UFOs - Is anybody out there?

[jcm@gwr]

16 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Don’t be pert any more.  Britain needs ex perts...

 

Pert: lithe, lissom. 
Pertinent: relevant. 
Impertinent: irreverent  

Incontinent: and we’re back to drips under pressure...

 

There are a couple of things that I can think of, that are better when pert!

[woodenhead]

4 minutes ago, jcm@gwr said:

 

There are a couple of things that I can think of, that are better when pert!

Hmm, you've seen Toyah as well then singing in the kitchen 

[SHMD]

"Expert"

 

"Ex" is a "has been"

"Spurt" is a "drip under pressure"

 

 

I find that you have to trust experts BUT experts first have to first earn that trust.

If the populace can not be relied upon to differentiate between the "experts" with no agenda/anything-to-gain, and those experts, who are pushing a philosophy/opinion because they have something to gain or promote, thus relegating the unbiased truth to second (or no) place.

 

I think mass-media has a duty to control/sensor wrong/dangerous information.

We are beginning to see something like this after a certain powerful politician spouted verifiable nonsense as "the truth" or "fake news" or "I never said that" or .......

 

I find myself increasingly asking people, who ask me about such a thing/persons views, "what do they have to gain by saying such a thing". I tend to believe/listen more to those who are verifiably independent of any news item.

 

 

Getting back on (well more on!) subject, a lot of reported UFOs are just natural events/phenomena but are poorly/insufficiently documented, allowing experts/anyone to wildly extrapolate anything they want out of it for whatever reason. If there is a gain to be had, with that extrapolated nonsense, then they are encouraged to push that nonsense even more.

 

Quite often, there really is smoke with no fire!

 

 

Kev.

[KeithMacdonald]

On 06/11/2019 at 23:46, Dave Hunt said:

I spent nearly forty years as a pilot in the RAF, mainly flying fighters, and in all that time not only did I never see anything that could be construed as a UFO but I never met anyone or even heard about anyone who had. I also worked with pilots from most NATO air forces and navies and spent time detached to other air forces, during which I never saw or heard about anything that could be a UFO. Either I am missing something or the security surrounding the subject is so tight that frankly it beggars belief.

 

Dave

 

Hi Dave

 

I accept what you say, especially as other RAF pilots I know say the same. Except for pilots that were at Boscombe Down in the late 1960s and 1970s, when Boscombe Down was home to the testing of a new generation of UK remote-control drone aircraft. Also, I don't suppose many in the RAF paid much attention to what the Royal Artillery was doing (unless they tried to shoot at the RAF)

 

e.g.

Quote

A drone of the SDI surveillance drone system, used by the Royal Artillery, is given a pre-launch check at Larkhill in Wiltshire, England, May 1962. This was the first of a family of new drones acquired by the Royal Artillery in the 1960s to extend observation over the battlefield and to locate targets for new long range weapons.

 

Recommended reading:

Imperial War Museum's "A brief history of drones"

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-brief-history-of-drones

 

Some might say : So what?

 

Here's what. These days, we are accustomed to seeing TV and films with coverage of remote-controlled drones with GPS and amazing precision digital accuracy. But back then, before GPS, it was all analogue, and the remote-control was unreliable and not very accurate. So those early drones wobbled a lot and often changed direction. The thing was, being semi-secret devices, and being sensible, the test flight paths went over the least populated areas. From Boscombe and/or Larkhill, that meant flying west, over Salisbury Plain and the Somerset Levels. Which meant these things flew over places like Stonehenge, Avebury, and Glastonbury. Places fairly well stocked with fairly stoned hippies who noticed strange flashing lights wobbling in the skies, or sunlight reflecting off strange little aircraft.

Being semi-secret test devices, the MoD denied it was anything to do with them.

 

Oh wow man, it must be UFOs.

