from the how-do-you-know-they-did-not-find-something? dept.
The Government's Secret UFO Program Funded Research on Wormholes and Extra Dimensions
The Department of Defense funded research on wormholes, invisibility cloaking, and "the manipulation of extra dimensions" under its shadowy Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, first described in 2017 by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
On Wednesday, the Defense Intelligence Agency released a list of 38 research titles pursued by the program in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy.
[...] One such research topic, "Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy," was led by Eric W. Davis of EarthTech International Inc, which describes itself as a facility "exploring the forefront reaches of science and engineering," with an interest in theories of spacetime, studies of the quantum vacuum, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Another project called "Invisibility Cloaking" was helmed by German scientist Ulf Leonhardt, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Leonhardt's research pertains to theoretical quantum optics, and in 2006 his work on theoretically creating "an invisible 'hole' in space, inside which objects can be hidden" was cited by Nature.
Yet another title, "Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions," was attributed to theoretical physicist Richard Obousy, director of the nonprofit Icarus Interstellar, which claims to be "researching technologies that will enable breakthroughs in interstellar travel." Obousy was credited by Gizmodo in 2009 for creating "a scientifically accurate warpship design" that could hypothetically be propelled through space by manipulating dark energy.
Also at Teslarati.
Previously: 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
Related: Are We Alone? The Question is Worthy of Serious Scientific Study
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Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program
In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find. Which was how the Pentagon wanted it. For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon's C Ring, deep within the building's maze.
The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.
The existence of UFOs had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt," according the head of the secret Pentagon program that analyzed the mysterious aircrafts.
In an interview with British broadsheet The Telegraph published on Saturday, Luis Elizondo told the newspaper of the sightings, "In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt.'"
"I hate to use the term UFO but that's what we're looking at," he added. "I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so no one has to ask questions where they're from."
Since 2007, Elizondo led the government program, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, investigating evidence of UFOs and alien life. It was shuttered in 2012.
Its existence was first reported by The New York Times last week.
Elizondo was not able to discuss specifics of the program, but told The Telegraph that there had been "lots" of UFO sightings and witnesses interviewed during the program's five years.
Investigators pinpointed geographical "hot spots" that were sometimes near nuclear facilities and power plants and observed trends among the aircrafts including lack of flight surfaces on the objects and extreme manoeuvrability, Elizondo told The Telegraph.
Previously: Pentagon's UFO Investigation Program Revealed
A group linked to Luis Elizondo, the former leader of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, as well as other former military and government officials, has released a video showing a 2015 UFO encounter involving U.S. Navy pilots:
A newly-released video which shows U.S. Navy pilots encountering an unidentified flying object (UFO) in 2015 has garnered calls for more research into what these mysterious objects could be. "What the f--- is that thing?" one pilot can be heard saying in the video. "Wow, what is that, man?" the pilot adds. "Look at that flying!"
The footage was released Friday by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science (TTSA), a private scientific research and media group. It is led by Dr. Hal Puthoff, a NASA and U.S. Department of Defense adviser and James Semivan, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency service member. The clip is said to be "an authentic DoD video that captures the high-speed flight of an unidentified aircraft at low altitude" and "reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015," according to a statement from TTSA.
From my work with To the Stars Academy, which seeks to raise private funds to investigate incidents like the 2004 Nimitz encounter, I know they continue to occur, because we are being approached by military personnel who are concerned about national security and frustrated by how the Defense Department is handling such reports. I am also familiar with the evidence as a former Pentagon intelligence official and a consultant who began researching the issue after the Nimitz incident was brought to my attention. On several occasions, I have met with senior Pentagon officials, and at least one followed up and obtained briefings confirming incidents such as the Nimitz case. But nobody wants to be "the alien guy" in the national security bureaucracy; nobody wants to be ridiculed or sidelined for drawing attention to the issue. This is true up and down the chain of command, and it is a serious and recurring impediment to progress.
