[HN Gopher] Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aer... ___________________________________________________________________ Flight characteristics of anomalous unidentified aerial vehicles (2019) Author : sebg Score : 58 points Date : 2022-03-07 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) (TXT) w3m dump (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) | oblib wrote: | I won't venture to guess what these are but I did find it quite | interesting that the old and more recent descriptions of | sightings are very similar, and that we still do not know what | they are or where they come from. | motohagiography wrote: | Makes me wonder what the psychology and politics of anti- | extraterrestrial beliefs and rules are. It's very plausible other | beings exist, but what necessary axioms disintegrate if a society | comes to believe in aliens, and why is it important to isolate | and shame people who suspect it? | | I can see how our dominant moral systems are rooted in the idea | of human primacy and a single One supreme being. Recognition that | we can appeal to super beings to intervene on our behalf could | arrest our evolutionary intellectual development by causing our | civilizations to optimize for pleasing said beings, instead of | organizing ourselves to elevate human minds that enable a more | natural and free evolution for our species. There may be some | evolutionary rule about life where a species only evolves along | degrees of freedom and our development becomes arrested when we | optimize for the constraint of appealing to the discretion of | super beings, sort of like domesticated animals vs. wild ones. | | To adapt to co-existing with a technologically advanced species, | you would need a conceptual or moral degree of freedom and agency | beyond them, which made peaceful and free co-existence possible, | and provided some basis for principled equality of life. (an | agreement on a One god whose will has been revealed them as well | would go a long way, and as an idea, could secure our ability to | evolve independently of our advanced co-habitants. This may be | the rational evolutionary case for monotheism, as a necessary | condition for moral agency across significant differences.) The | most obvious consequence of introducing a new super being species | would be how we would organize ourselves and relate to each other | around them, and not just find increasingly subtle ways to murder | each other to secure their favoured status. | | If humans forfeited our moral agency by optimizing for becoming | subjects of these super beings, we would be putting | responsibility on the super beings to govern us, and arrest our | own evolutionary development. | | Maybe the anti-extraterrestrial people have a deeper | understanding of this. Or they just recognize, maybe the arrival | of such a species would irreconcilably polarize us all between | those who could sustain their own moral agency in the face of a | superior power, and those who give it up to optimize for material | animal ingroup security, and the ensuing war would wipe us all | out - or the aliens would do it for us. Maybe it will take | another couple hundred years for them to really arrive as we're | not quite fully baked from an evolutionary perspective, and we | need to be on average more intelligent than we rather obviously | are now. | | I'm sure they laugh at our nuclear energy use and social media as | being the civilizational equivalent to trepanation though. I | wonder what their jokes are like. | the_af wrote: | I don't know that such a thing as "anti extraterrestrial" | belief exists. | | Here's two beliefs/points of view that are compatible: | | 1. There's a very high chance there's life out there in the | universe. There may even be intelligent life, too. | | 2. It's unlikely extraterrestrial intelligent life will be able | to reach Earth. Most reports of UFOs are either made up | bullshit or the human brain finding patterns where there are | none. Or simply classified military tech. Or people craving | attention. | | Not one person that laughs at fake accounts of alien abduction | and probing does this because they are afraid of coexisting | with alien intelligence. Instead, they do it because fake | accounts of alien abduction are hilarious. | Ancapistani wrote: | > why is it important to isolate and shame people who suspect | it | | I'd argue that humans are tribal creatures, and that we don't | need a reason to "other" people. On the contrary - our need to | "other" people drives the creation of reasons to do so if | necessary. | JALTU wrote: | This article (linked) is a fun thought exploration of alien | psychology/motivations as understood by us humans, given the | history of our interactions ("known interactions" so to speak) | with the aliens: https://www.overcomingbias.com/2021/03/social- | ufo-stylized-f... | smoyer wrote: | Reaching relativistic speeds in minutes to hours and covering | interstellar distances in days to weeks as proposed in the | abstract seem to not be compatible - wouldn't a relativistic | speed mean we'd need 4ish years to reach another star? | netgusto wrote: | The durations are expressed in 'ship time', ie the perceived | duration from the pov of the ship. This is explicited further | in the document. | kmote00 wrote: | Off topic comment: I'm pretty sure "explicited" is not a real | word, but you've convinced me that it ought to be. Perfectly | clear what you meant. Can somebody add this to the | dictionary, please? | jointpdf