Mendel
Senior Member.
I understood that you wanted to bring across that the suggestion that a large number of people were mistaken is insulting and not up for debate.
Millenia-old wisdom: to err is human (errare humanum est).
Are All UFO Reports Wrong, Or Are They Evidence That UFOs Exist?
- Thread starter Bill Ferguson
- Start date
- Status
Millenia-old wisdom: to err is human (errare humanum est).
Robert Webb
Member
Lots of people have replied lots of things to you, so what are you referrig to?
John J.
Senior Member.
I think that's a useful- and interesting- example.
(1): A retrospective on flying discs:
The widespread awareness of UFOs, and the idea that they might be alien craft, took off with the Kenneth Arnold sighting in 1947.
Arnold drew what he claims to have seen, and later posed with an artist's impression (which looked a bit different).
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/ufos-report.html Photo on (R), posted by Duke 02/07/22,
(L) picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting accessed 15/04/23.
It's widely understood that the term "flying saucer" arose because of a journalist misunderstanding Arnold's description:
-Transcript of Ed Murrow-Kenneth Arnold telephone conversation, broadcast April 7, 1950, documented in February-March 1984 CUFOS Associate Newsletter http://www.project1947.com/fig/kamurrow.htm
So the term "flying saucer" was coined, and very widely publicized (in America) before any flying discs were reported.
8 days after the Arnold sighting, the crew of a United Airlines DC3 (Flight 105) was told by control tower staff in Boise, Idaho
...and, lo, the flight crew reported seeing groups of objects; they couldn't agree if they were "oval or saucer-like".
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_105_UFO_sighting Wikipedia, "Flight 105 UFO sighting", accessed 15/04/23)
The passengers saw nothing; the crew stated the objects were dead ahead for maybe 12 minutes. Wasn't there enough fuel for a brief manoeuvre to allow the passengers a look? It wouldn't have required much of a deviation from the flight-path, DC3's are "nimble" and don't fly much faster than 200 mph.
The control tower staff's joke, and lack of passenger corroboration, must cast some doubt over the crew's report.
3 days after this (07/07/1947)- 11 days after the Arnold sighting and subsequent publicity- a New Mexico rancher, W.W. Brazel, helped a USAAF major collect debris he had found on his property. On 08/07/47, a USAAF lieutenant made a press release,
(My emphasis), from Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident, accessed 16/04/23, cited to be from Associated Press, Flying Disc Found; In Army Possession, The Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, California), July 8, 1947.
"The rancher stored the disc", "...the disc was picked up at the rancher's home" implies the "disc" was of rather modest size and weight. It was this press release, and this alone, that led to the 08/07/47 Roswell Daily Record headline,
"RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region".
The same day, the debris was flown to Fort Worth Army Airfield, on a B-29, presumably in one of the two crew compartments (it wasn't a cargo aircraft). It was immediately identified as a weather balloon by General Ramey and his chief of staff. The on-duty Fort Worth Army Airfield weather officer explained to reporters what it was.
Next day (09/07/47) the Roswell Daily Record clarified their rather leading take on the USAAF's somewhat sensationalist press release, quoting Mr Brazel's description of the debris:
(Wikipedia link as above, cited as being from "Harassed Rancher who Located 'Saucer' Sorry He Told About it". Roswell Daily Record. July 9, 1947. cited in McAndrews 1997, pp. 8).
One reporter's use of the term "flying saucer"- not Arnold's description of what he saw- seems to have triggered, within days, reports of flying saucers, and the use of "flying disc" to describe balloon wreckage (for whatever reason, the Roswell AF information officer clearly attempted to connect Brazel's find with the "flying saucers" in the popular press that past 2 weeks).
Duke made this excellent point, in the "How have descriptions of UAPs changed over the years?" thread:
Bill Ferguson, we have to think about why
(1) No-one's reporting flying discs over the USA prior to 1947. (I suspect the "foo fighters" of WW2 are different phenomena).
(2) In 1947 Kenneth Arnold claims to see UFOs. They are not disc-shaped.
(3) A reporter misunderstands Arnold, and coins the term "flying saucer". The "flying saucers" story gets widespread publicity.
