UFOs etc

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Someone in a tech news site left an interesting link in the comments about UFOs. Googling further I found this:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/ufo/index.shtml

Note how the site isn't fake, and the documents are supposedly declassified.

The question is, what the heck is in there, cryptography exercises? Standard PR? Your standard conspiracy?

[ivor]

Probably balloons...     That was repeated over and over.  I found that odd, like they were trying to convince themselves or the reader...

[Opsa]

There you are, MB! We were looking for you in Vigils. Good to see you've not been abducted.

[Roland Deschain]

I love speculation of alien civilisations and life beyond this planet, and UFOs in particular have held my rapt attention since I was a child. I remember a radio programme I found online a long time ago, which said that a number of non-terrestrial radio transmissions had been picked up by SETI, but had been subsequently covered-up, and not publicly acknowledged. The problem is that it was a pretty standard conspiracy type programme, so I couldn't really tell whether what they were saying was for real or yet another overdramatisation of a seemingly innocent incident (or outright lies/paranoia).

I had a quick look through the PDF link you posted, and it does indeed appear to be saying that a signal was found. If this is so, and there have been efforts to decrypt the signal (not that it looks like it when reading the PDF, lol), why the hell isn't this more common knowledge? If this were true, it would be a monumental occasion for our species, and proof positive that we are not alone in this universe. It should be shouted from the rooftops! What exactly was received, is it in any way intelligible to us, and what's been done with the information? These are questions that really need answering.

I've briefly glanced at the NSA site itself, but will have to devote some serious time to it later. There appears to be some interesting reading there, despite the obligatory redactions.

The site does appear to be legit. It is a .gov site, which only one organisation has access to. As a further aside, I had to laugh. Not so long ago, the US government were vehemently denying the existence of the NSA, and now they have their own bloody website! :rofl:

Thread necromancy FTW! (sorry)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I guess the good question would be, is there a real reason to cover up UFO related information? Or, what would be the consequences of acknowledging the existence of non human visitors? Would that really cause a frenzied panic among the population? Is there a legitimate reason to cover up the stuff?

[Griffin NoName]

I guess the good question would be, is there a real reason to cover up UFO related information? Or, what would be the consequences of acknowledging the existence of non human visitors? Would that really cause a frenzied panic among the population? Is there a legitimate reason to cover up the stuff?

It would have an effect on literature and the film industry

[Swatopluk]

I guess a lot of people would not believe the info because it comes from the government (after all, they tried to fool us into believing that human beings reached the moon  ).
Panic can be avoided, just announce the news on Friday evening.
If there was indeed a crash of an alien spacecraft, I'd expect government to keep it a secret because of the opportunity to keep the technology for itself, less because of a fear of public panic.
I assume there would only be widespread panic, if the landing was very public in the first place (and partially depending on how it plays out). I would expect extreme distrust though given our own history. WE were rarely nice to the 'primitives' we 'discovered', although they were of our own species.

[pieces o nine]

After the initial dust settled from alien contact, I would enjoy  --[and be saddened, embarrassed, enraged, horrified, etc. by]--  Pronouncements To The Faithful by various public religious figures.  I'm guessing that the Dalai Lama would respond calmly (whatever the outcome), the Vatican would issue statements that sounded like something but only hedged their bets, the most virulent patriarchs of the Big Three would posture childishly, and US-style televangelists would announce that 'God had put a word on my heart' that He wants all to turn to Him in the Hour of Need, and also to send a substantial Faith Gift to the Ministry of the respective televangelist.

The inevitable Political posturings would provide fodder for comedians for eons, if things went at all well.

[Aggie]

It could be more complicated than that, Pieces...  if humans are any guide, the most likely reason for a more highly developed species to visit our planet would be to evangelize.

[Swatopluk]

Muslims should in principle have no problems with the existence of aliens. Iirc the Koran has nothing to say for or against the idea while the Bible has (in)famously been used to 'disproof' it followed by thermolysis of its carriers.
Btw, some psychologists think that the aliens of today are the witches of the past, i.e. projections of the mind taking the 'appropriate' shape for the time. Always distorted human figures flying through the air, conducting strange rituals in remote places and extremly interested in sex.

[Griffin NoName]

Btw, some psychologists think that the aliens of today are the witches of the past, i.e. projections of the mind taking the 'appropriate' shape for the time. Always distorted human figures flying through the air, conducting strange rituals in remote places and extremly interested in sex.

Freud is probably responsible for that. 

[Swatopluk]

Only the sex part. The rest looks more like C.G.Jung. (CG junk?)
Reich on the other hand would have been highly interested in alien sex life in a practical manner.

