UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

Yazata said:
Mainly because no past human civilization appears to have had the ability to time-travel.

Which suggests some issues:

1. Must time travelers from Earth's past be human? It's possible to imagine that dinosaurs achieved intelligence and perhaps even science and technology late in their history, only to have it wiped out by some stray asteroid or something. (That idea has appeared repeatedly in science fiction.)

2. Would a technological civilization tens of millions of years ago have left traces for us to discover today? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to think 'yes', which is my main reason for doubting this speculation.

3. Assuming that it's possible at all, must time-travel require science and technology?. Could it be accomplished some other way? So would it really have required an industrial civilization to accomplish?
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With respect to (3), tardigrades could remain dormant for thousands of years. So it would require some kind of (natural evolved) sapient, macroscopic life-form that was as tough as they were, but faced with the challenges of being larger and presumably more complex (i.e., more vulnerabilities to overcome during "hibernation").

And thereby, one thing about "time travel" from the past is that it's actually possible in theory -- from a subjective standpoint at least. And not just in terms of relativistic rockets (like matter/antimatter propelled ones).

If a civilization reached a level where they could engineer self-replicating molecular machines, and the original intelligent organisms had also incrementally replaced themselves with artificial or transbiological bodies...

Then a hidden colony of the microbots (and some larger storage devices they might be responsible for copying/preserving over the same time period) could be programmed to keep maintaining themselves in that fashion over the course of millennia, or even a few million years (recycling their own deteriorated component materials whenever possible).

Upon reaching _X_ date, the colony begins reconstruction of a few now long-dead members of the transbiological creator species ("time-traveling" representatives of that bygone culture), from retained "blueprint instructions" that include the personal memories. Uploading memories and personality configurations from artificial bodies designed with that capacity would be vastly easier to accomplish than with the near impossible(?) challenge of doing that with biological brains.

The colony could even be concealed in the interior of another extra-Earth body (like the Moon). But that presents the additional task of the microbots and larger robots they build having to grow/assemble a new spaceship from the surrounding raw materials. And having to deal with perhaps greater and harsher environmental stresses over the lengthy "time-travel" duration (or not). And solar-power arrays would be visible if they couldn't tap available geothermal energy -- though fusion or nuclear energy would surely be within their prowess, too.
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Description of a famous (now, super-secret then) black project of the early 1960's that produced the Lockheed A-12.

How the CIA handled money with Kelly Johnson. Everything about this project was dark alley, cloak and dagger. Even the way they financed the operation was highly unconventional: using secret contingency funds, they back-doored payment to Lockheed by writing personal checks to Kelly for more than a million bucks as start-up costs. The checks arrived by regular mail at his Encino home, which had to be the wildest government payout in history. Johnson could have absconded with the dough and taken off on a one-way ticket to Tahiti. He banked the funds through a phony company called “C & J Engineering,” the “C & J” standing for Clarence Johnson. Even our drawings bore the logo “C & J”—the word “Lockheed” never appeared. We used a mail drop out at Sunland, a remote locale in the San Fernando Valley, for suppliers to send us parts. The local postmaster got curious about all the crates and boxes piling up in his bins and looked up “C & J” in the phone book and, of course, found nothing. So he decided to have one of his inspectors follow our unmarked van as it traveled back to Burbank. Our security people nabbed him just outside the plant and had him signing national security secrecy forms until he pleaded writer’s cramp.” ― Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12

https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-...d/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZCSY0N4CO2TR

 
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Yazata said:
Description of a famous (now, super-secret then) black project of the early 1960's that produced the Lockheed A-12.

How the CIA handled money with Kelly Johnson. Everything about this project was dark alley, cloak and dagger. Even the way they financed the operation was highly unconventional: using secret contingency funds, they back-doored payment to Lockheed by writing personal checks to Kelly for more than a million bucks as start-up costs. The checks arrived by regular mail at his Encino home, which had to be the wildest government payout in history. Johnson could have absconded with the dough and taken off on a one-way ticket to Tahiti. He banked the funds through a phony company called “C & J Engineering,” the “C & J” standing for Clarence Johnson. Even our drawings bore the logo “C & J”—the word “Lockheed” never appeared. We used a mail drop out at Sunland, a remote locale in the San Fernando Valley, for suppliers to send us parts. The local postmaster got curious about all the crates and boxes piling up in his bins and looked up “C & J” in the phone book and, of course, found nothing. So he decided to have one of his inspectors follow our unmarked van as it traveled back to Burbank. Our security people nabbed him just outside the plant and had him signing national security secrecy forms until he pleaded writer’s cramp.” ― Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12

https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-...d/dp/0316743003/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2ZCSY0N4CO2TR
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The designation "skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, with the task of working on advanced or secret projects. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works​

Witnesses apparently do like to tell their stories years or decades after the fact. But the old ones didn't risk the consequences while _X_ was actually transpiring, or were successfully discredited under tall-tale disinformation if they did.