(4) Within days, other people are reporting "flying saucers", not craft of the shape (or flight characteristics) Arnold described.
And not long after, we start getting photos of "flying saucers".
Except, we know many of the early photos are hoaxes. Adamski's scout ship is perhaps the best-known example, but at least it had high information value- it was clearly a technological artefact!
Cameras, cine-cameras, CCTV, video cameras, cell-phone cams have all proliferated enormously since then, across the world- but the "information value" of photos of UFOs remains low; rarely are any surface details present.
If anything, I get the impression that the early photos of UFOs (1950's, 60's) tend to show more detail than the often-featureless, over-lit shapes of more recent years.
No-one has film of a structured UFO (as opposed to points of light in the distance) landing or taking off AFAIK.
I think there must be a socio-psychological component to the sudden appearance of flying saucers so soon (days!) after the term was invented and publicized.
Many people experience strange phenomena, and/ or see things that appear inexplicable or anomalous.
I think that these experiences/ sightings are intrinsically interesting, and are worth investigating- even if they are not what they appear to be "at face value".
(2) Has evidence of other unusual phenomena been accepted by many- and later disproved?
Why is that problematic?
There must be many thousands of cases of confidence tricksters and forgers, all fakers by definition.
There are scientists and doctors who have deliberately produced fraudulent research.
Sadly, we know some police officers have altered or faked evidence, or given untrue testimony.
There have been thousands of "crop circles" since the early 80's (I "discovered" one in a field between Alton Barnes and Fyfield, Wiltshire), but it's now broadly accepted that every single one has been deliberately made by people.
Theories of natural origins- such as plasma vortices- now seem a bit embarrassing; attempts by slightly naïve or credulous people to explain a phenomenon that didn't exist. Theories of ETI involvement seem utterly bankrupt.
Here's two pages I managed to find of Terence Meaden's
"Discovery of a New Electromagnetic Phenomenon in the Atmosphere: An Electrified Vortex and Its Physical Properties as Revealed by Patterned Ground Traces and Radio-Frequency, Electromagnetic, Acoustic and Luminous Effects",
Environmental and Space Electromagnetics, Kikuchi, H. (Ed), Springer, Tokyo 1991.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-4-431-68162-5_57
(I've left them as thumbnails to reduce the scrolling required by those not interested- click to enlarge)
Meaden has bona-fide scientific credentials, and I feel he was deeply sincere (he featured in several UK TV items about his work),
but the reality is he couldn't distinguish between "real" crop circles and "controls" deliberately made to test his claims.
The same goes for those who believed that the circles were of alien origin, and that "real" circles were distinguishable from hoaxes . From Wikipedia, Crop circle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle
Scientist Pat Delgado, a supporter of the ETI hypothesis of crop circle formation, was shown a circle:
From https://menwhoconnedtheworld.weebly.com/new-11-today-september-9-1991.html, MEN WHO CONNED THE WORLD,
Graham Brough, Today (defunct UK newspaper) 9/9/91. (If you're interested in the subject, the link is worth a click).
If anything, making a crop circle probably requires more effort than making a fake UFO photo- hours of work at night; the summer English countryside isn't inhospitable but angry farmers can be, and you'll probably get bitten by gnats or something.
ALL the "mysterious" crop circles were fakes- thousands of them. (Some were for publicity campaigns etc., and not mysterious).
I hope we all agree that all the photos taken of spiritualist mediums producing "ectoplasm" are fakes! Yet intelligent men- the astronomer Camille Flammarion (who proposed the name "Triton" for Neptune's largest moon) and Arthur Conan Doyle believed ectoplasm was real.
So there are whole categories of things which have been attested to by intelligent and reputable eye-witnesses, and clearly photographed, which simply do not exist (ectoplasm) or are likely all faked (crop circles).
This delightful photo was taken in 1920 by cousins, a young woman of 19 and a girl of 12.
I think it shows more detail than many UFO photos taken with much more modern equipment, and was at a known location.
It also gives a clear indication of scale, and an identified participant, available to be questioned.
