Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens?

by ROB Sun Dec 11, 2011 2:19 am

First topic message reminder :

Cloaked planet-sized UFO discovered near Mercury? Read the article and view the video.
__________________________________________________________________________________________

Mysterious planet-sized object spotted near Mercury
By Eric Pfeiffer

Is a giant, cloaked spaceship orbiting around Mercury?

Theorists have seized on the images captured from the "coronal mass ejection" (CME) last week as suggestive of alien life hanging out in our own cosmic backyard. Specifically, the solar flare washing over Mercury appears to hit another object of comparable size. “It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked,” YouTube-user siniXster said in his video commentary on the footage, which has generated hundreds of thousands of views this week.

Full article: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/mysterious-planet-sized-object-spotted-near-mercury-154443870.html

by ROB Thu Jan 26, 2012 11:04 pm

OW,

0.05% H₂O (I believe) on Earth. Twice as much, 0.10%, all life "drowns", half as muc, 0.025%, all life drys up. Delicate indeed.

by Shirina Fri Jan 27, 2012 3:19 am

What about the fact that, without the delicate balance of everything on Earth, life would be impossible here? Can that balance be duplicated?

Human life evolved on earth because the conditions were right for our species - and millions of others - to exist here. If earth was slightly different, then we would most likely see different forms of life, perhaps life we would view as "alien." We are but one planet among billions - trillions, perhaps - and we only really know anything about 8 of them. It is extremely premature to assume that earth is somehow special or that the only life capable of existing is the kind found on on a precisely duplicated earth. There are most likely a few "must haves" for intelligent life to evolve: water, sunlight, a specific ecological niche, as but a few possibilities. Yet even saying that much may be too presumptuous. The bottom line is that we simply do not know - and that means alien life, even advanced alien life, cannot be ruled out. That includes advanced life coming here in the form of UFOs. It has always baffled me how so many educated people can dismiss, even laugh at, the mere possibility of an extraterrestrial visitation. Have Hollywood movies, often with cheap make-up and guys in rubber suits tainted our perception of what an extraterrestrial might be?

by ROB Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:44 am

Shirina wrote:
It is extremely premature to assume that earth is somehow special...

Earth is special, and it is somehow special, since it defies odds (and certainly my logic) that everything would be "just so." Yet everything is "just so", somehow, and we are here, somehow.

Shirina wrote:
It is extremely premature to assume... that the only life capable of existing is the kind found on on a precisely duplicated earth.

This is the othe side of the coin. Life as we know it requires this specific delicate balance. But what about life as we do not know it? Perhpas Earth would be poisonous and the interio of Jupiter like a beach in the Society Islands to such life.

by Papaumau Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:08 pm

RockOnBrother wrote:
Papaumau wrote:
As Professor Brian Cox recently said: "If they were as advanced as they would need to be to visit us they would be bound to be capable of either ensuring that they were never seen - if they wanted to keep it that way - or they would have made deliberate contact with us already.

Anybody ?

Papaumau,

Professor Cox’s series, “Wonders of the Solar System” aired last night. I believe it was four episodes, which I DVR’d, one of which is entitled “Aliens.” I tried to find it on YouTube (no luck) to post here. Perhaps it’s available in a “post-able” format over there.

Yes, of course it is true that if we believe that in the vast and endless universe and the proposed limitless numbers of parallel universes that may be along side us in the possible space-time-continuum are also possible then it is also possible that everything that can happen will happen at some time or another.

I would much rather consider that until we really KNOW that such entities exist then we have to go with what our present sciences tell us are there.

Like any other faith-based beliefs, things that are based on faith do not require any proof of existence. That is why, when I look at faith-based beliefs I compare them to magical fairly-tales and fables and not to fact.
When one’s knowledge of “all that is” is as limited as human knowledge, the existence of anything can never be ruled out.

Regards.....

Papaumau

by Shirina Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:18 pm

Like any other faith-based beliefs, things that are based on faith do not require any proof of existence. That is why, when I look at faith-based beliefs I compare them to magical fairly-tales and fables and not to fact.

I think you're heading down the wrong path in regards to aliens. In most (if not all) cases, a "faith-based belief" focuses on things that cannot exist without the assistance of the paranormal - or magic. In fact, you, yourself, used the term "magical fairy-tales" in your own description. Aliens are not magical, and while I suppose they could look like fairies, I doubt very much such an alien would come from the Seelie Court. In addition, thousands of UFO sightings are reported annually in all parts of the world irrespective of culture, technology levels, religious belief, or government type. I wouldn't be so quick to place this in the same category as Puck and Titania when the evidence is certainly substantial enough to warrant serious investigation. Yet mainstream science still scoffs at the idea, most likely because scientists don't want to be upstaged by a far more advanced species. It would akin to laboring all of your life to build this:
Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Wright-Brothers-Airplane-001

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Wright-Brothers-Airplane-001

Only to have some upstart show-off fly past you in this:
Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 F-22_Raptor

by Shirina Fri Jan 27, 2012 5:29 pm

Earth is special, and it is somehow special, since it defies odds (and certainly my logic) that everything would be "just so." Yet everything is "just so", somehow, and we are here, somehow.

It's only special because we are here, and we are here because the conditions are right for us to be here. That doesn't mean we were meant to be here in the esoteric sense. I'm sure, if a mold spore was sentient, it would be saying that the stale piece of bread it is growing upon is also special. If dinosaurs could talk, they might be saying how special earth is, too ... just before they went extinct. Another sentient species elsewhere might be saying, "Isn't it fortunate that we don't have a large moon? And if we were 93 million miles away from our star instead of 40 million, we couldn't exist! Fortunately, our atmosphere is mostly ammonia and carbon monoxide or we would suffocate."

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is that life is pretty tenacious, and the type of life found evolving on a given planet will be whatever type that planet can support. From a purely humanocentric point of view, of course earth is special because it supports us. In the same way, there is a tiny village in Pennsylvania that is very special to me, but for the vast majority of people, it is just a speck on a map with no significance whatsoever. Just because this town is special to me does not mean that it is unique or special in a scientific sense.

by oftenwrong Fri Jan 27, 2012 7:22 pm

The issue of mobility is extremely important. Anyone with a garden knows how rapidly weeds colonise an area, and how some plants sytematically drive out all opposition from the territory. Trees which come into the world as two leaves on a stem can grow to three times the height of a man within about ten or twenty years.

Imagine how short our lives could be if vegetation moved as fast as us.

by Papaumau Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:33 am

Shirina said:

"Aliens are not magical",

But I say that they would as well be as we have no proof that they exist.

Yes, we have made enormous technical strides in the few years since the industrial revolution but I worry that we simply cannot continue to make such massive strides in technological achievement without killing ourselves off in the short astronomical time we have been - or are going to be - on this earth.

Maybe this is a curse that all clever humanoid races around the galaxies have to accept if we/they realise that there has to come a point where we can not make any more technological expansion. As the scientists say...."If anything stops growing it must then contract as natural law does not allow for anything to stand still" !

To take up your point that "thousands of UFO sightings are reported annually in all parts of the world" I have to say that humans are predisposed to "see things that they cannot explain" and in that state we are bound to cling to the conspiracy theories that feed those needs.

