UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Supposedly, ball lightning events are rare, yet they would be more likely than the possibility of these UAP’s being piloted space crafts of some type. It would make more sense to assume that a weather event that has been documented and proven to exist, would be given more consideration than speculating it to be an unidentified spacecraft. This doesn’t mean all UAP’s have explanations - the tic tac video was considered “unexplained,” but it’s better to rule out all potential possibilities than just guess because you’ve seen an unusual sight.

I’m going to start studying up on different weather occurrences, for the sake of this discussion. lol

 

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I am not sure if you are trying to describe what you think was St. Elmo's Fire, but that was not St. Elmo's Fire.

It is closely associated with spires and tall thin objects that discharge ions.

" ... luminous plasma is created by a corona discharge from a rod-like object such as a mast, spire, chimney, or animal horn in an atmospheric electric field. It has also been observed on the leading edges of airplanes, ..."

 

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Here's a video of St. Elmo's fire as it was occurring on the front of an airplane. Interesting phenomena..It reminds me of those plasma lamps, of which I have several.

 

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Dang that's cool.

And well done on the

, MR.

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Announced today by Dr. Z, the NASA Associate Administrator in charge of NASA's Science Directorate

NASA to Set Up Independent Study on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

https://twitter.com/Dr_ThomasZ/status/1534906666424090627

(What follows comes from today's press release)

"The study will focus on identifying available data, how best to collect future data, and how NASA can use that data to move the scientific understanding of UAPs forward...

...Unidentified phenomena in the atmosphere are of interest for both national security and air safety. Establishing which events are natural provides a key first step to identifying or mitigating such phenomena, which aligns with one of NASA's goals to ensure the safety of aircraft. There is no evidence UAPs are extra-terrestrial in orgin.

"NASA believes that the tools of scientific discovery are powerful and apply here also," said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington. "We have access to a broad range of observations of Earth from space - and that is the lifeblood of scientific inquiry. We have the tools and the team who can help us improve our understanding of the unknown. That's the very definition of what science is. That's what we do."

The agency is not part of the Department of Defense's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force or its successor, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group. NASA has, however, coordinated widely across the government regarding how to apply the tools of science to shed light on the nature and origin of unidentified aerial phenomena."...

..."Given the paucity of observations, our first task is simply to gather the most robust set of data that we can," said Spergel. "We will be identifying what data... exists, what else we should try to collect, and how best to analyze it."

The study is expected to take about nine months to complete. It will secure the counsel of experts in the scientific, aeronautics, and data analytics communities to focus on how best to collect new data and improve observations of UAPs.

Consistent with NASA's principles of openness, transparency, and scientific integrity, this report will be shared publicly," said Evans. "All of NASA's data is available to the public - we take that obligation seriously - and we make it easily accessible for anyone to see or study."

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-t...masZ&utm_campaign=NASASocial&linkId=168612700

 

https://media.defense.gov/2021/Nov/...TION-AND-MANAGEMENT-SYNCHRONIZATION-GROUP.PDF

 

wegs said: ↑
Why isn’t the military (per country) alarmed by at least some of these sightings? If these are credible sightings. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.

Probability - The sightings might have some credibility but the interpretation of the sightings not so credibile

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Yay! This is great news - a scientific perspective on UAP's.

 

Looks like Mick West will have his work cut out for him..

 

Only if the evidence conforms to the characteristics of a weather phenomenon. That sort a priori dismissal of uaps only because they are less probable than a weather event or a bird or a weather balloon is not valid imo. It assumes the nonexistence of the uap as a mystery in itself and from there concludes its improbability if not its impossibility. That's disingenous in my view. If science were to operate that way it would never have discovered any new phenomena. "Well, it's less probable that it is a new phenomenon than a known phenomenon therefore it isn't anything new."

 

To be clear, I don’t see these various UAP sightings as resembling birds of any type. I’m not dismissing anything, and not leaping to any conclusions one way or the other.

 

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/project-goal

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/FAQ

The Galileo project is led by Avi Loeb

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/

I'm pleased to see that Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine is one of their "affiliates"

Their Scientific Advisory Board has some big names, including Paul Davies, Seth Shostak of the SETI project, Stephen Wolfram of Mathematica fame, and several prominent astronomers.

 

It's not a dismissal of UAPs, though. It is more that one should initially hypothesise that it has something mundane (and if one can narrow it down to a certain type from the description etc, all the better) rather than initially hypothesise that it is something utterly extraordinary (like aliens, superhumans etc). One then has to get over the hurdle of whether it is more likely to be something mundane that is not yet fully understood (e.g. a previously unencountered variation of an otherwise known phenomenon) or something not mundane.

