Errors in Luis Elizondo's UFO Book "Imminent"

He appears to be suggestig and Alcubierre drive, with the energy derived from either vacuum-fluctuation zero-point energy, or cracking the protons in hydrogen, so it could run off water - or maybe heavy water. He seemed to be seeking a justification for the imagined attraction UFOs have to water.

External Quote:

But where did they get all that energy? Sitting in that room, we attempted to imagine a holy grail of fuels, a dream engine that would burn without creating enormous thermal heat while providing an inexhaustible supply of energy.

Hal explained that if one were to try to achieve the levels of energy required to warp space-time, one might need to start with the most basic form of energy that we know of—that of the underlying roiling quantum fluctuations of empty space, so-called vacuum fluctuations.
This speculative hypothesis, yet to be practically implemented, was based on the now well-studied phenomenon of what is commonly referred to as zero-point energy. However, also discussed were alternative hypotheses.


Oof...this is rough.

Starting with zero-point energy, the current consensus is that you can't actually use it to generate more energy than you put in to access it.

External Quote:
Physicists overwhelmingly reject any possibility that the zero-point energy field can be exploited to obtain useful energy (work) or uncompensated momentum
From Wiki link above

Of course, Puthoff has dabbled in that:

External Quote:
Froning and Roach (2002)[266] put forward a paper that builds on the work of Puthoff, Haisch and Alcubierre.
From Wiki link above

PDF: "Inertia as a Zero-Point-Field Lorentz Force" Haisch, B.; Rueda, A.; Puthoff, H. E. (1994).

On to protons...

External Quote:

I remembered a conversation I had, years prior, with another scientist. His speculation was that the hydrogen atom, or, more specifically, the proton of a hydrogen atom, could be harnessed and ultimately used for energy in a similar way as we do today with nuclear power plants. The only thing lacking was an efficient technology to crack the proton open in a useful and controlled manner to release potential energy. From there one could unlock the unimaginable energy held hidden deep within the nucleus. Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is usually in the form of a gas. However, hydrogen happens to be abundant in a very dense form that we know more commonly as liquid water, or H2O.

At the time, we already had sufficient data to imply that UAP were often encountered near bodies of water and, in some cases, appeared to be interacting with it. Liquid water seemed to be a commonality, and some data even suggested that UAP were taking water on board.

If this was true, all one had to do was remove the oxygen from the hydrogen molecule of H2O, and voila! You have a virtually unlimited supply of protons to crack open and unlock the energy hidden deep within.

I thought to myself, maybe our planet is simply a gas station? We humans have gone to war many times to protect our own resources. Maybe UAP are concerned about their planetary gas station? Were we simply a galactic Exxon pump? Recently, our own scientists on earth have identified other planets with water. Surely a species this advanced can figure out the same.

I got chills thinking about it. So many of the long-standing mysteries now made better sense to me.

The Nimitz and Roosevelt sightings happened on the open sea. In the Belgian Congo in 1952, the UAP fled the uranium mines and escaped in the direction of Lake Tanganyika, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world. And in that 1988 UAP incident on Lake Erie, as the UAP descended, the Coast Guard investigators observed "that the ice was cracking and moving abnormal amounts as the object came closer." I thought of that Tic Tac darting around a roiling, bubbling circle of the Pacific Ocean in 2004. Maybe, when the water or ice is agitated, these ships can more easily strip off and harvest the hydrogen atoms?

Elizondo, Luis. Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs: the Former Head of the Program Responsible for Investigating UAPs Reveals Profound Secrets (pp. 163-164). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
  • No clue why the hydrogen proton would be needed as opposed to any other proton. They're all the same. The hydrogen in water is not special compared to any other hydrogen.
  • Literally zero reason an advanced species would be able to use liquid water but not water vapor to get those protons. Condensation is out of their grasp?
  • Nuclear power plants use fission (splitting apart) of atoms, not splitting apart subatomic particles like protons. More importantly, you can't even get energy from splitting apart a proton. See this reddit askscience thread (the people who answer there have to have actual credentials so the responses are actual physicists). The answers are of varying complexity which is nice for getting whatever level of understanding you prefer. tldr quote: "No; we cannot split a proton, to create energy."
  • Why would earth water be necessary? It's abundant elsewhere.
  • The connection between water and UFOs is just creating a connection that doesn't exist.
 
