2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

I believe he said "quite a number" when asked how many were in the possession of "the program". Recent reporting from Michael Shellenberger has claimed that his sources have indicated that the number is "at least twelve".  Lazar also claimed that at least one of the vehicles being worked on was recovered in an archeological dig.....so we may be talking about a fairly long timeframe.

 

Long time frame or not, Its too many for a hyper advanced technology that makes child's play of interdimensional and interstellar travel. I think people underestimate the technological requirement that we are talking about, its absolutely extreme, and a species that advanced would have perfected "flying through an atmosphere". I'm not saying a multitude of crashed hyper capable alien craft is impossible, just that it has a very low degree of probability assigned to it.

I mentioned earlier in this debate, that one possibility I might envisage is that what we are dealing with is some kind of unmanned probe technology that's been drifting through the cosmos for an extreme length of time. Thus, not as sophisticated and far more unreliable (due to the protracted travel time) than we think. That would of course preclude the "found alien bodies" claim. 

 

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

But if you must, one could easily hypothesize that if you were orders of magnitude more advanced than us, you'd send a "biological" robot that could do way more than a drone

 

An interesting idea, and one I admit I've considered before when we've debated this on the forum. If our synthetic biological being had true AGI though and was so advanced it was superior to hardware AGI, it would likely be sentient and the race risking its life not a pleasant one, for the act of risking a sentient beings life.

 

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

As for why they crash. I think it might be a bit of a fallacy to assume "they" travelled any meaningful distance in relatively small (as popularly described) craft. If you were visiting a newly discovered island, you wouldn't dock / beach / land your oceangoing vessel on the shore. You'd keep it moored out of sight send a small (and likely much less durable) landing craft. <<This somewhat excludes the interdimensional hypothesis.

 

Some kind of landing craft, rather than a mothership, wouldn't be less durable. Again we are talking about a species that has hyper advanced technology, and these smaller craft are said to be capable of many times the speed of sound, thousands of G and rapid maneuvers without being restrained by inertia (tic tac UFO for example) that's not a craft with a low level of durability and likely to crash. 

 

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

We do have some pretty cool Laser and EM-based weapons being put on warships now...who knows how long those have been operational.

 

Doubt such weapons' would have any impact whatsoever, when we consider the huge forces these claimed small saucer shaped objects are said to withstand, during their physics defying maneuvers. 

 

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

Again, If true, this is kind of a big deal so I feel it's worth paying attention.

 

More than a big deal. It would be huge discovery, the biggest ever. 

 

Sorry to challenge so much that you have said, but its important to consider all possibilities and subject such claims to a skeptical analysis. The human brain is easily fooled. 🤔

Edited June 21, 20232 yr by martin-w

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

 

After the Chinese balloon was shot down, radar was retuned, hence why other "baloons" were identified. Before that the filters were set  to a lower sensitivity to avoid clutter from small commercial balloons. 

Correct, so I guess the implication is that maybe whoever was sending "spy" balloons stopped sending them after the first was discovered, and the final 3 were just leftovers? Seems a bit of a stretch.

So no more balloons were discovered after that? No more runaway commercial or weather balloons? ....or did the news cycle just move on and the rest weren't reported? Either way....shenanigans.

12 minutes ago, DaviiB said:

Correct, so I guess the implication is that maybe whoever was sending "spy" balloons stopped sending them after the first was discovered, and the final 3 were just leftovers? Seems a bit of a stretch.

So no more balloons were discovered after that? No more runaway commercial or weather balloons? ....or did the news cycle just move on and the rest weren't reported? Either way....shenanigans.

 

I suspect that after the Chinese admitted it was their balloon, the authorities panicked and the filters on the sensors were adjusted in an attempt to track down smaller surveillance balloons. the other balloons that were detected were probably just commercial balloons.  The filters were there for a reason of course, so that the sensors weren't full of clutter from the plethora of commercial balloons and weather balloons etc. May be that those filters have been adjusted to detect what could more likely be spy balloon rather than a  mini commercial balloon.

You can buy small helium balloons yourself, any of us can, they are common. Clearly they can't leave radar sensors set so that they detect them or our sensors would be swamped.

Me thinks you are a true believer and want the alien visitation hypothesis to be true. 😁

 

https://www.scientificsales.com/Meteorological-Weather-Sounding-Balloon-s/25.htm

 

17 minutes ago, DaviiB said:

.or did the news cycle just move on and the rest weren't reported?