 

One particularly famous-but-unfortunate individual was Reg Presley (of The Troggs). His home in Somerset was under one of these test flight paths. Unfortunate because he became convinced they were genuine UFOs and then spent a large part of what he had earned from The Troggs on UFO research for the next 40 years.

 

Conclusions?

1) Muppetry is more prevalent than malevolence

2) Forgotten events occur more frequently than suppressed secrets.

 

[KeithMacdonald]

On 18/12/2019 at 00:41, Pacific231G said:

For a long time nobody believed seafarers' accounts of giant rogue waves that appear from nowhere and disappear completely and even more dangerous giant rogue holes both capable of sinking a large well found ship. Eventually one such wave was observed in the North Sea in 1995 by measuring equipment fitted to the Draupner E gas platform about 90NM SSW of the southern tip of Norway. Since then they've been observed several times and even spotted in detailed analyses of satellite images and there may be as many as ten of them in the world's oceans at any one time; there may  also be super-rogue waves five times higher than the prevailing sea state. However there is AFAIK still no satisfactory mathematical theory to account for them  though they have now been reproduced in experimental tanks. They seem to be a pure phenomenon of wave interactions not requiring any exceptional external cause.

 

I concur. There is, however, one common-sense explanation. Small tsunami waves, cause by deep ocean earth tremors (small earthquakes) or landslides. Like smaller version of the Norwegian Storegga Slide

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

[jcm@gwr]

My take on this, is that I think it's very arrogant to assume we are the only

intelligent beings/life forms in the universe, this is being backed up by the

discovery of more and more planets that are in the 'Goldilocks Zone', (the

ideal distance from the sun that they orbit), potentially able to support life.

 

The problem is that almost all these planets are being discovered in very

distant galaxies, and the chances of anyone or anything travelling those 

vast distances (normally measured in light years) is extremely remote, if

not impossible. We might, in the future, be able to communicate (send or

receive messages), but the time lag would preclude the notion of 'having

a chat', more likely to be a generational thing! 

[Reorte]

32 minutes ago, jcm@gwr said:

My take on this, is that I think it's very arrogant to assume we are the only

intelligent beings/life forms in the universe, this is being backed up by the

discovery of more and more planets that are in the 'Goldilocks Zone', (the

ideal distance from the sun that they orbit), potentially able to support life.

 

The problem is that almost all these planets are being discovered in very

distant galaxies, and the chances of anyone or anything travelling those 

vast distances (normally measured in light years) is extremely remote, if

not impossible. We might, in the future, be able to communicate (send or

receive messages), but the time lag would preclude the notion of 'having

a chat', more likely to be a generational thing! 

Mostly in this galaxy to be fair, although that still involves very long distances (the nearest star outside our solar system is over four light years away - and has two confirmed planets orbiting it). Sending probes to the nearest stars within a human lifetime is actually a plausible goal, current technology isn't up to it yet but getting there doesn't require science fiction style technology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

[2750Papyrus]

2 hours ago, jcm@gwr said:

 

There are a couple of things that I can think of, that are better when pert!

Oops, you caught me thinking about the girl from Cheltenham......

 

At one time, I was employed as a PERT Engineer.  Formally, the acronym stood for Project Evaluation and Review Technique, and was reputedly pioneered on the USN Polaris programme.  Informally, its critics claimed it stood for Persistent Evasion of the Real Truth.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

I concur. There is, however, one common-sense explanation. Small tsunami waves, cause by deep ocean earth tremors (small earthquakes) or landslides. Like smaller version of the Norwegian Storegga Slide

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

Hi Keith. Rogue waves are different from tsunami waves which, because of their long wavelenth, are harmless in the open ocean but become very dangerous when they reach shallow water, particularly coastlines. They can also travel long distances unlike rogue waves which seem to be of very short duration.

Rogue waves seem to have a similar wavelenth to the normal waves around them. 

This is the "Drauper Wave" recorded by an oil rig in the North Sea in 1995.