@yoshy

It seems mr Elizondo has no clue about particle science or fundamental physics. I guess it was not part of the requirements of his former job(s) to know a bit about science. Because, who needs it to judge "advanced crafts and phenomena" right?
 
It's the repeated pattern of using a scientist's thought experiment / maths theory where the scientists basically says this is actually impossible in reality because of x problem and then just claiming aliens would be way smarter than us and as such would be able to solve x.

Then use the word maybe a lot to link it to some videos/descriptions of UFOs you've seen / read about.

And when someone criticises your tenuous links just claim you were speculating and aliens are unknowable really and also probably really intelligent so would be able to solve whatever issue people raise.
 
and then just claiming aliens would be way smarter than us and as such would be able to solve x.
"It's magic", except it's the 21st century and more people believe in aliens than in magic¹.

Remember: If magic exists, it's not impossible!


¹ Elizondo² apparently believes in both, given his tales of remote viewing.
² Nobody calls him The Great Zondo.
 
To TL;DR @yoshy's analysis, protons are not a fuel because they are a low energy configuration. Other, more complex baryons *decay into protons*, and in so doing release energy. There's no lower energy state for the quarks to form or change into.

This is somewhat similar to the "use water as a fuel" idea - water is a very stable compound, it's at a very low energy state, the only things that will break it down are the raw application of energy (thus making the water not the source of energy, so not a fuel), or some other element or compound in a state that it really doesn't want to be in, such that it's prepared to rip the water apart to achieve a lower energy state, and in that case, it was the other element or compound in its high energy state that was the actual fuel, again not the water.

And now I drift off into philosophising rather than explication, feel free to not read:
Call it thermodynamics, call it entropy, it doesn't matter; these tendencies are inviolable from a mathematical standpoint, and maths would still trump new physics, as the new physics would still need to use good old-fashioned maths in order to describe itself. These things are no more believable than perpetua mobilia. (And don't think that tensors or bra-kets of modern physics - relativity and quantum mechanics respectively - called for the creation of new maths; they were just new notation for well-established linear algebra that predated the science they were used to describe by centuries. Schroedinger's wave equation in quantum mechanics is a direct descendent of things like Hooke's spring law in classical mechanics, just with a bit of Newton's 17th century calculus with some 16th century complex numbers for an extra twist. Good useful maths lasts practically forever.)
 
Last edited:
The top and bottom would be irregular distances, so if he's correct that:

"The bubble must surround the craft equally, on all sides, to avoid catastrophic consequences."
I don't think there is any bubble that fits this criteria.

There is an indent on the top of the craft where the dome meets the saucer. Where the bubble intersects at 45 degrees there are two parts of the craft that would be closer to the bubble than the indented portion.

Unless I am missing something, there is no solution to Elizondo's statement. So it isn't just that he is wrong with a spherical bubble, there is no way he could have been right.

It amuses me to add that these indentations in the craft at the joins would likely constitute weak spots in the design which would surely exacerbate the impossible bubble problem.

Starting with zero-point energy, the current consensus is that you can't actually use it to generate more energy than you put in to access it.
Ah, so that's why they call it zero point energy? Makes sense.
 
I just noticed something even sillier in Lue's water theory.

External Quote:
Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is usually in the form of a gas. However, hydrogen happens to be abundant in a very dense form that we know more commonly as liquid water, or H2O.
Splitting H2O results in H2 as a gas, so his idea that they need water to get hydrogen because hydrogen is usually a gas elsewhere makes no sense. You end up with hydrogen gas either way lmao
 
I just noticed something even sillier in Lue's water theory.

