UFOs (UAPs): Explanations?

DaveC426913 said:
If that's your theory, it's going to be hard to verify. How will you separate criticism of faulty method from criticism of subject?
I think you're setting yourself up for a foregone conclusion.
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It’s my theory because MR isn’t the only one in this thread who has been “scolded” for his “flawed thinking” on this topic. Sarkus and Yazata have been targeted, too. So, that tells me, it’s the sub-forum where it’s posted that’s part of this - that there’s already a bias that members have when they decide to post in this section.
 
wegs said:
It’s my theory because MR isn’t the only one in this thread who has been “scolded” for his “flawed thinking” on this topic. Sarkus and Yazata have been targeted, too. So, that tells me, it’s the sub-forum where it’s posted that’s part of this - that there’s already a bias that members have when they decide to post in this section.
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Maybe the "ambiance" of a subforum category (or whatever else, in general) can have an effect at times. As an imperfect comparison, vaguely akin to operating in a reality show setting like Survivor, where 33 days competing on an island or isolated spot has people behaving in ways they would not back home.

Or send an adult back to a boarding school, where that atavistic teen status is the only social and residential environment they've got for a year. They'd soon be "fitting in" by regressing to former juvenile behaviors and attitudes.

Tom Hanks: "Hollywood is exactly like high school, with money! It's filled with just as much pettiness, sadness and jealousy -- as well as fun and senior proms and parties." [1]

- - - appended (and extraneous) reflection - - -

[1] Perhaps also why the entertainment industry is collectively such a poseur on one end of the political spectrum: Virtue posturing is a key means for counteracting one's tabloid lifestyle with respect to the public. In the old days of wild parties and affairs garnering headlines, celebrities might instead be contributing and appealing to religious charities, platitudes, etc. But for a secular today, it's leftangelicalism that's the ticket. Even going back to the latter's deepest roots in the French Revolution and some philosophical treatises prior, there was at least a kind of unconscious (if not deliberate) attempt by its architects to mimic or seize morality and crowd-manipulative attributes from the traditional preaching and "holier than thou" realm.
_
 
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The Debrief
(Michael Glawson PhD)
IT’S TIME TO RETHINK SOME COMMON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT UFOS
FEATURESUAP
·MAY 17, 2023

"Sightings of UFOs may challenge our entire worldview, but the facts are too compelling to ignore, and they’re not going away. So, it’s time to wash off the sticky stigma and engage in serious discussion about the evidence, and its implications.

Most UFO sightings are attributable to man-made objects like experimental aircraft or satellites, innocent misidentifications of Venus and other celestial objects, or outright hoaxes. However, we now know that in a minority of cases, there appears to be something else going on: something quite extraordinary and beyond our current comprehension.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are objects of unknown origin, evidently under intelligent control, which behave in ways that seem to challenge our understanding of physics. These objects don’t just “fly” without any apparent lift surfaces or means of propulsion; according to some military testimony, they would appear to be the fastest technological objects on Earth, capable of accelerating so quickly that they should create sonic booms, superheat the air around them into a glowing plasma, and instantly kill any occupants on board.

Instead, they silently maneuver with perfect agility through the atmosphere and, according to some eyewitness reports, underwater, as if basic rules of inertia and friction simply don’t apply to them.

There’s general acknowledgment that these phenomena have been documented in America since at least the late 1940s, and probably much earlier. Hence, many longtime UFO advocates, as well as those newer to the subject, are now asking why it has taken 70 years for government offices to openly regard UFOs as a subject of serious inquiry. This is a question that deserves a lengthy public discussion.

Today, serious researchers are beginning–sometimes grudgingly–to admit that UFOs (or UAPs if you prefer the rebranded version) are a valid area of study, and pockets of scientific enthusiasm are emerging. After the New York Times made the revelation of a secret Pentagon UFO study their front page story, the Department of Defense subsequently admitted that leaked UFO videos were in fact real (and that it has others it’s not showing us). Since that time, a NASA UFO research initiative headed by Princeton’s former chair of astronomy has been launched, former Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project wants to determine if the strange phenomena are extraterrestrial. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is now investigating UFO phenomena across all the branches of the military; the US Navy has revised its protocols to counter stigmas against UFO reporting and encourage sighting reports by pilots (like this one); and there have been briefings in the US Senate and House regarding the more than 650 sightings now being studied by AARO, marking an almost singular point of bipartisanship in a traditionally fractured Congress.

