They're Here...

[Berzerker]

No, not ghosts...

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018...-leaders-to-take-threat-aliens-seriously.html

An American pilot who claims to have chased an alien aircraft has warned world leaders to take UFO sightings seriously.

Retired US Navy pilot commander David Fravor spoke out in support of ex US government intelligence officer Luis Elizondo, who last week revealed he ran a real life "X Files" UFO research department at the Pentagon named the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) funded by £16 million ($22m) “black ops money” from Congress.

Elizondo secured the release of previously classified US Defense Department videos of UFO encounters - one of which shows the craft Fravor saw darting off at an incredible speed.

The pilot wants Stephen Hawking to watch the video, yes, they have video... I've never been much into the UFO scene but if we have actual military pilots chasing and filming them, I'm impressed.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Uh-huh. Whatever. Show us the evidence, as in real artifacts, not merely videos.

 

[FriendlyFire]

They will contact us when they are ready.
In the meantimes FFS dont start a war with a technologically superior species that can probably delete humanity overnight

 

[Cassius Critzer]

I saw the video. It's been on youtube.

People always assume extraterrestrials and that theory makes no scientific sense. They could never carry enough fuel. The only way is a totally novel dimensional travel, not space travel. Or they have always lived here but out of our direct observation. Thus not traveling vast distances. People have been talking about the alternative theory called the IDH or interdimensional hypothesis for decades just not loudly as everyone wants to meet ET. The proponents were Keel and Vallee.

The Pentagon spent $22 million on that program. We know that novel propulsion systems exist due to Aurora and the release of the startling warp engine...the Alcubierre drive. That kind of drive is honestly a solar system drive only.

There is no reason to believe in a positive outcome as in history when a low tech nation.meets a high tech nation, then exploitation and subjugation happens. It would be worse than Aztecs meeting the Spanish conquestidors. And many people would welcome them...open arms...in a completely naive fashion.

The theory that huge distances would be indicative of explorers is based solely that to cross that distance would be so costly that it shouldn't be an invasion. Well that is not logical, and if terrestrially based, or if able to cross dimensionally, then this vast distance is moot.

Communication would be hugely difficult and we should not expect similarities as evolution would have placed entirely different pressures on their development. Their sensory organs and vocalization could be anything like chemical transmitters, light, sounds we can't hear. And we have no frame of reference either to discern meaning.

We should talk over decades and be wary...as every subjugated people who died in Earth's past would tell us.

Arrival is a very good film discussing alien linguistics and radical paradigms in understanding the passage of time. Plus how a species so radically different might be motivated in the long run.

Then there is the famous RAND study on disclosure of other species. They concluded it would melt down human society into anarchy. Crash the markets. Religious chaos. Mass suicides.

 

[FriendlyFire]

I saw the video. It's been on youtube.

People always assume extraterrestrials and that theory makes no scientific sense. They could never carry enough fuel. The only way is a totally novel dimensional travel, not space travel. Or they have always lived here but out of our direct observation. Thus not traveling vast distances. People have been talking about the alternative theory called the IDH or interdimensional hypothesis for decades just not loudly as everyone wants to meet ET. The proponents were Keel and Vallee..

Of course they could be drones launched from a mothership, or via non-neutonian physics or could be robotic probes sent via ballstic means etc etc

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Yeah. One theory is that whatever beings were seen were biological robots and thus of limited capacity and gathering data for analysis. And so not subject to intense g forces, sudden turns, damage that we would experience on one of their ships. And perhaps why seemingly cold in some.encounters.

As you say some ships themselves could be probes but equally with advanced synthetic biology the ships themselves could be living probes just not life as we know it.

The old saying was if humans can't communucate with dogs still, then why would you think you could communicate with a nonhuman species? At some base level we think of ourselves as altruists, but that is rare in human contact and typically due to a positive exchange even if only a feeling of benevolence that is acknowledged. But most are those who try to gain the upper hand and cheat the other. That is why, we ourselves are flawed, and might screw up diplomatically.

Diplomatic exchanges are not inherently honest but misrepresentations in terms of threat exchange, power, ability, mustering of forces, true tech levels, etc. So there is no reason to assume truthfulness on either side and terrible misunderstanding. Again see Arrival.