I would have thought that after those "thousands of UFO sightings are reported annually in all parts of the world" we might have something that can be properly verified like an unambiguous video of a sighting or even one single picture of a human shaking hands with an alien visitor.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

by ROB Sat Jan 28, 2012 12:17 pm

Shirina,

You could have used the F-35C, the larger control surfaces varient. I know the Raptor can boogie, but it can't launch and recover in mid Pacific.

by ROB Sat Jan 28, 2012 2:24 pm

General challenge: Define and describe magic.

I admit beforehand that I cannot define magic, for reasons, one of which that I once performed magic, which, of course, wasn't magic to me, because I knew how I did what I did. I could make coins up to the size of silver US dollar and down to the size of a US nickel disappear and reappear, I could "snatch" coins out of the air, I could place them behind my ear and draw them out from behind another person's ear, etc. I could bring a card to the top of the deck. I could "read your mind" and pick out the cards you named from a deck.

All of this I learned during a series of Saturday classes offered by AGVA magicians (AGVA - American Guild of Variety Artists) at the Junior High I and my friends attended. Six of us attended faithfully for a school year; during the week, we practiced on each other, and when we reached competency, we fooled our friends. The cost of the classes was lifetime adherence to the magicians' code, "don’t reveal the secrets to anyone that has nor committed herself/himself to the craft." In fact, in the many decades since, I can count those to whom I've revealed the secrets probably on one hand, and all of them first convinced me that they were beyond serious about the craft.

I was pretty good, competent enough to put on impromptu amateur magic shows from then until now with no slip-ups, and knowledgeable enough to know how magicians far more competent than me pull of their deception. Anyone who can mystify me is good. That street magic guy, Angle I believe is has name, is the finest modern magician I've seen, hands down, working without visible props and devices, using hand skills, misdirection, and "smarts" to befuddle me. I've never figured out any of his tricks, and I've tried many times.

But I know that, amazing as Angels stuff appears, it’s conjuring; sleight of hand, misdirection, something so simple that it would almost make you mad that you fell for it if you knew the secret. This knowledge profoundly affects my belief/disbelief, because I know that, even if something appears to be an awesome impossibility, "it ain't necessarily so."

Have I seen a UFO? Damn skippy I have. Two friends and I were hanging out one December evening on UCLA's campus. We looked up and saw a light in the sky that appeared to be traveling at least Mach 1 plus, in an absolutely straight line, at 'low altitude. We knew it wasn't a jetliner, because there was no sound and it was traveling too fast.

Suddenly, it turned on a dime and gave back nine cents change. I'm talking about a squares off ninety degree turn. It didn't slow down at all, and it didn’t round off the turn at all. I've seen F-16 and several F/A-18s make hard turns, and this was in another league. After the turn, it accelerated like nothing I've ever seen and disappeared over the horizon in maybe three seconds.

Ain't nothing we've got can do that, not an Eagle, not a Raptor, not a Blackbird, and.

Are there UFOs? You betcha last dollar! I and two other credible witnesses saw the damned thing, and our accounts match perfectly. Three witnesses saw a UFO which none of us could explain. And I was trained by AGVA magicians.

Doesn’t mean it was magic. It does mean it was unidentified, and unexplained.

by Papaumau Sun Jan 29, 2012 12:56 pm

Thanks for your views RockOnBrother and your explanation of "magic".

Mind you I think that such "magic" should be more-correctly described as Illusion rather than perceived as "magic".

What you said in your explanation of your "craft" ( and that is an even better description of your kind of magic ), highlighted exactly how people, mostly of sound mind, can easily be tricked by seeing things that they do not understand.

I submit that ALL of the sightings, that curiously can NOT be supported by incontrovertible evidence, are therefore simply what people think they have seen but have not in fact been there at all.

Nature can fool us in just as many ways as a skilled illusionist can fool us and I honestly believe that even although the "viewer" is also "honestly" reporting what they think they have seen, they in fact have no clue what it really was.

That is why I firmly believe that if there were such things as alien visitors to earth that they would - in their advanced knowledge - either be able to ensure that we NEVER see them, or they would have presented themselves to someone who could supply us with the incontrovertible evidence that they do exist. Neither of these things have been proven so far.

As far as there being aliens - to us - on other worlds is concerned; I have no doubt that somewhere in the cosmos all of the millions of conditions that were needed to form life - as we know it Jim Laughing

- here might have also happened there. In fact I suggest that if we do not make particular stipulations on what form this life might take I am certain that some form of living entities may be crawling, swimming, walking or flying around the planets that sit in their particular "goldilocks" position from their sun, even if because of the massive distances in light years we might never be able to see up close, touch, or interact with these forms of life.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

by Shirina Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:51 pm

You could have used the F-35C, the larger control surfaces varient. I know the Raptor can boogie, but it can't launch and recover in mid Pacific.

True, but the F-35s don't have AESA radar, thrust vectoring, or super cruise. Originally, the F-35 was designed to be a bomb truck with F-22s escorting, but with less than 200 F-22s in service, the F-35 will most likely take up the slack.

by Shirina Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:06 pm

I would have thought that after those "thousands of UFO sightings are reported annually in all parts of the world" we might have something that can be properly verified

None of the mainstream sources - not the government, not the scientific community, and not the press - will ever make the claim that any UFO is undeniably alien until one of them makes that proverbial landing in the White House lawn. That doesn't rule out the possibility that UFOs are alien. There are also plenty of good photographs that have been put through a gauntlet of tests and analyses from such organizations as Kodak and the US Navy which have been ruled as free from tampering. These analyses can also show whether or not the photos have been hoaxed. Many of these photos clearly show an object (not just a point of light) that does not exist in nature.

Through the process of elimination, if they are not alien, what else could they be?

I submit that ALL of the sightings, that curiously can NOT be supported by incontrovertible evidence, are therefore simply what people think they have seen but have not in fact been there at all.

What constitutes "incontrovertible" evidence is a very subjective thing. However, to claim that all UFOs are simply a figment of over-active imaginations doesn't really add up. Cameras and video recorders neither imagine nor hallucinate, and with multiple witness sightings, the odds of it being an identically manifesting shared delusion drops precipitously. In addition, imaginations don't show up on radar, nor is the government in the habit of scrambling fighter aircraft (at the cost of millions of dollars) to chase down someone's delusion. In fact, if we are to apply the standard of proof equally, there is no proof at all that people are simply seeing things that are not actually there. Evidence to the contrary, however, exists in abundance.