This explosion of interest and influx of expertise, credibility, and funding into UFO research will create a flow of ideas between old-hat UFO researchers and establishment newcomers to the subject. As some scientific communities shift to incorporate the nascently-legitimate subject of UFO research, they may have to accommodate elements of the other’s conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and research agendas, and this will require questioning old assumptions about what sort of evidence actually exists and how to interpret it. Likewise, it is the perfect moment for UFO-interested folks to pause and evaluate their own assumptions about the subject, many of which seem to have been in place since the very beginning of the Flying Saucer craze that in 1947 began simultaneously in both America and Canada. As career researchers and academics (like me) join the conversation, the contours of the conversation itself will inevitably shift–I think for the better...."

Contin'd here: https://thedebrief.org/its-time-to-rethink-some-common-assumptions-about-ufos/
 
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Magical Realist said:
The Debrief
(Michael Glawson PhD)
IT’S TIME TO RETHINK SOME COMMON ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT UFOS
FEATURESUAP
·MAY 17, 2023

"Sightings of UFOs may challenge our entire worldview, but the facts are too compelling to ignore, and they’re not going away. So, it’s time to wash off the sticky stigma and engage in serious discussion about the evidence, and its implications.

Most UFO sightings are attributable to man-made objects like experimental aircraft or satellites, innocent misidentifications of Venus and other celestial objects, or outright hoaxes. However, we now know that in a minority of cases, there appears to be something else going on: something quite extraordinary and beyond our current comprehension.

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are objects of unknown origin, evidently under intelligent control, which behave in ways that seem to challenge our understanding of physics. These objects don’t just “fly” without any apparent lift surfaces or means of propulsion; according to some military testimony, they would appear to be the fastest technological objects on Earth, capable of accelerating so quickly that they should create sonic booms, superheat the air around them into a glowing plasma, and instantly kill any occupants on board.

Instead, they silently maneuver with perfect agility through the atmosphere and, according to some eyewitness reports, underwater, as if basic rules of inertia and friction simply don’t apply to them.

There’s general acknowledgment that these phenomena have been documented in America since at least the late 1940s, and probably much earlier. Hence, many longtime UFO advocates, as well as those newer to the subject, are now asking why it has taken 70 years for government offices to openly regard UFOs as a subject of serious inquiry. This is a question that deserves a lengthy public discussion.

Today, serious researchers are beginning–sometimes grudgingly–to admit that UFOs (or UAPs if you prefer the rebranded version) are a valid area of study, and pockets of scientific enthusiasm are emerging. After the New York Times made the revelation of a secret Pentagon UFO study their front page story, the Department of Defense subsequently admitted that leaked UFO videos were in fact real (and that it has others it’s not showing us). Since that time, a NASA UFO research initiative headed by Princeton’s former chair of astronomy has been launched, former Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb’s Galileo Project wants to determine if the strange phenomena are extraterrestrial. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office is now investigating UFO phenomena across all the branches of the military; the US Navy has revised its protocols to counter stigmas against UFO reporting and encourage sighting reports by pilots (like this one); and there have been briefings in the US Senate and House regarding the more than 650 sightings now being studied by AARO, marking an almost singular point of bipartisanship in a traditionally fractured Congress.

This explosion of interest and influx of expertise, credibility, and funding into UFO research will create a flow of ideas between old-hat UFO researchers and establishment newcomers to the subject. As some scientific communities shift to incorporate the nascently-legitimate subject of UFO research, they may have to accommodate elements of the other’s conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and research agendas, and this will require questioning old assumptions about what sort of evidence actually exists and how to interpret it. Likewise, it is the perfect moment for UFO-interested folks to pause and evaluate their own assumptions about the subject, many of which seem to have been in place since the very beginning of the Flying Saucer craze that in 1947 began simultaneously in both America and Canada. As career researchers and academics (like me) join the conversation, the contours of the conversation itself will inevitably shift–I think for the better...."

Contin'd here: https://thedebrief.org/its-time-to-rethink-some-common-assumptions-about-ufos/
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Faulty assumptions and preconceived notions will always limit skeptics' curiosity, but it can also limit how ''evidence'' is perceived by UFO-enthusiasts, too. Of course, it would help if there was a way to test the ''new approaches'', or alleged evidence ''supporting'' UAP's, in a repeatable, meaningful (scientific) way. But, I suppose we should celebrate the fact that the government is taking some of these allegations seriously enough to invest time/money/energy into researching them. I wonder if debunkers view these articles though as mere strawmen?

For now, though, I'll keep positive on the topic, and this article is a well balanced look at the subject.
 