 

[Berzerker]

They will contact us when they are ready.
In the meantimes FFS dont start a war with a technologically superior species that can probably delete humanity overnight

what happens if you're a pilot chasing one of these things and you catch up? Kinda like a dog chasing a car, now what?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

what happens if you're a pilot chasing one of these things and you catch up? Kinda like a dog chasing a car, now what?

See the Star Trek episode "Tomorrow is Yesterday." On the positive side, you get a bowl of chicken soup. The downside is that after you're returned to Earth, you don't remember eating it, or that you ever left Earth in the first place.

 

[Cassius Critzer]

Well, they probably would be ordered not to make contact and leave that to special diplomats and linguists. Whatever is considered hostile to them might not be considered hostile to us. And vice versa.

Say their race has no sense of privacy and they immediately disrobe and examine us clinically as we would a biological specimen. Well we would be outraged. They may think nothing of it. Maybe shooting down a plane would be a normal way of establishing power ability if the value of a single device and individuals has no meaning. Maybe communication is a sign of weakness or they feel it would take too much effort. We don't try to communicate with animals save the sensitive compassionate ones who like animals among us.

 

[Commodore]

In the meantimes FFS dont start a war with a technologically superior species that can probably delete humanity overnigh

Any war that would result wouldn't be our fault though even if we are the ones who shoot first. They are trespassing on our territory without making any attempts to communicate their intentions to us, so it would only be reasonable that we would then assume hostile intent and attempt to defend ourselves accordingly.

An intelligent space-faring species should be able to understand this, and as such, would be completely unjustified if they retaliated against any attacks we made against them. And if they do, maybe they aren't such an intelligent species after all.

In other words my point is this: The onus to not start a war is not on us in such a scenario. We have every right to defend ourselves in anyway we see fit, these hypothetical aliens do not.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Any war that would result wouldn't be our fault though even if we are the ones who shoot first. They are trespassing on our territory without making any attempts to communicate their intentions to us, so it would only be reasonable that we would then assume hostile intent and attempt to defend ourselves accordingly.
An intelligent space-faring species should be able to understand this, and as such, would be completely unjustified if they retaliated against any attacks we made against them. And if they do, maybe they aren't such an intelligent species after all.

In other words my point is this: The onus to not start a war is not on us in such a scenario. We have every right to defend ourselves in anyway we see fit, these hypothetical aliens do not.

I can imagine the US attacking a UFO in order to obtain its tech, Then we find out that we just attack an alien messanger and because of our violent warlike ways, Humanity will be exterminated to prevent us exporting our violence to the rest of the galaxy. I dont think these are hostile. similar UFO designs have been observed for a while now and non of them have carried out any attacks.

 

[Hrothbern]

I have forgotten the title
(does somebody know ?)
But one of the nicest SF books I ever read was about an alien visit of a small explorer alien spacecraft to Britain in the time of the longbows and got lucky to stumble upon a small warrior band....
The aliens not expecting real issues with a bunch of primitive natives, got surprised by the deadly arrows...
In the fight through the small spacecraft, a button was hit for an autopilot course to their home planet before the human warriors took over the ship.
Ofc they had no clue how to get back, but they did manage to survive at their arrival, and because of their primitive warrior culture conquered the more passive alien civilisation.
Upon wich they started trying to find back Earth, at which they succeeded after several centuries in our modern 20th century.
And ofc lots of specualtions and panic at Earth etc


The point is that we have no clue about the nature of supposed aliens, their Techs, their culture, their psychology, their motives to be here...... their everything.

But I think it is safe to assume that their Techs are at such a hugely higher level than ours, considering the incredible high and still accelerating speed of our Techs development, that we do not pose any threat for them.... and they can take us out anytime and anyway they please to do.

so....
IF you would be the UN, or a the leader of a big power here on earth....

What can you do about it ?
You can only deal with reality as it is..... we being nothing.

What will you do about it ?
I guess the same as what you see happening in all the disaster movies where there is one freak scientist that is predicting a disaster.
A governments prime priority will be to keep their citizens calm, to maintain stability.
Deny it, ignore it, keep it small, etc
(set up some investigation, so you can say you take it seriously.... only to be able to say that, no more)
Until you cannot any longer hide it.

