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posted by martyb on Monday July 02 2018, @01:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the Close-Encounters-of-Whatever-Kind dept.

Are we alone? The question is worthy of serious scientific study

Are we alone? Unfortunately, neither of the answers feel satisfactory. To be alone in this vast universe is a lonely prospect. On the other hand, if we are not alone and there is someone or something more powerful out there, that too is terrifying.

As a NASA research scientist and now a professor of physics, I attended the 2002 NASA Contact Conference, which focused on serious speculation about extraterrestrials. During the meeting a concerned participant said loudly in a sinister tone, "You have absolutely no idea what is out there!" The silence was palpable as the truth of this statement sunk in. Humans are fearful of extraterrestrials visiting Earth. Perhaps fortunately, the distances between the stars are prohibitively vast. At least this is what we novices, who are just learning to travel into space, tell ourselves.

I have always been interested in UFOs. Of course, there was the excitement that there could be aliens and other living worlds. But more exciting to me was the possibility that interstellar travel was technologically achievable. In 1988, during my second week of graduate school at Montana State University, several students and I were discussing a recent cattle mutilation that was associated with UFOs. A physics professor joined the conversation and told us that he had colleagues working at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Great Falls, Montana, where they were having problems with UFOs shutting down nuclear missiles. At the time I thought this professor was talking nonsense. But 20 years later, I was stunned to see a recording of a press conference featuring several former US Air Force personnel, with a couple from Malmstrom AFB, describing similar occurrences in the 1960s. Clearly there must be something to this.

With July 2 being World UFO Day, it is a good time for society to address the unsettling and refreshing fact we may not be alone. I believe we need to face the possibility that some of the strange flying objects that outperform the best aircraft in our inventory and defy explanation may indeed be visitors from afar – and there's plenty of evidence to support UFO sightings.

See also: Released FAA recording reveals pilot report of a UFO over Long Island
I-Team Exclusive: Nevada senator fought to save secret UFO program

Related: Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
Newly-Released Video Shows 2015 U.S. Navy Sighting of UFO


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @03:27AM (25 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @03:27AM (#701176)

    I've been around aircraft my entire life. I've flown many, and I have seen nearly any aircraft you can name fly at least once. Suffice it to say I am familiar with what aircraft can and cannot do.

    *

    I have seen one UFO that did something no manned aircraft could do. I don't know what was operating it, but I do know that absent some sort of device which could negate the effects of acceleration on a human, no human could have been on board this UFO and survived, because the rate of acceleration this UFO displayed would have killed any human. The UFO in question was observed by me hovering motionless when it suddenly accelerated to a very high rate of speed such that it disappeared from sight over the horizon, in a few seconds. I don't know what the UFO was, but I know I've never seen anything do what it did, before or since.

    *

    To those who make statements like "faster than light travel is impossible", I submit that many things we now accept as part of every day life would have been considered utterly impossible several hundred years ago. A few hundred years is a short period of time in the larger scheme of things. Rather than make blanket statements like "x is impossible", it might be more prudent to say "humanity, given the sum of human knowledge at this time, is unable to accomplish "x", but over time "x" may become possible. In other words, keep an open mind and be aware that the limits of our knowledge do not define the limits of what may be possible for an entity which has more knowledge.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @03:47AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @03:47AM (#701186)
    It took about two thousand years to understand that different parallel lines can cross. Today anyone can demonstrate it by folding paper.
    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @03:57AM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @03:57AM (#701191) Journal

      They had to invent paper too.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @10:39AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @10:39AM (#701265)

      what are you talking about?
      if two lines are parallel, they cannot cross. not if they are straight lines in Euclidian geometry.
      the notion of "parallel" is in fact only adequate for Euclidian geometry.
      if you're going to extend it to "lines that do not cross", then you can do that, but then THEY DO NOT CROSS.
      if you're going to say "light rays that are initially parallel can cross"... you're just playing with the definition of parallel again.

      and the fact that you can draw some lines on a piece of paper and then bend the piece of paper has absolutely no relation to what you can physically do with geodesics in the objective universe.
      even black holes (arguably the strongest perturbations of space-time observable in the universe) are nowhere near a "bend the piece of paper" phenomenon.
      and wormwholes have never actually been observed (I will admit that there are people working on trying to link observable phenomena to the concept of wormhole: https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.024040; [aps.org] https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.024031). [aps.org]

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 02 2018, @03:58PM (3 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @03:58PM (#701421) Journal

        if two lines are parallel, they cannot cross. not if they are straight lines in Euclidian geometry.

        I think I found the problem!

        As Adam Savage from Mythbusters would say: there's your problem!

        Euclidian geometry is a nice hypothetical idea to think about. But it is a fantasy world that does not reflect physical reality.