The UFO skeptics and debunkers, in addition, use many fallacious arguments against the phenomenon. One of the more infamous examples is to claim that if a sighting can be hoaxed, it was hoaxed. In their minds, all one has to do is show how a UFO sighting can be faked with a hubcap and some fishing line and viola! The sighting is explained. That's pure rubbish. Imagine if that kind of logical standard were used in a court case. If you could commit the crime, then you're guilty! Another disingenuous tactic is to cherry pick from an eyewitness account only those items the skeptics can tackle while ignoring the rest of it. So while there might be a lighthouse 5 miles away that could be confused with a UFO, the skeptic would slam the book shut and exclaim case closed ... despite the witness stating he actually put his hand on the craft. Yet another tactic is to associate two or more unrelated events in order to explain away a sighting. For instance, a re-entering Soviet satellite that lit up the sky for a few seconds can not explain away a sighting that lasted for an hour, and over the course of three nights. While yes, a satellite did reenter the atmosphere that night, it only happened once, and only for a brief time. Then there's the tactic of offering up an even more implausible explanation more bizarre than alien UFOs. "That wasn't a UFO, that was a laser light show in Dallas, Texas; one of the beams struck the bottom of a 747 at just the right angle to reflect through ice particles in the air. This made the laser brighter as it ricocheted off the space shuttle to slam into a neutrino burst caused by a supernova back in 1200 BC that just happened to be reaching earth just as the laser passed through it, and this resulted in the laser projecting an image of a UFO on a thick cloud bank in Yokohama, Japan just as you looked up to see it."

Their arguments sound desperate. In fact, the way skeptics try so hard to debunk every sighting falls under the category of: "The lady dost protest too much methinks." And we both know what that means.

If you launch into an investigation already certain that UFOs are not aliens, then you have already been compromised - evidence that exists will be dismissed with a flippant wave of the hand and a positively ludicrous explanation. Imagine if the letter Z represents the explanation that some UFOs are actually alien craft. If you go through the entire alphabet and none of the other explanations fit, then it HAS to be Z. What skeptics tend to do is claim that there must be an unknown 27th letter, because they've already discounted Z completely.

And finally, there is this: The scientific community will tell you all kinds of fanciful notions about multiple dimensions, duplicate copies of yourself existing elsewhere, infinite numbers of universes floating around The Bulk in soap bubbles ... but aliens coming to earth? Ha! That's just stupid. The religious community will regale you with stories of an all-powerful entity that poofed the entire universe into existence with magic, complete with talking snakes, prowling demon lords, burning bushes, and angels going to war with each other ... but aliens coming to earth? Ha! That's just stupid. I find it utterly amazing the very same experts can come up with these fantasy-like beliefs and speculations and yet still denounced with absolute certainty that UFOs are anything and everything BUT aliens. Because believing in even the possibility of alien visitations is silly. Right?

Of all the things we believe in, whether it comes from the scientific side or the religious side, alien visitations are the least improbable and least bizarre of them all. Yet of all those beliefs, a belief in aliens, nay, the belief in the mere possibility of aliens coming here, is modern day heresy. Now, if that isn't a symptom of brainwashing, I don't know what is. Sure, you don't want to believe absolutely that aliens are coming here because you're right in saying there is no absolute proof. But there is an extraordinary amount of evidence. But the subject matter itself gets in the way.

For example: I did a pretty thorough research paper on the UFO phenomenon in college. I interviewed witnesses, contacted UFO researchers, the whole nine yards. Funny thing, though - when I submitted my subject matter for my professor's approval, she giggled. She thought I was crazy. This reaction is so widespread that UFO researchers actually call it "The Giggle Factor." Now ... I still received an A for all of my work, but scrawled beside it were these words: "Is there any proof for all of this?" Since I was graduating, I didn't have to "brown nose" her any longer, so I said to her: "Did you ask anyone else if there was any proof to their research? And if not, why not? You just read 250 pages of proof complete with eyewitnesses (one of which was a good friend of the professor) and photographs, and you're still asking for proof?"

It just goes to show you that no evidence and no proof will be good enough if you're already certain of the conclusion. Kind of like Birthers and Truthers.

by Shirina Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:32 pm

That is why I firmly believe that if there were such things as alien visitors to earth that they would - in their advanced knowledge - either be able to ensure that we NEVER see them, or they would have presented themselves to someone who could supply us with the incontrovertible evidence that they do exist.

This is an example of the False Dilemma fallacy, an argument that gives only two possible choices when, in fact, many other choices do exist. Who can really judge the motives of an alien species? No one on the planet is a qualified expert on alien psychology. It could be that these aliens don't care if we see them. Do we duck behind a tree to avoid being seen by a spider? Some have theorized that aliens are making their craft visible here and there to gradually acclimate humanity to the existence of alien life since bursting out of the clouds in a ship and landing in Central Park could cause widespread panic and a breakdown of order. There's also the very real possibility that there are some things these aliens cannot do. They are not gods, after all. Perhaps cloaking devices and invisibility never really worked for them. Perhaps our detection devices such as radar and IR are so primitive by comparison that the alien ships were never equipped with the necessary countermeasures. Or perhaps the aliens aren't that much more advanced than we are. The UFOs people are seeing could be an alien race's equivalent of Voyager that took 30,000 years to get here. Perhaps an alien race placed most of their emphasis on inventing interstellar travel but research in other areas lapsed.

There are even more reasons why they haven't just outright presented themselves. Cultural contamination is a big factor. Perhaps they are worried about being perceived as gods. Perhaps they are worried they will create a Cargo Cult out of us. Perhaps we haven't sufficiently developed enough or perhaps they fear we will shoot at them. In fact, they may not even be interested in us at all.

by **astradt1** Sun Jan 29, 2012 7:46 pm

What has the pros and cons US military planes got to do with believing on UFO's..........

Other than the opportunity for some Americans(USV) to do some back slapping....

by ROB Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:04 pm

RockOnBrother wrote:
You could have used the F-35C, the larger control surfaces varient. I know the Raptor can boogie, but it can't launch and recover in mid Pacific.

Shirina wrote:
True, but the F-35s don't have (1) AESA radar, (2) thrust vectoring, or (3) super cruise. Originally, the F-35 was designed to be a bomb truck with F-22s escorting, but with less than 200 F-22s in service, the F-35 will most likely take up the slack.

True (1), true (2), and true (3), but the F35, all variants, look so good! I mean, come on, “ain’t she purty?”

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 39323_35617

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 F-35c

With the cut back on the primitively expensive Raptor, which you forgot to mention lo has a significantly more miniscule radar cross section than the F-117, I continue to wander if those advantages could be back-engineered into the D, E, and F variants of the F-35.

(Hope it works this time)

by **Ivan** Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:24 pm

Just a reminder that the subject of this thread is:-
"Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens?"
Thank you.

by ROB Sun Jan 29, 2012 8:25 pm

Papaumau wrote:
… ALL of the sightings… are therefore simply what people think they have seen but have not in fact been there at all.

I do not think that I saw something that evening; I know that I saw something that evening.

Papaumau wrote:
I would have thought that… we might have something that can be properly verified like an unambiguous video of a sighting or even one single picture of a human shaking hands with an alien visitor.

Normal people didn’t carry eight millimeter home movie cameras everywhere they went back during the time my friends and I saw the UFO. Eye witness testimony, times three, is as good as it can get on this sighting.

I do wish that pocketsize modern cell phones/Internet hook-ups/video recorders etc. had been available back then, if for no other reason than that I’d like to see it again somewhere other than in my memory.

by Papaumau Mon Jan 30, 2012 12:32 pm

RockOnBrother....and....Meow.....

I am sorry but if the incontrovertible evidence was there to see or find it would have been unambiguously seen and found by now. None of the evidence that has been put forward by the thousands of people who claim to have seen UFOs or even those that claim they have been "taken" on board and experimented on have ever been able to provide any kind of proof that was open to examination about their "experiences".

