Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: IceFire on May 13, 2004, 10:35:47 pm
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I'm somewhat of a optimistic skeptic on the nature of UFO's (I'm not really quite sure what to believe) but this is an interesting story I just saw on Daily Planet (on the Discovery Channel) which doesn't come from a drunk man at 3:00 am with a video camera. This comes from a Mexican military aircraft with military grade IR and radar abilities.
Not sure if anyone heard about it but here's at least one link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3707057.stm
Absolutely fascinating and the source is fairly credible compaired to the usual assortment.
I'm still thinking its probably not aliens and yet another relatively undocumented and unobserved meteological phenomenon like ball lightning, sprites, St. Elmo's Fire, and other odd things that happen in the atmosphere.
From the video that they had...its quite obviously not a star reflection and there are apparently corresponding radar and IR signatures which means to me that there was something there to bounce those reflections back (i.e. its not a reflection from venus).
So what in the heck happened? Anyone?
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Yeah, it is cool. I watched it something like five times. The lights looks like pairs of reflections, one set being a copy of the other set, all except that little light that circles one light in each set. Interesting that only 3 showed up on radar (albiet ~Mexican~ radar), when they clearly form two sets of lights, each a set of three.
In general: Why is the Mexican military credible when sightings by American military an airline pilots aren't?
Edit: wow, that's lot of sets... :nervous:
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Originally posted by Beowulf
Yeah, it is cool. I watched it something like five times. The lights looks like pairs of reflections, one set being a copy of the other set, all except that little light that circles one light in each set. Interesting that only 3 showed up on radar (albiet ~Mexican~ radar), when they clearly form two sets of lights, each a set of three.
In general: Why is the Mexican military credible when sightings by American military an airline pilots aren't?
American military sources are perfectly credible (again with advanced IR and radar sensors to back up or disprove the event)...provided that they actually come forward and talk about it. Airline pilots as well...lacking the sensor data and the detailed recordings (audio/vis) but being trained to operate in the sky.
From what I saw...there are two reflections (one above and infront and one behind and at the back) and three in the center which I believe are the ones that they were actually detecting and their radar giving a reception.
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You have a good point about the commercial pilots, altough I've heard some pretty clear stories of impossible craft being spotted flying or hovering, what ever you call it, right alongside an aircraft.
All in all, it's a pretty interesting video. I would wonder if they have any other videos, in regular spectrum or such.
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UFOs? Certainly. Aliens? Absolutely not.
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I'm with Micheal
Hot Air Balloons with Bright Lights, maybe??:p
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Any number of things. I just don't buy into aliens visiting Terra. There's just too many basic things that make it unlikely.
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Why not? Could be. :D
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Looks like they tried to cloak, but the engine glows didn't cloak along with them.
Anybody have their SN? Sounds like a bug for mantis, should be pretty easy to fix. :nod:
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Originally posted by ubermetroid
Why not? Could be. :D
Little things. Like physics.
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Uh...Oh.. Sounds like WMCoolmon needs some sleep.;)
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Originally posted by mikhael
Little things. Like physics.
Physics can be broken, or so I heard:confused:
Really though, space doesn't follow physics sometimes
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Could be drug smugglers with christmas lights too :)
OR
Alien drug smuggers with christmas lights...one doesn't know.
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Three words -- SANTA CLAUSE!!! -- err, something :D
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They don't look like Christmas lights, though.
Hmm...the engines look a lot like those on the cruiser from TBP. Er, assuming they bright lights are engines. Has there ever been any race thought up that was dumb enough to fly around in bright lights?
Oh yeah, the Organians from Star Trek. :p
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As unlikely as it sounds there is always the possibility that it was an Alien.
It just could be .0000000000000000000000000000001% chance that it is one though.
I like to hope that it was one. :D
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I know of an Alien that made a battle mech that had a cloak that cloaked the mech but not the pilot.
"I believe they could feel we were pursuing them,"
were have I heard something like this before.
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My question is why the **** would any aliens with visible spectrum cloaking technology not be able to hide from radar and infra-red?
I need to have a little talk with those folks' (the aliens) CO, afterall they're doing a sloppy job...
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well we didn't have radar and IR sensors for the last ten thousand years...
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maybe they forgot to switch the IF and Radar cloak on...
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Mexican Airforce Never Forget!
