Why Is a Harvard Astrophysicist Working With UFO Buffs? (science.org) 94
Science magazine checks in on the new "Galileo Project" from controversial Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb. It's searching for evidence of extraterrestrial technology, whether it's spotted deep in space by mountaintop observatories or by their network of rooftop cameras "designed to capture any UFOs prowling through Earth's atmosphere."
"After enlisting more than three dozen astronomers and engineers in the project — as well as some notorious nonscientists — Loeb hopes to solve the enduring UFO mystery once and for all. 'Scientists have to come to the rescue and clear up the fog,' Loeb says." Some researchers applaud Loeb's endeavor. "He has mounted a scientific attack on a problem that is frustratingly fuzzy," says Gregory Laughlin, an astrophysicist at Yale University. "A project like this would have been unthinkable 10 years ago." But others say Loeb is tarnishing astronomy and undermining the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) just as that effort has started to acquire a veneer of respectability. In particular, they are bothered by the outspoken UFO zealots with no science background whom Loeb has welcomed into the project. "He's intermingled legitimate scientists with these fringe people," says Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University. "I think you lose far more by doing that...."
One part of the project would design software to screen the data coming from telescopes like the Rubin observatory for interstellar objects. But the core of the project would be a worldwide network of sky monitors, hundreds in all. Each dome-shaped unit, roughly the size of an umbrella, will contain infrared and optical cameras arranged like a fly's eye to capture the full expanse of sky overhead. Audio sensors and radio antennas will listen at other frequencies. Running 24 hours a day, the monitors are meant to record everything that moves through the sky, day and night: from birds and balloons to insects, airliners, and drones. Artificial intelligence algorithms, trained to discard known objects like birds in favor of fast-moving spherical and lens-shaped objects, will sift through the data, says Richard Cloete, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, who is overseeing the system's software. "We're basically filtering out all the things that we expect to find in the sky," he says. "And all these things that are labeled other [by the AI] will be of interest."
Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute who sits on the Galileo Project's advisory board, points out that networks of sky cameras are not new. Since 2010, one SETI Institute network has detected 2 million meteors, and in the past few years, the LaserSETI project has begun to watch the sky for pulses of light from alien technologies. What's novel about the Galileo Project, Shostak says, is its focus on hunting for aliens in Earth's atmosphere. Both the Galileo Project and the SETI Institute "are looking for indications of extraterrestrial intelligence," he adds. "But that's like saying that studying unknown fauna in the rainforest is similar to those who are hoping to find mermaids or unicorns."
Loeb says a prototype sky monitor is being built now and will be affixed to the roof of the Harvard College Observatory in the spring. If the instruments work, he plans to make duplicates; if he can raise another $100 million from private donors, he will place them around the world. He says he won't utter the UFO word unless they see an object "that looks strange and moves in ways that human technology cannot enable."
A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, who participates as an unpaid "research affiliate "for the project, points out that "One of the problems is that many of the areas we're seeing the greatest level of [UFO] activity are restricted military airspace. The Defense Department is not going to be real excited about bringing in a lot of instruments to record everything that's going on."
Ed Turner, a Princeton University astrophysicist who is part of the project's core research team, tells the magazine that he's more excited by the interstellar component of the project — and doubts that the ground-based cameras will actually pick up any evidence of extraterrestrial visits. "If the aliens don't want us to know about them, they'll likely know about the Galileo Project," he says drily. "They can just avoid our high-resolution cameras."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article
"After enlisting more than three dozen astronomers and engineers in the project — as well as some notorious nonscientists — Loeb hopes to solve the enduring UFO mystery once and for all. 'Scientists have to come to the rescue and clear up the fog,' Loeb says." Some researchers applaud Loeb's endeavor. "He has mounted a scientific attack on a problem that is frustratingly fuzzy," says Gregory Laughlin, an astrophysicist at Yale University. "A project like this would have been unthinkable 10 years ago." But others say Loeb is tarnishing astronomy and undermining the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) just as that effort has started to acquire a veneer of respectability. In particular, they are bothered by the outspoken UFO zealots with no science background whom Loeb has welcomed into the project. "He's intermingled legitimate scientists with these fringe people," says Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University. "I think you lose far more by doing that...."