Meaning that as long as the aliens allow that hiding... and do not force the issue in the open.... governments will always do the same: deny and ignore it.

Also meaning that for us that we never get the picture
Whether there is or is not an alien presence

Until somebody, human or alien, makes a real mistake.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

There is no reason to believe in a positive outcome as in human* history when a low tech nation.meets a high tech nation, then exploitation and subjugation happens. It would be worse than Aztecs meeting the Spanish conquestidors. And many people would welcome them...open arms...in a completely naive fashion.

Fixed that for you. Both domination and subjugation are decidedly human concepts. An extreterrestrial species could be quite literally anything, doesn't even have to be a carbon based lifeform. It could be gas, or spores, or a non-material collective consciousness, or something completely beyound our imagination.

I loved Arrival by the way, good flick. Have you seen Tarkovski's Solaris? That's how I imagine an alien "species".

Any war that would result wouldn't be our fault though even if we are the ones who shoot first. They are trespassing on our territory without making any attempts to communicate their intentions to us, so it would only be reasonable that we would then assume hostile intent and attempt to defend ourselves accordingly.

An intelligent space-faring species should be able to understand this, and as such, would be completely unjustified if they retaliated against any attacks we made against them. And if they do, maybe they aren't such an intelligent species after all.

In other words my point is this: The onus to not start a war is not on us in such a scenario. We have every right to defend ourselves in anyway we see fit, these hypothetical aliens do not.

...

Why do you think aliens have a concept of "territory"? In order to have a concept of territory, you need to have a concept of materialism. You also need to have a concept of ownership. It is also not implied that any trespassing of "owned territory" is necessarily violation, that is also your implication. What if they never even had to struggle for ressources - What if, just due to the nature of their environment, they have been in a post-scarcity scenario from the get-go?


You are just anthropormphising for no good reason.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I have forgotten the title
(does somebody know ?)
But one of the nicest SF books I ever read was about an alien visit of a small explorer alien spacecraft to Britain in the time of the longbows and got lucky to stumble upon a small warrior band....
The aliens not expecting real issues with a bunch of primitive natives, got surprised by the deadly arrows...
In the fight through the small spacecraft, a button was hit for an autopilot course to their home planet before the human warriors took over the ship.
Ofc they had no clue how to get back, but they did manage to survive at their arrival, and because of their primitive warrior culture conquered the more passive alien civilisation.
Upon wich they started trying to find back Earth, at which they succeeded after several centuries in our modern 20th century.
And ofc lots of specualtions and panic at Earth etc

Are you talking about The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson?

Some of the novel's description is similar to yours. I couldn't say offhand, as it's been over 40 years since I last read it.

 

[Hrothbern]

Are you talking about The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson?

Some of the novel's description is similar to yours. I couldn't say offhand, as it's been over 40 years since I last read it.

I love you !

It is indeed that story... for me also 40 years ago

Going through the details in self critisism...
I forgot that the local villagers got on board as well, the autopilot button was hit after that. I remembered the reason that they could not pilot back wrong. Not the spacecraft but the destroyed notes thereto, because by accident destroyed when the person that wanted to return was killed to prevent that.
Got it calibrated now

 

[Kyriakos]

If aliens are here, it is about time. It's not like we are doing much with the planet anyway.

 

[Ryika]

Plot Twist: It's an insect that sat on the instrument.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The company tasked by the government to run this program is run by a well-known UFO conspiracy theorist nut. It is also almost certain that this nut convinced his friend (Harry Reid) to push the military to create this program. I mean Harry Reid has talked about how this program was his baby. Coincidentally, the nut (Robert Bigelow) is a wealthy Nevadan who runs in the same social circles as Harry.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

It's reassuring to know that some of the most powerful people in the world believe in aliens, the protocols, lizard people.. Or is it?

 

[Borachio]

I've got mixed feelings about this space travellers story.

On the one hand, it could be leprechauns.

On the other, some kind of lichen. Or maybe moss.

Any of those would make decent spaceship pilots, imo. Easily capable of travelling... er... miles. At least.