        Space is curved in a dimension we cannot observe. Example, here is one of the proof of relativity. Once upon a time, there was this thing called Mariner 9. It was happy in its transfer orbit to Mars. Even happier when it got there. Given that the humanoids on Earth understood the layout of the solar system, they knew at all times how far away their baby Mariner 9 was from Earth. To prevent separation clingxiety, as with puppies, humanoids on Earth could stay in contact with Mariner 9. The line of communication, that is, the straight line between Earth and Mariner 9 would always be a known distance. But when Earth and Mariner 9 were positioned such that the line of communication came close to the sun, the apparent distance (and thus round trip time) increased quite measurably -- as relativity predicted.

        It seems that as you get closer to a massive gravitational source, like the sun, there is more space there. Let's suppose you took a few boxen of tinkertoys, and constructed a square. All four sides equal length. One edge of the square is tangent to the orbit of Jupiter. The opposite edge of the square is close to the sun. Guess what? That edge of the square close to the sun is going to need A LOT more tinkertoy sticks to complete its length than the number of tinkertoy segments at the opposite edge of the square near Jupiter.

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        • (Score: 1) by notrandom on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:38AM (2 children)

          by notrandom (5820) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:38AM (#701743)
          • (Score: 1) by notrandom on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:42AM

            by notrandom (5820) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:42AM (#701745)

            and if you read the abstract, the conclusion is kind of meh.... large margin of error, kind of inconclusive...

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:55PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 03 2018, @02:55PM (#701921) Journal

            Thank you for pointing that out.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @04:31AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @04:31AM (#701198)

    IMO, FTL "might be possible", but require finding some other physics rule.
    That said it would be related to another point along with the relativity theory: since time would pass differently for someone travelling really fast, you can't really go on a holiday in alpha centauri then go back home on earth, thousands/millions of years would have passed, the same for the destination and maybe when you arrive, the galaxy would have moved on to some other location.

    So even if we were to find FTL travel tomorrow, using it right away will give other troubles.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @04:43AM (4 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @04:43AM (#701201) Journal

      A warp drive that bends space would not result in the time dilation you're talking about. Presumably, other FTL technologies such as wormholes would work the same way. If you're not actually traveling faster than c, you don't get the time dilation.

      You don't even need FTL to get your scenario. If you get your velocity to a significant % of c, you will experience noticeable time dilation:

      https://www.fourmilab.ch/cship/timedial.html [fourmilab.ch]

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      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @10:44AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @10:44AM (#701266)

        special relativity says that you can go on vacation on the other side of the galaxy (time dilation allows you to get there and back in a reasonably short subjective time), but what you observe while there is far in the future of the pictures from the flier, and what you find back home is even further into the future (for instance it's likely that your car will have been moved from the spaceport parking lot because it had become an eye-sore).

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @11:50AM (2 children)

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @11:50AM (#701285) Journal

          Time dilation only kicks in if your velocity approaches the speed of light or if you are near a strong gravitational field. If you are not actually moving, e.g. bending spacetime with a warp drive or wormhole, time dilation does not apply. That's not to say that either method of travel is conclusively possible. But if they are, they could work around time dilation and give you the results you would expect (for example, if your warp capable ship takes a month to travel to Proxima Centauri, about a month of time passed for both passengers on the ship and people back on Earth).

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          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @09:38PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @09:38PM (#701589)

            as far as i understand it the alcubierre drive allows for time travel.
            I really doubt time travel ispossible, because of the temporal Fermi paradox (if time travel is possible, where are the time travelers, because there's an eternity of them?).

            • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:45AM

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday July 03 2018, @01:45AM (#701677) Journal

              Even if it could allow you to observe Earth as it appeared in the past (for example, instantly move 5 light years and see Earth as it was 5 years ago from that distance), that's not real time travel and it does not mean that a glut of time travelers are coming.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @07:57AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @07:57AM (#701230)

    well, here's my problem with your statement: you're an anonymous coward on the internet.
    your statement has absolutely the same value as the statement: "I went up on a mountain, God showed himself as a burning bush and told me we should listen to these here rules".

    in case you are sincere, I apologize if my assessment is insulting.
    if you are a pilot, than I assume you are quite rational, and you can understand that if you were in my position you'd react the same way.
    with the risk of further insulting you: it is quite possible for you to be sincere and wrong at the same time.

    this is a general problem.
    when we question the laws of the universe, we discover that we do not have enough time to personally review every claim that has been made.
    I don't have an intuition about the Earth being round.
    however, I have seen a couple of lunar eclipses, I've visited a couple of different latitudes and saw the sun setting at 23:00, hell I've skyped from the US to Europe and the time of day was different.
    I really don't have an intuition about general relativity, and I can only take people's word for it that you need to account for GR in order for GPS to work (I haven't actually taken anything apart and I haven't checked their code).
    but I believe that there is no great conspiracy to fool me into believing the wrong theory of gravity, because people are consistent about it.
    with your UFO story, I'm sorry, but it's not a verifiable statement, independently of whether you believe you are telling the truth.