Michael 345 said:
For million millionth time there is none
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No evidence, you mean?

Of what?

There's plenty of evidence of people reporting things in the sky that they are unable to immediately identify as something known or familiar: those things are UAPs, which the emphasis on the "U" for "unidentified".

On the other hand, there's no reliable evidence for alien spacecraft or ghosts from the bottom of the Atlantic, etc.

There are lots of claims of "impossible" technologies and manoeuvres etc., but when we actually dig into the data that we're told is supposed to be evidence of such things, we mostly find that the data is absent or unreliable. A lot of these claims - almost all of them, actually - tend to rely on pure anecdotal evidence and guesses made by "eyewitnesses".
 
"Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads." - Mary Oliver
 
Faulty assumptions and preconceived notions will always limit skeptics' curiosity, but it can also limit how ''evidence'' is perceived by UFO-enthusiasts, too.
Click to expand...

I'm always thinking of the debunker position in my learning about a uap sighting. It behooves the ufo enthusiast to get those mundane explanations out of the way before inferring the uap as being of an otherworldly origin, So for example the account or video of a metallic sphere in the sky is not itself noteworthy because it could just be a balloon. It only becomes interesting if the object is observed traveling at a high speed and performing maneuvers that don't match that of a windblown balloon. The Pentagon anomaly committee has since confirmed the observed existence of metallic spheres flying in the sky in ways that defy conventional craft or balloons. They DO exist and are witnessed by many military personnel, and so this increases the possibility of it being a true UAP as defined by the US military.

“What we have done is reduce the most typically reported UAP characteristics to these fields, mostly around 1 to 4 meters wide,” said Sean M. Kirkpatrick, director of AARO, who appeared in front of a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, describing how UAPs mostly appear. “Silver. Translucent. Metallic. 10,000 to 30,000 feet [in the air] with apparent velocities from the stationary to mach to no thermal exhausts usually detected.”--- https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kx...drone-spotted-metallic-orb-ufo-in-middle-east
 
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Magical Realist:
Magical Realist said:
I'm always thinking of the debunker position in my learning about a uap sighting.
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I'll call that progress. Well done.
It behooves the ufo enthusiast to get those mundane explanations out of the way before inferring the uap as being of an otherworldly origin, So for example the account or video of a metallic sphere in the sky is not itself noteworthy because it could just be a balloon.
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Yes! Bravo.
It only becomes interesting if the object is observed traveling at a high speed and performing maneuvers that don't match that of a windblown balloon. The Pentagon anomaly committee has since confirmed the observed existence of metallic spheres flying in the sky in ways that defy conventional craft or balloons. They DO exist and are witnessed by many military personnel, and so this increases the possibility of it being a true UAP as defined by the US military.
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Can you please quote where the committee says it has "confirmed" the existence of metallic spheres flying in the sky that defy conventional craft or balloons?

Or is that nothing something that they have confirmed?

Why you did you write "The ... committeee has since confirmed the observed existence ..."?

Are you saying they have merely confirmed that people have reported observing things they think are metallic spheres that defy conventional craft or balloons? Obviously, that's would be a much less surprising confirmation than the one in which the actual existence of such things was confirmed.

What evidence did the committee site as confirmation?
“What we have done is reduce the most typically reported UAP characteristics to these fields, mostly around 1 to 4 meters wide,” said Sean M. Kirkpatrick, director of AARO, who appeared in front of a subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, describing how UAPs mostly appear. “Silver. Translucent. Metallic. 10,000 to 30,000 feet [in the air] with apparent velocities from the stationary to mach to no thermal exhausts usually detected.”--- https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kx...drone-spotted-metallic-orb-ufo-in-middle-east
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Only apparent velocities? Measured how? By whom?

Is the Director merely referring to what some eyewitnesses have estimated about the velocities, as opposed to "hard" evidence?
 
Michael:

I was attempting to confirm what you meant, for the benefit of other readers. If you'd rather not say, that's up to you, of course.

I don't know what your problem with me is.
 
James R said:
I don't know what your problem with me is.
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I find that hard to believe (or perhaps not

Have been in Hospital over 2 months - fractured head of femur and pelvis - which has not been cause of extended stay

But in a effort to diagnose problem of nervousness I was subjected to a brain scan. During chat with hospital psychologist I mentioned the problem had with you (no names)

Also showed a reply given to another poster (different thread) and he spotted either one must be incorrect

He picked mine as being the one found correct although science is still divided

He advised don't engage but here I am as I have used another tactic to ignore you

:)
 
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