UFOs exist, or do they?

[Cassius_Smoke]

I figured this was a big enough discussion to warrant a thread of its own.

The US government have released an official document stating that UFOs or UAPs exist, they have seen 144 of them in recent years, and they don't know what they are.

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf

It's also worth remembering that the US have been investigating these things for decades. Project blue book is known about, as is the Majestic12.
Meaning that, whatever the government have disclosed in this recent 9 page report will be a drop in the ocean of the information they actually have.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12

So whats everyone's thoughts on this?

[prinnysquad]

There’s a lot of theorising to explain why UFOs can’t be extra-terrestrial. They depend on current understanding, and it’s ignorant to be absolute in conclusions based around that. A few thoughts about things…

There’s an agenda on both sides of the argument. The lengths some believers go to is extraordinary. It’s like they have zero critical ability to consider evidence, so desperate is their need to have a belief confirmed. On the flip side, the lengths some sceptics go to in order to provide a ‘rational’ explanation can be as absurd as the notion of alien visitation. Case in point: Steuart’s Campbell’s absurd classification of the 1958 Trinidade Island photos as a ‘double exposed daylight mirage of the planet Jupiter.’ Excuse me? Where to start with that one?

The science of travel. How? Well, the understanding of physics is being challenged all the time. The latest data suggests issues with Einstein’s work. Ben Rich, the head of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works, stated before he died that their physicists had found problems in the equations, which revolutionised space travel. Even if watertight, Einstein himself described Rosen Bridges as theoretical ways to travel large distances. I place limited stock in arguments based on physics and tech, because they’re based on current understanding only.

The philosophy. Why bother? Why bother to travel all that way to get involved in a savage, child-like race who have a tendency to self-destroy? Probably the same reason we dig miles down into the depths of the planet’s harshest environments to find frozen worms or bacteria, I guess. Discovery. Intellectual curiosity. Besides, we aren’t talking about an amoeba being contacted by a superior intelligence. Simple life forms we discover deep in caves or under the ice don’t seek to contact us. They haven’t reached a threshold of advancement. We have. We may, on the cosmic scale, be primitive and pathetic, but perhaps we have (or have the potential) to reach a certain level whereby we are worthy of interaction. This line of argument holds very little water with me.

All these sightings and reports over the years. All it takes is one. Just one, to have been extraterrestrial. And that’s a big deal. Currently there’s no 100% definitive statement to be made one way or another, so I find it prudent to keep an open mind, rather than be instantly dismissive.

Edit: I’d love to see the Calvine photos. On the other thread, the quality of photographs is alluded to. Even if they were just capturing a black project stealth aircraft or something, I bet it was an amazing sight.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I've copied this across for my thoughts on it.

There as an additional theory...

Advanced aquatic lifeforms - I guess the knowledge of our own oceans is quite limited. The sea is deep enough and vast enough to harbour a city, but an entire civilisation I'm not sure about. I'm sure Jim Cameron would love to have been right.

Aliens -
do I believe its aliens? No. Space is just too big. They could have some kind of faster than light travel or event horizon style thing, but it's a big ask to break the laws of physics.

Multidimensional beings -
We know exoplanets exist, but extra dimensions we have no evidence of. I'm ruling it out.

Tourists from the future -
Again, a big ask for time travel to be invented. Not sure.

A natural and unexplained phenomenon -
Without seeing all the evidence, it's hard to say. Based on what we know, these objects come in different shapes and sizes, unlike something like Ball-Lighting or plasma discharge. I'd have to see, and I mean really see, what these things are.

All completely benign and explainable things like balloons -
Just too many sightings for them ALL to be just floating things. Plus we know they act with some kind of propulsion and travel at high speed.

Advanced technology from another country which they somehow invented not long after the Wright brothers -
No chance. We've seen them for decades and a county with this kind of tech would flaunt it.

Gun to my head, what do think it is out of these? Jeez, maybe time travellers?! I mean it's the only one might make a tiny hint of sense?

[Dogg Thang]

Yes, of course unidentified flying objects exist. Even non-flying unidentified objects exist. I’ve had things in my dinner I couldn’t identify. But as yet unidentified doesn’t mean aliens or other sci-fi stories we desperately want to be believe in.

Personally, I think the chances of there being aliens out in space seem incredibly high. I don’t believe they are here.

[prinnysquad]

This is all any of it can boil down to. A belief.

[Dogg Thang]

Exactly. But therein lies the problem for me. Because people have been seeing things they don’t understand since time began and, in those cases, almost always jump to a higher power as explanation, be it a god, aliens or what have you. Like the X-Files, we want to believe.

[prinnysquad]

It does work both ways, however. Our current understanding of science and possibilities is limited, and therefore no conclusive statements can be made.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Based on the limited evidence we have (fast moving, ultra acceleration, different shape and sizes, been around for decades, no evidence of contact), I don't think any of the theories I've listed above really fit. So what the hell does that leave? Glitches in the matrix? A projection?