 

Though there isn't yet AFAIK a complete mathematical model for them they can be recreated in laboratory conditions. 

The Wiki. on rogue waves is actually pretty good but the Drauper Wave itself was recreated in 2019 by a team from Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science using Edinburgh University's wave tank, and they've made their research available online.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-fluid-mechanics/article/laboratory-recreation-of-the-draupner-wave-and-the-role-of-breaking-in-crossing-seas/65EA3294DAFD97A50C8046140B45F759

 

Rogue waves don't seem to require an external input beyond the interaction of waves themselves and, unlike ocean tremors, quakes and slides they seem to be around all the time. Fortunately they mostly happen away from ships but unlike tsunamis where warnings are possible they seem to occur apparently at random.  

All this  does lead me to wonder whether otherwise inexplicable UFO sightings may themselves be the result of unusual and rarely observed atmospheric phenomenon. Unexplained doesn't mean inexplicable.

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Pacific231G

[KeithMacdonald]

41 minutes ago, Reorte said:

Sending probes to the nearest stars within a human lifetime is actually a plausible goal, current technology isn't up to it yet but getting there doesn't require science fiction style technology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

 

An excellent idea!

 

Quote

The conceptual principles to enable this interstellar travel project were described in "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight", by Philip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara. Sending the lightweight spacecraft involves a multi-kilometer phased array of beam-steerable lasers with a combined coherent power output of up to 100 GW.

 

Also an excellent plot for a future Bond film.

e.g.

Evil villian hijacks the 100 GW beam-steerable lasers and plans to aim them at all the major countries, capital buildings etc. Bond goes rogue (again), borrows some HALO jump equipment (again) to jump into villian's HQ and saves the world (again).

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, jcm@gwr said:

My take on this, is that I think it's very arrogant to assume we are the only

intelligent beings/life forms in the universe, this is being backed up by the

discovery of more and more planets that are in the 'Goldilocks Zone', (the

ideal distance from the sun that they orbit), potentially able to support life.

 

The problem is that almost all these planets are being discovered in very

distant galaxies, and the chances of anyone or anything travelling those 

vast distances (normally measured in light years) is extremely remote, if

not impossible. We might, in the future, be able to communicate (send or

receive messages), but the time lag would preclude the notion of 'having

a chat', more likely to be a generational thing! 

 

This

 

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

Mostly in this galaxy to be fair, although that still involves very long distances (the nearest star outside our solar system is over four light years away - and has two confirmed planets orbiting it). Sending probes to the nearest stars within a human lifetime is actually a plausible goal, current technology isn't up to it yet but getting there doesn't require science fiction style technology (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot)

 

And this.

 

There must be very many places in the galaxy, never mind the universe, that life has developed to an advanced state (very basic life is probably endemic, and what we call 'extremophiles' are probably the norm; we are the extremophiles).  But, assuming (always a dangerous thing, but all we've got at the moment) that the speed limit of communication is light speed, (I'm siding with Einstein on this, he knew more about it than I do) and that of physical travel is light speed or somewhere close, which is far too slwo for any practicable purpose over these sorts of disantces (seriously, the comparison with continentaly drift comes out very much in favour of continental drift, which can achieve distances of thousands of miles in a few 10s of millions of years), then making a ball park assessement of how many of those places are a) within communcating distance of us by even as low as a few centuries, b) have developed advanced life that is capable of the tech needed to communicate, c)  actually might want to communicate with aien life like us, d) have some idea where we are to know where to aim the signal, e) get that right, and f) time it so that, of the 14 billion year since the big bang, the signal arrives within a century or so of our being able to recieve it will show that the chances of picking a signal up are vanishingly small.