Meow talks - at length - about "interpretation" but I say that if the real proof had been presented to us in any measurable way it would have been measured and accepted as real evidence. EVERY - that's EVERY time that someone has tried to present us with "proof of existence" this evidence has been destroyed or left unacceptable as evidence by the scientists that think about and consider this "proof" without bias.

Even the accepted - for many years - photographs that were taken by a couple of wee girls at the steam at the bottom of the garden of "fairies" was eventually accepted as lies and as a fake when one of the girls admitted this. ( The photos were never proven to have been faked ).

An eminent scientist was on the TV in Britain last week giving the Christmas lectures to kids and he explained in detail just how easily the human brain is tricked and how visual evidence in criminal trials is now holding less and less sway as far as successful convictions is concerned.

I firmly believe that if a person's mind is predisposed to see things that are not there he or she will create these "false memories" just so that they can present that what they saw was actually there when it was in fact, not.

Regards....

Papaumau.

by ROB Mon Jan 30, 2012 6:40 pm

Papaumau,

Allow me to clarify my position. A lady dear to me taught me as a child that three of the most powerful words in the English language are "I don't know." I grew into adulthood unafraid of admitting that to myself and anyone else who cared. Going left field for a moment, that's why I was agnostic for awhile. I'll tell you about that if you want to know.

When my friends and I saw whatever we saw, all explanations as to what it could have been failed. These three young men were not exactly "chopped liver" in the smarts department. We put our heads together and went over everything any of us knew. Nothing explained a phenomenon that seemed through visual input to defy the laws of classical physics like this thing did. Seemingly Mach 1 plus, no sonic boom. A turn that described a perfect right angle with no cessation or diminishment of speed. Acceleration that put it out of our sight like (count to three with no pause in between)... now.

That was decades ago. I'm no closer to an explanation now than I was then. In summary, "I don't know."

But here's the clincher. The testimony is irrefutable. Men have been convicted and sentenced to life in prison upon testimony as solid as our testimony. In fact, one of the testifiers became a criminal court judge. I suspect if asked today what he saw decades ago, he would answer, "I don't know."

Rock

by oftenwrong Mon Jan 30, 2012 7:33 pm

The human brain is not designed to confuse us with mysteries. Its function is to deliver a message. Right or wrong.

In any traffic accident there can be witnesses who will each swear on oath that they saw a black sedan, a white sports car or a delivery-van; where only one vehicle was involved.

by ROB Mon Jan 30, 2012 8:31 pm

oftenwrong wrote:
In any traffic accident there can be witnesses who will each swear on oath that they saw a black sedan, a white sports car or a delivery-van; where only one vehicle was involved.

True.

In this UFO sighting, the independent testimonies of three credible witnesses, each of whom received training in the physical sciences, meshed precisely.

by Papaumau Tue Jan 31, 2012 12:25 pm

RockOnBrother......

I would not suggest even for a minute that any of you do not believe what you think you saw. That cannot be refuted. What I will say is that even although what you describe does seem to be something that Newton's Three Laws of Motion would not support, we still have to agree that Newton's Laws of Motion are rules that we MUST obey in our standard view of what is or what is not.

Without any real effort I can think of something in present science that does behave like that and maybe you should consider this:

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second and if it meets a mirror at 45 degrees IT can change direction as you described. With this speculation in mind I suggest that what you and your friends saw was not in fact a solid or physical entity at all but it was a ray of light travelling across the sky and being reflected at right angles by say...a cloud full of ice particles.

You see, when anyone tries to really think about things that are at first unexplained or unexplainable one has to have empirical proof before one can say for certain that what was seen was in fact there at all. You have no such "empirical proof" even although you all say you saw the same

The fact that all of you agree that you saw the same happening is important in this respect as then no-one can suggest that it was a trick of the individual mind or any kind of hallucination. With this accepted then we have to agree that what you saw DID actually happen.

If we then all agree that it "DID actually happen" and it did not obey Newton's Laws of Motion then the only thing that we know for certain is that the only thing that we know that can travel as fast as that and change direction like that is projected light.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

by ROB Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:51 pm

Papaumau wrote:
RockOnBrother......

I would not suggest even for a minute that any of you do not [know – edit by RockOnBrother] what you think you saw. That cannot be refuted. What I will say is that even although what you describe does seem to be something that Newton's Three Laws of Motion would not support, we still have to agree that Newton's Laws of Motion are rules that we MUST obey in our standard view of what is or what is not.

I’ve edited your comment (one word) so that I can agree with you. The only thing I would point out is that there are those who choose not to obey Newton’s Laws, to their detriment. You can disobey, but you cannot escape the consequences of disobedience.

My university roommate saved my life one night. I was drunk like a skunk; a jokester had spiked some punch I was drinking with everclear, 180 proof, 90% alcohol. Earlier that day I had been reading about Roger Bannister, the first sub-four minute miler (British, I think) and the fact that once Bannister proved it could be done, others began breaking the four minute barrier. With the willing aid of everclear, I had convinced myself that man could glide like a flying squirrel, and that once one person did it, like Bannister and the four minute mile, others would follow.

I convinced myself that I was the one. When my roommate saved my life, I was at an open third story window, planning my glide to a nearby two story roof, roughly calculating the glide angle in my head, and preparing to make the historic flight. This was at a party.

My roommate saw me at the window, came over, and asked me what I was doing. I told him the whole story, from Bannister to my eminent historic first glide. He persuaded me to dance with a young lady before taking the plunge, and gently guided me away from the window.

Off topic story, but it popped into my mind. Had I disobeyed Newton’s Laws that night…

Papaumau wrote:
Without any real effort I can think of something in present science that does behave like that and maybe you should consider this:

Light travels at 186,282 miles per second and if it meets a mirror at 45 degrees IT can change direction as you described. With this speculation in mind I suggest that what you and your friends saw was not in fact a solid or physical entity at all but it was a ray of light travelling across the sky and being reflected at right angles by say...a cloud full of ice particles.

That’s as good an explanation as I’ve heard, but the thing, which to us was a light source in the sky at night, sort of, since the sky over Los Angeles is always illuminated by ground light, seemed to travel at mach 1 plus, nowhere near the speed of light.

That being said, I’ll discard no possible explanation.

Papaumau wrote:
You see, when anyone tries to really think about things that are at first unexplained or unexplainable one has to have empirical proof before one can say for certain that what was seen was in fact there at all. You have no such "empirical proof" even although you all say you saw the same

I can see that you’re an empiricist. I’m not. I’m a phenomenologist at core. I don’t need empirical evidence to know that something is, even if I can’t explain what it is or how it is.

That’s where the “U” in “UFO” comes into play. The thing was unidentified because it was unidentifiable. Continuing on, it was unidentifiable in large part because it was unexplainable.

There’s a Canadian magician whose name escapes me that made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Unlike s with Angel, I’ve got an idea how he did it. Probably involved mirrors and angles of view, kind of like making a horse disappear on stage, which I know how it’s done even though I can’t do it.