The cousins had taken photographs of faeries beginning in 1917, when they were 9 and 16.
Incredibly, quite a few people, including Arthur Conan Doyle (again) and author Henry De Vere Stacpoole, thought this was real.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies Wikipedia, Cottingley Fairies).
Replace "fairies" with "UFOs", and the quote wouldn't be out of place in a contemporary TV program "investigating" UFOs.
I doubt if faking a UFO is illegal anywhere (unless you waste police time or try to cause alarm, I guess).
One of my favourite books when I was a kid showed ways of faking a UFO- and it was aimed at children!
From "UFO's", World of the Unknown series, Usborne Books. 1977.
Most (all?) of the other pages here, a 60's-80's pop-culture blog called "We Are The Mutants"
https://wearethemutants.com/2018/07/17/usbornes-world-of-the-unknown-ufos-1977/
Frankly, I think pictures 4 and 7 are at least as good as many of the pictures claimed to be evidence of ETI-origin UFOs.
So I'm sceptical concerning photos of UFOs!
But I do find them interesting. So come on Bill Ferguson, post a few of what you think are the most likely candidates to be ET tech- I'll certainly have a look.
Ann K
Senior Member.
Arnold's photo appears to show his endorsement of the artists's rendition, although it is wildly at odds with his own handwritten note "they seemed longer than wide". That may show a cautionary tale, that memories are fallible, and that the observers of a phenomenon can have their memories influenced by later popular depictions.Arnold drew what he claims to have seen, and later posed with an artist's impression (which looked a bit different).
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/ufos-report.html Photo on (R), posted by Duke 02/07/22,
(L) picture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting accessed 15/04/23.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
Unless he saw aircraft with both shapes. I once started formulating a theory that what Arnold had actually seen was a flight of 1 reverse engineered Horten ho-229 and 8 experimental Avro aircraft seen below.
There's a striking resemblance between these 2 aircraft and what Arnold claimed to have seen. It is known however that John Frost, the designer of the Avro aircraft, was known to take an interest in UFO reports. It's possible Arnold's sighting could have influenced his designs. On top of this, the dates of Arnold's sighting and the patent don't make sense as the patent was filed in 1953. It is known however, the ho-229 V3, Horten's most advanced prototype was captured in 1945 and sent off to the states for evaluation. Here's a picture for reference.
This was a model built for a TV show. The original prototype sits at the Smithsonian I believe.
There's a striking resemblance between these 2 aircraft and what Arnold claimed to have seen. It is known however that John Frost, the designer of the Avro aircraft, was known to take an interest in UFO reports. It's possible Arnold's sighting could have influenced his designs. On top of this, the dates of Arnold's sighting and the patent don't make sense as the patent was filed in 1953. It is known however, the ho-229 V3, Horten's most advanced prototype was captured in 1945 and sent off to the states for evaluation. Here's a picture for reference.
This was a model built for a TV show. The original prototype sits at the Smithsonian I believe.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
I was once a 100% believer. Like you, I thought...gosh, there are so many witness reports, photos, bizarre encounters...surely some of them must be the real deal. The trouble is....so many 'best ever' cases have been resoundingly debunked.
Take the infamous Yukon UFO as an example. Multiple witnesses. Cited as a case where a 1000 foot wide craft hovered over the road right above several witnesses. And so on. Yet a proper examination of the case clearly reveals that the event was the re-entry of a Russian satellite...with some of the witnesses jumping on the bandwagon and exaggerating what was seen.
Then there's Travis Walton. I watched an amazing serious of podcasts last year in which it was pretty much conclusively shown that the 'UFO' was a fire tower and the event was a hoax. In fact one of the men involved has even admitted the whole thing was a hoax ( though he since retracted the admission ).
Or there's the Japan Airlines UFO over Alaska. Did you know that the UFO ( in fact two lights close together ) was first spotted at the exact location in the sky where a conjunction of Mars and Jupiter was occurring ? Huge clue there.
Case after case actually has a mundane explanation. And these are some of the 'best' cases !