Correct. They have more important things to be reporting on an ongoing basis. If it doesn't defy the laws of physics, they are not all that interested.

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

......Doubt such weapons' would have any impact whatsoever, when we consider the huge forces these claimed small saucer shaped objects are said to withstand, during their physics defying maneuvers......

That is assuming that these "physics defying movements" are being performed using conventional motion. They could be an illusion.

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

An interesting idea, and one I admit I've considered before when we've debated this on the forum. If our synthetic biological being had true AGI though and was so advanced it was superior to hardware AGI, it would likely be sentient and the race risking its life, not a pleasant one, for the cat of risking a sentient beings life.

I think the implications of an AGI are much broader than that, and leaves a lot of possibilities open. Imagine a centralized AGI, controlling multiple "robots". If it's actually sentient (a massive can of worms), would it be concerned about losing one of its "probes"?

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Some kind of landing craft, rather than a mothership, wouldn't be less durable. Again we are talking about a species that has hyper advanced technology, and these smaller craft are said to be capable of many times the speed of sound, thousands of G and rapid maneuvers without being restrained by inertia (tic tac UFO for example) that's not a craft with a low level of durability and likely to crash. 

On the contrary, if you're not restrained by inertia, then you don't really need much structural reinforcement. If a craft is immune to G forces (i.e. inertia....which seems to be implied by instantaneous acceleration), you can make it out of balsa wood and it'll do the job just fine.

In aviation, we reinforce wing spars because of the G-Loading the wings endure and landing gear is reinforced because of impact forces.....all of which is moot if you're able to manipulate gravity, mass and/or inertia.

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Doubt such weapons' would have any impact whatsoever, when we consider the huge forces these claimed small saucer shaped objects are said to withstand, during their physics defying maneuvers. 

See above. 

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Long time frame or not, Its too many for a hyper advanced technology that makes child's play of interdimensional and interstellar travel. I think people underestimate the technological requirement that we are talking about, its absolutely extreme, and a species that advanced would have perfected "flying through an atmosphere". I'm not saying a multitude of crashed hyper capable alien craft is impossible, just that it has a very low degree of probability assigned to it.

I think there's another big underlying assumption here that nobody's pointed out (and I haven't really touched). What if the technologies that enable the "physics defying" maneuvers we're discussing are actually fairly basic / universal?

What if we (modern science) have missed, or completely misunderstood something fundamental in the Physics of the universe, and due to the momentum of "technological advancement", we've wound up doing things "the hard way" (Read: inefficient or unnecessarily difficult). 

We hear descriptions of craft doing Physics-defying maneuvers and immediately assume the tech and science involved must be incredibly advanced, because we consider ourselves to be technologically sophisticated.

What if, for the last 50-100 years we have been perfecting the wrong tools for the job? Like trying to sharpen a spoon when we could just use a fork.

It's not outside the realm of possibility that as a civilization develops, scientific advancement could "break the wrong way" for a while, and end up pursuing a potential dead-end. (See: String Theory). During that time, the "leap" required to get back on track could seem insurmountable, when in reality all that's needed is to correct a fundamental "law" that we got wrong. 

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Sorry to challenge so much that you have said, but its important to consider all possibilities and subject such claims to a skeptical analysis. The human brain is easily fooled

I actually really appreciate the discussion!

Cheers

Edited June 21, 20232 yr by DaviiB
Grammar

8 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

I suspect that after the Chinese admitted it was their balloon, the authorities panicked and the filters on the sensors were adjusted in an attempt to track down smaller surveillance balloons. the other balloons that were detected were probably just commercial balloons.  The filters were there for a reason of course, so that the sensors weren't full of clutter from the plethora of commercial balloons and weather balloons etc. May be that those filters have been adjusted to detect what could more likely be spy balloon rather than a  mini commercial balloon.

You can buy small helium balloons yourself, any of us can, they are common. Clearly they can't leave radar sensors set so that they detect them or our sensors would be swamped.

Me thinks you are a true believer and want the alien visitation hypothesis to be true. 😁

 

https://www.scientificsales.com/Meteorological-Weather-Sounding-Balloon-s/25.htm

 

When I say shenanigans, I mean it appears to me that the whole Balloon / UAP shoot-down thing was completely overblown. I don't think they actually brought down a UAP with an F22 / F16. That idea seems a bit unrealistic (at best).

5 hours ago, robb13 said:

... I thought the President could do that just by thinking about it  !