External Quote:
Although hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it is usually in the form of a gas. However, hydrogen happens to be abundant in a very dense form that we know more commonly as liquid water, or H2O.
Splitting H2O results in H2 as a gas, so his idea that they need water to get hydrogen because hydrogen is usually a gas elsewhere makes no sense. You end up with hydrogen gas either way lmao
Indeed. Also, in space, hydrogen is mostly (99%) found in atomic and plasma states. He really has no idea about the universe (as we know it). Perhaps he knows a lot about the universe we don't know yet, but I cannot verify that. :cool:
 
Last edited:
Splitting H2O results in H2 as a gas, so his idea that they need water to get hydrogen because hydrogen is usually a gas elsewhere makes no sense. You end up with hydrogen gas either way lmao

I could see making a case that it is easier to scoop up water or ice than collect gas, or molecules floating around in space, I guess. Though there are places where the gas would be nicely concentrated for you:
Jupiter is like 90% hydrogen as well.

Either way, the idea that Earth is of some special interest because we have some hydrogen/water is difficult to support. Is there ANYTHING we have that you can't get easier elsewhere? All I can think of is life, WE don't know of any life elsewhere -- but if there are aliens tooling around of a dozen species in as many different designs of UFOs, they don't need Earth to find life!
 
It's the repeated pattern of using a scientist's thought experiment / maths theory where the scientists basically says this is actually impossible in reality because of x problem and then just claiming aliens would be way smarter than us and as such would be able to solve x.

Then use the word maybe a lot to link it to some videos/descriptions of UFOs you've seen / read about.

And when someone criticises your tenuous links just claim you were speculating and aliens are unknowable really and also probably really intelligent so would be able to solve whatever issue people raise.
It's a form of the wishful thinking fallacy.

The wishful thinking fallacy occurs when someone believes something to be true simply because they want it to be true, rather than based on evidence or rational reasoning. It's a type of cognitive bias where desires or hopes influence one's belief in a claim, often leading to unfounded or overly optimistic conclusions.
 
Is there ANYTHING we have that you can't get easier elsewhere?
1. Mistakes
2. Wishful thinking
3. Misleading narratives
4. "Imminent", by Luis Elizondo
5. Hal Puthoff's experimental results

Maybe more positively,

1. Nice dogs
2. Coffee, tea
3. Fish and chips
4. Good books
5. Love

Edit: For some reason I felt compelled to add "Flying kites" to the second list, as if some exterior will was influencing me...
 
Last edited:
For some reason I felt compelled to add "Flying kites" to the second list, as if some exterior will was influencing me...
I have always assumed that to be universal... ^_^

But anyway, back to the topic... ^_^ So hydrogen is everywhere, water is most everywhere, both are available in places less inconvenient for collecting it than is Earth. Earth does not seem to have anything unique except possibly life (and life byproducts like books by UFO believers or cellular telephones) , which will not be the case if it turns out space is crawling with UFO pilots and their vehicles. And they are not making contact with us, so far...

The idea that they'd maybe come by once (assuming they exist and have the capability) just because you gotta go somewhere, maybe that would make sense. The idea that they are flying all over the place in the skies around our planet seems, for lack of a better phrase, to be devoid of all purpose. Mr. Elizondo's speculations about water seem particularly ill-founded.
 
It's wise to remind yourself when reading a ufologist's writings that ufology is not a science, it's creative writing using real-world references, and can have a more compelling narrative than science because it's fiction.

  • Many UFO reports involve bodies of water.
    • Skeptics: we have a lot of water on the planet, that's expected
    • Ufology: there's a reason, the UFOs need the water, as...uh...fuel!
Only one of these options could ever make it into a movie. (And only one could ever make it into a textbook.) It's a pity more people watch movies than read textbooks.

