UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Discussion in 'UFOs, Ghosts and Monsters' started by Magical Realist, Oct 10, 2017.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Then our answer is "we don't know", not "exotic".

    "I don't know" does not automatically lead to "therefore exotic".
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    Your claim that it is a mundane phenomena wasn't defended either. None of those you suggested account for the extraordinary zig zag performance of the UAPs. Guess we're stuck with just the facts of the sighting then.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    It leans closer to exotic though than it being mundane. (common/nothing to see here)
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
    Magical Realist likes this.
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Again. Read carefully. I am not claiming it is a mundane phenomena; I am simply saying there's nothing compelling that warrants an exotic explanation over one of many mundane explanations.


    Mundane observed objects make zig zags all the time.
    The onus is on you to rule out innumerable causes of mundane objects that make zig zags.

    You know the onus is on you.



    The first one you should start with is that you're not just making up details. You have a documented history of doing so, and it is therefore within the bounds of plausibility that ... whatever hypothetical account you are currently referring to ... is simply made up.
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    There's no objective such thing as "closer to".
    All things unknown are unknown until they're known.
     
  9. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    "Retired US Navy pilot David Fravor trusts what he saw with his own two eyes. And what he saw, in 2004, was a flying object that cannot be identified. Otherwise known as a UFO.

    It was a “white object, oblong, pointing north, moving erratically,” he told CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Tuesday evening.

    At the time of the sighting, Fravor was a naval commander, in the cockpit of a US aircraft, and the details of the encounter are still fresh in his mind.

    “As I got close to it … it rapidly accelerated to the south, and disappeared in less than two seconds,” he said.

    The object in question had no wings. As such, one might think it was a helicopter. Not so, said Fravor, who noted clear differences between a chopper and the aircraft he came across.

    “When helicopters move side to side, they kinda slow, and then they pick up speed going the other way,” Fravor explained. “This was extremely abrupt, like a ping pong ball, bouncing off a wall. It would hit and go the other way.”

    The movements of the flying object were unlike anything Fravor had ever seen, largely due to its agility and the way it handled.

    Speaking live with Sciutto, the former naval pilot said the aircraft had “the ability to hover over the water, and then start a vertical climb, from basically zero up towards about 12,000 feet, and then accelerate in less than two seconds, and disappear.”

    As a believer in UFO’s, Fravor knows there are skeptics.

    “It’s easy to doubt what we can’t explain,” he said. However, he reminded viewers that he was among other aviation experts, all of whom did their due diligence on that day.

    “It was an actual object that we tracked … for somewhere around five minutes, before it rapidly accelerated.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/19/us/pilot-david-fravor-ufo-jim-sciutto-outfront-cnntv
     
    Last edited: Nov 22, 2022
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Well that's good. You didn't make it up this time.
    Let's call that progress.
    Do you think you can keep it up? The not making stuff up? That would save us all a lot of time.
     
  11. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    So now that you know the account is genuine, what mundane cause do you believe matches the observed flight maneuvers of the UAP?
     
  12. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,077
    How was the zig zag performance determined to be a true performance of the UFO and not a glitch in the equipment readings?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    It was seen performing those maneuevers with the pilots' own eyes.
     
  14. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,077
    The equipment can actually be the pilots' own eyes

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



     
  15. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    And this is why Mick West is gaining in popularity - skepticism requires no effort really, just toss out a few barbs like “maybe the pilots were mistaken,” or “it could have been a really fast weather balloon,” and that’s enough to end the discussion.

    It’s easy to doubt, but not easy to go beyond your doubts, and see if there’s something more to these claims.

    Skeptics think that all UFO enthusiasts haven’t thought about these possibilities, already. That’s what bugs me about Mick West - he thinks he’s the arbiter of truth when all he is doing is casting doubt, like a defense attorney who doesn’t need to prove anything to win a case.
     
    Last edited: Nov 23, 2022
    Yazata and Magical Realist like this.
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    It's not a contest. There are no winners and losers here.

    What has not been discussed? What are we supposed to do with this pilot's account? It's not like we can go back and confirm it, or extract the images directly from his brain.

    It's an interesting account, but, in terms of seeking truth, it's a dead end.

    The question won't be resolved until and unless we get some extant evidence - something tangible.

    What more? It's not like we know where their camp is, and we just haven't bothered going and looking.


    It sounds more and more like what you're looking for is to spread faith. That you're looking for more people to believe in exotic UAPs.

    Thing is, if were science, it wouldn't care who believes in it - its mere physical presence would stand in defiance of all doubters.
     