Also at USA Today and NextBigFuture.
Related: UFO Existence 'Proven Beyond Reasonable Doubt': Former Head Of Pentagon Program
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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:04AM (4 children)
Is there engineering going on here or just theoretical papers?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:22AM (3 children)
Engineering. More precisely, financial engineering... part of the budget went through a wormhole to your local congresscritter's pocket.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:00AM (2 children)
That's a big problem with such far out research. How much of this research is at all serious, and how much is just made up bull by a bunch of hacks, charlatans, and con artists hustling the public for money?
But I wonder something. Would you suspect the same thing about climate research?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:27AM
Is a question answerable by others in the field. This isn't a difficult question if you have the funds to hire some others to check.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hartree on Thursday January 24 2019, @06:35AM
The Air Force used to pay scifi writer Robert Forward to dream up ideas that were still in the scifi realm, but had a basis in fact. He'd then try to get other people interested in them. When others started looking at them, he went on to the next thing.
It was basically a very cheap way for them to get some brainstorming from a former aerospace engineer who made a living coming up with sorta plausible ideas for his stories. And, who knows, he might come up with something.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Snotnose on Thursday January 24 2019, @01:41AM (1 child)
Throw piles of shit against the wall, see what sticks. If even one of those sticks we win.
In the grand scheme of things the money involved won't even be noticed in the welfare slush fund, but the rewards could be immeasurable.
/ Ok, the money protecting the president
// or the money paying for the TSA
/// oops, I just showed my bias. So sue me.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:21AM
You first need to build the wall if you want to throw shit at it...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:01AM (1 child)
Good thing people wasted money on that obvious nonsense.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MostCynical on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:11AM
also.. [mentalfloss.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:16AM (7 children)
The relevant quantum optics effects were observed and replicated in lab experiments and work within the same known physics model that describe lasers and the likes. The issue is designing actual hardware that can manipulate more than a few particles at a time.
They really have no businesses putting them on the same list as FTL and wormhole fantasies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:39AM (5 children)
Physicists writing such papers is how we find out that physics doesn't permit those things.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:32AM (4 children)
I love the ludicrous speed scene from Spaceballs. "No, no, no, light speed is too slow."
I wonder if the main problem with all this dreaming of FTL travel is our terminology. If we understood the concept better, maybe we wouldn't call it "speed". Can't go slower than 0. An example of a bad term is "data compression". That name "data compression" makes it sound like more data can be squeezed into the same physical space like trash in a trash compacter. What is really going on is redundancy removal. Once all the redundancy is removed, no more "compression" is possible. Someday, maybe talk of FTL travel will sound as silly as alchemy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @03:44AM (1 child)
It's worth pointing out that we did end up achieving transmutation, though we call it fusion/fission, and it isn't economically viable to make gold with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @02:26PM
FTL is possible by warping space. Sure, That is extremely difficult to do and may depend on negative mass, but is not yet disproven.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:20AM (1 child)
"Redundancy removal" is misleading, possible incorrect - e.g. for lossless compression, one must not suppose that anything in the input signal is insignificant/useless/redundant. "Space efficient encoding" is closer to the reality.
Otherwise, yes, the image of "squeezing the crap out of things" is wrong in regards with data compression: you just translate the data in a "language" in which the same information takes less "space" but which a "decompressor" is able to understand it and translate it back.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Disagree) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 24 2019, @04:27AM
Redundancy removal is entirely correct. Especially for lossless. No information is being thrown away, only redundancy is being removed. Some work will have to be done to restore the redundancy, but it can all be restored.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 24 2019, @07:07AM
Why not?, the physics behind 'cloaking' might be sound but 'lay' expectations of the practical application of said physics, thanks to exposure to generations of Science Fiction's 'cloaking' devices, are just as nonsensical as FTL and Wormhole travel.
Still, you've got to admire the chutzpah of the scientists involved..