On the side news, Mexico and Cuba were engaged in some sort of quarrel a while ago. I would pay to see those countries duking it out, because neither has any capability to really wage war overseas.
It would be like Luxemburg vs. Azerbaidzan.
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My question is why the hell are they in Mexico? Maybe they're trying to cross the border like all the other mexican aliens.
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:lol:
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Originally posted by Bobboau
I know of an Alien that made a battle mech that had a cloak that cloaked the mech but not the pilot.
"I believe they could feel we were pursuing them,"
were have I heard something like this before.
:lol:
I know him too :D
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Originally posted by jdjtcagle
Physics can be broken, or so I heard:confused:
Really though, space doesn't follow physics sometimes
Really? Where? When?
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singularities
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Space doesn't break the law of physics, it's as simple as that. However, we may have completely the wrong laws of physics to apply to that particular bit of space ;) Physics are man-made, space is actually there ;)
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Well I think that there are aliens out there, this universe is too massive not to have other intelligent life out there. Whether they visit Earth or have that technology is another matter.
But would they want to visit us? Probably not, we're just too violent as a species that they may not want to have anything to do with us.
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or too stupid
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Mic-- Basically what Flipside said, I say that because eery time they look they are confused at they way stuff works and can't figure it out with our laws of Physics
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Or waiting for us to blow ourselves up so they can put the planet to better use ;)
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or maybe they're already here :nervous: :nervous: :nervous:
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Originally posted by jdjtcagle
Mic-- Basically what Flipside said, I say that because eery time they look they are confused at they way stuff works and can't figure it out with our laws of Physics
Yes. Exactly what he said:
Originally posted by Flipside
Space doesn't break the law of physics, it's as simple as that. However, we may have completely the wrong laws of physics to apply to that particular bit of space ;) Physics are man-made, space is actually there ;)
In other words: nothing violates physics.
Where did the Aliens come from? Nowhere in OUR neighborhood. Our light-horizon is 26 billion lightyears across, and nowhere in the local 100-200 thousand lightyear sphere is there a structured RF source.
FTL without RF? WTF? Not bloody likely.
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Naah, forget the physics.
Obviously they are wandering spirits, demons or that sort of thing..
Hehe, whatever ;)
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Originally posted by mikhael
Yes. Exactly what he said:
In other words: nothing violates physics.
Where did the Aliens come from? Nowhere in OUR neighborhood. Our light-horizon is 26 billion lightyears across, and nowhere in the local 100-200 thousand lightyear sphere is there a structured RF source.
FTL without RF? WTF? Not bloody likely.
Isn't that even a bit too big. I mean the radio signals we've been sending out from the planet for the last 100 years or so have gotten how far was it?
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Nope.
See, HUMAN RF signals have only traveled to fill a sphere approximately 400 light years across, since we've only been transmitting RF for the last 200 yrs. For the last 100 yrs, we've been transmitting RF continuously, with a huge rise in the last 50 years.
I'm giving these mythical aliens a huge head start on us. For them to be as far away as 200 thousand light years, they would have had to transmit their first RF signal 200 thousand years ago. That means they would have to be 200 thousand years more advanced than us.
Nothing in the local 200 thousand lightyear radius sphere exhibits a structured RF signature. If they'd been using RF during all that time, every radio antennae on earth would be catching Zarfnab's Ochre Oldies 385.9 ZKBR regularly. But we're not. Everywhere we look in the night sky, the closest thing we get to a structured RF signal is a pulsar.
I'm not saying there's no aliens, and I'm not saying that they wouldn't be advanced. I am saying that given the evidence, there's no post-information-age alien race anywhere in OUR neighborhood.
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You're making certain assumptions about alien technology and psychology their Mik.
On the whole I tend to agree that there's probably not anything nearby and certainly nothing visiting us to conduct anal probes but I can think of several reasons why there could be aliens as close as the Centauri system and we still wouldn't hear anything.
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I'm making basic assumptions about neither alien technology, or psychology.
Perhaps you could suggest a plausible scenario in which a civilization could exist less than four light years away, develop FTL travel and never have either never developed RF in any manner (and remember, structured RF isn't just television and radio signals. Your car's engine, your microwave oven, and a nuclear reactor all give off measurable structured RF signals) or it developed it and gave it up just in time to make sure that all their signals washed past us before we developed it (and yet they somehow retained the high technology needed for FTL).