To me, this thing was like an Angel street trick; I’ve no idea how in the world what we saw could be. And like with Angel, who I’ve seen several times, no matter how much I “see” it, I’m no closer to an explanation.

Papaumau wrote:
The fact that all of you agree that you saw the same happening is important in this respect as then no-one can suggest that it was a trick of the individual mind or any kind of hallucination. With this accepted then we have to agree that what you saw DID actually happen.

There you go. No everclear around, and none of us partook of grass, hashish, THC, peyote, psilocybin, LSD, or any hallucinogen.

Papaumau wrote:
If we then all agree that it "DID actually happen" and it did not obey Newton's Laws of Motion then the only thing that we know for certain is that the only thing that we know that can travel as fast as that and change direction like that is projected light.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

Once again, I’ll go with that, as I’ve nothing better.

by Shirina Tue Jan 31, 2012 7:03 pm

With this speculation in mind I suggest that what you and your friends saw was not in fact a solid or physical entity at all but it was a ray of light travelling across the sky and being reflected at right angles by say...a cloud full of ice particles.

I'm going to assume that what Rock saw was a point of light, not a beam of light.

Light travels in rays, not a point. In order to see a point of light move, the point itself must be radiating the light. It cannot come from a secondary source unless it was a reflection. However, even if it was a reflection, it means an object was actually there, and that object moved in contravention of known physics. Ice particles do not move in contravention of physics. If Rock saw a "flash" of light, then I would accept your explanation, but Rock could not have seen a flash of light long enough to either gauge its speed or to see it move in right angles.

by Shirina Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:06 pm

I am sorry but if the incontrovertible evidence was there to see or find it would have been unambiguously seen and found by now.

There's no reason to believe that. It would be akin to the Spanish in 1491 saying, "Surely if there was an undiscovered continent, we would have found it by now!" Even today, scientists are still cataloging new species, but if there are new species, shouldn't we have discovered all of them long before now? If we don't even know all of the species here on earth, it is pretty far-fetched to make claims about alien species from other worlds. In addition, the undiscovered species here on earth are not making any particular effort at avoiding being seen - we just haven't found or noticed them yet. An advanced alien race, which could be vastly more intelligent than we, can take precautions to ensure a human never gets a hold of alien technology. In fact, I believe that would be a major priority for a whole host of reasons. A picture or a video will never be "unambiguous" evidence because the die-hard skeptics can always effortlessly claim the photos/videos are hoaxed - and that's what they do even after they've been analyzed. Of course, the skeptics never analyze the visual evidence. Instead, they let others pick up the tab for the analysis, and if the results are not what the skeptics want, they will move on to another tactic; usually that tactic is character assassination.

Meow talks - at length - about "interpretation" but I say that if the real proof had been presented to us in any measurable way it would have been measured and accepted as real evidence.

And I say differently. More on this to follow.

EVERY - that's EVERY time that someone has tried to present us with "proof of existence" this evidence has been destroyed or left unacceptable as evidence by the scientists that think about and consider this "proof" without bias.

This is why I say differently. Of course there is bias in the scientific community. Academia is not all about finding the truth. In fact, academia is at least as political as the government. In fields such as history, information is often suppressed and new discoveries ridiculed namely because there are powerful people trying to protect a specific premise that their entire careers are based upon. If your doctorate and your professorship are grounded on a premise that turns out to be false, it will destroy you. Naturally, people work hard not to be destroyed. Now, I'm not saying there is evidence of alien visitations - at least the kind you want - but if you think that any scientist is going to stand behind an alien hypothesis without bias, you're kidding yourself. Not when the general attitude toward aliens is to laugh and make fun of the whole concept. I have researched events where people claim to have a piece of a UFO and often the results are inconclusive - meaning it could be from a UFO because they can't identify what it is. Again, not "unambiguous," but not damning, either.

When it comes to UFOs, there are so many problems with obtaining accurate information that I could write a book on that subject alone. These problems include everything from a lack of funding for serious examination of said evidence to having to disseminate information anonymously to avoid the ridicule and the effects it would have on one's career. It's a quagmire of Biblical proportions, the point of which is that the skeptics have it easy. All they have to do is say "nuh uh!" and the scientific community will rally behind them.

Even the accepted - for many years - photographs that were taken by a couple of wee girls at the steam at the bottom of the garden of "fairies" was eventually accepted as lies and as a fake when one of the girls admitted this. ( The photos were never proven to have been faked ).

A couple of things here. The Cottingley Fairies event was a one-off scenario. Tens of thousands of people were not claiming to see fairies nor are there thousands of photos and videos showing fairies. Second, using the primitive techniques available in the late teens and early 20s, the photos couldn't be conclusively ruled as fakes. When the photos were examined again with modern equipment, they were obvious fakes. The lesson here is that with today's equipment, older photos of UFOs can now be honestly analyzed, and several have been ruled to be genuine.

I firmly believe that if a person's mind is predisposed to see things that are not there he or she will create these "false memories" just so that they can present that what they saw was actually there when it was in fact, not.

You believe this because you want to (bias?). There is no more proof that people are hallucinating and creating "false memories" than there is proof of alien visitations. Unfortunately, you are compartmentalizing the facts instead of seeing ALL of the evidence. The UFO phenomenon isn't just a collection of people claiming they've seen things. The Washington Merry-Go-Round incident is a particularly good example. When there are radar contacts on different types of radar, sightings of craft from the ground, and when the government scrambles fighters to intercept the objects - and the pilot radios the objects surrounding him, this isn't a hallucination or a false memory. When it happens twice on two successive weekends, it was enough to prompt a national press conference with the military. The US Air Force never denied the presence of aliens. All they said, in their typically evasive way, was that "they are not a threat to national security." It certainly should make one wonder: Who are "they?"

by ROB Tue Jan 31, 2012 8:22 pm

Shirina,

It was indeed a point of light.

by Papaumau Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:01 am

RockOnBrother.....

Thanks for taking the time to consider and comment on every point I made above !

When people do that I congratulate myself that they have at least paid attention to my ravings.

Yes, I will plead guilty to being an empiricist as that is the only way that I can make any sense out of this confusing world. All real scientists are empiricists as no science is accepted by others if it has not been empirically proven to be true.

I guess that with that in mind I am just going to have to agree with you that what you and your friends saw that night - while it WAS truly picked up by your eyes - it was STILL unexplained and unexplainable and therefore could never be accepted as fact.

The thing that gets me, ( being an atheist as well as an empiricist ), is when people accept that something that has been suggested to them by other flawed humans is right just because it has been said and for no other reason, I have to throw my hands into the air and shout...."I give up" as that kind of faith cannot be attacked or explained away if that kind of blind faith is strong enough.

Regards......

Papaumau.

by jackthelad Wed Feb 01, 2012 11:37 am

They say there are 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, so it is unconceivable that we are the only planet with life on it. If by any chance UFO's, are alien space craft, it proves one thing, they are more intelligent than the human form of life on this planet, they are avoiding us as if we are a plague. A very sensible thing to do, we are forever killing each other, so what would we do to an alien life form.

by oftenwrong Wed Feb 01, 2012 12:37 pm

This world's inhabitants present a wide selection of complexions, so what's curious about green?

by Kalitay Wed Feb 01, 2012 3:20 pm

It was reported on www.lastest-ufo-sightings.net The we had another UFO sighting in Moscow.