(2010) Area 51 vets break silence - but no UFOs & aliens
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ak-silence-sorry-but-no-space-aliens-or-ufos/

EXCERPTS: . . . James Noce remembers always getting paid in cash, signing a phony name to the receipt, during his several years of working security at the site. It was, in CIA parlance, “a black project."

Noce says he has no paperwork showing that he worked at Area 51 for the CIA. He says that was common. Others who got checks say they came from various companies, including Pan American World Airways.

But Noce is vouched for by T.D. Barnes, of Henderson, Nev., founder and president of Roadrunners Internationale, membership 325. Barnes is the one who says he got checks from Pan Am, for whom he had never worked.

[...] Noce remembers when “Article 123,” as one of the A-12s was called, crashed on May 24, 1963, after the plane stalled near Wendover, Utah. The pilot ejected and survived.

Noce says he was among those who flew to the crash site in a giant cargo plane loaded with several trucks. They loaded everything from the crash into the trucks.

He remembers that a local deputy had either witnessed the crash or had quickly arrived at the scene. There also was a family on a vacation car trip who had taken photos.

“We confiscated the camera, took the film out,” says Noce. “We just said we worked for the government.”

He says the deputy and the family were told not to talk to anybody about the crash, especially the press. “We told them there would be dire consequences,” Noce says. “You scared them.”

As an added incentive, he says, the CIA arrived with a briefcase full of cash. “I think it was like 25 grand apiece, for the sheriff and the family,” says Noce. Robarge says of cash payments to cover things up, “It was common practice.”

[...] Noce worked at Area 51 from early 1962 to late 1965. He returned to Vancouver and spent most of his working life as a longshoreman.

Noce remembers once in recent years talking with fellow retired longshoreman pals and telling them stories about Area 51. When they didn’t believe him, he says, “Well, there was nothing I could do to prove anything.” [entailed by the very nature of BPs]
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“I had started out as an outright 'debunker,' taking great joy in cracking what seemed at first to be puzzling cases. I was the arch enemy of those 'flying saucer groups and enthusiasts' who very dearly wanted UFOs to be interplanetary. My own knowledge of those groups came almost entirely from what I heard from Blue Book personnel: they were all 'crackpots and visionaries.' My transformation was gradual but by the late sixties it was complete. Today I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didn't seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real and that efforts to investigate and understand it, and eventually to solve it, could have a profound effect -- perhaps even be the springboard to mankind's outlook on the universe.”― J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report
 
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Magical Realist said:
“I had started out as an outright 'debunker,' taking great joy in cracking what seemed at first to be puzzling cases. I was the arch enemy of those 'flying saucer groups and enthusiasts' who very dearly wanted UFOs to be interplanetary. My own knowledge of those groups came almost entirely from what I heard from Blue Book personnel: they were all 'crackpots and visionaries.' My transformation was gradual but by the late sixties it was complete. Today I would not spend one further moment on the subject of UFOs if I didn't seriously feel that the UFO phenomenon is real and that efforts to investigate and understand it, and eventually to solve it, could have a profound effect -- perhaps even be the springboard to mankind's outlook on the universe.”― J. Allen Hynek, The Hynek UFO Report
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Would be nice if it was because he stumbled upon a smoking gun. But his change seems to have been prodded by philosophical resentment. He disliked the dogmatic attitude of the establishment he worked for. The latter's hard, mocking stance in part resulting from wanting to protect its own spy planes and other secret projects.

The quality of the witnesses also contributed to Hynek's shift in loyalty. Though prizing the testimony of "well-trained pilots" just echoes the current situation. Where aviators are likewise depreciated as all-around expert or critical observers, vulnerable to perceptual illusions and faulty inferences about "defying physics"; as well as being in the dark about American and foreign dark programs like almost everyone else.