The trouble is that one's list of ' but what about......?' cases gets shorter and shorter. I am no longer a 'believer'. I am now highly skeptical of all UFO cases.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence...and we don't really even have any ordinary evidence.
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Scaramanga
Senior Member
Kenneth Arnold claimed to see the sun glinting off the 9 or so objects. Which leads me to think that the glint itself defined the 'shape' of what was seen and may have had no bearing whatever on the true shape.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
But at least we can all agree he saw approximately 9 objects that were reflective enough to catch his attention. Whether they were aircraft known or unknown, birds or some other strange phenomena, it's highly unlikely he made the entire account up.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
Or perhaps the most we can ALL agree on is that he claimed to have seen 9 objects that were reflective enough to catch his attention. I wasn't there, I have no idea what if anything he actually saw.
Note that I am not claiming he didn't see exactly what he described. I am just saying that I don't know. While eyewitness testimony from a single witness can be right on the money, it can also be completely wrong (through mistakes in observation, errors in memory or, sometimes, intentional deception.)
Duke
Senior Member.
Don't know if you are aware, but Italian aeronautical engineer Dr Renato Vesco made a similar claim in his book "Intercept But Don't Shoot" in the early 1970s. Dr Vesco, who worked on advanced aviation technologies for the Germans in WWII, claims the UFOs seen by Arnold and others from 1947 on were British aircraft based on German designs/technology captured by the Brits at the end of WWII in Europe.
The political backstory, at least according to Dr Vesco, was while the US and Soviets were seeking to recover rocket technology and scientists, the Brits concentrated on aviation technologies. Using those technologies, the Brits built very high performance aircraft based on some advanced aerodynamic principles the Germans had discovered. Unfortunately I can't recall what he called this. He further claims when the Brits asked the US for the technology to build atomic bombs, the US told them they had nothing of any technical value to trade in exchange. So to prove the US wrong, the Brits based their advanced aircraft at secret airfields in British Columbia and overflew the US to show they did indeed have something worth trading for.
By the way, the Ho229 reproduction you pictured was built for a Smithsonian TV program called something like "Hitler's Stealth Fighter." The model was built at Northop, with the purpose of determining just how stealthy the design had been. To do this, the reproduction was taken to Northrop's once highly classified Tejon Ranch Radar Cross Section (RCS) test facility outside of Rosamond, CA.
I spent a great deal of time there in the late 80s, and was shocked when I saw the facility had been both disclosed and filmed for the TV program. Besides the isolation and heat, the other thing I remember about the facility was its abundance of "Mojave Green" rattlesnakes. When entering the facility, part of the security check in procedure included the issuance of heavy leather, knee high leggings that had to be worn in certain areas of the facility. They were not necessarily fashionable, but they were effective to protect the wearer from snake bite.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
It doesn't help that Arnold tried to capitalize off of his experience after the sighting which may have led him to sensationalize his claims a bit. Unfortunately, most of the people from that era are no longer around to answer any of the million questions we have. That's why I like to look at it from a technological angle. Is it possible that he saw a new a aircraft being tested? We do know for certain that the captured horten flying wing was here in the states in 1945-1946. However we don't know what state it was in. Was it reverse engineered? Did we test fly it with American made jet engines? Are there any documents in the US archives indicating as much? Those are the questions I've been trying to find answers to for the last few years. I'm confident if we find a definitive answer to any one of these that we will be a lot closer to unraveling the mystery surrounding his sighting.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
Actually I have read some of that book and I had to re-read that chapter in particular about the British and Avro. I realize now that Vesco didn't really make a good connection between Avro's disc aircraft program and the sighting in 1947. He also failed to mention the existence of John Frost's Special Projects Group inside Avro and it's importance to the existence of the project in the first place. As much as I want to believe Frost was successful and his designs flew, the timeline of sightings, documents and Frost's employment don't add up. The earliest year mentioned in available Project 1794 documents was 1956 and according to an unofficial timeline put together by an Avro museum in Canada, talk of Project Y was happening as early as January 1952, possibly earlier if you read more into the statements made by certain Avro employees at the time. Here's a link to the timeline, link. In the end, this is where my theory fell flat. Still, the Horten ho-229 was in the US and possibly had been studied extensively by 1947. Who knows if the original or even copies were flying by then.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
Personally I think arguments about the Avro disk or other similar experimental craft are all a red herring as the key component to explain is howcome there'd be nine of such craft all flying in formation near Mount Rainier. The point where you have nine of something flying in formation is surely way beyond the point where some prototype is being tested.