One part of the project would design software to screen the data coming from telescopes like the Rubin observatory for interstellar objects. But the core of the project would be a worldwide network of sky monitors, hundreds in all. Each dome-shaped unit, roughly the size of an umbrella, will contain infrared and optical cameras arranged like a fly's eye to capture the full expanse of sky overhead. Audio sensors and radio antennas will listen at other frequencies. Running 24 hours a day, the monitors are meant to record everything that moves through the sky, day and night: from birds and balloons to insects, airliners, and drones. Artificial intelligence algorithms, trained to discard known objects like birds in favor of fast-moving spherical and lens-shaped objects, will sift through the data, says Richard Cloete, a computer scientist at the University of Cambridge, who is overseeing the system's software. "We're basically filtering out all the things that we expect to find in the sky," he says. "And all these things that are labeled other [by the AI] will be of interest."
Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute who sits on the Galileo Project's advisory board, points out that networks of sky cameras are not new. Since 2010, one SETI Institute network has detected 2 million meteors, and in the past few years, the LaserSETI project has begun to watch the sky for pulses of light from alien technologies. What's novel about the Galileo Project, Shostak says, is its focus on hunting for aliens in Earth's atmosphere. Both the Galileo Project and the SETI Institute "are looking for indications of extraterrestrial intelligence," he adds. "But that's like saying that studying unknown fauna in the rainforest is similar to those who are hoping to find mermaids or unicorns."
Loeb says a prototype sky monitor is being built now and will be affixed to the roof of the Harvard College Observatory in the spring. If the instruments work, he plans to make duplicates; if he can raise another $100 million from private donors, he will place them around the world. He says he won't utter the UFO word unless they see an object "that looks strange and moves in ways that human technology cannot enable."
A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, who participates as an unpaid "research affiliate "for the project, points out that "One of the problems is that many of the areas we're seeing the greatest level of [UFO] activity are restricted military airspace. The Defense Department is not going to be real excited about bringing in a lot of instruments to record everything that's going on."
Ed Turner, a Princeton University astrophysicist who is part of the project's core research team, tells the magazine that he's more excited by the interstellar component of the project — and doubts that the ground-based cameras will actually pick up any evidence of extraterrestrial visits. "If the aliens don't want us to know about them, they'll likely know about the Galileo Project," he says drily. "They can just avoid our high-resolution cameras."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article
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Yeah, yer right, 'cause if dinosaur bones are real, than so must be UFOs. Alabamans have no trouble with UFOs, they are in the Bible and their inhabitants are angels.
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...people made fun of people looking for dinosaur bones hundreds of million years old, when everybody knew the earth was only 6000 years old.
It was last week in Alabama.
No, they didn't. That's not a thing that ever happened.
In reality, conservation of momentum means we'd see the drive plumes of any interstellar ship months or years before it ever arrives in the system. No drive plumes, no aliens. If you want to posit that they don't need to obey laws of conservation, you might as well just make them fairies as they're just straight magic if they can selectively ignore fundamental laws of nature.
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There's no such thing as hyperspace. Exotic drives like the Alcubierre drive require an amount of energy equivalent to Jupiter's mass converted into energy. We'd definitely see that coming, if not with Chandra then with our shiny new gravity telescopes.
The low end of the power requirements for even a slow interstellar ship are several times the sum of all electrical generation on Earth. The energy output of every nuclear explosive ever built would only get a mothership to single-digit percents of the speed
Because... (Score:4, Funny)
The truth is out there!
We Should Be Seeing Unidentified Objects (Score:5, Interesting)
A former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, who participates as an unpaid "research affiliate "for the project, points out that "One of the problems is that many of the areas we're seeing the greatest level of [UFO] activity are restricted military airspace. The Defense Department is not going to be real excited about bringing in a lot of instruments to record everything that's going on."
This is interesting, and matches my impressions about this. Which suggests either that "aliens" have a special interest in restricted military airspace, or that classified projects that are a source of unidentified sightings are commonly tested there.
Which seems more likely?
There is a black budget of about 9 billions dollars spent every year and has been at this level for decades. They are building stuff. Also, the usual case is that classified projects are not declassified for many decades, usually until well after they have any military or intelligence relevance. Project Mogul, that used newly invented high altitude balloons to detect nuclear tests, and which caused the "Roswell Incident" when one came down there in 1947 was not declassified for 45 years. One program just recently declassified was a radioisotope powered intelligence drone project that was cancelled without ever building hardware around 1972, so almost 50 years to disclose a scheme that did not pan out.