Actually, the President has zero authority over classification/de-classification of military related projects. That authority lies solely within the purview of the DoD and/or the DoE.

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

Imagine a centralized AGI, controlling multiple "robots". If it's actually sentient (a massive can of worms), would it be concerned about losing one of its "probes"?

 

Very true, but that's my point. If the centralized AI was in a mothership then the craft darting about our skies would be unmanned drones, thus, no bodies in crashed craft for humans to discover. That was my point. 

 

2 hours ago, DaviiB said:

On the contrary, if you're not restrained by inertia, then you don't really need much structural reinforcement. If a craft is immune to G forces (i.e. inertia....which seems to be implied by instantaneous acceleration), you can make it out of balsa wood and it'll do the job just fine.

 

If your craft was made of balsa wood you would make sure that your force fields and structural integrity fields and inertial dampening fields were fool proof so as not to get shot down by those pesky human F22's, or suffer some kind of structural failure and crash. Or, If you know humans have pesky F22's that fire rounds and missiles then you make sure the structure of your craft is not made of a flimsy material like balsa wood. Either way, an advanced alien civilization, perhaps on the Kardashev scale, capable of manipulating matter on the atomic scale, wouldn't be lazy and a bit dumb and not bother to make their craft capable of withstanding any threats they may face. 

 

Edited June 21, 20232 yr by martin-w

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Very true, but that's my point. If the centralized AI was in a mothership then the craft darting about our skies would be unmanned drones, thus, no bodies in crashed craft for humans to discover. That was my point. 

My point was that the "bodies" could be AI-controlled, biological robots placed on board to perform a function. More useful than just an "unmanned" drone, but still very much expendable.

 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Either way, an advanced alien civilization, perhaps on the Kardashev scale, capable of manipulating matter on the atomic scale, wouldn't be lazy and a bit dumb and not bother to make their craft capable of withstanding any threats they may face. 

You're running the risk of assigning godlike capabilities to a hypothetical species we know nothing about. Our run-of-the-mill military hardware would seem impossibly advanced, and virtually infallible, to "technologically advanced" humans from just 500 years ago, but it still fails sometimes, and crashes do happen. 

To be clear, I'm inclined to agree with you that a civilization with extremely-advanced technology shouldn't have craft "falling out of the sky", but we can't presume to understand the operating parameters, limitations and capacities of these vehicles. Safe to assume that everything physical will have some kind of limits and / or be designed for certain environments. We don't know what those limits would be because we don't understand the methodology of construction, propulsion, or intended operating parameters. 

Perhaps (per my last post) we're assigning too much credibility to the technical capabilities of these craft, beings (or whatever). What if the technology involved isn't so much more "advanced" but just "different"? 

 

Has anyone given any thought to the possibility that the universal benchmark for measuring the "level of advancement" of a civilization might not be technological capability, but something else entirely?

After all, we (humans) were "smart" enough to build the atomic bomb, but not "advanced" enough to know we should never use it.

 

DB

Edited June 21, 20232 yr by DaviiB

Why do so many crash?  Perhaps there is something in our airspace that interferes with the propulsion, navigation or flight control (or even alien pilot biology) of some of the craft.  Perhaps there's some minor difference in the physics between their origin and here (this was actually considered during the earliest moon flights, unlikely though it is).  Maybe the pilots are just sleep deprived, or whatever their version of hypoxia is.

Where is the NTSB in all this? 😄  HAS the NTSB investigated any of these crashes but can't talk about it because... "it's classified"?  How many of the crashes are *normal* secret aircraft projects that the government wouldn't want reported to the public, and thus to unfriendly countries?

Maybe the aliens are here to find out how we're able to have so many commercial airline flights with so few crashes?  What is it we know that they don't about flight safety?  

Or... maybe it's all misdirection/slight of hand/smoke and mirrors and the entire subject should be considered psyops until proven otherwise.  

Is all this making anyone else's head hurt?

Hook

I just thought of another one.  Maybe there's something in the technology that allows travel across multi-lightyear space that degrades the systems on some craft, or affects their pilots.  Think "worm holes".  

Maybe the aliens look exactly like us at home, but worm hole travel morphs their bodies into what we think of as alien greys.  This would likely give them some problems operating their craft.  Sure seems unlikely, but we won't know until we are able to try it ourselves.  Worm hole technology, or whatever they are using, might be a relatively new tech for the aliens.

More likely that "faster than light" travel technology synthesizes some hallucinogenic substance in the brains of the pilots or creates a hallucinogenic field in the vicinity of their craft affecting not only the pilots but potential observers.  Naw, that's too far out.