    it's like claiming that you placed a drop of ink in a glass of water and saw it diffuse for a few minutes, then it reformed into almost the initial shape, and then it diffused again.
    there is a well known theorem in dynamical systems (Poincare's recurrence theorem) that says such an event is possible, but it's extremely unlikely (in the sense of "in general we expect the drop to reform after many ages of the universe").
    if anyone witnesses such an event and they don't have irrefutable evidence for it, no physicist will ever believe them --- the claim is not verifiable in practice.
    I'm not saying your observation is just as unlikely, I'm just saying that in practice it's also unverifiable, because the only rational explanation for the lack of other evidence is the fact that we're dealing with intelligent agents who are actively hiding from us, i.e. any experiment we make in order to "measure" their existence is not, in practice, repeatable.

    if you are sincere: while it may be unfair, I find it more reasonable to discount the "extremely fast moving object" experience that you claim to have had.
    there is evidence which I think should be investigated: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42405205/ufo-spotted-by-us-fighter-jet-pilots-new-footage-reveals [bbc.com]
    but I don't have the knowledge to do it.
    when this video was discussed here, there were a few people who pointed out inconsistencies in this video itself; in fact with today's technology I would only trust a video claiming to show nonhuman technology if every TV station in the world would be claiming it's true.
    but you don't even have something like this.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 02 2018, @08:16AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday July 02 2018, @08:16AM (#701235) Journal

      your statement has absolutely the same value as the statement: "I went up on a mountain, God showed himself as a burning bush and told me we should listen to these here rules".

      No, his/her statement has tremendous more value.

      First, it was using correct English (or at least few enough errors that they didn't jump on you on reading; I didn't go through it to find errors).

      Second, it was a much better read, even when ignoring the language issues.

      What it is not is a reliable source for judging the existence of UFOs.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @11:33PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @11:33PM (#701632)

      OP here.

      I don't care whether you believe me or not.

      What you wrote is your opinion, and you are entitled to it, but if you think your opinion
      negates the opinion of others, you are in the grip of severe ego issues.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:30AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @07:30AM (#701782)

        I didn't want to offend you, I'm sorry if I did.
        what I would like is for you to make an official statement, using your own identity, in front of witnesses who can confirm you are sane. if others like you come forward as well, it may turn out that my initial assessment is wrong. I mean... there are less than one in a thousand people who understand GR, yet I believe GR is a good description of the universe. if there's a significant number of aviation/astronomy experts who say "there are things that are seen and cannot be explained as conventional human technology", that would certainly make your statement worth investigating (in the sense of society setting aside resources to look at this carefully).
        but your statement, in the context of this discussion, is frustrating. I would like to believe you, but I can't. I assume the situation is also frustrating to you, and I can understand why you would not want to do the "official statement" I described above, since it's likely most people you know professionally would have my reaction.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:47AM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:47AM (#702849) Journal

        What you wrote is your opinion, and you are entitled to it, but if you think your opinion negates the opinion of others, you are in the grip of severe ego issues.

        The problem here is that it does. When there's nothing backing the opinion, then one opinion is just as good as another. You need more than opinion if you want us to take you seriously.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @11:00AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @11:00AM (#701270)

    in the edward norton hulk there is a scene where a human is on a table and begins transformation into the hulk. as the transformation proceeds, the table breaks because of the increased weight. THAT is impossible, it would have been called impossible a few hundred years ago, and I call it impossible now. that scene breaks conservation of mass. I'm sorry to say this, but current physics points to "you can't go faster than light" being just as true as mass conservation (well, we call it energy conservation). I could be wrong, but it's very unlikely.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @11:41AM (5 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @11:41AM (#701282) Journal

      Bending spacetime is the way to work around the faster-than-light limit:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive [wikipedia.org]
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormhole [wikipedia.org]

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      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @12:25PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @12:25PM (#701296)

        the "negative energy" part makes those things extremely unlikely.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday July 02 2018, @12:40PM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday July 02 2018, @12:40PM (#701307) Journal

          No one said they weren't.

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        • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 02 2018, @05:51PM (2 children)

          by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday July 02 2018, @05:51PM (#701498) Journal

          Actually, negative energy exists. Look up Casimir Effect. It's (probably) a result of a situation where some of the virtual particles that normally appear is space-time are prohibited from showing up. I sure don't see how you could use that to stabilize a wormhole, though. When Forward was trying to justify them he felt he had to invoke negative mass (different from anti-matter). Negative mass is theoretically possible without violating any extant laws, and there are obvious reasons why we've never seen any. But it's really dubious, particularly as it would make the dark matter problem even worse (though it could be used to justify dark energy). And since it would be repelled by gravitational fields, it wouldn't make the dark matter problem *that* much worse. You just wouldn't find any within a galaxy, and probably not within a galaxy cluster.

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          • (Score: 1) by notrandom on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:48AM (1 child)

            by notrandom (5820) on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:48AM (#701749)

            All the Feynmann in the world will not convince me about the exzistence of virtual particles as anything more than a math device...
            I'm sorry .. I'm dumb :D

            • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:38PM

              by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:38PM (#702060) Journal

              Well come up with a different explanation then. The effect is observable.

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