So there should be object detected that have no publicly known origin simply because of secret programs that create them. And no, people in the military will not know about these either (fighter pilots, radar operators, etc.), even people who typical Top Secret and intelligence related clearances (SCI, TK, SI) will not know about them, only the very small group that have an absolute need to know will know about them. Area 51 is real - they really do test super-classified stuff there. But probably not aliens.
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At the very least, putting aliens aside for a second, Roswell suggests a multilayer coverup... the crash test dummy/weather balloon coverup was so bad that they had to then backpedal and come up with a secondary coverup.
Another thing people underestimate was the monolithic nature of news and investigation in the pre-internet era. Inconvenient facts and even eyewitnesses could simply be swept under the rug or given the most transparent excuses because there was effectively no independent investigation, and
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Elsewhere in the world, the black budget is more like 9 groats/year - so we shouldn't have anything very experimental in our skies. We might have some new-and-classified military stuff, I guess, but even there, unless it's for a proper purpose, you'd imagine not so much either.
Either way, lots of people "watching the skies" seems like a great idea to me. There's still a lot we don't understand, and so learning more is always going to be a good thing. I'll bet a side-effect of this will be that weather forec
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I hope you are right that these are just black projects. Because according to Navy pilots, these objects (tracked visually, by radar, and by FLIR from multiple sources) can drop from 50,000 feet to sea level in less than a second, and can make turns and accelerate well in excess of g forces that would shred a human apart, or a plane apart using our currently known manufacturing techniques.
What that means, if true, is that our black projects have basically discovered something that no scientist on the plane
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There was a scifi story some decades ago (probably in Analog) in which the plot device was small but extremely dense objects (maybe neutron-star like, not black holes) that could be mounted on a track in front of a manned spaceship. When you wanted to accelerate at a rate that would otherwise harm the humans, you brought the mass closer to the cabin, so its gravitational attraction would counter the acceleration (think inverse square law. And similarly when you needed to decelerate at a high rate. Somethi
I mean why woulnd't you (Score:4, Insightful)
People don't understand this about science. (Score:5, Insightful)
Science does *not* discriminate against crackpots. It makes constructive use of them by forcing them to play by the rules.
If you're a Young Earth creationist who believes that climate change contravenes Divine Will, there is no climate journal that will ban you because of your beliefs. They just won't let you publish your beliefs as fact. You have to restrict yourself to things that support your belief that you can demonstrate with facts. You're forced to tug at the loose threads of scientific consensus hoping the whole thing will unravel. It'll probably won't most likely it will end up stronger. But if it does unravel, that's progress too.
This tolerance of crackpots is what makes science so dynamic -- able to seek out and process new evidence. Even this guy's collaborators think his objectives are probably not worth funding, but he went out and found the funding anyway. At the very least they get a whole novel class of instruments out of it. If he proves alien spacecraft are visiting Earth, even better, but they're not counting on it.
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"smacks up against the fermi paradox": The Fermi paradox remains an observation, not a law or even a theory, regardless of how many possible explanations we might imagine for it. So finding real alien-piloted (or at least alien-owned) UFOs would not smack up against the Fermi paradox, it would simply invalidate it.
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Roy Spencer of U of Alabama is a creationist and believer in intelligent design. He sometimes appears on talk radio because he doesn't believe in climate change, in fact he's a signatory to the Cornwall Alliance "Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming," which states that global warming can't be happening because it contradicts divine plans for human welfare. He still publishes in meteorology and climate journals.
Now your turn: name a single scientist who has been blackballed for his religious beliefs.
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Being able to publish papers which reach limited claims favorable to the creationist viewpoint but having to publish your less-supportable religious claims elsewhere seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
It's basically the same thing that anthropogenic warming had to face before it became the scientific consensus. It didn't have a level playing field either. There were very good reasons in 1950 to believe that anthropogenic CO2 mediated warming was impossible. It took twenty years before it was reasona
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Re: People don't understand this about science. (Score:1)
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A fiat creation of the universe we see is required by one outcome of the simulation hypothesis [wikipedia.org].
There are some interpretations that are falsifiable.
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That's a good reason to reject the paper. It suggests more is proven than actually is.
Where your conclusions contradict decades or centuries of work, you have to couch them as narrowly as possible. Like the EmDrive people; they didn't come out and say, "It is suggested this result is more nearly consistent with a net gain of momentum," (i.e., that Conservation of Momentum was disproved). Everyone knows what they're up to, but they don't want a paper published in a journal saying the Law of Conservation
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Thats a really good observation. Harry White is somewhat of a mad professor and has a few ideas that physics would consider hetrodox at best. But people are fine with him doing what he's doing, because he's very careful to make sure his papers contain ONLY what the evidence permits, and saves the nutty speculation for the TED talks.