 

To cover the spread, the signal has to be generated simultaneously in all directions from it's transmitter, which requires power sources that are unlikely to be available on a planet; the only ones we know that cut the mustard so far are from pulsars, massive power generators.  So, ET is out there for something very close to absolute certainty, and thinks we are ET if he/she/it thinks about it at all, and may or may not want to get in touch for a variety of reasons, not all of which are necessarily primarily driven by scientific curiosity as many a 50s B movie tells us.  But we are all much, much too far away from each other to acutally communicate, and the number of reasons ET doesn't want or is incapable of communcication are considerable. 

 

So, to respond to the OP's original question about UFOs, there are flying objects that are difficult to identify, but they are always terrestrial military aircraft or lighting effects, or mistaken natural phenomena.  Now, it's not impossible that alien spacecraft have visited Earth at some time over the past 4 and a half billion years, but it's pretty unlikely and if they were looking for developed life they'd have to have been very lucky with their timing.  The answer to the question is thus, yes, someone's out there.  So what? 

 

The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said.

 

 

 

 

 

UUUUULLLLLAAAAA! derra der derrr derra  derra....

[KeithMacdonald]

9 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

Hi Keith. Rogue waves are different from tsunami waves which, because of their long wavelenth, are harmless in the open ocean but become very dangerous when they reach shallow water, particularly coastlines. They can also travel long distances unlike rogue waves which seem to be of very short duration.

Rogue waves seem to have a similar wavelenth to the normal waves around them. 

This is the "Drauper Wave" recorded by an oil rig in the North Sea in 1995.

 

@Pacific231G - thanks for explaining, I'd forgotten there's a distinction.

 

It does remind me of something that might be more usual. From when I used to sail offshore in deeper open water. The times when we felt the effect of the waves most was when sailing downwind, with winds above force four, with the wind angle (and the wave front) around 150 degrees or 210 degrees from the bow. About every seventh wave would be bigger than the previous six, and could lift the stern more, and throw the boat around more. At a guess I'd say the seventh wave was between 10% and 30% bigger.

 

Everyone I've ever sailed with just accepted that as something natural that just happens, but nobody could explain why. Maybe some kinds of resonance effect? Maybe there are circumstances when that resonance is even bigger or compounded?

 

But not caused by UFOs (as far as I know).

[Michael Hodgson]

I don't know much about UFOs or time travel but somewhere I do have a cast metal Tardis in 4mm scale.

Took it off the layout as it looked a bit out of place at a provincial branch line station.

[Steamport Southport]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I don't know much about UFOs or time travel but somewhere I do have a cast metal Tardis in 4mm scale.

Took it off the layout as it looked a bit out of place at a provincial branch line station.

 

Depends on where it's set.

 

They were usually found in towns and cities. But some rural places did have them. There used to be a few dotted about in North Wales for example.

 

They were after all phone boxes for policemen to call the police station for assistance before they had radios. As well as for the public to phone the police. Still loads of them about in the 1970s.

 

Likewise the RAC and AA boxes. People forget they even existed, but how else were you meant to phone ET?

 

 

http://www.the-telephone-box.co.uk/kiosks/tardis/

 

 

[KeithMacdonald]

9 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I don't know much about UFOs or time travel but somewhere I do have a cast metal Tardis in 4mm scale.

Took it off the layout as it looked a bit out of place at a provincial branch line station.

 

 

Barry Island Railway Station is one location already used

https://www.doctorwholocations.net/locations/barryislandrailwaystation

 

Also, Buckinghamshire Railway Centre

https://www.doctorwholocations.net/locations/buckinghamshirerailwaycentre

[Pacific231G]

On 20/01/2021 at 09:37, Nick C said:

The cynic in me thinks that's deliberate, to undermine public trust in real experts, and thus keep us reliant on the mass media for 'knowledge'...

It really isn't like that and in general I'd say do be sceptical but don't be cynical. The people who want you to believe that everthing in the mass media is a lie are the very people who want to lie to you and not be called out for lying. 