Elizondo writes what he does because it's impressive, and because it can be imagined to be true—not because it's actually true. His errors don't matter.

how-powerful-was-the-spaceballs-vacuum-cleaner-request-v0-yopvgrshy6mc1.jpeg

MegaMaid siphoning Earth's air
 
Last edited:
Here is a reply to Mick West's criticism of Elizondo's book, by 'Jimmy', from 'UAP Podcast'.
Fact-Checking Mick West
it is mostly an information-free apologia for Elizondo, but there might be some interesting tid-bits in it.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ic-m7bxoX8E

I posted a message about this a few days ago, but I didn't properly format it so the mods deleted it.

As you mentioned, he didn't really fact-check Mick. Jimmy...never mind.
 
Here is a reply to Mick West's criticism of Elizondo's book, by 'Jimmy', from 'UAP Podcast'.
Fact-Checking Mick West

Jimmy from UAP Podcast makes a very significant error (I assume it's an error and not deliberate "muddying of the waters").

From 02:15 minutes into the episode linked to by @Eburacum, Jimmy quotes/ shows some of Mick West's criticism (Quotes from Luis Elizondo's "Imminent" in bold, Mick West's commentary in standard text):

External Quote:

the object looks elongated and white. But that color is somewhat misleading. Since the camera is in infrared mode, white merely indicates that the object is "cold"—no heat emanating from the aircraft at all.

This is just not just wrong, it's backwards. The camera is in white hot mode, WHT, which means the object is hot, not cold, and it means there IS a heat signature. He repeats this error again after the camera switches to black hot mode, BHT.

The object is now black, which in this camera mode also indicates that the object is "cold"—no heat signature.

But again, it's the opposite, the object is hot, and there is a heat signature. Much is made of objects that fly without a heat signature, but this is not one of those objects. He got that fundamental fact entirely wrong.
(Posted by Mick in the OP.)

Jimmy gives us his views on this from 03:01 to 03:36 (approx.) in his video- any transcription errors are mine:

External Quote:
So it seems like we're getting into semantics here. You've got to remember that Mick is reading a book. This is not a video that is being narrated by Lue, the video isn't implanted into the book or audiobook, so Mick is having to marry up what Lue is saying with where he thinks he is in the footage. Now yes, black hot mode or white hot mode are two different things and it would invert the colours to dark or light depending on the heat signatures given off, but we don't know where Lue is in the video when he's describing it so it's really difficult to say he's wrong about that, so let's move on.
(My emphasis).

But Jimmy either overlooks, or possibly fails to understand,

(1) Luis Elizondo in Imminent states, clearly, twice, that the ATFLIR footage indicates
External Quote:
...that the object is "cold"
-followed by (1st time)
External Quote:
—no heat emanating from the aircraft at all.
(2nd time)
External Quote:
-no heat signature.

(2) At no point, at any time, does the ATFLIR footage indicate 'the object' is cold.
In fact it always indicates that the object is hot, regardless of where we are in the footage or what imaging mode is used.

Luis Elizondo says the ATFLIR indicates the object is cold. In reality the ATFLIR always indicates the object is hot.

So when Jimmy says
External Quote:
...so it's really difficult to say he's [Lue's] wrong about that,
Jimmy is being factually incorrect. Luis Elizondo is clearly "wrong about that";
Lue's statements that the ATFLIR footage indicates that "Gimbal" is cold are not correct at any time.
 
Jimmy is being factually incorrect. Luis Elizondo is clearly "wrong about that";
Lue's statements that the ATFLIR footage indicates that "Gimbal" is cold are not correct at any time.
Yeah, it seems a bit odd that he waves that one away as semantics, and not knowing what bit of the video we are looking at.

It's literally black and white. First he's looking at the white blob and saying it's cold. Then he describes how it inverts, and how the black blob is cold. Here's the entire section. We know exactly where in the video Lue is describing.

2024-08-29_12-14-29.jpg


The rest of it has lots of "I don't think that's what Lue means" or "I think Lue is trying to say..."
 
Capture.JPG


Reading Mick's post (3rd above this one), the bit I've highlighted in yellow also struck me. How in the world does Mr. Elizondo or anybody else know that the UAP "wants" to do? That's just totally made up. There is no indication at all as to what the target object's (or its pilots') intentions are, what it or they want to do. This is laying aside that we now know the rotation is due to what is happening at the plane, in the camera system, and has nothing to do with what the target might or might not be doing.