Arguably, he did finally see and photograph a UFO himself, but there's some conflicting testimony with respect to that. One of the contradictory accounts sports a potential excuse for the inconsistency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Allen_Hynek

APPLICABLE EXCERPTS: In April 1953, Hynek wrote a report for the Journal of the Optical Society of America titled Unusual Aerial Phenomena, which contained one of his best-known statements: "Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports, often made in concert by reliable observers, raises questions of scientific obligation and responsibility..."

[...] In a 1985 interview, when asked what caused his change of opinion, Hynek responded, "Two things, really. One was the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I still thought they weren't going about it in the right way. You can't assume that everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well, maybe there was something to all this."

[...] In 1977, at the First International UFO Congress in Chicago, Hynek presented his thoughts in his speech What I Really Believe About UFOs. "I do believe", he said, "that the UFO phenomenon as a whole is real, but I do not mean necessarily that it's just one thing. We must ask whether the diversity of observed UFOs ... all spring from the same basic source ... or whether they differ..."

[...] Regarding hypotheses of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and extradimensional intelligence (EDI), Hynek continued, "There is sufficient evidence to defend both".

As evidence for the ETI hypothesis, he mentioned the cases involving radar as good evidence of something solid, as well as the cases of physical evidence.

Then he turned to defending the EDI hypothesis: in addition to the observations of materialization and dematerialization, he cited the "poltergeist" phenomenon experienced by some people after a close encounter; the photographs of UFOs, sometimes in only one frame, and not seen by witnesses; the changing of form in front of witnesses; the puzzling question of telepathic communication; that in close encounters of the third kind, the creatures seem to be at home in Earth's gravity and atmosphere; the sudden stillness in the presence of the craft; levitation of cars or people; and the development by some of psychic abilities after an encounter.

"Do we have two aspects of one phenomenon or two different sets of phenomena?" Hynek asked

Finally, he introduced a third hypothesis. "I hold it entirely possible", he said, "that a technology exists, which encompasses both the physical and the psychic, the material and the mental. There are stars that are millions of years older than the sun. There may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than man's. We have gone from Kitty Hawk to the moon in some seventy years, but it's possible that a million-year-old civilization may know something that we don't ... I hypothesize an 'M&M' technology encompassing the mental and material realms. The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology."

In Hynek and Vallee's 1975 book The Edge of Reality, Hynek published a stereoscopic photograph of a UFO he took during a flight. According to the book, the object stayed in sight long enough for Hynek to unpack his camera from his luggage and take two exposures. UFO researcher Robert Sheaffer writes in his book Psychic Vibrations that Hynek seemed to have forgotten the photographs when he later told a reporter for The Globe and Mail that he had never seen a UFO. The article states that in all the years he had been looking upward, Hynek "has never seen 'what I would so dearly love to see. Oh, the subject has been so ridiculed that I would never report a UFO even if I did see one—not without a witness'".
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So has all this UAP hearing stuff about "non-human bilogics associated with recovered god-tech" finally fizzled out? Not quite. There's a reason for the interval of quietness. (I.e., the astonishing proof of animal remains mingled with wrecked weather balloon apparatus and materials still awaits disclosure farther down the pike. ;))
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(Aug 9) What happens next for Congress' UFO hearings?
https://www.newsweek.com/what-happens-next-congress-ufo-hearings-1818495

EXCERPTS: Ranking member Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, asked that "these discussions and these hearings" continue. "Clearly, there's a lot of information that we don't know but it's also clear that we have to continue our investigation and accountability on asking the right questions and ensuring they're part of the public record," Garcia said.

Chair Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin, added that he "assumed some legislation will come out of this".

[...] As Congress began its five-week recess in August, committee members won't reconvene until at least September. Newsweek understands the Committee on Oversight & Accountability has no updates on future investigations. while the exact timings and dates of future committee hearings and investigations have not been proposed, it appears that the cross-party support and interest will almost certainly guarantee more action on UAPs to come after the summer recess.

However, a number of members have spoken since the hearing [...] Subcommittee member Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), also posted on X (formerly Twitter) calling for "a Select Committee on UAP with subpoena power."

[...] while the exact timings and dates of future committee hearings and investigations have not been proposed, it appears that the cross-party support and interest will almost certainly guarantee more action on UAPs to come after the summer recess.