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Thats a really good observation. Harry White is somewhat of a mad professor and has a few ideas that physics would consider hetrodox at best. But people are fine with him doing what he's doing, because he's very careful to make sure his papers contain ONLY what the evidence permits, and saves the nutty speculation for the TED talks.
Doesn't matter. The conspiracy theorists will reject any conclusion that doesn't fit their belief.
People's exhibit 1 - the moon landings never happening, which would require millions of people to have managed to remain silent, and cost about as much as actually going there.
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The way I heard it, Spielberg demanded such realism that the only place he could film the fake moon landings to his satisfaction was on the Moon.
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The way I heard it, Spielberg demanded such realism that the only place he could film the fake moon landings to his satisfaction was on the Moon.
I heard it was Stanley Kubrick. Maybe both?
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Conservation of Momentum, was neither disproved nor wrong in the EM-drive.
The EM-drive follows the law just fine.
However in the end we figured that at least the "prototypes" we thought we had, got their "force" from heat effects.
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Conservation of Momentum, was neither disproved nor wrong in the EM-drive.
The EM-drive follows the law just fine.
I agree. But as long as that result stands Em-drive will never lead to any kind of spacecraft propulsion.
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It really is not.
Just dropping a "Maybe god did it" in the conclusion isn't scientific at al. Big claims require Big evidence, and no evidence is provided for that clanger.
Of course its not going to be accepted in a reputable journal, its a straight up religious statement, not a scientific one.
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Well, the idea of an ancient Earth is falsifiable.
The idea that the Earth developed and life evolved following largely known physical principles like thermodynamics is probably lagely falsifiable too.
So in principle it should be possible to show that the Earth is both young and as far as we can tell, miraculous (rather than obscure). That would be a significant step towards validating creationism and intelligent design. You don't necessarily have to know exactly how you will get to a conclusion to eventual
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Well, the idea of an ancient Earth is falsifiable.
Of course it is. That's what makes it science. Same with thermodynamics. Is this even slashdot? But so far these ideas have not been falsified, and remain a fact (in the case of the young earth) or a theory (thermodynamics) until that day. That is the beauty of falsification.
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Well, the idea of an ancient Earth is falsifiable.
The past is not falsifiable in the same way that the present is. You have to alter and reduce your standards of evidence. And you might say, "well that is the only way to do it because the past already happened, we can't set up an experiment in advance to re-observe it." And that is true. And yet, it would not be a valid excuse in the present for not doing the experiment and just supposing what the result would be if you did it.
It comes down to standards of proof, and you'll always have a lower standard of
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You send out the proposed paper to an expert in that particular field, who reads it, looks for holes in the logic, inadequate data, incorrect calculations etc, writes down those details and why she (sometimes "he") thinks they make the paper inappropriate for publication. That then goes back to the (lead)
Re:People don't understand this about science. (Score:4, Insightful)
As log as it's not climate science. That is sacrosanct.
No it's not. You're welcome to over turn it if you can, but only if you do it *exactly* the way anthropogenic climate change overthrew the previous consensus.
You don't get a level playing field. When guys like Charles Keeling, Roger Revelle and Gilbert Plass started out, they didn't get a level playing field either. Nobody gets to waltz in and declare their personal brain wave be treated as equal to decades of research and evidence. You've got to earn it, like they did.
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"Settled science" doesn't mean what you apparently think it does. What is settled in any scientific question is where the burden of proof lay, not some kind of ultimate determination of truth.
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Science does *not* discriminate against crackpots. It makes constructive use of them by forcing them to play by the rules.
What is cool is the people who as an example try to cherry pick data, acting as if one data point invalidates the laws of physics. The scientists look at the complaints, and make a checklist of items to look into, and solve. The denialists are helping science by picking on things they are wrong about.
It's a thankless job, but someone has to do it.
Because he is a true academic and open (Score:2)
Timely XKCD (Score:3)
Alien Mission [xkcd.com]
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Once again, Randal proves that he doesn't understand even the basics of science.
"even the basics of science" being what? For example, you using "proves" like that indicates---though doesn't prove---that you don't understand the basics of science.