And one would have to wonder why any new craft was being tested in the middle of nowhere over dense forest and rough terrain that would make any recovery all but impossible should one go down....this is after all where DB Cooper managed to evade everyone for decades...rather than at the White Sands range or some other more convenient place.
Personally I think experimental craft is the least likely explanation for the Arnold sighting, way behind conventional explanations like a flock of birds or even just a bunch of Cessnas seen from an odd angle.
Duke
Senior Member.
I find the highlighted bit above somewhat ironic considering the posts we saw --> at the Calvine thread with respect to the photographed "object" possibly being a classified/experimental craft. There comments were made it made no sense to test such a system in a relatively populated area in a foreign nation when it could be tested in the US in/over a remote area.
I don't for a second believe what Arnold saw were classified aircraft, be they US, UK, Russian, or whoever. That said, if Dr Vesco's claim was true, we know early jets had very high fuel consumption rates, meaning in those days prior to practical aerial refueling, they would have had a limited range/operational radius. So if those were UK jets operating out of BC, they would not have had the range to go much further south on his purported "look what we got" flights.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
My point was more that the US had existing top secret areas for testing....I mean the Arnold sighting was only 2 years after the Manhattan Project and it is clear that even before Area 51 there were already highly classified areas of desert where testing any new craft could have been done. Some even claim that the infamous Lonnie Zamora case was one such. I fail to see why anyone would come up with 'hey...lets go test nine of our brand new Avro craft over the remote mountains of Washington state ' especially as it is clear that Arnold was on a regular flight ( he made that trip often ) over un-regulated space.
The Calvine UFO was within spitting distance of the busy A9 main arterial road ( the only main road for 30-40 miles around ) heading north through the Cairngorm mountains. It is a very popular area for hill walkers...in fact I have been up many of the hills around there and know the area very well. In fact the wonder is that nobody else saw the Calvine UFO...if there ever was one. Anyone who chose this as the test area for a top secret diamond shaped craft should be sacked. There is hardly anywhere in the UK that is remote enough for a top secret craft to be seen by no-one. In fact the last thing one would do is test in an area full of hill walkers and mountain climbers ( which is most of northern Scotland ) all armed with cameras for their bid to reach the summit of this or that mountain !
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
Well in 1945, the Lockheed P80 Shooting Star had a range of around 800 miles. There were airfields inside the US in Tacoma, Washington, Gray AAF and McChord, that were less than 300 miles roundtrip from Mt Rainier so well within the range of any operational jet aircraft. I don't think there would have been any scenario were operational Avro saucers would have been flying in from Canada all the way down to Tacoma, especially considering Avro's main plant was in Malton in Ontario. That being said, I do believe the project was a joint US and Canadian venture and if it had ever produced any air worthy aircraft, they could have been flying out of those bases in Tacoma. If they existed and that's a big IF, perhaps the reason they took that daylight flight along a common air route had something to do with the Marine Corp C46 transport plane that had crashed somewhere in those mountains the previous year.
To Scaramanga's point though, it is entirely possible and more likely Arnold mistook a flock of large birds for aircraft. It makes sense too when you consider that the flapping of the wings could have created the bobbing and flipping effects that Arnold mentioned.
Perhaps John Frost was a crackpot after all. It does seem likely some of the inspiration for his designs grew from reports of flying saucer sightings and rumor which is probably not the way you should design aircraft. Either way, I find the history behind Avro Canada interesting and I'll continue to dig into it for as long as I can.
Bill Ferguson
Member
No, sir. What I mean is no different from Michio Kaku saying that the enormous number of planets now known or thought to exists makes extraterrestrial life of some kind near certain.
Ann K
Senior Member.