There are media outlets- in Britain certain newspapers mostly- that set out to support a particular political standpoint. Elsewhere Fox News disgusts me and is about as unbiased as a North Korean state news agency but most of the mass media is staffed by people who want to get at the truth. There's no grand conspiracy in the mainstream media to keep the public ignorant. If there was, there would be umpteen programmes and well researched articles exposing it.

 

I made factual programmes for the BBC for twenty years and also worked in newsrooms. There was no pressure to tell a story a certain way to give a particular impression but there was pressure to get to the truth. What does tend to happen, particularly in news where time is always too short, is that once an expert has been found who is willing to appear, doesn't appear to have an axe to grind and doesn't fall apart on camera,  they tend to get a bit overused.

Edited January 21, 2021 by Pacific231G

[boxbrownie]

Ha ha ha you poor meagre earthlings.....completely oblivious 

[2750Papyrus]

19 hours ago, Pacific231G said:

It really isn't like that and in general I'd say do be sceptical but don't be cynical. The people who want you to believe that everthing in the mass media is a lie are the very people who want to lie to you and not be called out for lying. 

There are media outlets- in Britain certain newspapers mostly- that set out to support a particular political standpoint. Elsewhere Fox News disgusts me and is about as unbiased as a North Korean state news agency but most of the mass media is staffed by people who want to get at the truth. There's no grand conspiracy in the mainstream media to keep the public ignorant. If there was, there would be umpteen programmes and well researched articles exposing it.

 

I made factual programmes for the BBC for twenty years and also worked in newsrooms. There was no pressure to tell a story a certain way to give a particular impression but there was pressure to get to the truth. What does tend to happen, particularly in news where time is always too short, is that once an expert has been found who is willing to appear, doesn't appear to have an axe to grind and doesn't fall apart on camera,  they tend to get a bit overused.

 

Do we not live in a post-truth society, where news is a mixture of facts, factoids and emotion?

[Ron Ron Ron]

I have been monitoring this thread with interest........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

I have been monitoring this thread with interest........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

From where............

[laurenceb]

Planet Spud?

[Ron Ron Ron]

In the run up to the official US government release of information, relating to AATIP and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), there has been an increasing amount of discussion and articles published in the media.

Apart from the usual dismissive tone from some quarters, the subject is being treated quite seriously by some respectable publications and media outlets.

 

The number of former senior officials who have spoken publicly, may even suggest that a "softening up" exercise may be being carried out, prior to the public disclosure of the report.

 

The Washington Post carried out this interview with former AATIP director, Luis Elizondo, last week.

 

It's 31 minutes long, so needs your attention.

Whatever preconceptions you may hold, the points being made between 10.30 and 13.00 minutes, should make any rational human take note.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[johnofwessex]

On 21/01/2021 at 04:31, Steamport Southport said:

 

Depends on where it's set.

 

They were usually found in towns and cities. But some rural places did have them. There used to be a few dotted about in North Wales for example.

 

They were after all phone boxes for policemen to call the police station for assistance before they had radios. As well as for the public to phone the police. Still loads of them about in the 1970s.

 

Likewise the RAC and AA boxes. People forget they even existed, but how else were you meant to phone ET?

 

 

http://www.the-telephone-box.co.uk/kiosks/tardis/

 

 

 

I passed an AA box in Wales on holiday a few weeks ago

[Kylestrome]

1 hour ago, johnofwessex said:

I passed an AA box in Wales on holiday a few weeks ago

 

Aliens Anonymous?

[Nearholmer]

7 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

the points being made between 10.30 and 13.00 minutes, should make any rational human take note.

He makes a good pitch in that section, no question, but there is something about his overall drift/tone that reminds me of post-truth politicians, conspiracy theorists, and certain sorts of evangelists, the way he creates a soufflé of verbiage that sort of says very little, but very deliberately leaves impressions on the mind.

 

Maybe I simply don’t warm to over-articulate Americans who clearly want me to believe something (the something in this case, I think, being that it would be a good idea to create and fund a whopping great study into this subject, presumably with him in charge).