It assumes a priori that the UAP is unlikely to be an alien craft, or superhumans. It doesn't assume the non-existence of the mystery, though, as it will be a mystery until confirmed one way or the other. It is simply what category that eventual explanation will be: mundane or not. But, yes, it is entirely reasonable and valid to assume a priori that it is unlikely to be something that is... well... unlikely.
If, on the other hand, you want to assume a priori that aliens, superhumans, non-human tech etc, is just as likely as everything else, then you'll likely end up with a belief that they are more likely than they actually are.

But noone assumes that the nature of the UAP is not a mystery. If they thought that they wouldn't consider it a UAP, would they? They'd say that it was identified, surely? The issue is more of assuming a more likely explanation to be a more likely explanation. Unless, or until, one can show that the more fanciful and extraordinary explanations are as likely as the more mundane, this would/should surely be the default position: that until demonstrated otherwise, it should be assumed to be mundane. Not claimed that it definitely is, or that the non-mundane is impossible, only that, if you had to initially stake your life's earnings on the explanation, you should bet on "mundane".

There have been many times science has struggled to acknowledge a new phenomenon, such as freak waves etc. The good thing about science, however, is that while it might initially conclude that it is more likely to be a known phenomenon than a new one, science will not rule out an explanation (unless proven to be impossible) and it can, and does, change its position on such matters, as and when a sufficient weight of evidence arises such that it becomes more likely to be a new phenomenon than an existing one.

 

I'm not convinced by their probability argument because we aren't just talking about "weather events" or "birds". We are talking about very specific observed "UAP" phenomena to which the weather phenomena or birds would have to somehow conform if the weather or birds are to serve as the explanation of the observations. What's more, we are supposed to believe that a whole series of these supposedly common high-probabity events somehow came together in just such a way as to explain all aspects of the UAP report. And that coherence will be less likely by its nature.

I mean a bird that's able to stay ahead of an F-18 jet fighter and able to display the lateral velocities necessary if the camera images are to be explained by parallax, would suggest a bird able to fly at something like 500 mph. That would be an extraordinary zoological discovery if true and it seems very unlikely, given what is known about birds.

A bird able to keep pace with jet fighters and also able to conform with the radar observations, ascending and descending to the edge of space at what appear to be ballistic missile velocities, would seem to me to be vanishingly unlikely.

If we start out with the a-priori assumption that the probability of the UAP is zero, then any mundane explanation that has any likelihood at all, however small that likelihood is, will be more probable.

But we don't really know that the probability of the UAP is zero, do we? If in fact experimental aircraft prototypes are being tested out there, or (horrors!) space aliens are really buzzing us in their high-tech craft, then the probability of those things happening would be one (certainty) just by definition.

Except that we don't know what it is that people are seeing, so we don't seem to be in any position to assign a probability to it.

Yes, I agree.

 

Which is why those explanations are not given to every UAP sighting by default. They are given to those UAP cases where consideration of the evidence available leads to a reasonable conclusion of such.
It's not a case of "birds are more probable events overall, therefore we must assume birds before anything else". To think that that is what happens is nonsense.

Less likely than the individual elements, yes, but is the overall probability still higher than something like aliens, or superhumans from the oceans etc? Almost certainly: yes.

Indeed. Which is why the evidence needs to be examined as objectively as possible, and the likelihood of errors in interpretation understood and accepted. Just crowing that "oh, he's a pilot, he has nothing to gain by lying, so he can't be wrong", for example, is not going to appeal to anyone other than someone who already wants to believe.

Sure, which is why the "it's a bird" explanation may not be a reasonable explanation. But it also relies on the accurate interpretation of all the other evidence, the ruling out of errors, of glitches etc, and anything else which, as a combined set of circumstances, is more likely than an explanation of "it's aliens! It's superhumans from under the ocean!" etc.
It may be that "it's birds!" is not appropriate, but that in itself is not justification for jumping to the other. "I don't know" remains, in my view at least, the most honest conclusion of them all. One can speculate, sure, and speculations can be fanciful or reasonable. "Aliens" etc is fanciful.

This is a nonsense statement. No one disputes that there are observations that are UAPs. It is the explanation of them that is in dispute, and the likelihood of speculations that is debated, not that the observation is of a UAP.
Now, as to when a UAP becomes classified as "Identified", whether it needs absolute proof of identification or just a widely held acceptance of what it is, I don't know. But if there is any reasonable doubt it must surely be still classified as "Unidentified", and as such no-one has an a priori assumption that there is nothing that remains unidentified. There are those who have the a priori assumption that the phenomenon is not "aliens" or "superhumans from under the ocean. I count myself among them, but again it is an assumption, and assumptions can be overturned with weight of evidence to the contrary.
So don't conflate "not a UAP" with "not an ET or superhuman" etc.

UAPs currently exist. Period. It is proven, simply by having one case that currently defies reasonably identification. So the probability is 1.
If you mean the probability of "aliens" or other fanciful explanation, then it is a non-zero probability but for all practical purposes one might as well consider it zero. At least in the view of most scientists. "Experimental aircraft" would not be so fanciful an explanation, but certainly speculative, depending on how far above current understanding of physics we're talking.