[pieces o nine]

It could be more complicated than that, Pieces...  if humans are any guide, the most likely reason for a more highly developed species to visit our planet would be to evangelize.

    ha!  That possibility had never occurred to me!

Muslims should in principle have no problems with the existence of aliens. Iirc the Koran has nothing to say for or against the idea while the Bible has (in)famously been used to 'disproof' it followed by thermolysis of its carriers.

Except that it is unlikely an alien culture would have the remotest interest in acknowledging the superiority of any people with a Book, or in submitting to the scriptural limitations, which would not go down at all well with the most ... uncompromising .. supporters.

[Swatopluk]

I am talking about how humans would react not how the aliens would react to our peculiarities
Christianity (at least the conservative kind) has painted itself a bit into the corner there. the other major faith are a good deal more flexible in that regard. Except of course about the topic, whether the aliens could be eaten without violating the religious food laws.
If aliens are the least bit like us there might not even be an attempt of communication. Sterilizing the planet from afar after maybe collecting enough info would be a real consideration. Why risk infection (Wells-like) or a nuclear welcome, if one is mainly interested in the exploitable wealth (not including credit default swaps)?

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Sterilizing would be silly-- if you have a space-faring race?  There are much easier to get at resources out in space, under microgravity.  Minerals galore in the comets and asteroids-- even complex molecules.  And water by the planet-full.  The very silly movie series "V" wherein they wanted water from Earth?   Pointless-- if you can land and take off on a planet?  You have the resources to exploit comets-- at a much cheaper (energy-wise) cost.

So the motive to "get our mineral wealth" is a stupid one-- only Hollywood would think it reasonable.  (and I'm not calling you stupid, Swato-- I expect you are just repeating the silliness of the silly).

Sterilizing because of a deeply ingrained xenophobia?  I could easily see that-- if they are afraid of all non-local (to them) life, then they'd need to do something very dramatic:  multiple strikes from really large asteroids in hope of literally breaking up the planet-- bacteria can exist in the wildest of places, even 1000's of feet down in rocks.

But if they are only afraid of a technological species?  (like us)  Then diverting a couple of moderate asteroids would easily do the trick, and us never catching on that it wasn't accidental.   That would set our civilization back a few hundred (if not 1000) years, and make all many of the religions deeply happy too.

Sending just a few as scouts?  Likely-- watching the results, to see if the asteroid strike(s) are required after all.

If they sent only a single individual?  Who was carefully modified to look exactly like a typical human?   And only armed him(her)(it) with a working human-language vocabulary?   No one on earth would believe the story... would they?   No matter how mundane or wild... the majority of folk would either presume he was a magical-dude (religious) or just a nut-case.

I seriously doubt anyone would buy his alien-origins story at all.

And who can say?  This may well have already happened-- and perhaps the alien was only interested in instilling a message of peace.... but was thought to be only a "holey" man... and perhaps--some of the modern religious ideas came from his/her/it's spreading this idea?



Yes.... Jesus was merely an alien, and did not actually die-- he returned to his ship in the end.  So was Mohammad, and Gandhi, and the Buddha, and even Joseph Smith (his cover-story was from a not very well-thought out version-- it was a rush job).

[Swatopluk]

The term 'sterilize' was an allusion to Turtledove where the aliens use it as euphemism for wiping out all higher lifeforms on Earth to make it safe for colonization. The proponents get reminded that the result would not look like what the settlers want to find in their new home and that this could be bad for those responsible.
---
As for minerals, there is a lot of stuff that can be only found in significant quantities on the type of planet we live on, in essence anything with a nuclear weight exceeding that of iron (exception: nickel). So, in our solar system the first target for such exploits would likely be Mars. It would provide a base from where further actions could be staged. Venus would be better placed for that but the environment is totally unsuitable unfortunately.

Personally I think that a 'manned' interstellar expedition would be an all or nothing thing, either big scale or not worth the huge effort. Robotic probes would probably not be necessary because large scale interferometry* would yield enough info to base the large scale expedition on. Probes would arrive only shortly before the main force.
I presume of course that Einstein will not be overturned, so visitors will not travel faster than light or use macroscopic wormholes.

*first prototypes are currently prepared. The possible scale is primarily limited by the achievable coherence and focusabilty of the used lasers. I guess the most feasible solution around here would be to park the interferometrically linked telescopes around the Lagrange points of Jupiter and Saturn yielding baselines of several astronomical units (current state of the art technology can cope with far lower distances only though, a few million miles maybe). That would be enough to read alien newspapers (at least the yellow press with their larger types).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Considering that Earth-like planets are prime real state, sterilization of an "inferior" race isn't unthinkable, but the way to achieve it is far easier, just a couple of engineered virus/bacteria and you can decimate the population of the planet in matter of months, a second or third germ would deal with the remainder quite easily and the biosphere would be ready to be taken over. They just need to have little regard for other sentient species (hey, we don't have any either), and the cleanup can be used to create compost.

The idea of an interplanetary war is just silly.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I agree-- interstellar war is pointless-- if you are after resources?  There are more available in space itself, in the OORT clouds (for example) than on high-gravity rocky balls.

If you can travel between stars, the simple chemistry of organic molecules could be done without the need to go get them from somewhere else.

And why raid an existing biosphere at all?  Your DNA is unlikely to be compatible anyway-- and it is likely uninhabited systems are more common than inhabited ones-- so you terraform an otherwise lifeless planet to suit your biology-- any you find already bearing life is likely toxic to your biochemistry.

But if you are xenophobic?  And are driven to wipe out life you don't recognize, when and wherever you can?  Then dropping asteroids is the easiest.   If you can jump between stars, it would be a simple task for your technology, to dislodge several giant asteroids to smash into any inhabited planets.  One after the other hitting the biosphere will get the job done in short order-- only bacteria would survive multiple hits. 

And starting over from bacteria, the planet will need a couple of billion years or so-- the local sun would go red giant, engulfing the planet by then.

I just don't see any rational reason to do such things. 

But I suppose there is no rule stating interstellar travelers must be rational...

[Griffin NoName]

Considering that Earth-like planets are prime real state, sterilization of an "inferior" race isn't unthinkable, but the way to achieve it is far easier, just a couple of engineered virus/bacteria and you can decimate the population of the planet in matter of months, a second or third germ would deal with the remainder quite easily and the biosphere would be ready to be taken over.

This was the exact story line of a recent US film import (r TV sereis) I watched recently. Can't remember the title. It was hung on the premice that a US pilot was half alien and to kill the US president. It all went wrong. Aliens locked up in some kind of ice shed escaped and tried to release the virus. Turned out to be quite a lot of half aliens living in US (they aged more slowly than humans), but that didn't seem all that relevant, except for one who was in the FBI. The aliens had to clear earth of humans to re-house their own people as their own planet was caput. (Oddly they only seemed to be concerned with clearing the US LoL). Load of rubbish. Anyonw know the title?

[Swatopluk]

Well, out in the Oort cloud you will not find much heavy material. That stuff naturally accumulates near the star while the light material condenses farther out. Essentially all light stuff we can find on the inner planets (esp. water) came there only after the planets had already formed. The oceans are the result of comets hitting Earth over time. Mars and Mercury lost theirs again due to heat, solar wind and insufficient size.

Unless we have to deal with predatory space nomads, any alien arrivals would probably be more interested in using Earth as a place to settle since transporting resources back from here to where they came from would be highly uneconomic. Earth is the only place around with liquid water and a nitrogen atmosphere. Mars has close to no nitrogen. Even if Mars was big enough to permanently keep an atmosphere (it could only keep one, if it was at a greater distance from the sun), all nitrogen would have to be imported, e.g. from Jupiter. Not that a nitrogen atmosphere would be mandatory but it would be a wee bit difficult to do chemistry, if that element was completely missing (I make no implications about alien BIOchemistry but we would need lots of nitrogen compounds even if our bodies did not contain any).

WE would commit genocide, if we were the invaders from space seeking new land. We did it to or own species, we would  not have many scruples to do it to inferior aliens (they must be inferior, or they would have reached us first).  It's sad but that's how we tick and what we would expect of others by default (and react accordingly).
If you ask me, Avatar was unrealistic because it was not shoot-first-no-need-to-ask-questions-later.
Btw, I have read an analysis about the economics of the Avatar scenario that showed that it is not totally off the mark. Above a certain value of the unobtainium it would actually be feasible and that value is in the range given in the movie. Ground operations would look different though. The movie has too much stuff carried over from Earth. In reality most would have to be made from scratch on location.

[Roland Deschain]

This was the exact story line of a recent US film import (r TV sereis) I watched recently. Can't remember the title. It was hung on the premice that a US pilot was half alien and to kill the US president. It all went wrong. Aliens locked up in some kind of ice shed escaped and tried to release the virus. Turned out to be quite a lot of half aliens living in US (they aged more slowly than humans), but that didn't seem all that relevant, except for one who was in the FBI. The aliens had to clear earth of humans to re-house their own people as their own planet was caput. (Oddly they only seemed to be concerned with clearing the US LoL). Load of rubbish. Anyonw know the title?

It was a TV series called The Event. It was ok, and fairly enjoyable to watch, but I don't think it'll be back for a second season.

