Uhtred Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 Just now, pongo said: Apart from the maths. Maybe. (Not to mention all of the unknowns). In an infinite passage of time and in an infinite space, the time taken for any particular journey is surely irrelevant. We might miss some specific visit but there is always going to be another one shortly. Like buses. Fair enough - I genuinely believe there are all sorts of twists and turns in physics that we’re currently ignorant of and that there will be alien civilisations (plural) “out there” somewhere. I’m sceptical that UFO sightings are alien visitations. And if some of them are, why do the buggers never say hello?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbie Bobster Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 45 minutes ago, pongo said: Apart from the maths. Maybe. (Not to mention all of the unknowns). In an infinite passage of time and in an infinite space, the time taken for any particular journey is surely irrelevant. We might miss some specific visit but there is always going to be another one shortly. Like buses. And that's the great wonder of the Fermi paradox. Also, very difficult to construct a proposition about the level of abundance of life, intelligent or otherwise, in the universe from a sample of 1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 3 hours ago, Bobbie Bobster said: And that's the great wonder of the Fermi paradox. John Hodgman's lovely Ted Talk. It's in better quality at https://www.ted.com/talks/john_hodgman_s_brief_digression but I could not get that to embed nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doc.fixit Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 4 hours ago, pongo said: Given that there are no dimensional boundaries, surely the chances would simultaneously tend towards it being both infinitely likely and infinitely unlikely. .....did you just read prof. cox's, 'How to build a universe'?.............I'm just reading the chapter on infinity, not understanding the maths yet! It may take an infinity............ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 22, 2017 Share Posted December 22, 2017 Negative on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 This article at The Big Think puts it into some more perspective. It's definitely a big story. And the program has not apparently not been cancelled according to most of the reporting. The main issue seems to be that they are awkward about admitting spending money on this. Here is the original New York Times piece. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbie Bobster Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 I think JH's talk contains more analysis linked to reality than that Big Think piece - It goes completely Mulder & Sculley in the last 2 paragraphs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 39 minutes ago, Bobbie Bobster said: I think JH's talk contains more analysis linked to reality than that Big Think piece - It goes completely Mulder & Sculley in the last 2 paragraphs. I don't want to believe. I've always been a total sceptic. More than that I don't feel anything about it whether or not it points to something. And I'm not into sci fi. But completely dispassionately - this story seems to be worth taking seriously at least. The 2nd sentence of the article brought it home for me: "That U.S. military personnel even have a name for them is just one of the surprises". That is a surprise. That the world's best military pilots, trained at huge expense, have a name for something they are seeing really does seem to be worthy of attention. That's not crazy talk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbie Bobster Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 1 hour ago, pongo said: But completely dispassionately - this story seems to be worth taking seriously at least. The 2nd sentence of the article brought it home for me: "That U.S. military personnel even have a name for them is just one of the surprises". That is a surprise. That the world's best military pilots, trained at huge expense, have a name for something they are seeing really does seem to be worthy of attention. That's not crazy talk. Are you aware of the term "Foo fighter" that dates from the 1940's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 13 minutes ago, Bobbie Bobster said: Are you aware of the term "Foo fighter" that dates from the 1940's? If you hadn’t asked then the answer would have been no. Asking the question changed the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbie Bobster Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 7 minutes ago, pongo said: If you hadn’t asked then the answer would have been no. Asking the question changed the answer. There you go then. Prior art for military aviators having a name for UFOs. Nice summary from an El Reg commentard: Credulous or corrupt? Robert Bigelow has said he was absolutely convinced there were alien visitors to Earth. He founded the National Institute for Discovery Science to investigate anomalies. The Deputy Administrator of the institute appears to understand the difference between unidentified and extraterrestrial (the first requires the absence of evidence while the second requires strong evidence - some UFOlogists get this backwards). The institute was disbanded in 2004. According to the article the idea for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program came from within the Defense Intelligence Agency. Pentagon officials went to visit Bigelow presumably because he has money and a desire to believe stories about extraterrestrial visitors. Bigelow took this to Harry Reid (D NV) presumably because he had power and a desire to believe stories about extraterrestrial visitors. Reid went back to the pentagon officials then roped in two more senators: Ted Stevens (R AK) and Daniel Inouye (D HI). The three senators got the funding approved, much of which went to Bigelow. All three senators did not want public discussion of the project or its funding. Pick a reason: embarrassment, to avoid being deluged with crank calls or corruption. In Bigelow's place, I would have spent a pittance on evidence of a serious investigation, sent some campaign contributions to the senators and put the rest in my pocket. There is evidence of a serious investigation. Bigelow is the sort of person who would actually spend this money on the reason it was paid to him. I looked for campaign contributions back to the senators, but found nothing related to Bigelow (would not be hard to hide this from me as it is not something I do for a living). Funding began in 2007 (I would like to blame Bush but I am sure he knew bugger all about any of this). The project officially ended in 2012 (I would like to blame Obama but I suspect the real reasons are that Stevens died in 2010 and Inouye died in 2012). The project has trundled on without funding for another five years and has hit the news because Luis Elizondo (project leader in the Pentagon) resigned to protest excessive secrecy and internal opposition. It is possible the investigation caught evidence of secret aviation research or military aircraft where they were not supposed to be. In Elizondo's place I would welcome the secrecy to hide the fact that my department had nothing to show for $4.4M/year and to fuel support from conspiracy theorists. So far, the story is consistent with people spending tax payers' money on a genuine attempt to investigate unidentified flying objects. If you have actual evidence of corruption (or extraterrestrials visiting Earth), please post it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 @Bobbie Bobster It’s the NYT which ran this as a front page story and they’ve got a very rigorous process with respect to fact and source checking etc. It takes months for a story like this to get published. Also - this is not out of the, so called, ufology community. It’s from someone who was, until two months ago, a senior Pentagon military and defence insider. Someone with a long record of military and intelligence service. Also - it’s not really a story about aliens or little green men. It’s about craft. I would share your instinctive scepticism. At the same time I believe that this deserves to be treated somewhat differently to the normal crackpot stuff. For whatever final reason it is clearly more interesting than that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbie Bobster Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 More interesting than the precedents: Project SIgn Project Grudge Project Blue Book all of which concluded that it was a load of bunkum? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dilligaf Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 11 hours ago, pongo said: This article at The Big Think puts it into some more perspective. It's definitely a big story. And the program has not apparently not been cancelled according to most of the reporting. The main issue seems to be that they are awkward about admitting spending money on this. Here is the original New York Times piece. I used to have a bloody big bug on my windscreen that looked like that. When I cornered fast or suddenly changed direction it appeared to move exactly the same as in the video. Who'd have thought. What a load of rubbish. Like they say.................."I want to believe" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pongo Posted December 23, 2017 Share Posted December 23, 2017 1 hour ago, Bobbie Bobster said: More interesting than the precedents: Project SIgn Project Grudge Project Blue Book all of which concluded that it was a load of bunkum? I don’t want to go too far down this rat hole and you clearly know more about the world of so called ufology than me. But things like Project Blue Book were, according to Google, essentially public facing PR exercises rather than secret defence / intelligence projects. It’s not about investigating public reports of lights in the sky. There is clearly something different behind this story. Even if that is not about what it seems to be about. There is a story here. 28 minutes ago, dilligaf said: I used to have a bloody big bug on my windscreen I doubt the bug on your windscreen would also have been recorded by the instrumentation, battlefleet etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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