[Neon Ignition]

I'd go with aliens over time travel, time travel is infinitely more complicated. Like in the other thread I don't believe it's aliens and I'm not willing to go with it on faith either as that's kind of the religion approach which isn't me. It's a bit like in the other thread too in that hundreds upon hundreds of UFO sightings are reported every month so whilst 140 seems like a lot it's actually the tiniest drop in the ocean of events that are later explained. Like prinny says though, it does take just one and I'm fine being open to it happening, I'd just side the chances of one of the remaining UFO's being something alien is probably as close to zero as it gets.

[Dogg Thang]

You seem to be approaching these as if they are all the same thing and I feel like that's a flaw. The reason things like this are hard to identify is that there are many, many possible explanations (including many we know about and some I'm sure we don't). In each case, there are probably loads you can rule out very quickly based on the information but that doesn't mean you can rule those same things out for all of them.

[wheelaa]

I've encountered numerous instances of UFOs...unidentified fart originators.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I can't believe we can understand the density of stars and calculate the mathematics of gravitational waves across the galaxy, but we can't identify something in our own atmosphere. It just doesn't make sense.

[wakka]

UFO sightings and the people that research them are endlessly fascinating to me, and I've read many books on the topic. I don't agree, however, that the subject is necessarily a matter of pure faith.

For some people, it is, and that's fine. The UFO movement is closely tied with various other New Age stuff and some people get really into that and as long as they're not doing themselves or anyone else any harm, more power to them.

But I think, for me, it's most interesting to approach it from a pragmatic perspective.

So rather than working from a list of working hypotheses that begins with the lost kingdom of Atlantis, goes through timetravellers and ends with multidimension beings, I think it's best to start with the idea that this is a misidentified plane, balloon, or something else entirely terrestrial. More sexy but still much more likely than any of the more esoteric theories is secret military aircraft (much more likely the US's than something foreign they can't identify - logically, they'd be unlikely to bandy that idea around were it true).

I know what you're thinking - it can't be those things, because these sightings are from US test pilots and have been recorded on military sensors, and surely mistakes wouldn't be made.

But they can be, and they are. These people aren't infallible - and what's more, there may be motivations at play among those interpreting, recording and releasing information regarding the sightings that further muddy the waters. I've mentioned previously that there is a small US Government division which is known to have deliberately spread and encouraged supernatural UFO theories in order to obfuscate real technology and tests, which sounds like a mad conspiracy theory but, like other examples of whacko American officialdom like the testing of LSD as a truth serum and psychic 'remote viewing' as a military tactic, is a recorded fact.*

Less sensationally, there are doubtless people within the military who, just like UFO fans outside it, want to believe. And so they're perhaps more readily interpreting information to support the zanier end of the spectrum of explanations.

For a look at the phenomenon from the sceptical end of the telescope, Mick West's YouTube channel is well worth a look:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF3UCTZiVg9wrIEzO7Om6jw

Side note - funnily enough he is one of the founders of Neversoft and was a lead programmer on the early Tony Hawk's games! Although he has been retired from games for many years (probably after making a boatload out of the sale of the company to Activision), and his channel has nothing to do with gaming.

He has just done a video on the release of the report which I've yet to watch but I'm sure will be an interesting analysis. He has also done some interesting analyses of AATIP's FLIR, GIMBAL and GOFAST videos, all recorded by the Navy, which have caused so many furore recently.

He also has a podcast which is about all sorts of topics related to scepticism and the supernatural, and, relevant to the idea of those in the military world because less pragmatic and more credulous than we might think, I can particularly recommend his interview with Luis Elizondo - particularly if you are interested in the recent AATIP videos:

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/tales-from-the-rabbit-hole-848112/episodes/episode-52-luis-elizondo-ufos-86139392

Elizondo is the guy who's been very much the front man for much of the recent interest, as he was actually the person running the AATIP unit within the Government analysing the Navy's sightings. He's also the person that called for the release of GIMBAL, GOFAST, FLIR, etc, and has been interviewed all over the place including the New York Times and Washington Post.

With that in mind, good on him for appearing on Mick West's comparatively tiny platform. He's a fascinating interview subject, because in many ways he is the person most responsible for the resurgence in interest in the topic.

West spends time asking Elizondo about the videos and how he feels that they show explicable, terrestrial objects (mostly planes). Elizondo's response tends to basically be that 'There are videos you haven't seen which haven't been released which are much more convincing', which, well, OK.

Personally, I don't think Elizondo is a charlatan. But I think he wants to believe. I think a lot of us do. I know I do. And I think that can make us much more credulous about this type of thing than we should be.

I think the real answer to the 'UFO question' is that there is, of course, no single answer. They exist, obviously. And it's further stating the obvious that for the thousands of sightings there are thousands of explanations, almost all of them boringly terrestrial. Has there ever been one, just one, that's really an alien craft?

Maybe. Probably not. But it's still fascinating to read about and wonder.

*It really is well established. Mirage Men is a good book/documentary on the topic of officialdom spreading saucer rumours, and Saucers, Spooks and Kooks is good for further reading.

[Brad]

If us humans managed to travel to another planet and found life on it we’d be investigating that planet nomatter how dumb we thought the inhabitants were. You have to imagine another planet’s travellers would do the same. Just general interest. Especially if they’ve seen us sending things to the moon and Mars.

[Dogg Thang]

Is that a case for or against, Brad?