But we have some solid evidence of the existence of other planets, and a comparison with the one planet we all share. Alien planets circle their suns following the same laws of physics that we are familiar with, and it's not unreasonable to say that since our solar system has a number of planets, there's no reason to suppose they're impossible elsewhere. We don't HAVE any alien UFOs with that amount of evidence, even though the proponents claim they're right here on earth rather than light-years away. It's a poor comparison.
Mauro
Senior Member.
It's quite different instead, because while we know for sure planets can harbor life (us living on the only known example), in the case of UFO reports we know for sure the opposite: none of them was ever identified as something extraordinary. We also know for sure extraterrestrial planets exist (and noone after, say, 1800-1900 ever doubted they did, even long before we developed the technology to actually 'see' them), while in the case of UFOs we know any form of meaningful space travel to be, instead, exceedingly improbable (and the more we know the more exceedingly improbable it becomes).
And, by the way, the humongous number of planets thought to exist in the universe does not by itself make 'extraterrestrial life of some kind near certain' because we have no idea of what the probability of a planet to develop life is (except it's surely low). If there are N planets in the universe, however big that N may be, no other life forms in the universe would be expected if that probability turns out to be, say, lower than 1 divided by N.
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Duke
Senior Member.
Have you checked to see if that airspace was an MOA in 1947? As I recall Arnold diverted looking for a missing USMC R5C. I'd be surprised if Boeing didn't routinely conduct acceptance and functional check flights in that area, as well experimental test flights on new design a/c like the B-47.
The USN/USMC did their experimental/cert flight testing out of Pax River (Maryland) and Pensacola (FL). The USAAF/USAF did theirs out of Wright Field (Ohio), and starting in the mid 40s, Muroc Airfield, now Edwards AFB (CA.) Acceptance and functional flight testing occured at production plants/fields nation wide. Also keep in mind there were hundreds of WWII primary and auxiliary airfields still in active or caretaker status across the nation in 1947. A good number of them were in fairly desolate areas.
Not the place to rehash Calvine, but if that was a classified aircraft in the photo, I don't think it was being tested. I'd be more inclined to think it was either staging through/deployed to the UK in preparation for service against Iraq. If that's case, I also think there's a good chance the craft was experiencing technical difficulties and was being escorted by the Harriers to a divert base, probably Leuchars or Lossiemouth.
Duke
Senior Member.
Are you familiar with the joint US/Canada Avro "Avrocar" program?
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John J.
Senior Member.
Wikipedia, "Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arnold_UFO_sighting, says (without citation)
I think it's worth asking why he didn't appear to say this early on, or include a sketch of the crescent-shaped object in his submission to the USAAF.External Quote:
The Avro Canada Project Y proposal does have a resemblance, in plan at least, to Arnold's initial sketches; (John Frost's 1962 patent for a gas turbine aircraft, shown in TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo's post, link above, even more so)
This (above) is a picture of the 1954 mock-up.
However, that's as far as it got- it was part of the line of development that led to the Avro Canada VZ-9 Avrocar
-whose troubled development (including the Project Y) can be read about on Wikipedia, here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar "Avro Canada VZ9 Avrocar".
The final product was something of a disappointment, managing an altitude of 3 feet (a bit less than a metre).
So it's unlikely that any earlier incarnations of Avro Canada's Special Projects Group along these lines faired much better!
-Thank you, I didn't know that.
I'm sceptical of the Horton Ho 229, or any reverse-engineered derivative, being flown after the fatal crash of the prototype in 1944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229, Wikipedia, "Horten Ho 229", although we know it was examined in the UK at Farnborough and in the USA.
Unlike the V2 or the Me 262, there's no evidence that I'm aware of that the USA, UK or USSR test-flew any of the Horten prototypes or attempted to build their own. In the US, Northrop already had a fairly advanced flying-wing program; the prop-powered YB-35 first flew in 1946 and the jet-powered YB-49 in 1947. Although slower than the (notional) top speed of the Horten Ho, they were more refined aircraft with greater range and payload, and (it would seem) more aerodynamically stable.
I don't think the plywood, pine and glue wings of the Horten Ho would fare well in the transonic regime!
