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- cross-posted to:
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This week, the director of the U.S. government’s UFO analysis office stated that there is “evidence” of concerning unidentified flying object activity “in our backyard.” According to physicist Seán Kirkpatrick, who heads the congressionally-mandated All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, this alarming UFO activity can be attributed to one of two extraordinary sources: either a foreign power or “aliens.”
To be sure, the ramifications of either would be significant. But Kirkpatrick’s comments, which come as he is about to retire after a 27-year defense and intelligence-focused career, are more intriguing because he also says that “none” of the hundreds of military UFO reports analyzed by his office recently “have been positively attributed to foreign activities.”
At the same time, Kirkpatrick and senior defense officials have ruled out the possibility that secret U.S. programs or experimental aircraft explain the phenomena.
From everything we know interstellar travel in less than generational time scales is all but impossible.
The only thing that is more improbable from our current knowledge of physics is…travel back in time.
Occam’s razor: The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct.
So we have three possibilities.
A foreign power
Aliens
Time Travel.
…
The boring reality is that it is the first one. A foreign power.
The trick with the foreign power angle is that it would be a foreign power with technology we don’t fully comprehend. I doubt Russia or China is at that level. We know for a fact that North Korea isn’t. Nor is Iran.
So who would it be? Japan? Tech-wise they could surprise us, but why?
And that is still orders of magnitude more likely than time travel or interstellar aliens.
And so is one branch of the US government not talking to another
This map of UFO sightings has the USA at ~250,000 but as soon as you cross the border into mexico you only have…895.
While Europe tops outs at ~20,000.
isnt that map tracking data only from US agencies?
It’s those rascals in the hollow earth, I tells ya.
ARTESIANS! I SEEN 'EM!
https://youtu.be/o2VcqffbbH8
It could also be US Skunk Works shit. IIRC a bunch of weird sightings in the US some decades ago ended up being the F-117 and that stealth bomber. The public didn’t know about them until years after their development.
That seems more plausible to me than China or whatever.
A random government official not knowing what they are doesn’t say much if they’re black ops projects. By definition, nobody would know about them except the people directly working on them, and they’re not gonna say anything.
I’m most interested in what makes them so sure these aren’t our own. They’re awfully naive if they think they’re allowed to know everything.
Even if they did know what it was, feigning extreme ignorance like this would probably be the better strategy anyway. It would be in the US’ best interest for the waters around all of this to be extremely muddy.
Let me remind you tgat the universe has no obligation to do things as easily as possible. Occam’s razor is at best a way to prioritise your conjectures. It could easily be the dolphin spaceships coming to rescue their peers before climate change kills them.
Sorry, I thought we were talking science not science fiction.
As Carl Sagan said: Extraordinary claims require Extraordinary evidence.
“easily”
Well yeah, i prob went too far there. I just don’t like people defending positions by saying “it’s the easiest explanation so this is it”
If the videos of the tic tac object are accurate, as in what was recorded was really there, I disagree. These things can drop from 80k feet to sea level in a second with no obvious signs of propulsion and no control surfaces.
Yeah that isn’t true. With enough will we could leave the solar system in our lifetime.
Leaving the solar system is less than 1% of the distance to the nearest star.
The Voyager probes have left the solar system. It took about 30 years for them to do it…
The Voyager probes didn’t have a nuclear engine. They had a sad little rocket and some gravity assists. Nor were they designed to go as far as they did. The original mandate was only to Juptiet and Saturn.
In any case nothing is going to happen until the boomers are dead so we can embrace nuclear power and propulsion.
Nuclear thermal engines still need propellent.
And while they have an ISP about 10 times higher than chemical rockets, they are still basically useless for interstellar distances.
Simply because the more you accelerate the more you have to break and you have to carry the propellant for both.
TLDR: the rocket equation is a merciless task master.
You don’t have to carry enough for both. You can solar sail and gravity break.
No you can’t.
Any craft that has enough mass for human travel and is accelerated to even 1% of c would need solar sails that are thousands of square Kms in area to have a hope of decelerating.
That still ends up at a 500+ year trip to Alpha Centauri.
And that is just more added weight you have to accelerate in the first place.
TLDR: the rocket equation is a merciless task master.
Ok show your math. Show that nuclear fueled rocket can never get above 5% light speed in total.
You first…