Sure, proof makes the probability 1. Until we know, we can only go by what we do know, and that is that explanations such as "aliens" are vanishingly slim. Prototypes... a greyer area, depending on what is being claimed about performance etc.

Agreed. First we need to get behind the initial interpretations that can bias any future understanding. Then we need to remove any possibility of errors, glitches, in hardware etc - such as interpretation by IR cameras that might make a source seem to disappear, when all that is happening might be an algorithm issue in the detector etc.
Again, I come back to "I don't know" as the most reasonable conclusion for some of the cases, although many will be a case of "likely X, Y, Z" (being mundane explanations).

We can all agree with a strawman. Fortunately science doesn't operate the way MR suggested, so agreeing with it is just as irrelevant.

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10th June 2022

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...assed-navy-ships-demystified-in-new-documents

 

Those drones were never reputed to be uaps in the first place. They were recorded in the ship's deck logs as drones when they were first sighted. The flying "triangles" were also identified by the Navy as drones. The media likely hyped up their appearance as uaps when the video of them was released. But the Navy confirmed that their triangular appearance was an affect of looking thru night goggles. Definitely NOT uaps. You can't always rely on everything the media reports.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...us-drones-off-california-over-numerous-nights

 

That's a pretty amazing story in that article, MR. You could make a movie out of it. And it's been happening a lot more than has been reported in the media. It seems to have peaked in 2019, when something was definitely happening. My guess it was likely the Chinese and that they may have stopped being so overt after some back-channel warnings from the US to cool it.

I think that I'd call these drones "UAPs", MR. I'm not wedded to the idea that all UAPs have to have extra-mundane explanations. I expect that most of them don't, though it's the more problematic ones that are most interesting. But these events below are fscinating too, in a different more James Bondish way.

A web-search turned up a follow-up story by the same authors from yesterday with lots of additional Navy information.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...assed-navy-ships-demystified-in-new-documents

The stories mention mysterious Navy-owned San Clemente Island which was right in the middle of the action. This island is said to have hosted secret Navy projects since the Cold War. If something exciting is happening in military technology and it isn't at Area 51 (more of an Air Force thing), this is one of the places it would be.

Predictably, the stories contain denials that the drones were ours, but I'm not entirely convinced.

It does appear that these were very likely small UAVs buzzing a variety of Navy ships, including the science-fictionish USS Zumwalt. Apparently the Navy is unaware of who owned and operated the drones (or if they are, they ain't talking). But the drones certainly seem to have been professional grade, with extraordinarily high endurance and able to track naval vessels in low visibility conditions at night. So they weren't off-the-shelf models and weren't something being used for fun by casual boaters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Zumwalt

When some of the earlier events occurred, there was a Hong Kong registerd bulk carrier in the area.

In the briefing slides below, Zulu time is 7 hours ahead of PDT. So 05:11Z would be 22:11 PDT

PHM is USS Paul Hamilton, a guided missile destroyer. BKH is USS Bunker Hill, an Aegis missile cruiser.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ai...400/imo:9311414/vessel:BASS_STRAIT#VesselInfo

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Other times there were small private boats. Prez Espada is probably a mistake, since Pez Espada is Spanish for swordfish. I'm speculating that it's a Mexican fishing boat. R Donzi is probably a fishing boat too. It's the third 'Unknown small boat 1' that looks most suspicious. GBG is USS Gabriele Giffords, a littoral combat ship.

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Somebody in the vicinity was launching the drones, controlling and recovering them. Presumably somebody was sending commands and was receiving video and sensor data back. I'm surprised that we don't hear more in these stories about RF communications between the drones and their controllers, though the Navy suggests they did capture some. (I should hope so!)

We read that only some of the ships were equipped with anti-drone jammers, the Northrop-Grumman Drake system. But these systems apparently weren't used.

https://news.northropgrumman.com/ne...V3CDX0R2*MTY1NTAwMTIwNC4xLjAuMTY1NTAwMTIwNC4w

So all in all, these events point to another aspect of UAPs besides the extraterrestrial one that gets all the attention. If some UAP are artifacts that have a terrestrial origin, are they being used for intelligence gathering? If so, by whom?

 

Yes, it's all drones drones and more drones even a released picture of one of the drones:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...assed-navy-ships-demystified-in-new-documents

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Unidentified craft in relation to country of origin, that's what I would say. Although the 'Bass Strait' maybe a clue to that.

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You're learning fast grasshopper.
It must be the new title of this thread that's brought about this change in Magical Realist.

 

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BBC News

One for MR? Think not

The text refers to the strange Earthly plants and other Earthly stuff not a Intergalactic hideaway Earth base headquarters

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