wrote: | They probably meant: | | explicate -- to give a detailed explanation of | | https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/explicate | | It seems like a relatively newer word in its usage: https:/ | /books.google.com/ngrams/graph?year_start=1800&year_e... | shkkmo wrote: | From the body of the paper: | | > Such a craft accelerating at a constant 1000g for half of the | trip and decelerating at the same rate for the remaining half | would reach Proxima Centuri within 5 days' ship time due to the | fact that it would have been traveling at relativistic speeds | for most of the trip (Figure 7B). However, for those of us on | Earth, or anyone on Proxima Centuri b, the trip would take over | four years. | thfuran wrote: | That depends whose clock you're using. | hammock wrote: | From the study: | | >Collectively, these observations strongly suggest that these | UAVs should be carefully studied by scientists [9,10,11,12,13]. | | >Unfortunately, the attitude that the study of UAVs (UFOs) is | "unscientific" pervades the scientific community, including SETI | (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) [34], which is | surprising, especially since efforts are underway to search for | extraterrestrial artifacts in the solar system [35,36,37,38,39], | particularly, on the Moon, Mars, asteroids [40], and at Earth- | associated Lagrange points. Ironically, such attitudes inhibit | scientific study, perpetuating a state of ignorance about these | phenomena that has persisted for well over 70 years, which is now | especially detrimental, since answers are presently needed | [41,42,43,44,45,46]. | mullingitover wrote: | Right out of the gate, the paper is begging the question by | stating that these are 'vehicles.' | dvh wrote: | Here's my most recent thought. Pilots spent years up there and | the only thing they see are other planes. If they see something | it must be a plane, from the size they can estimate the distance. | | But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain | thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a plane, | they think it must be far away. And when it flys same speed as | plane, in "projected" large distance those speeds are enormous. | And their agility is amplified in the same way. | | The result is that pilots see "planes" doing impossible | manoeuvres at impossible speeds. | 1shooner wrote: | The study addresses this: the cases selected for analysis | include multi-modal observation (e.g. visual + radar). | zardo wrote: | Even with the video evidence from the Nimitz incident, all the | calculations rest on the pilot's estimate of the vehicle size. | tejohnso wrote: | > But when they suddenly see smaller drone, their pilot-brain | thinks it's a plane, but because it is much smaller than a | plane, they think it must be far away. | | I think this neglects the training and capability of the pilot | to the point of being insulting. You're basically saying that a | (let's say) 15 year veteran of the U.S. Air Force can't tell | the difference between a small drone and a plane, doesn't | understand basic physics / optics, and when uncertain, assumes | that anything observed _must_ be a plane because "all we see | are planes". Preposterous. | | Also, even if that were the case, it's pretty hard to explain | away when the same object is being observed from multiple | angles, with multiple humans, and multiple high precision | sensors, with all observations confirming the same conclusions. | cma wrote: | When stabilized against the ocean some of the things the | pilots said were pulling impossible G levels of acceleration | were actually flying in a straight line: | | https://www.metabunk.org/data/MetaMirrorCache/49d95870dca331. | .. | | Some of the other high g-force examples turned out to be an | FOV change of the camera footage when toggling IR. | runjake wrote: | 1. (US) military pilots are trained to recognize the | shortcomings of their sensory perceptions in this exact regard. | | 2. This doesn't explain the many, separate close-up encounters, | such at the Nimitz and east coast/Atlantic Ocean encounters. | | PS: FWIW, I don't think these things are extra-terrestrial. | zardo wrote: | 1. They are trained to estimate the sizes of featureless | flying tic-tacs? | runjake wrote: | They are trained in identifying aircraft and grok flight | characteristics, and for the lack of better phrasing | because I'm eating a taco at lunch, how one's senses can be | wrong or skewed. | cma wrote: | But some of those pilots made critical mistakes | describing the tic tac, things like FOV changes on the | camera were interpreted by them publicly as velocity | changes of the object. | count wrote: | The radar and FLIR aren't as easy to 'trick' though. | runjake wrote: | They could be, with RF and laser equipment running | reasonably-advanced software to spoof such sensors _. | | _ There are a lot of gotchas to work out here, but it 's my | best guess, aside from "craft that defy physics." | | Source: worked on such military equipment, back in the early | 90s. | marcusverus wrote: | > They could be, with RF and laser equipment running | reasonably-advanced software to spoof such sensors. | | How would such RF and laser equipment spoof sensors that | are thousands of feet in the air and moving at hundreds of | miles per hour and moving in unpredictable ways? Radar is | off the table--that would presumably have been detected, | right? How would our spoofer spoof multiple sensors, | separated by significant distance? Remember that