But aliens capable of co-operating to the degree where they develop interstellar travel don't necessarily have to be malevolent. A warlike species would very easily wipe itself out before it ever got to that stage, so what's wrong with them being benevolent? If they find and observe us, and decide that we are too primitive technologically, socially, and economically, then they could move on, but check back every so often, just in case. I'm talking The Day the Earth Stood Still, Star Trek, etc, here. Maybe they give us a little push in the right direction (Chocky by John Wyndham, 2001 by Arthur C Clarke), maybe they don't.

The issue with all of our hypotheses is that they are limited by the way we think. An alien species would necessarily think differently to any of us, and in ways we could never imagine, so there may be something they would do in, maybe, social engineering to push civilisations along, or some as yet unimagined field of study. Maybe the isolation is enforced, so that when we finally do get beyond the metaphorical end of our own noses, we have adapted and grown up enough to be able to cope with at least some of what's out there. Maybe i'm just rambling, lol.

[Griffin NoName]

It was a TV series called The Event. It was ok, and fairly enjoyable to watch, but I don't think it'll be back for a second season.

Yes, it's all coming back to me now. No, I don't see it returning, although as I remember they left it open for further series.

The issue with all of our hypotheses is that they are limited by the way we think. An alien species would necessarily think differently to any of us, and in ways we could never imagine, so there may be something they would do in, maybe, social engineering to push civilisations along, or some as yet unimagined field of study.

All our imaginings of aliens are totally limited by the way our braiins work and by how we conceieve "livng" things. I see no reason to think aliens would be anything we would recognize at all. For all I know, my TV is actually an alien.

[Swatopluk]

We should still put warning signs at the entrance to this solar system saying "Beware! Third planet from the sun is inhabited by paranoid, notoriously violent beings. Proceed at own risk!".
Even if aliens should have no hostile intentions, they will be treated as if they had (because we would).

[Griffin NoName]

"Beware! Third planet from the sun is inhabited by paranoid, notoriously violent beings. Proceed at own risk!".

Have to be on one of those cards that have the same sentence written in umpteen different languages.

[Swatopluk]

A few well-chosen pictograms should do the job.
But the 'quality' of earthly broadcasting (radio and Tv) is often counted as the real reason for no aliens showing up or allowing us to catch their signals. A species that produces stuff like Musikantenstadl or certain types of talkshows will be  put on the black list of any self-respecting alien.

[Griffin NoName]

A few well-chosen pictograms should do the job.

Not if they are blind.

OK, now I am getting picky.

[Aggie]

If they sent only a single individual?  Who was carefully modified to look exactly like a typical human?   And only armed him(her)(it) with a working human-language vocabulary?   No one on earth would believe the story... would they?   No matter how mundane or wild... the majority of folk would either presume he was a magical-dude (religious) or just a nut-case.

In that case, it'd be much easier to make and send a realistic android. Wouldn't be hard if you could had a supercomputer that could intercept and decipher a few billion cell phone calls, in order to program it multilingually.

Some of the way God is described in the Old Testament seems fairly petty (i.e. like a powerful being, but not the Creator), and even now we are not too far off of having the technology to make it happen. An advanced space-travelling species would have the technologies necessary to pull off the same act, I suspect.

[pieces o nine]

In that case, it'd be much easier to make and send a realistic android. Wouldn't be hard if you could had a supercomputer that could intercept and decipher a few billion cell phone calls, in order to program it multilingually.

What?

And ruin all of the fun for the Away Team?

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The Old Testament dude(s) seem somewhat restrained compared to some of the Indian, Greek, Egyptian or Mesopotamian dudes. Sometimes I think that the premise of Cowboys vs Aliens isn't that far fetched: a small crew looking to mine some rare material, find it here and proceed without much regard for the locals. No need to wipe them out unless it's necessary, not economically worth the effort if you have to deal with too many, and tempting to enslave a few by telling them you are a god. Or no mining crew but just a stranded one, they take advantage of their knowledge, weapons and the beliefs of the locals until someone comes by to take them back home. Those two could fit a number of myths in old cultures (I know that is somewhat a rehash of the ancient astronaut theory, but IMO it does have some merit).

[Swatopluk]

Even before the arrival of SciFi that idea  existed. In the foreword to the Prosaic Edda the author (Snorri Sturluson) presents the theory that the Ases (the Norse gods) were actually Asians (Troians to be precise) that used their superior culture and knowledge to impress the primitive locals and fooled them into believing that the new arrivals were gods. The Norse gods are rather unique in that they are not immortal and ageless but need special food to rejuvenate. In general they are much closer to just elevated humans than even the Greek gods of the Homeric tradition. And unlike those they are expected to lose the final battle against chaos. Thor was literally one to have a beer (or mead) with in person.