I'm a skeptic: I'm not interested in fanciful silliness. I want logic. I want something that could be plausible within the realms of the observable measurable universe. Anything else is just religion and mythology.
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I didn't know car engines gave off RF intereference.
I know that darned well most things seem to give off some sort of RFI and its really hard to find a place on this planet anymore that is RFI quiet (thus all the shielding on wires and whatnot). My question is...would you pick that sort of thing up 200 light years away. Johnny the green and purple alien just turned on his microwave to heat up some alien ice cream (you heat alien ice cream ok :D) and the inhabitants of earth are listening to the ice cream melting.
Obviously overdone...but if we didn't have TV/radio mass media type broadcasting and say we didn't have cars but we did all have microwaves...what the heck would you hear from Earth if we isolate it down to a single item (for instance).
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The problem, Icefire, is that a Microwave's RFI is structured. Its not the random noise of background RF. Further, its "louder" than the cosmic background. Besides that, having a microwave but not radio or television or anything else implies that somehow, the aliens just decided not to follow a line of research at all anymore.
I might assume a lot of things, but I'll never assume that the aliens are lazy or stupid. They'll be at least as motivated and intelligent as us.
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I wasn't on about a race with FTL although that's possible too.
SETI have stated that they couldn't pick up even Earth's transmissions if they were on Alpha Centauri.
From the SETI (http://www.seti-inst.edu/about_us/faq.html#anchor320509) website
If an extraterrestrial civilization has a SETI project similar to Project Phoenix, could they hear Earth?
In general, no. Most earthly transmitters are too weak to be detectable by Phoenix-type equipment at the distance of even the nearest star. The exceptions are some high-powered radars and the Arecibo broadcast of 1974 (which lasted for only three minutes). To detect "leakage" radiation similar to our own will require instruments that are many times more sensitive than what we now have.
So bang goes the theory that we can hear ET's microwave. He can make popcorn every day and we won't hear him.
In addition to that SETI is largely ignoring almost every frequency except the hydrogen band and a few other very narrow frequencies. If ET isn't transmitting anything much on those bands we won't hear anything.
So we're back to the assumptions again. The only way we're going to hear ET with our current technology is if they choose to send out radio signals. You're assuming that the aliens are choosing to send out something on the narrow set of radio bands we choose to listen to.
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Where did the Aliens come from? Nowhere in OUR neighborhood. Our light-horizon is 26 billion lightyears across, and nowhere in the local 100-200 thousand lightyear sphere is there a structured RF source.
How do we know 3000 years ago, 3010 light-years away, aliens didn't start making RF transmissions? Then they develop some FTL drive and come visit us.
Really, I don't think we're a good enough neighbor someone would travel for x-hundred years to meet us. Heck, we might not even rate a decade.
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I wouldn't even walk next door to meet half of the idiots on this planet :D
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What? SETI is the only transmission ever? We've NEVER blasted RF straight up? Aliens of sufficient ability to TRAVEL ACROSS SEVERAL LIGHTYEARS AT LEAST can't come up with a listening device to hear us?
Nah. I don't buy it.
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I've always found it funny that people with low IQ in the middle of nowhere claim to be abducted by aliens and have surgery that doesn't show up as scars done to the,.
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Originally posted by mikhael
What? SETI is the only transmission ever? We've NEVER blasted RF straight up? Aliens of sufficient ability to TRAVEL ACROSS SEVERAL LIGHTYEARS AT LEAST can't come up with a listening device to hear us?
Nah. I don't buy it.
Now you're arguing the other side Mik. My arguements were all related to whether we could hear the aliens. That's about whether they can hear us.
Sure aliens with FTL would probably be able to detect us if they tried. However if they have FTL they may have completely abandoned radio astronomy (or at least limited it to a degree that they won't hear us). After all what's the point in building a giant radio telescope to listen to 4 year old signals from Sol when you can just go there in a couple of minutes? Maybe they only point radio telescopes at deep space where the signals are from far away enough to be a barrier to them.
However you're making an even bigger assumption. You're assuming the aliens care. We're dealing with an alien race here. You're assuming that the alien race would upon detecting us would do something that let us know that they had found us. They might not.
Like I said assumptions about the aliens technology and psychology.