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(Aug 22) Lawmakers want subpoena power in UFO inquiries
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4164741-lawmakers-want-subpoena-power-in-ufo-inquiries/

EXCERPTS: [...] former intelligence official David Grusch, their star whistleblower, said he was unable to present classified evidence to substantiate his claims. A trio of lawmakers are among those now leading a push ... to appoint a select committee on UAPs, though they have not yet heard back on the request.

Tim Burchett (R) said such a panel would allow lawmakers to subpoena people to speak on UAPs in an open setting. “When you subpoena these folks, they’ll have their lawyers there, but they will not be prosecuted under law...”

[...] Burchett said the expanded powers would help overcome roadblocks they’ve run into when trying to secure a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), in which they could hear the rest of Grusch’s testimony.

Anna Paulina Luna (R) said Congress is “actively being stonewalled” in its efforts to ensure Grusch has the security clearance he needs to brief them. “It just creates more and more conspiracy theories because our federal government is so arrogant and so bloated,” Burchett said of the roadblocks. “They’ll just run out the clock.”

[...] While the nation’s military capabilities should be kept confidential to maintain superiority, Jared Moskowitz (D) said, the American people should not be kept in the dark about the possibility of extraterrestrial life UFOs. “If we’re reverse-engineering technology based on stuff that has crashed landed here from other civilizations, we can’t just tell the American people that’s not true forever,” Moskowitz said. “The American people deserve to know.”​
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C C said:
(I.e., the astonishing proof of animal remains mingled with wrecked weather balloon apparatus and materials still awaits disclosure farther down the pike. ;))
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Strange. Animal remains found with crashed weather balloon - in a area I am speculating - animal remains are all over the region

1/ Were the remains fresh ie killed by the crash of the weather balloon while holding onto the steering mechanism?

2/ Or killed by being hit by the weather balloon?

1/ would definitely indicate a non earth life form and really would that finding would it be possible to keep quiet?

Why don't I add my speculation about what is going one

Someone or more members of the investigationl currently have a cushy job with good wages why not keep it going?

Another speculation deals with grabbing more power

:)
 
Michael 345 said:
New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers describes witnessing a large ufo with friends:

Really? witnessing - hardly ---- ufo again hardly

https://twitter.com/i/status/1699246791445897691

Of course none had a mobile phone/camera

:>
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The "Venus and camera stabilizing" topic is part of a roundabout way of asserting that photos and video footage wouldn't make much difference, anyway. (I.e., such might lend some support to the story or description itself, but futile for either bracing-up or validating an interpretation of the event as legitimately "extraordinary".)

Even the highly vaunted third level (after anecdotes and pictures) -- where tangible "evidence" is offered, is a similarly futile or pointless standard. Since scores of palpable items of the past ranging from the Cardiff Giant to the pickled baby dragon illustrate another category of vulnerable and gullible indulgence.

The apathy of the establishment always finds a way.
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C C said:
The "Venus and camera stabilizing" topic is part of a roundabout way of asserting that photos and video footage wouldn't make much difference, anyway.
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I disagree. Photos and video footage are certainly valid and very valuable sources of evidence. The VaCS thread is simply making it clear that they cannot be taken at face value without analysis and interpretation.

Our local enthusiast once asserted that 'photos don't lie'. That's not true. Or more accurately, photos don't 'say' anything at all. They are coloured pixels, and pixels need to be interpreted.
 
DaveC426913 said:
I disagree. Photos and video footage are certainly valid and very valuable sources of evidence. The VaCS thread is simply making it clear that they cannot be taken at face value without analysis and interpretation.

Our local enthusiast once asserted that 'photos don't lie'. That's not true. Or more accurately, photos don't 'say' anything at all. They are coloured pixels, and pixels need to be interpreted.
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Establishment: "Your anecdote is horse####."

Storyteller: "I have photos."

Establishment after analysis: "Your underlying suggestion that something extraterrestrial, paranormal, etc was happening here is horse####."

I.e., not much difference. Indifference reliably outputted on most occasions.
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C C said:
Establishment: "Your anecdote is horse####."

Storyteller: "I have photos."

Establishment after analysis: "Your underlying suggestion that something extraterrestrial, paranormal, etc was happening here is horse####."

I.e., not much difference. Indifference reliably outputted on most occasions.
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OK, but your analysis seems to presuppose that it's not horse# # # #.
If the evidence is not there to support something paranormal, then an interpretation of paranormality is an overreach. Invocation of "establishment" is effectively a conspiracy theory.
Essentially, what you're doing is poisoning the well. You're suggesting that we cannot find the "truth" because establishment stands in our way.