some of | these events involved multiple aircraft and ships, all of | which saw the same data on their sensors. How could the | spoofer engage all of these targets without its physical | presence being detected by the various players, with all | their various systems constantly searching? | | Spoofing seems possible, but it seems like some kind of | pre-planned hack would be the least offensive flavor of | that particular theory. But even then, some of the pilots | swear they saw these things with their own eyes (sometimes | multiple people in a single aircraft, sometimes multiple | people in different aircraft), which casts doubt on the | whole 'spoofing' idea. | | Of course, the most likely answer is that these reports are | some simply untrue. If someone has an impossible story that | you can't independently verify, there's no good reason to | believe them. | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | The analysis in this article is just plain bad; it came up in | another UFO discussion about nine months ago. e.g. see here: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27355333 | | The article is published in a journal the subject matter of | which has nothing to do with UFOs, or flight dynamics or | anything similar. It does so happen that the principal author | of the paper is the editor-in-chief of that journal however; | and the publisher of the journal has been on-again-off-again | the lists of predatory publishers for some years. | danbruc wrote: | At least those videos [1] are just birds, see for example this | analysis [2]. Skip to the meat of it, if you dislike the style | of the video. | | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkPn-YMp9vI | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhAC2YiYHs | bufferoverflow wrote: | What kind of a freaking bird travels at fighter jet speeds | and rotates like that? | | I'm a photographer who loves watching birds, taking photos, I | watch other bird photographers. It's never anything like | that. | danbruc wrote: | It isn't. The bird is between the sea and the jet and for | all practically purposes stationary. When the camera pod on | the jet tracks the bird and keeps it in the center of the | field of view, what you are seeing is a parallax motion of | the sea in the background due to the motion of the jet. | This refers to the second clip in the linked video which | also also the focus of the linked analysis. | bufferoverflow wrote: | You need to listen to the interview with the pilots who | filmed this. They were chasing it, and couldn't catch up. | robotresearcher wrote: | Which is what you'd see of a bit of gum stuck to the | sensor lens. | | I'm not saying that's what this is, I'm pointing out that | what the pilots perceive is not to be taken at face | value. | billsmithwicks wrote: | Quick, someone find a carpet to sweep this under! | | In all seriousness, I hope that the Galileo Project comes up with | the goods in the next few years - | https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home | Ancapistani wrote: | Can anyone clue me in as to why this is on the NIH's website? | sliken wrote: | From another comment "The article is published in a journal the | subject matter of which has nothing to do with UFOs, or flight | dynamics or anything similar. It does so happen that the | principal author of the paper is the editor-in-chief of that | journal" | nl wrote: | It's published in a journal that PubMed[1] indexes. The journal | itself is about "research on all aspects of entropy and | information theory" [2] which is why the paper is about | _estimation_. | | [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(journal) | Ancapistani wrote: | Ah, thanks. That makes sense. | | Now I have to go back and re-read that paper with an eye | toward the statistical techniques used. | jaqalopes wrote: | It was news to me that in the Nimitz event ballistic missile | defense radar was actually observing the UAVs _in low Earth | orbit_ days before the fighter jet encounter. Truly wild stuff. | If I had to hazard a guess, these are unmanned (unaliened?) | probes, the same ones that have been here for centuries or more. | They may not even know or care what humans are or what we 're up | to. Maybe they keep dipping to the water to take algae samples or | something similarly banal. And the reason they "run away" when | the fighter jets get too close is just their onboard flight AI | following a generic self-preservation script. However, none of | this comports with the report of the fleeing tic-tac "appearing" | directly at the fighters' pre-determined, _secret_ CAP point. | h2odragon wrote: | I had not caught that bit before, either: | | > The main incident occurred on 14 November 2004, but several | days earlier, radar operators on the USS Princeton were | detecting UAPs appearing on radar at about 80,000+ feet | altitude to the north of CSG11 in the vicinity of Santa | Catalina and San Clemente Islands. Senior Chief Kevin Day | informed us that the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) radar | systems had detected the UAPs in low Earth orbit before they | dropped down to 80,000 feet. The objects would arrive in groups | of 10 to 20 and subsequently drop down to 28,000 feet with a | several hundred foot variation, and track south at a speed of | about 100 knots. | swagasaurus-rex wrote: | Artifacts on sensors, or even active jamming could explain | massive changes in speed for recorded videos ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-07 23:00 UTC)