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First thing first, if FTL is possible, wouldn't any travel near (relatively speaking) Earth leave like a detectable MASSIVE light spectrum burst behind?
Well, we may never know, but one thing is clear.....
"The truth is out there."
:nervous: :shaking:
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You mean like a sonic boom? Maybe. If a ship is travelling FTL, it has to be defying Einsteinian physics, or bypassing them. If it bypasses the speed restriction (see hyperspace/subspace and warp concepts), then I doubt it. If it is defying (and therefore standing Einsteinian physics on their ear) then who knows?
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Well, what do we know for sure about the basic structure of the universe?
Our best bet atm is the uber theoretic string theory, which has no practical proof at all.. (or does it?)
Pretty much everything/anything could FIT in the holes in our knowledge.
A strong oipinion here, on the way or the another would be mostly ego boosting.
(& sorry for the ego boosting above :) )
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So in conclusion: We don't know enough really about anything to be certain one way or another :)
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Well, yes :)
We can observe, and draw our personal conclusions that apply on that moment in time.. for us.
The fact is, there is no fixed ground to stand on.
Thats how life has always been.
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Aliens Exist (http://www.sfdt.com/flash/movie-pages/movies/6815.html) :D
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I didn't know Mexico had an airforce :eek2:
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Originally posted by YodaSean
I didn't know Mexico had an airforce :eek2:
They strap rockets to there legs... :lol:
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Originally posted by karajorma
Now you're arguing the other side Mik. My arguements were all related to whether we could hear the aliens. That's about whether they can hear us.
Well, its a two way street. RF goes both ways. The only real assumptions I make about aliens is that they if they're interested enough to come here and give anal probes, they're interested enough to do the fruity SETI thing themselves AND that if they're advanced enough to come here and visit, then they've gone through the whole SATURATE THE SKY WITH COMMUNICATIONS thing like we have.
Based on those two things and a basic knowledge of physics, there ain't no one but us in our end of the sky.
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Or they could just not give a ****. They could hear us, think "That is an incredibly stupid race of sentients" and go back to doing whatever they were doing. Also, if they are 200 light years away, what if they stopped using RF 300 years ago? The signals would be past us, and we wouldn't even know.
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Originally posted by mikhael
Well, its a two way street. RF goes both ways.
I know but it's really hard to argue from both the alien and human perspectives at the same time so I tend to pick one for each post :)
Originally posted by mikhael
The only real assumptions I make about aliens is that they if they're interested enough to come here and give anal probes, they're interested enough to do the fruity SETI thing themselves AND that if they're advanced enough to come here and visit, then they've gone through the whole SATURATE THE SKY WITH COMMUNICATIONS thing like we have.
Based on those two things and a basic knowledge of physics, there ain't no one but us in our end of the sky.
Again you're making basic assumptions about the alien tech. I've already stated that SETI have said they couldn't detect Earth style RF leakage even from nearby stars. We haven't saturated the sky as you claim. The simple fact is that a species with a similar tech base on Alpha Centauri wouldn't be able to hear us. It's equally a fact that we wouldn't be able to hear them either.
Okay so that deals with an alien race with a similar tech base to ours. Lets now deal with an advanced civilisation.
You're assuming that a more advanced race would saturate the sky with RF. Thats a prettty big assumption again. Why would they?
If they have FTL travel who's to say they don't also have FTL comms? So that removes almost all the transmissions from any powerful RF source.
All we're left with is alien microwaves and car engines and I doubt that no matter how powerful and advanced they are that an alien making popcorn is a sound you can hear 10,000LY away.
You're still making the assumption that we can pick up alien background noise. We can't. We'll hear aliens when they choose to point a transmitter in our direction and send a deliberate message.
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You never know...they may prefer giant city sized microwave machines for their mass production of popcorn...who knows, they are aliens :D
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They may have evoled on the dark side of a planet that permanently faces one side toward the star, and is about as far out as Mercury. In that case, it would be even harder for RF signals to get as far as Earth due to the stars magnetic interference :) They may use some kind of EM shielding to protect the hull that blocks RF output.
That's the fun thing about the Universe, it could be anything :)
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I hope a big yellow thing does not show up to destroy eath to make a space freeway.
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Either way you look at it, it's a government coverup. Look at the size of the article.
:nervous: