American Airlines jet has close encounter with unidentified flying object (with audio)

Richman said:
Discuss....
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Sure. We are incapable of interstellar travel, for all intents and purposes. Yeah, we can sling a few hundred pounds in a random direction at 10-15 km/s, but at those speeds you're talking hundreds of thousands of years to get to anywhere anything which could be described as "sentient" is likely to be hanging out. On the other hand, our electromagnetic transmissions are positively blaring out in to the universe like a giant neon "idiots here" sign.

So we are very dumb and very vulnerable, right? Well maybe, but my takeaway from these facts is more like "why would we imagine that anyone else would be different?" The distances involved are really hard to think about in a meaningful way, they utterly dwarf our common experiences as hairless apes, by many orders of magnitude. The absurd cost and danger of travelling these insane distances would require a pretty big piece of cheese at the other end, and I'm not seeing it. As far as our limited abilities can discern, there's nothing particularly unique about the composition of our solar system. It's maybe got more of its total mass flying around in planets than usual, but it's not off the charts, and the Sun itself is almost laughably pedestrian. No one is going to travel distances measured in AU to steal our Justin Bieber albums.

And it seems awfully likely that a species which was so advanced as to somehow render the physics problems of A) somehow covering up any indications of their existence and B) travelling absolutely ludicrous distances safely would be just bored out of their minds by anything they found around here
 
Boris Badenov said:
A) somehow covering up any indications of their existence
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Nah, they don't have too
We are still finding stuff to figure out on our own planet and we've taken pictures of just about everything from space. Couple of recent examples from Siberia are naturally occurring line patterns and the giant sink holes.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Sure. We are incapable of interstellar travel, for all intents and purposes. Yeah, we can sling a few hundred pounds in a random direction at 10-15 km/s, but at those speeds you're talking hundreds of thousands of years to get to anywhere anything which could be described as "sentient" is likely to be hanging out. On the other hand, our electromagnetic transmissions are positively blaring out in to the universe like a giant neon "idiots here" sign.

So we are very dumb and very vulnerable, right? Well maybe, but my takeaway from these facts is more like "why would we imagine that anyone else would be different?" The distances involved are really hard to think about in a meaningful way, they utterly dwarf our common experiences as hairless apes, by many orders of magnitude. The absurd cost and danger of travelling these insane distances would require a pretty big piece of cheese at the other end, and I'm not seeing it. As far as our limited abilities can discern, there's nothing particularly unique about the composition of our solar system. It's maybe got more of its total mass flying around in planets than usual, but it's not off the charts, and the Sun itself is almost laughably pedestrian. No one is going to travel distances measured in AU to steal our Justin Bieber albums.

And it seems awfully likely that a species which was so advanced as to somehow render the physics problems of A) somehow covering up any indications of their existence and B) travelling absolutely ludicrous distances safely would be just bored out of their minds by anything they found around here
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What if they are hipster aliens and they find our existence charming? Or like steam punk or something? It could be like Ren Fair or Burning Man for them...
 
Boris Badenov said:
Well maybe, but my takeaway from these facts is more like "why would we imagine that anyone else would be different?"
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We've gone from not knowing there was something called gravity to fully being able to design trajectories using it in less than 4000 years. It's not a very big logic leap to assume that a civilization with several orders of magnitude more development time could have solved problems we don't even know exist yet.
 
BobDDuck said:
We've gone from not knowing there was something called gravity to fully being able to design trajectories using it in less than 4000 years. It's not a very big logic leap to assume that a civilization with several orders of magnitude more development time could have solved problems we don't even know exist yet.
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We always knew about gravity, we just didn't have a theory to explain it. And having such a theory hasn't really changed any of the things we already knew, it's just allowed us to make use of them. Similarly, I see no obvious way in which further understanding of the behavior of matter and energy is going to change the fact that there are fairly strict and evident limits on the behavior of the same.

But sure, let's say that some alien civilization with orders of magnitude more development time than we have had has worked out FTL travel, and somehow erased all EM emissions from their period of technological infancy, which would be a pretty neat trick. So now these hyperbeings who can completely disobey the laws of physics as we understand them have nothing better to do with their time than jet around the skies of this primitive backwater of a planet, occasionally getting CAUGHT DOING SO by the locals who are essentially amoebas to them?
 