Latest UFO sightings - This strange bright orbs were recorded over Krylatskoye in Moscow, Russia on Wednesday, 28th December 2011 with another with other strange activity in the sky was recorded in Paita, Peru on Thursday, 29th December 2011.

So do you believe there is any real truth in all of this? if yes what do you believe they seek from us?

I think there's no real reason to doubt that UFO sightings could be signs of something beyond the ordinary, though this does not necessarily mean alien visitation. Properly speaking, UFOs and aliens are different subjects.

Alien visitation itself would need to have tangible effects for it to mean anything for most of us. Even if we hold the existence of extraterrestrial life to be a virtual certainty, we would need direct, confirmed contact with such beings in order to reconfigure our outlook accordingly.

Regarding what they may potentially want from us, perhaps we may look to examples of colonialism in which there was a large educational and technological gap between subject and ruler. Sometimes the less advanced culture received much needed help, but more often it tended to be subjugated and exploited.
We don't know if any alien civilisation would be like us in this regard; it could be much more benign but it could also be much more ruthless. The nature of contact will be known to us if and when it happens.

by ROB Wed Feb 01, 2012 4:26 pm

Papaumau wrote:
RockOnBrother.....

Thanks for taking the time to consider and comment on every point I made above !

No problem. Every point you’ve made is worthy of comment.

Papaumau wrote:
When people do that I congratulate myself that they have at least paid attention to my ravings.

Your points demand attention, so your congratulatory actions are deserved. I personally appreciate folks who (1) think about things, (2) form opinions about things based upon logical consideration of the things about which they have thought, and (3) boldly proclaim their opinions of things about which they have thought and logically considered to anyone willing to pat attention.

That is precisely why I appreciate you.

Papaumau wrote:
Yes, I will plead guilty to being an empiricist as that is the only way that I can make any sense out of this confusing world. All real scientists are empiricists as no science is accepted by others if it has not been empirically proven to be true.

I guess that with that in mind I am just going to have to agree with you that what you and your friends saw that night - while it WAS truly picked up by your eyes - it was STILL unexplained and unexplainable and therefore could never be accepted as fact.

One must either (1) accept what we saw as fact, or (2) challenge the credibility of our testimony. That’s the nature of empiricism, and that’s its flaw. I’ll come back to this in relation to what we saw in a moment.

Albert Einstein engaged in thought experiment, exploring phenomena that (1) could not be directly observed, and thus (2) was beyond the reach of empiricism and strict empiricists. Brother Al spent a whole buncha years working out the formulas to describe that which he had figured out through thought experiments, even meeting and overcoming the frustration of getting it wrong mathematically before finally getting it right, which he may not have personally done.

Empirical verification of the General Theory of Relativity didn’t occur until the 1920s, when an astronomer used measuring tools of sufficient fine accuracy that had not been previously available to measure the bending of light due to the sun’s gravitational field as light passed close by, a phenomenon only visible during a total solar eclipse.

I read about this decades ago while still a physics student. An excellent exposition of the story is now available courtesy of The Science Channel in a program whose title I do not remember.

The lesson of this story is that, had the worldwide scientific community depended solely upon empiricism to explain that which pre-exists all of us, we might never have known what we know now.

Back to what we saw that night, the phenomenological evidence is ironclad if you accept the credibility and veracity of the three witnesses. The proper place for empiricism is attempting to explain how what we saw happened as we saw it. I’ve no problem with that; in fact, I welcome such inquiry, because, according to all laws of physics of which I am aware, what we saw was impossible.

Thank you for your attention to my points, which I appreciate.

by Shirina Wed Feb 01, 2012 6:45 pm

The thing that gets me, ( being an atheist as well as an empiricist ), is when people accept that something that has been suggested to them by other flawed humans is right just because it has been said and for no other reason, I have to throw my hands into the air and shout...."I give up" as that kind of faith cannot be attacked or explained away if that kind of blind faith is strong enough.

I'm an agnostic ... which means I can honestly say: I don't know if there is a god. There very well may be an immensely powerful being out there that, to us, would at least appear to be a god. Now, that doesn't mean I believe in religion. I categorically deny religion.

Religion is entirely based on faith. Entirely.

The UFO phenomenon is based on evidence. While the scientific method is all well and good, it cannot be used on UFOs because you can neither haul one to a lab nor can you create a sighting. I think many simply don't understand that all of our rules for investigation go out the window when dealing with possible aliens because it will be the first time we're investigating something that is smarter than we are.

I don't believe aliens are visiting here. I believe there is the possibility that they are. I believe the subject is worthy of serious consideration instead of just laughing it off or dismissing it as hallucinations. The attitude towards it by the scientific community is unprofessional and primitive, and that needs to change.

by Papaumau Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:00 pm

Shirina.....

I have to say that I agree with all that you say above !

RockOnBrother......

While I also agree with much of what you say too I have to take the stance of examination of a few points:

You said:

One must either (1) accept what we saw as fact, or (2) challenge the credibility of our testimony. That’s the nature of empiricism, and that’s its flaw. I’ll come back to this in relation to what we saw in a moment.

I accept that while what you thought you saw - as a group - was "fact" to you, it could not be fact if it was not proven empirically to be so. It was just a phenomenon in the sky that, while it was there - "in fact" - in fact it could not be quantified or measured because it was only registered to you or your group by distant observation.

The evidence that is provided to us by our eyes has been proven time and time again to be seriously unreliable !( Your previous highlighting of the illusions used in the demonstrating of "magic" tricks supports my conclusions above very nicely ).

I would never try to "challenge the credibility of your testimony" as I was not there to see what you saw. Having said that I think I CAN challenge that what you say you saw was in fact truly what you think it might be as - referring to the point directly above - "group observation, of the same event" is not evidence enough of what the group have seen as being postulated as having truly and actually occurred.

I do understand that many new branches of science in physics and astronomy have been introduced to try to prove what is seen to be happening in outer or inner-space, ( the atom ), and the main new science of quantum mechanics has only started to prove many of the things that happen in cosmological distances or in the field of quantum physics.

Recently a proposal was made, as part of the study of the behaviour of exotic atomic particles at CERN, suggested that one particular particle had been seen to travel faster than light. As that occurrence has not yet been empirically proven to be correct the mathematics that we have all come to depend on so far are still correct. If that FTL particle is proven to exist and is proven to have actually travelled faster than light then all or most of the previous sciences that we have come to depend on might be wrong and even the great Albert Einstein could be proven to be wrong too.

This observation means that even if we have become used to depending on the mathematics of today, there is a possibility that what we know could be wrong and FTL travel could be possible. If this is true then we very well might be witnessing the visitation of beings and vehicles that have travelled over those impossible distances to come to us from many light years away.

The nearest known star to our own sun is Proxima Centauri, which is believed to be just one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri group and is about 4.2 light years away from us. That means that even this nearest star, that might have a solar system around it - or not - would take us 4.2 years travelling at the speed of light to get there. Even if we could fly though space at at or near the speed of light we would not live long enough to go even part of the way. If we could travel at FTL speeds then the whole space-travel idea will again be up for discussion. That is why I try very hard not to mix up science fact and science fiction even although I do love both.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

by **Phil Hornby** Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:17 pm

I confess that I have seen a strange being which can alienate people at the speed of light....

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRudqZfCGiV1SGhvoCVE4n060g_nx0_oflP5lGZ-IXVkOaxeEUJ

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRudqZfCGiV1SGhvoCVE4n060g_nx0_oflP5lGZ-IXVkOaxeEUJ

bbc.co.uk)

...I tried to communicate with it but all it seemed to be able to say was : "inherited from the last government..." and "we're all in it together...".

Phew, what a complete basket case those folk from Outer Space are...! Shocked

by Papaumau Thu Feb 02, 2012 1:47 pm

Shirina wrote:
With this speculation in mind I suggest that what you and your friends saw was not in fact a solid or physical entity at all but it was a ray of light travelling across the sky and being reflected at right angles by say...a cloud full of ice particles.
I'm going to assume that what Rock saw was a point of light, not a beam of light.

Light travels in rays, not a point. In order to see a point of light move, the point itself must be radiating the light. It cannot come from a secondary source unless it was a reflection. However, even if it was a reflection, it means an object was actually there, and that object moved in contravention of known physics. Ice particles do not move in contravention of physics. If Rock saw a "flash" of light, then I would accept your explanation, but Rock could not have seen a flash of light long enough to either gauge its speed or to see it move in right angles.

Some good thoughts there Shirina !

Mind you, if a laser is shone onto something in the sky we don't always see the light itself. There are times when we just see what the laser is shining on. It can then seem to move at incredible speed as the person holding the laser shifts it about the sky. I once saw a scientist working on a project where he made a small saucer fly up into the air by shining a powerful laser under it's shiny and reflective surface.

See this HERE

There is no doubt that if these aliens CAN move their vehicle about the sky like that they must have beaten the laws of gravitation and the laws of kinetics as if we were to be in a flying machine like that we would get squished when it changed direction at right angles at such speeds.

In Star-Trek they call it "inertial dampening", but of course that is only science fiction once again. Twisted Evil

Regards....

Papaumau.

by Shirina Thu Feb 02, 2012 6:21 pm

Greetings, Papaumau:

I think you and I agree more than disagree, but there is a problem with this:

It can then seem to move at incredible speed as the person holding the laser shifts it about the sky.

The problem with the ice particle theory is that, in order to see a singular point of light, there could only be one ice particle. For instance, if you shine a laser through a cloud of smoke, you can actually see the beam. This is because the laser is lighting up smoke particles as it passes through. In that same way, a beam passing through ice particles would illuminate millions of them - perhaps billions - resulting in a similar phenomenon known as a "sun dog" or "moon dog." This occurs when light from the moon or sun is reflected off ice particles in the atmosphere:
Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Moon_Rings_01

Do you believe there are UFOs and aliens? - Page 2 Moon_Rings_01

by oftenwrong Thu Feb 02, 2012 7:19 pm

Moondog, born Louis Thomas Hardin (May 26, 1916 – September 8, 1999), was a blind American composer, musician, poet and inventor of several musical instruments. Moving to New York as a young man, Moondog made a deliberate decision to make his home on the streets there, where he spent approximately twenty of the thirty years he lived in the city.
Not a lot of people know that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moondog

by ROB Fri Feb 03, 2012 1:13 am

Papaumau,

Consider this…

RockOnBrother wrote:
One must either (1) accept what we saw as fact, or (2) challenge the credibility of our testimony.

… and this…

Papaumau wrote:
You said:

One must either (1) accept what we saw as fact, or (2) challenge the credibility of our testimony. That’s the nature of empiricism, and that’s its flaw. I’ll come back to this in relation to what we saw in a moment.
I accept that while what you thought you saw - as a group - was "fact" to you, it could not be fact if it was not proven empirically to be so. It was just a phenomenon in the sky that, while it was there - "in fact" - in fact it could not be quantified or measured because it was only registered to you or your group by distant observation.

… I would never try to "challenge the credibility of your testimony" as I was not there to see what you saw.

In order to say “what you thought you saw”, you must “challenge the credibility of our testimony”, and yet you also say “I would never try to ‘challenge the credibility of your testimony’”; thus, you implicitly accept that what we saw is fact. Not what we thought we saw, but what we in fact saw. More on this in a moment.

Papaumau wrote:
The evidence that is provided to us by our eyes has been proven time and time again to be seriously unreliable !

True and not true, depending upon the specific incident and the circumstances surrounding the incident.

Please do remember that the three witnesses in this incident were well aware of the phenomena of one’s eyes reporting unreliably to one’s brain. The fact that all three had completed a rather rigorous high school curriculum entitles “Science and Mathematics Sequence” (no valedictorian or salutatorian was a “Science and Mathematics Sequence” student during my high school tenure) was a distinct advantage in validating amongst ourselves what we saw. Allow me to recount how it went.

First, we provided individual testimony, dispassionately, as we had been trained to do when describing physical phenomena. Each person’s testimony was substantively identical, varying only in non-pertinent terminology, such as “right angle” versus “ninety degree angle.”

Second, we tore apart the agreed upon account, beat it to death, tried to fit it into every known airborne object/non-object inn existence of which we were aware, from Blackbird (Mach 3.2 plus at altitude) to the hottest known fighter of the day.

Third, we each individually concluded (1) that we saw what we saw, as I’ve reported hereon, and (2) that we could not explain how what we saw could do and did do what we saw it do.

Inn other words, we concluded that all either of us could truthfully say about the “how” was “I don’t know”, while the “who” (a point of light), “what” (as described previously), “when” (that December evening), and “where” (in the sky above Los Angeles, as seen from UCLA’s campus) were irrefutable fact.

Our eyes didn’t trick us, we saw what we saw, we could not explain how what we saw did what we saw it do, and I’m no closer to an explanation today.

Papaumau wrote:
Your previous highlighting of the illusions used in the demonstrating of "magic" tricks supports my conclusions above very nicely ).

I would not exclude an illusion created by a magician, or more properly, an illusionist, with the skill of the Canadian illusionist who made the Statue of Liberty disappear. But please remember that the audience that saw the Statue of Liberty disappear actually saw the Statue of Liberty disappear before their eyes. Their eyes were not playing tricks on them; they were doing their job, receiving electromagnetic wave/photon information and transmitting raw data to the brains of the spectators. The illusionist manipulated the “sent” visual signal rather than the “perceived reception” of the visual signal.

Harry Blackstone (check the name on wiki, I believe that’s it) was a master of suggestion and misdirection, seducing audience’s into “seeing” what they were not actually seeing. There is a book about him I once read that might interest you in this regard. Remember that at the time of the sighting, I was aware of “tricking the eyes”, and tried to use Blackstone’s techniques in my own impromptu demonstrations.

Going left field for a moment, there’s a reason Blackstone was called the Master of Misdirection and I wasn’t! I wish!

Papaumau wrote:
I think I CAN challenge that what you say you saw was in fact truly what you think it might be as - referring to the point directly above - "group observation, of the same event" is not evidence enough of what the group have seen as being postulated as having truly and actually occurred.