Consider though: What if we do have the truth? What if there are no ETs? Then both the photos and this "establishment" were - and are - correct.

No, the only choice we have is to examine the evidence we have available with a critical eye and come to the best conclusion we can (or no conclusion at all). And there's no indication in any of these photos or videos or accounts of any "establishment" conspiracy.
 
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C C said:
Establishment: "Your anecdote is horse####."
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A question I would ask is why reports of some events are accepted, while reports of other kinds of events are dismissed (often with insult and ridicule). What would justify that, if it wasn't preexisting belief on the part of the one doing the accepting and dismissing?

Storyteller: "I have photos."
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Or any kind of corroborating evidence. Radar in the case of UAPs, infrared, satellites, multiple human observers.

Establishment after analysis: "Your underlying suggestion that something extraterrestrial, paranormal, etc was happening here is horse####."
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That's the crux of the matter I think.

My thought is that there's a huge difference between...

A. The possibility space consisting of all the hypothetical possibilities about how an unknown event might conceivably be explained. It's going to be an unbounded space by its nature, since there will be possibilities that nobody has thought of yet. Inclusion in this space will be highly speculative.

I have no real objection to including space aliens, time-travelers or interdimensional beings in this one. (I would actually encourage their inclusion, which makes me a "believer" in some eyes, I guess.) They are certainly possibilities, and there seems to be no reason to exclude them apart from preexisting ideas about what is and isn't real.

And I get the impression that's all that MR really wants to defend, their possibility. That's why I raised the issue earlier in a post directed at MR. What I was hoping for when I wrote it was inducing MR to clarify what his own position is. But JamesR jumped in with both feet, muddying the waters.

B. The actuality space consisting of the one correct explanation of what an unknown event really is. Given that it's an unknown event ex hypothesi, the contents of this space will be unknown, at least at first, even if we can assume that it's a much smaller space than the possibility space in A. The goal of inquiry is to shrink A. (the unbounded set of possible explanations) down to B. (the one correct explanation). That typically involves seeking more information.

My own skeptical fallibilism suggests to me that any flat-and-final statement of what is and isn't the case is probably impossible for beings like ourselves, who lack a "god's eye view" of reality. The best we can do is to argue about which possibility from A. seems most probable to us, based on whatever evidence that we happen to have acquired through inquiry.

I certainly don't want to argue that all possibilities are equally likely, though they might approach that situation in the absence of information that allows us to assign them weights, unless we introduce some preexisting assumptions to prune back the possibilities.

Put another way, I'm inclined to think that all of our knowledge claims are works-in-progress. In effect we are trying to grow our knowledge of the universe by lifting ourselves by our bootstraps.
 
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And I get the impression that's all that MR really wants to defend, their possibility. That's why I raised the issue earlier in a post directed at MR. What I was hoping for when I wrote it was inducing MR to clarify what his own position is. But JamesR jumped in with both feet, muddying the waters.
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Yes..that's all I'm saying. It is a distinct possibility that uaps are the products of non-human beings. In fact, it is really more than a possibility. It is imo an inference from the observed fact of uaps exhibiting traits that are beyond our present technology. It logically follows from this that they are of non-human origin. Or else some natural phenomenon we have never encountered before.
 
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Magical Realist said:
It is a distinct possibility that uaps are the products of non-human beings.
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We all grant that it's a possibility.

As the guys in Project Blue Book used to say: "We can't tell you you didn't see a UFO."

But possibilities are as useful as boobs on a snake. Here's why:

Magical Realist said:
It is imo an inference from the observed fact of uaps exhibiting traits that are beyond our present technology. It logically follows from this that they are of non-human origin. Or else some natural phenomenon we have never encountered before.
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Yes. Including angels, and even God.

I'm not being facetious or mocking here. The skeptic stance is "OK, I'm not about to grant the existence of God or angels just because I haven't figured out what's happening here. If there's evidence that requires God to be the explanation, I'll take that seriously. Until then, it's an overreach." The exact same argument holds for aliens (or your non-human beings).

So yes; It's a distinct possibility that UAPs are angels or God. The same distinct possibility.


(It is an easy conclusion that you and Yazata must both consider God to be a possible explanation for these UAPs. If not, then you are skeptical of God. That would mark you both as hypocritical in your denigration of skepticism. That's a tough place to be.)
 
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