Boris Badenov said:
So now these hyperbeings who can completely disobey the laws of physics as we understand them have nothing better to do with their time than jet around the skies of this primitive backwater of a planet, occasionally getting CAUGHT DOING SO by the locals who are essentially amoebas to them?
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yes
 
BobDDuck said:
We've gone from not knowing there was something called gravity to fully being able to design trajectories using it in less than 4000 years. It's not a very big logic leap to assume that a civilization with several orders of magnitude more development time could have solved problems we don't even know exist yet.
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We also know about the heliosphere and helioshield that protects our solar system as we travel across the Milky Way thanks to the Voyager missions. That also means we know about the Oort Cloud, it seems like a fairly impenetrable barrier to interstellar travel. I honestly think the only possible way to travel to another solar system or galaxy is to bend space and time, it's been theorized plenty of times, I think some folks believe they've actually solved it but the power required would use every resource on our planet in a fraction of a millisecond. I still like cars with clutches.
 
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The main reason the Voyagers were successful is because both are nuclear powered. The first one launched over 40 years ago and it's still running and transmitting data. I think at this point they've both exited the heliosphere and are somewhere between it and Oorts Cloud, but at the speed they're traveling they won't reach it until everyone reading this today, 3/1/2021, will be recycled when they get there. The distances are so vast that I won't assume someone elses ability to grasp the scale, but I can't so I'll go grab a stick and start poking around in the ground looking for food.
 
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How do we know these UFOs aren't time travelers from THIS planet? Maybe it's our future selves coming back a thousand years. No space travel required. Just sayin'.

I'm firmly of the belief UFOs are either top secret government projects or natural phenomena. But if someone is going to believe in wild hypotheticals, why not go all out. Anything is possible.
 
jrh said:
How do we know these UFOs aren't time travelers from THIS planet? Maybe it's our future selves coming back a thousand years. No space travel required. Just sayin'.
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If that's the case, they could have given us a heads up about a couple of things :P
 
jrh said:
I'm firmly of the belief UFOs are either top secret government projects
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But can the government really keep a secret as big as having technology centuries more advanced? Also, why risk getting seen, do stuff only at night or in MOAs.
 
Skåning said:
But can the government really keep a secret as big as having technology centuries more advanced? Also, why risk getting seen, do stuff only at night or in MOAs.
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The government can keep a secret if everyone involved believes in the significance of what they're doing. If I literally thought keeping my mouth shut would mean the difference of thousands of people living or dying, or starting a major conflict, I'd have no trouble keeping quiet.

Also, who is to say this technology is really centuries advanced? My cell phone would look like alien technology to somebody fifty years ago, but it's really just thousands of mundane incremental steps in the palm of my hand. The future might not be as far off as you think.

As for risking getting seen, what if they want to be seen? What if they're evaluating how people react?

I don't have all the answers. In fact I have none. But I'm highly skeptical of little green men causing mayhem. I'm much more inclined to believe boring explanations.
 
jrh said:
How do we know these UFOs aren't time travelers from THIS planet? Maybe it's our future selves coming back a thousand years. No space travel required. Just sayin'.

I'm firmly of the belief UFOs are either top secret government projects or natural phenomena. But if someone is going to believe in wild hypotheticals, why not go all out. Anything is possible.
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You are a wise man, and I like the way you think. A clip from my absolute favorite movie of all time:

 
Get with it. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space. The cop, you, me... Who notices?
 
Boris Badenov said:
We always knew about gravity, we just didn't have a theory to explain it. And having such a theory hasn't really changed any of the things we already knew, it's just allowed us to make use of them. Similarly, I see no obvious way in which further understanding of the behavior of matter and energy is going to change the fact that there are fairly strict and evident limits on the behavior of the same.

But sure, let's say that some alien civilization with orders of magnitude more development time than we have had has worked out FTL travel, and somehow erased all EM emissions from their period of technological infancy, which would be a pretty neat trick. So now these hyperbeings who can completely disobey the laws of physics as we understand them have nothing better to do with their time than jet around the skies of this primitive backwater of a planet, occasionally getting CAUGHT DOING SO by the locals who are essentially amoebas to them?
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We used to do this all the time back in the day. It was called “anthropology”.

We still have people who go out to pester animals in person. Heck, it wasn’t all that long ago where such people were celebrated on TV, even though ole Marlin was safe in the helicopter while Jim gave a prostate exam to an angry water buffalo.

As far as the obviousness of the physical universe, maybe, maybe not. But even if it was, sometimes there’s no getting through to the highly perceptive. There was a great short story called “The Road not Taken” where a seemingly advanced species capable of gravity manipulation invades...but if turns out the balance of their tech was very low because the gravity manipulation was so simple, they didn’t need to advance further. So simple it was completely overlooked by puny humans.

Fiction, to be sure, but sometimes the best answer was the one staring us in the face the whole time.
 
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