of STEM training since has persuaded me to deny my own experience. Militant scientists whose belief system will not permit the unexplained are no different to any other close-minded faith group.

[rjj]

we know much, much more than we know we know, and much, much less than we think we know ... or so it seems.

nonlocal viewing - lots of accounts by ethnobotanists - whatever the nature of the signals we are probably equipped with heavy duty wetware filters to prevent catastrophic overload.

here/now is remote.

[JJackson]

Agreed. The information is not useful, to us, but the state of one seems to set the state of the other at the time of observation and appears not to be 'communicated' by a means limited to c. I know there are a lot of 'seems to' in all of this but if we do find out how this counter-intuitive behavior occurs it could have some very useful applications.
My general point was the history of science is replete with periods where we thought we had a good idea of how nature behaved only later finding out it only applied under the very specific, and limited range of, conditions which prevail on and around the Earth. Radically change the size, pressure, temperature etc. and a very different realm is encountered.