In this instance, “group think” does not apply. We saw what we saw, and we were all disciplined enough to report the truth (what we saw), the whole truth (the detailed description of what w saw), and nothing but the truth (no explanation offered).

That last one is what bugs empiricists, who are wont to say, “If I can’t explain it, or at least construct a plausible scenario into which it mostly fits, then I doubt that I saw it or that anyone else saw it.”

I’m a phenomenologist at heart, so my heart doesn’t hurt when either you or I say “I don’t know.”

Papaumau wrote:
I do understand that many new branches of science in physics and astronomy have been introduced to try to prove what is seen to be happening in outer or inner-space, ( the atom ), and the main new science of quantum mechanics has only started to prove many of the things that happen in cosmological distances or in the field of quantum physics.

Big Bang defies Einstein. I mean, the universe expands faster than the speed of light? And yet, the evidence compellingly suggests just that, since the diameter of the universe is greater than 13.6 billion light years times two. By the way, if these details need adjusting, feel free to do so.

Here’s something often forgotten: All that is studied in the physical sciences pre-exists the study thereof. Scientists don’t invent truth, they discover truth, and it behooves us all to remember that truth does not bend to fit our capacity to understand.

I don’t understand how what I saw did what I saw it do, but I cannot bend truth to accommodate my understanding.

Papaumau wrote:
Recently a proposal was made, as part of the study of the behaviour of exotic atomic particles at CERN, suggested that one particular particle had been seen to travel faster than light.

Uh, huh! Take that, Brother Al!

Papaumau wrote:
As that occurrence has not yet been empirically proven to be correct the mathematics that we have all come to depend on so far are still correct.

Not necessarily, my empiricist friend. A phenomenologist would first seek to verify the findings by replicating the conditions (since it was a controlled experiment) and letting the resultant data speak. If the observed data and the mathematics continue to be at odds one with the other, then the mathematics needs to give way to the data, and mathematicians need to kick it up a notch to discover why.

Papaumau wrote:
If that FTL particle is proven to exist and is proven to have actually travelled faster than light then all or most of the previous sciences that we have come to depend on might be wrong and even the great Albert Einstein could be proven to be wrong too.

Yep. Truth is greater than even Brother Al or Brother Ike.

Papaumau wrote:
This observation means that even if we have become used to depending on the mathematics of today, there is a possibility that what we know could be wrong and FTL travel could be possible. If this is true then we very well might be witnessing the visitation of beings and vehicles that have travelled over those impossible distances to come to us from many light years away.

That’s been Shirina’s contention all along.

Papaumau wrote:
The nearest known star to our own sun is Proxima Centauri, which is believed to be just one of three stars in the Alpha Centauri group and is about 4.2 light years away from us. That means that even this nearest star, that might have a solar system around it - or not - would take us 4.2 years travelling at the speed of light to get there. Even if we could fly though space at at or near the speed of light we would not live long enough to go even part of the way.

We could theoretically make the round trip in eight point four plus years, according to Einstein. The plus is crucial, as, if memory isn’t deceiving me, the closer mass gets to the speed o light, the more massive it gets, and as we draw within shouting distance of that speed limit, mass approaches infinity.

Given the mass-energy requirement equation, let’s call it five years out and five years in.

We haven’t dialed in the age phenomenon; the astronauts would be perhaps eight point four years younger than their once-upon-a-time peers, so three round trips would put the astronauts into the next generation.

Papaumau wrote:
If we could travel at FTL speeds then the whole space-travel idea will again be up for discussion. That is why I try very hard not to mix up science fact and science fiction even although I do love both.

Regards.....

Papaumau.

Once again, that’s been Shirina’s contention all along.

RockOnBrother

by Papaumau Fri Feb 03, 2012 12:17 pm

Thanks all for your thoughtful comments on my input, I have enjoyed immensely the discussions about science and about the arguments that have gone on for many years about whether aliens are possible and if they have been visiting us in our tiny and insignificant corner of the universe - or not.

One of the reasons why I love sci-fi is because many of the scientific hypotheses that have been included in these bits of fiction have been based on truth. The creative minds of the greats like Roddenberry have answered many of the questions that we think about as we try to apply what science we know to events that we cannot explain.

I am sure - and hope - that many of the ideas that Roddenberry included in his stories will be actually included in real science as the years go by and as we make the discoveries that make these actions possible.

Maybe we WILL be able to transport people and objects using a matter transporter, ( one of my favourite wishes ), and maybe we will be able to travel in multiples of light speed as in any imaginary "warp-factor" ( # insert number ). and maybe we will find that as we discover how to get round the destructive forces of inertia by using "inertial dampening" fields. Until then I think we will be stuck on this earth or to just going to planets in our own solar system and the dream of travelling to other stars or galaxies will have to just stay a dream.

Oh and one final note.... If we do not have inertial dampening we will simply not be able to go any distance at all, as the problem of acceleration and deceleration - at the beginning and end of the journey - at the number of "G"s that our weak human bodies can tolerate, will mean that more time will be used getting up to the cruising speeds, ( above or below light-speed ), and getting down to landing speeds that we will need to get to to finish our journey, will account for most of the years that we will spend on such journeys.

If we CAN do this then as you rightly said above the comparative time spent doing those things in space will mean that even although the journey may have only taken a few years or even decades to get where we wanted to go, by the time we return to our place of origin - say earth - all of our relatives and friends will have died many relative earth-years ago.

If we cannot solve that ONE problem then the career of a space explorer may be one of never seeing the people they leave behind ever again and long journeys in space may only be completed by what is known as "generational" ships that will have had multiple generations of astronauts born, reared and educated into being able to fly those ships. Of course the generations that will have lived to do this will also have died and will probably be given burials in space as the years roll by.

I like that idea ! Rolling Eyes

by ROB Sat Feb 04, 2012 4:02 am

Papaumau,

Completely off topic, is your screen name Polynesian?

Although not as "intense" as a few years ago, I'm a science fiction fan. I mot like sci fi tales that account for such limitations in reality as inertia and the cosmic speed limit. I also like sci fi where the "trappings' are authentic. For this reason, I enjoy Star Trek the Second Generation far more than the original, as the interaction between captain and senior officers seems much more USN-ish/RN-ish than in the first generation series.

It could have been Isaac Asimov that said that good science fiction writers minimize suspension of disbelief as much as possible. When Captain Picard issue an order and turns to another concern, that echoes what little I've been able to glean of RN and USN protocol. Another comforting point is correct use of rank titles in two ways; one being the ranks generally associated with certain jobs (the ExO of a capital ship is typically a Commander, for instance) and the correct use of pronouns (commissioned officers of higher rank than oneself, and civilians, especially civilians of "rank", such as SECNAV, SECDEF, and CIC in the US, are addressed and "sir" if male and "ma'am" if female, a protocol rigorously followed by Star Trek II.

An intriguing novel I read awhile back featured a civilization in which the captain of a vessel was the titular head but the keysman was actually the Big Kahuna. If you've any idea of the novel's tile or author, I'd like to get my hands on it again.

I enjoy discussing things with you.

Rock

by Sponsored content