EDIT: reference third post above since some posts intervened while I was typing!
 
Reading Mick's post (3rd above this one), the bit I've highlighted in yellow also struck me. How in the world does Mr. Elizondo or anybody else know that the UAP "wants" to do? That's just totally made up.
Yes, I noticed that. That makes UFOlogy sound even more like a quasi-religion; I've heard all too many apologists telling me what "god wants". There's a regrettable tendency for many people to anthropomorphize objects.
 
Not that I can see, but the entire chapter is nonsensical. Take this:

External Quote:

So whatever you put in it has to fit neatly inside the bubble, which is equal distance on all sides from the center, 360 degrees. Because you can't be in different space-times at once, you would never want to have part of your craft inside the bubble while another part of your craft was outside it. The bubble must surround the craft equally, on all sides, to avoid catastrophic consequences. There is only one shape in geometry that allows you to be protected equally on all sides: think of our diving bell analogy, a sphere. A sphere-shaped craft may not be very practical when the bubble is turned off. The object would be rolling all over the place. So an alternative solution would be to flatten your sphere into a disc . . . A saucer. Form follows function. The stereotypical flying saucer looks the way it does because it must fit inside that bubble while remaining protected on all sides.
That makes no sense. The surface of a sphere would be equidistant from the bubble, but a saucer would not.

View attachment 70982

The top and bottom would be irregular distances, so if he's correct that:

"The bubble must surround the craft equally, on all sides, to avoid catastrophic consequences."

Then there would be catastrophic consequences.

If there were not, then there' would be no restrictions on the shape, just anything that could fit inside would do.
Fascinating thought process. A sphere has a favorable quality... because of its shape. If you reshape the sphere, it somehow retains that same favorable quality.

This is system 1 thinking. The focus is on a single superficial characteristic, without any kind of effortful analysis or doubt.

IMO this is an epitome of the book. These are cozy, comfortable stories. Wonder without thought. It sort of just washes over you with no effort or disturbing things like doubt.

When I'm really exhausted from overwork, I watch something like Gilligan's Island. I don't see this book as anything more than a kind of Gilligan's Island episode.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, it seems a bit odd that he waves that one away as semantics, and not knowing what bit of the video we are looking at.

It's literally black and white. First he's looking at the white blob and saying it's cold. Then he describes how it inverts, and how the black blob is cold. Here's the entire section. We know exactly where in the video Lue is describing.

View attachment 71101

The rest of it has lots of "I don't think that's what Lue means" or "I think Lue is trying to say..."

With respect to the first area highlighted in yellow the statement "no heat emanating from the aircraft at all" is incorrect. As people have noted before cameras of this type are NOT displaying actual temperatures, they are displaying RELATIVE temperatures.

The software converting the incoming infrared signals into a display that will be useful to the pilot is showing the hottest pixels in that scene as white and the least hot pixels as black. When in White Hot mode. The processor is continuously re-interpreting the scene so the pilots can distinguish useful (to the pilots) differences in temperature. If a new object, hotter than the hottest one currently being displayed, flies into the scene the object that was previously displayed in white would then be displayed in gray, and that new object would now be the one displayed as white. That doesn't mean the previously hottest object suddenly cooled down, it is simply no longer the hottest object in the scene.
 
With respect to the first area highlighted in yellow the statement "no heat emanating from the aircraft at all" is incorrect. As people have noted before cameras of this type are NOT displaying actual temperatures, they are displaying RELATIVE temperatures.

The software converting the incoming infrared signals into a display that will be useful to the pilot is showing the hottest pixels in that scene as white and the least hot pixels as black. When in White Hot mode. The processor is continuously re-interpreting the scene so the pilots can distinguish useful (to the pilots) differences in temperature. If a new object, hotter than the hottest one currently being displayed, flies into the scene the object that was previously displayed in white would then be displayed in gray, and that new object would now be the one displayed as white. That doesn't mean the previously hottest object suddenly cooled down, it is simply no longer the hottest object in the scene.
This is correct, but Elizondo's primary mistake is that he's describing a "white cold" mode, not white hot.