Why is this whole subject distracting me from reading legitimate science fiction anyway??  My Kindle Insights page currently has me at 435 consecutive days reading on my Kindle.  It would be a lot higher (currently 101 weeks of reading) if I hadn't taken occasional time off to flight sim.

Hook

They are here and been here...

Who here is watching this excellent show - The Secrets of SkinWalker Ranch.  It is not made for TV, it is honestly the experiments are being documented for TV

Heck, you can become an insider and ask these questions via zoom call every Thursday.

Wait till you get to Season 3...jaws drop

 

 

13 hours ago, DaviiB said:

My point was that the "bodies" could be AI-controlled, biological robots placed on board to perform a function. More useful than just an "unmanned" drone, but still very much expendable.

 

No point though, AI hardware could serve the same function. No point in cloning  loads of bodies and manipulating them in some way so they aren't sentient. 

 

13 hours ago, DaviiB said:

You're running the risk of assigning godlike capabilities to a hypothetical species we know nothing about. Our run-of-the-mill military hardware would seem impossibly advanced, and virtually infallible, to "technologically advanced" humans from just 500 years ago, but it still fails sometimes, and crashes do happen.

 

Nope, it was just an example. Regardless of how far advanced than us they are, If you are a species that can do the things its claimed these alleged craft can, then by definition you aren't likely to frequently crash. Not crashing is the easy stuff. Yes, our tech does crash sometimes, but a lot less than it used to, now project forward far enough in terms of technological development to the point where you can travel at relativistic speeds, or through time, or from another dimension, clearly reliability would have improved too, especially in terms of the easy stuff. But to hear the UFO community speak, there are loads of crashed alien craft. I could accept the possibility of one or two over a few centuries, but Lazar's 9, the recent claim of 12, Grusch and him several, and a claim of a Russian crash a while back, a claim of it being a global phenomenon and ongoing... sorry, sounds like nonsense to me. Too much hyperbole, they should have just stuck at one or two and they would have had me less skeptical. There's money to be made out of this stuff, which muddies the =waters, which is a shame. 

 

13 hours ago, DaviiB said:

Perhaps (per my last post) we're assigning too much credibility to the technical capabilities of these craft, beings (or whatever). What if the technology involved isn't so much more "advanced" but just "different"? 

 

Not logical. The physics that these craft allegedly defy is basic stuff, KNOWN laws. The stuff easily discovered FIRST. Exotic physics is the hard stuff, a way around the laws we currently know. The steps we require to get there aren't something you can just bypass. To climb a mountain begins with the first step, you don't jump to the top. Yes, serendipitous breakthroughs can happen, but not in terms of finding our way around hard to cheat fundamental laws. 

 

Edited June 22, 20232 yr by martin-w

4 hours ago, Skywolf said:

Who here is watching this excellent show - The Secrets of SkinWalker Ranch.

 

Its utter nonsense. And I'm not impressed with the scientist on the team who behaves in a very unscientific way. Mick Wiest has asked for their data regarding the claimed forcefield that deflected a bottle. So far its not been forthcoming and my guess is it wont be.

Its an entertainment show designed to make money. Don't take it seriously.  

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

 

 

Quote

 

Criticism[edit]

According to skeptical author Robert Sheaffer, "the 'phenomenon' at Skinwalker is almost certainly illusory. Not only was the several-years-long monitoring of 'Skinwalker' by NIDSci unable to obtain proof of anything unusual happening, but also, the people who owned the property prior to the Shermans, a family whose members lived there 60 years, deny that any mysterious 'phenomena' of any kind occurred there". Sheaffer says "the parsimonious explanation is that the supernatural claims about the ranch were made up by the Sherman family prior to selling it to the gullible Bigelow". Sheaffer wrote that many of the more extraordinary claims originated solely from Terry Sherman, who worked as a caretaker after the ranch was sold to Bigelow.^[12]

In 1996, skeptic James Randi awarded Bigelow a Pigasus Award for funding the purchase of the ranch and for supporting John E. Mack's and Budd Hopkins' investigations. The award category designated Bigelow as "the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult [sic]".^[13]

In 2023, ufologist Barry Greenwood, writing in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, criticized the $22 million research program led by James Lacatski. He emphasized the lack of any documentary evidence from the ranch after many decades of exploration, and characterized Skinwalker as "always in the business of selling belief and hope".^[14]