Discussion of the probability of life somewhere else in the Universe is quite pointless. Given the size of the universe and the apparent number of planets that seem to be out there I would say there is some someplace. But that is just my guess.
The real questions, the ones we can address here, are if any life form that evolved elsewhere is visiting this planet now, or has visited it sometime in the past.
Those are question we could definitely answer in the affirmative, if they land and say "hello", or if we find conclusive remains of their past presence.
Mauro
Senior Member.
I agree with you! It's not only a matter of alien civilizations (or simply 'life') existing, but also of how far they are from us (in space and time). Were we so lucky (or unlucky?) to have a different Venus with a contemporary alien civilization on it we would already have the answers, on the contrary no amount of alien civilizations in far away galaxies will make any difference for us (nor we for them).
The probability of life in the universe had indeed little to do with the arguments of this thread, I added it to my post as a side note ('by the way') given how it was used by @Bill Ferguson in his analogy.
I agree again, that would be my guess too. But the surest thing we can say is "we just don't know", and the next sure is the 'near certainty' of Michio Kaku is not a certainty at all.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
Yes. It's seems to me as if it was a last ditch attempt by Avro and John Frost to produce something the US Army would buy into. Ultimately never achieving the stated goals of the design, I believe at the very least some of the knowledge gained from the program has been used in the development of other aircraft like the V-22 Osprey and the Marine version of the F-35.
TrapperKeeperSpaceWeirdo
New Member
Granted the plywood composite construction of the Ho-229 was questionable, it's worth noting that the design and materials provided a slightly reduced rcs. At the time when radar was becoming the next great development in air defense, looking for ways to defeat it was becoming a high priority.
Even if there's no evidence today to support the idea that it was test flown, I can still envision a world where it did happen. All it would have taken was a bit of money and determination. I'm certain there are thousands of projects that were funded, tested and then mothballed without evidence ever being released to the public since WW2.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
Agreed, but my point was more that I'd place experimental craft way down the list of suspects. As far as I'm aware, the experimental 'UFO shaped' craft of that period barely got off the ground. And the version of if that looked like Arnold's craft was never more than a wooden mock up. It's also worth pointing out that ( according to Wikipedia ) the first test flight of the Avro vehicle was not until 1959....twelve years after Arnold's sighting. To me the whole Avrocar thing is a red herring.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
The perfect place to interject that Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and all the scientists who keep insisting there 'must' be other life out there are not arguing from science at all and are actually displaying a misunderstanding of statistics and probability.
Fortunately, we have the superb Professor David Kipping to come to the rescue, with a genuinely scientific and statistical approach...that may disappoint some but is the correct way of seeing the problem....
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcInt58juL4
Mendel
Senior Member.
That might be worth its own thread with a properly quoted claim.
My impression is that these calculations start from a clearly stated set of assumptions that feel likely, but are obviously highly speculative. David Kipping simply uses a different set of assumptions to start from.
Ann K
Senior Member.
But in essence, all he is saying is "we don't know". He uses the Drake equation, the one with the unquantifiable terms, and tells us what we already know, that they are unquantifiable.
Duke
Senior Member.
Sure, I said early on I did not believe what Arnold saw were classified/conventional aircraft, regardless of the nation.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
Sure he's saying we don't know. The message doesn't seem to have got across to Michio Kaku, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, The Science Guy, and a large host of others.
Mendel
Senior Member.
Please back this assertion up with quotations.
I have a hard time believing that the persons you've named would consider alien intelligent life a certainty.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Some quotes would have been good, posting guidelines and all that.
Less than 50 seconds in I come across something so egregious that I've pressed pause to post this.
"... why we could actually be the only ones in the galaxy, or maybe even beyond, maybe even in the universe."
From what I've seen the positions of near certainty of existence of other life forms from those taking scientific and statistical arguments have been based on the extremely large number of galaxies out there. If this guy's going straight in with the base claim "in the galaxy" then he is addressing a different argument that has not been made.