All flying objects emit heat (thermal radiation)
 
All flying objects emit heat (thermal radiation)
All objects emit thermal radiation.

(Theoretically, an object at absolute zero (0K) would not, but practically doesn't/can't exist.)

All flying objects in the three Navy videos emit/reflect more heat than their surroundings. That's why they're displayed as "hot" on the ATFLIR screen.
 
Last edited:
Not that I can see, but the entire chapter is nonsensical.
That's possibly a touch unfair. There is sense, but it's so basic that it hardly needs saying.

All the majority of the portion about the bubble is saying is that if you can move x cubic metres of stuff using y amount of energy, it's inefficient to move less that x cubic metres of stuff with y amount of energy.

That's it! That's all.

But you can't say it's nonsensical.

It goes a bit further with the incredible insight that the most efficient use of space in a sphere is to fill it with a sphere.

What's a bit silly is that Luis isn't bothered about the efficiency of filling this new sphere created inside the sphere. Surely space inside the sphere makes it just as inefficient? Spheres aren't easy to fill with solids.

But no. A sphere is bad because it rolls around (never mind that you have a device that can move this thing by bending space-time. I guess you can't stay still when you can bend space-time). So the most efficient shape to fill the bubble that won't roll around is a flying saucer shape (again, no interest in the efficiency of filling a flying saucer shaped object).

Eur-bloody-eka!

But ultimately, the crux of this incredible insight is...
you'd want to use it as efficiently as possible
Ignoring that efficiency here isn't just as basic as how much of the bubble you can fill, would FTL travelling aliens with portable power sources that can produce the energy required to create these bubbles really be that bothered about efficiency?

Luis thinks so. I'm not so sure.

But the amount of words to say so little is impressive.
 
Last edited:
Also, nobody says, "It's damn sure not a drone". That's not in the video.
The Elizondo fan club on Twitter are trying to find a loophole for him by arguing that he may be referring to something in the alleged longer version of the video.

I may be muddling up different cases, but hasn't someone (Ryan Graves?) said that they have seen the longer version, but it doesn't contain anything interesting and not in the shorter version. This would be a problem for the fan club, because it is well known to them that Ryan Graves, or indeed any US pilot, is incapable of making any error.
 
That's possibly a touch unfair. There is sense, but it's so basic that it hardly needs saying.

All the majority of the portion about the bubble is saying is that if you can move x cubic metres of stuff using y amount of energy, it's inefficient to move less that x cubic metres of stuff with y amount of energy.

That's it! That's all.

But you can't say it's nonsensical.

It goes a bit further with the incredible insight that the most efficient use of space in a sphere is to fill it with a sphere.

What's a bit silly is that Luis isn't bothered about the efficiency of filling this new sphere created inside the sphere. Surely space inside the sphere makes it just as inefficient? Spheres aren't easy to fill with solids.

But no. A sphere is bad because it rolls around (never mind that you have a device that can move this thing by bending space-time. I guess you can't stay still when you can bend space-time). So the most efficient shape to fill the bubble that won't roll around is a flying saucer shape (again, no interest in the efficiency of filling a flying saucer shaped object).

Eur-bloody-eka!

But ultimately, the crux of this incredible insight is...

Ignoring that efficiency here isn't just as basic as how much of the bubble you can fill, would FTL travelling aliens with portable power sources that can produce the energy required to create these bubbles really be that bothered about efficiency?

Luis thinks so. I'm not so sure.

But the amount of words to say so little is impressive.
A highly treasured commodity in the Pentagon. For those who've never read it, I recommend Burton's "The Pentagon Wars." He explains this very nicely.

https://www.amazon.com/Pentagon-War...d=1725022946&sprefix=pentagon+,aps,190&sr=8-2
 
Last edited:
Back
Top