  17. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    No, I’m looking for what NASA is doing; they’re forming a group to formally and properly conduct extensive research.

    You should applaud that, from a science perspective. You should want that level of concern because the tic tac object wasn’t a figment of anyone’s imagination, and it could be reckless to not take it seriously. Many UAP’s have mundane explanations or are hoaxes, but there are some that require our attention. And I’m not talking about space aliens, I’m curious what else it could be?
     
  18. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    I do.

    I'll bet most other people here do as well. Has anyone expressed that it's a waste of time?
     
    wegs likes this.
  19. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,253
    Okay, I’m glad.
    Not in so many words. I won’t name names. lol
     
  20. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    That's what typically happens here on Sciforums, for sure. But in Mick's defense, he does make an effort to concoct his own alternative mundane (in my sense of boring, humdrum, nothing extraordinary) explanations. I don't find them particularly convincing, but he tries at least.

    Why don't I find Mick's hypotheses convincing? Well, he often focuses on just one aspect of a complex sighting, such as trying to deconstruct a video while largely ignoring radar and visual confirmation that, if accurate, would make his account totally implausible. He typically treats witnesses as if they are complete idiots, people making the most elementary perceptual errors. Fravor was perhaps the most senior pilot on his carrier, an instructor pilot and a graduate of the Top Gun fighter school. He's a guy whose life depends on being able to accurately track the movements of enemy aircraft trying to get into position to kill him, while making violent maneuvers of his own. He isn't immune from making perceptual errors, but I'd take his word about what he saw over Mick's armchair speculations. (Mick has no comparable aviation experience that I'm aware of.)

    He is a world-class sneerer, that's for sure. That arrogance is part of why I just viscerally dislike the guy.

    I believe that the military and intelligence agencies have their own parallel investigations.

    I think that it's increasingly clear that something extraordinary (outside the bounds of ordinary experience) is physically there in some of these cases, and that whatever it is displays behavior that's hard to explain away with facile mundane (nothing extraordinary) speculations. That's the value of Fravor's report in my opinion. Trying to ridicule those who see and detect these things into silence for fear of career damage is just stupidity in my opinion. The phenomenon needs to be investigated with an open mind, assuming that is even possible in this day and age when the whole issue has become highly divisive and ideological between opposing groups of true-believers.

    I don't want to totally dismiss the possibility of space aliens. (Possibility, not actuality.) It would be premature to do that when we don't know what it is that is seemingly being encountered. So I keep aliens open as a possibility. (Hard to say how strong a possibility it is since we have no solid basis for assessing that probability.) The mere fact that some people will try to insult me to death if I take the possibility of aliens seriously (however remote it might be) doesn't deter me.
     
    wegs likes this.
  21. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,077
    however remote it might be

    Of All The Gin Joints In All The Towns In All The World . .

    Don't know the remoteness of the girl going into Dirks gin joint from all the towns in all the world but aliens coming to this world not even worth contemplating

    List, in order possibles, on the blackboard, aliens put under the floorboards

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,602
    Why are aliens so improbable? Give them about a thousand years of evolution before us maybe they have developed some way of teleporting thru wormholes. Space afterall is the preeminently foldable medium.
     
  23. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    10,354
    This is probably the key question in understanding why some consider alien visitation to be so low on the list of probability. To me, for example, it is far more likely that someone is lying than it is aliens (ET). Simply being mistaken on details is far more likely still.

    The main reason is that we've only been broadcasting significant EM waves for c.80-90 years. So that puts an 80-90LY limit on the range at which our broadcasts would be picked up. We've picked up nothing similar within that range, or anything much further out (i.e. at all) so the idea that someone would have picked up our signals and homes in on us, even if they could do it instantly, is far fetched (so the argument goes).
    (If we assume lightspeed as the maximum travel speed then this means the range is halved.) Without them picking up our signals, we are just an insignificant planet revolving around an insignificant star such that noticing us at random would seem... like winning the US lottery. It might have happened, but highly unlikely indeed. Being mistaken, misinterpreting, or flat out lying, would be far more likely.

    Then there are the philosophical issues with the notion of teleportation that any such civilization would have to have overcome (is teleportation the death of the consciousness who is teleported and the start of an entirely new life, or is it the uninterrupted continuation of the same, etc).

    It's an interesting question, you ask, MR, and worthy of its own thread, to be honest, even if it speaks to why skeptics are seemingly so dismissive of aliens as the explanation.
    I.e. it's a meta question that, while informs views of explanations of specific UAPs, notably the skeptics view, it will continue to derail this thread if discussed here (in my view at least). But, heck, who cares about that, right!

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     

Share This Page