Not His First Rodeo (Score:4, Interesting)
Loeb has figured out that making grandiose claims about extraterrestrial activity and humoring UFO nutters is a good way of raising your profile. He made news back in 2018 when he claimed that the asteroid Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft (most other astronomers did not agree). I'm going to go out on a limb and say he knows exactly what he's doing with these claims, and it's a lot more about personal advancement than the advancement of science.
Setting aside Loeb, my personal view is that there is a near certainty that there is life elsewhere in the universe and a very strong probability that at least some of it is or has been what we would define as "intelligent." On the other hand, I think there's also a near certainty that intelligent life has not and will never physically visit us. The more we learn about interstellar travel, the more we learn just how absurdly difficult it would be. Intergalactic travel would be several orders of magnitude more difficult still.
I think even many scientists have difficulty grasping just how vast the distances are between earth and even "close" stars and just how much energy is required to 1) travel to another star and, 2) turn around and return. Chemical rockets will never get us there- really no known tech will, and that's even if you assume lifespans well beyond human (or multiple generations of humans). Then you have to consider that a substantial portion of the universe is causally disconnected from our planet - a spacecraft traveling the speed of light could never reach us.
I remain extremely skeptical that there is a satisfactory solution to the problem of causality and faster than light travel. We want there to be a solution so we think there must be one, but my view is that faster than light travel is truly impossible, which is consistent with all known physics. If known physics correct, than the maximum theoretical radius for travel is probably on the order of 50 light years. We can only take a wild guess as to the incidence of intelligent life, but there could be literally millions of intelligent lifeforms in the universe without a single one anywhere near 50 light years away. And if there were intelligent technologically sophisticated life within 50 light years, it seems unlikely that we wouldn't have received any sign of it after decades of SETI.
Nor does the "they don't want to be found" theory sound particularly plausible to me. Any intelligent civilization would be subject to the same problems of the vastness of space. Perfect coordination of a communications and travel blackout among what would have to be millions of intelligent beings doesn't seem likely. Nor is there a particularly plausible reason for a civilization to travel such extreme distances while scrupulously avoiding any direct contact.
Of course a negative hypothesis can't be proven, but a hypothesis of the existence of an intelligent lifeform visiting earth has been attempted to be proven for decades with absolutely no progress other than as a platform for publicity.
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Why even attempt tp "grasp" when you can calculate?
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Because a cold number doesn't always convey the enormity. I can tell you that my house is 1,000 miles from your house, but that doesn't tell you what it would be like to travel that distance on your hands and knees. Now consider crawling on your hands and knees for the rest of your life and not even making visible progress between our houses. That starts to approach the experience of trying to go to a far away star in a chemical rocket.
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At least one person in this conversation is a caver, who knows exactly what it feels like to crawl a kilometre on hands and knees (and loose, jagged rocks too, not that you specified the substrate). A thousand miles would take about a year, assuming 8 hours a day crawling.
You're short, by several orders of magnitude. Us
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I think you are taking things a bit too literally. And I couldn't be short by any level of magnitude with my star analogy, as my example didn't quantify any measurable progress. What I'm saying is you can run all the numbers you want, but I'm not sure anybody can truly wrap their heads around what those numbers mean experientially to someone proposing an interstellar journey.
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Doubtful. If a physicist could solve the causality paradox for time travel (and faster than light travel, which is effectively the same thing), it would be insta-Nobel prize and a stature comparable to Einstein if not greater. Nobody would leave that on the table.
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Loeb has figured out that making grandiose claims about extraterrestrial activity and humoring UFO nutters is a good way of raising your profile...He knows exactly what he's doing with these claims, and it's a lot more about personal advancement than the advancement of science.
That is exactly what I would expect from a scientist at Harvard.
To be fair (Score:2)
To be fair to Loeb, I don't believe he said Oumuamua was an alien spacecraft exactly, but that it could be of alien origin. With the data we had at the time, particularly the lightcurve, the spin, and the change in velocity, he posited that it could be an extremely thin piece of debris that acted like a solar sail. To account for the variables though, the debris would have to be very thin, thus hinting at alien manufacture. He did also point out that more data was needed.
But I also think it's fair he may ha
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Any alien being/force with the capability of crossing intergalactic distances surely has the technology to remain hidden from our view! ... why would they? More precisely: how?