Deliberately searching for the incorrect claim to be made (``de grasse tyson life galaxy'') yields as its first hits:
"""
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO7PIvZSIDY
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Are We Alone in The Universe? - YouTube
Jan 2, 2021 ... Neil deGrasse Tyson explains the possibility of life existing elsewhere in the Universe. He explains where the elements that make up life on ...
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sz79YhoG7c
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, "Welcome to the Universe - YouTube
Nov 11, 2016 ... Neil DeGrasse Tyson answers many of the questions of the universe including how it began and the liklihood of intelligent life elsewhere in, ...
https://neildegrassetyson.com/essays/1996-09-the-search-for-life-in-the-universe/
The Search for Life in the Universe - Neil deGrasse Tyson
To declare that Earth must be the only planet in the universe with life would be inexcusably bigheaded of us. Many generations of thinkers, both religious and ...
"""
Universe, universe, universe.
Whilst Kipping does extend to "maybe even in the universe", the fact that he starts by attacking a straw man for "balance" I find disingenuous.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Ugh, and literally the first slide shows him conflating a calculation containing expected values with a conclusion about probabilities. This is just mangled thinking, he's not explaining anything so far, he's adding to the confusion.
FatPhil
Senior Member.
However, if you run the numbers, the sigmoid functions tend to be so steep that it would require freakishly fine tuning to come up with a probability for N>1 that isn't 1-eps. (Probability eps requires freakishly fine tuning because we have N>=1 as a given) And I think it's fine for scientists to describe probability 1-eps as "certain". I'm no fan of the Drake equation, quite the opposite, and I'm pretty sure if you're honest about the ranges of the various proportions then you end up with a range that includes both "extremely unlikely" and "extremely likely", so nothing can be said with any conviction. However, the black swan of earth means that anyone who favours anything apart from the "extremely likely" area of the graph is appealing either to unsupportably narrow ranges in the proportions (so fine tuning not based on evidence), or to misleading maths (which is unfortunately already baked into the framing of the Drake equation in the first place). Perhaps both.
Scaramanga
Senior Member
He's not attacking a straw man at all. He is quite correctly pointing out that we have absolutely no idea what the probability of life is anywhere, thus nobody is in any position to argue that there 'must' be other life out there. Professor Kipping explains the maths of this very concisely....pointing out that the odds for life may be so small that even the number of stars in the galaxy or even the entire universe may be insufficient.
The point Kipping is making is that being impressed with the sheer number of planets in the galaxy or the universe is not good enough. It does not matter if there are a trillion planets in the galaxy....if the odds of life forming on a planet are one in a quintillion. It does not matter if there are 10^15 planets in the universe, if the odds of life on any planet are 1 in 10^50 or some such huge number. Kipping is simply pointing out that the odds against life may be larger than the number of planets.
Whether one argues 'in the galaxy' or 'in the universe'....the mathematical and logical point is exactly the same. It does not change with the scale. For any given scale, the odds against life may be larger than the number of planets in that scale.
What's not to understand ? Confirmation bias is the only possible reason for not grasping his extremely clear point.
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Scaramanga
Senior Member
The quotations are in the actual video ( see around 2 minutes 18 seconds ). Is this a confession that you didn't watch it ?
captancourgette
Active Member
A valid point, I assume you are talking about intelligent life
If we find non earth life say on mars, do the odds of 1^50 (or so) decrease a lot?
Even on our planet life evolved (or we got seeded according to some), i.e. A hugely unlikely event only then to be followed by a couple of billion years of pretty much stasis, and only then did another unlikely freak event to occur which caused multi-cellular life which rapidly evolved into us.
A small number * a small number = an even smaller number.
But hey to counter-balance there are a huge number of planets so who knows?
Finding even simple life on Mars or Europa etc would be a massive boost to the possibility of intelligent alien life
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Any argument that ignores the existence of the earth is committing a graver error than confirmation bias. Earth exists, that is a valid input into any argument, that's not confirmation bias. Seemingly not knowing it, he's using fine tuning.
The "we know nothing apart from our own existence, and have no reason to think our situation is special" argument leads to a conclusion that the probability there's life on another planet is 42%. Any conclusion different from that must be taking different premises, which would need to be justified.
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