Nope
They can make a probe orbiting earth small enough and radar proof to observe the earth and tight beam information towards the moon and hide in the moon shadow behind earth ... but that basically is it. A spacecraft will have an energy source. It will radiate heat, or reflect something. Technology can not prevent that.
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They can make a probe orbiting earth small
enough and radar proof to observe the earth and tight
beam information towards the moon and hide in the moon
shadow behind earth
Yeah, OK. That's probably exactly what they would do.
Re: Not His First Rodeo (Score:2)
As long as the science he's doing is sound, kudos to him for creative marketing... :-)
As for interstellar travel: physics has lots of loopholes and leeway. The Alcubierre theory being one of the more spectacular, but there are also others. May yet pan out, who knows... splitting atoms and quantum teleportation were also impossible until they were't anymore.
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From the SETI Institute FAQ [seti.org]:
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Yes, but in the "UFO are aliens" hypothesis, we don't have to receive the signals from nearly so far away. You are hypothesizing that aliens have come at least inside the earth's atmosphere (if not to its surface) without any radio, microwave, sound, or other radiation being picked up in the process.
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> I think there's also a near certainty that intelligent life has not and will never physically visit us.
That's incorrect as the HULU documentary The UFO Phenomenon [hulu.com] goes over a few cases that had eye witnesses.
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Don't forget dozens of History channel documentary featuring guys with crazy hair and blurry photos.
7th planet (Score:2)
No Uranus jokes? Step up Slashdot!
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They should just rename the planet "Urectum" so we can end those jokes, once and for all...
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Robert Malone (Score:2)
Why is a vaccinologist like Robert Malone working for the anti-vaxxers even though he himself took the jabs? It is because he is bitter for not being given adequate credit. Evidenced by the nasty email he wrote Kariko and also the fact that he ranted about the mRNA vaccines being unlicensed when he went on the Michael Savage podcast (shortly after the Joe Rogan show.)
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There's money in being a contrarian right now.
Sure, it'll completely destroy your career and legacy, but think of the cash you'll make in the short term!
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when he went on the Michael Savage podcast
I can't believe that guy is still around. What an angry, insincere, spewer of hate.
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Sean Hannity overtook Michael "Savage" years ago and he's been trying to hang on. I doubt he'll ever get back to his peak listenership. He lost his place not because he's an angry spewer of hate, but he's just not as good at it as Hannity.
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Oh that's great. The angry guy replaced by the stupid guy.
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Clear Channel certainly knows their audience.
UFOs -- a media-created myth (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone who doubts this should read "How UFOs Conquered the World" (the History of a Modern Myth) written in 2015 by journalist and one-time UFO-believer David Clarke.
The amplification of the idea of visiting aliens by the news media is so very similar to the amplification of anti-vaxx propaganda by certain social media and others. And many other ideas which are found to be false on careful examination
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And, no, I had never heard of Randall Monroe until about a decade ago. But, perhaps like him, my university degree is in Physics. What's yours ?
Sightings will be made (Score:2)
Guaranteed. And they'll look like this [9cache.com] because the aliens will stay further away [xkcd.com] while observing us.
ToE Avi Loeb interview on YT (Score:2)
2 hour interview with Curt Jaimungal, theoretical physicist behind the Theories of Everything YT channel. [youtube.com] Time codes by topic.
Seth rocks (Score:2)
condescending much? (Score:2)
We really should not associate with "those fringe people". Clear that would lower all of us from our lofty elite status... besides, we know everything there is to know already.
Mystery != Aliens (Score:2)
Something seems to be going on. The Navy stated they are baffled by amorphous blobs that hover and then zip away. Maybe it's not even aliens, just an unsolved mystery.
Defense Department and aliens (Score:2)
"... The Defense Department is not going to be real excited about bringing in a lot of instruments to record everything that's going on."
"If the aliens don't want us to know about them, they'll likely know about the Galileo Project," (Turner) says drily. "They can just avoid our high-resolution cameras."
Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious... but how does this latter observation not also apply to the Defense Department?
Science is always trying to answer the unanswerabl (Score:1)
UFO doesn't equal "aliens" though.... (Score:2)
Obviously, it's the aliens aspect of it that excites or interests the majority of people. But by definition, a UFO simply means a sighting of something in the sky that we can't adequately explain as a traditional aircraft or flying object of our own making.
I remember a couple years ago, when I was living in western Maryland, seeing about 5 minutes of footage captured on a neighbor's iPhone. (She shared it on Facebook in our local community's message forum on there.) She was coming home from the store in t