UFOs revisited

[DannyinJapan]

I felt like taking another shot at trying to convey my personal view of the UFO thing.
Here is the scientific method:

1. Observe a phenomenon
2. Postulate a theory to explain the phenomenon.
3. Develop and conduct an experiment to test the theory.
4. Draw conclusions as to the validity of the theory.

(Middendorf, Design of Devices and Systems, 1990, pg 2-3)

Let us imagine that we are all standing next to the late Paul Hill, Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA's Langley Research Center, when he saw a UFO.

"... I was surprised to see a fat aluminum- or metallic-colored “fuselage” nearly the size of a small freighter, but shaped more like a dirigible, approaching from the rear. It was at an altitude of about 1000 feet [about 300 meters] .... It was moving slowly, possibly 100 mph [160 kilometers per hour] ... It looked like a big, pointed-nose dirigible, but had not even a tail surface as an appendage. ... Soon ... it began to accelerate very rapidly and at the same time to emit a straw-yellow, or pale flame-colored wake or plume, short at first but growing in length as the speed increased until it was nearly as long as the object. Also, when it started to accelerate it changed from a level path to an upward slanting path, making an angle of about 5 degrees with the horizontal. It passed us going at an astounding speed. It disappeared into the cloud layer ... in what I estimated to be four seconds after the time it began to accelerate. The accelerating distance was measured by the car odometer to be 5 miles " (9,000 Mph.)


If you don't believe in UFO's, and that is your right, tell me, what would you tell Paul?

If you get the urge to quote Einstein, please have a look at the scientific method again and notice that there is no "step 5 - consult Einstein if you don't like your own conclusions and go back to step 2 with something easier to digest..."

Do you want to tell the late Paul Hill, Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA's Langley Research Center, that he just saw a plane or swamp gas and didnt recognize it because he doesnt have much experience with such things and/or he doesnt have enough education to make such observations with any certainty?

 

[Semper Fi]

If you don't believe in UFO's, and that is your right, tell me, what would you tell Paul?

Lay off the bottle a while.

 

[Mr.BadExample]

He saw an unidentified flying object.
The calculations as to its speed are sketchy- a scientist should know how fallible human perception is, especially measuring size, depth, distance and speed on a foggy night. I'd like to know what he saw, but a UFO is a UFO- it doesn't mean "Identified as a craft full of aliens" it means unidentified flying object
We can speculate, and postulate, but in the end, we don't know what he saw. It's part of what makes them so interesting.
We're currently using radar to spot huge waves in the ocean that scientists said were impossible (and ship crewmen I know said they saw them with their own two eyes). So perhaps we'll be identifying these objects soon.

 

[DannyinJapan]

Take note, he was not just a scientist, but Paul Hill, Chief Scientist-Manager at NASA's Langley Research Center.

If ANYOBDY on Earth was capable of accuracy under those conditions, it would have been him.

 

[ruel]

Hi Danny,

If you don't believe in UFO's, and that is your right, tell me, what would you tell Paul?

I, myself, would tell him that this is an extra-ordinary claim, one which should have been supported by more evidence before being brought public. To simply come forward with an incredible eyewitness description only reflects discredit on the institution he represents (NASA).

As is often said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; all we have here is the claim.

 

[spiraltwista]

Well this fellow has rather a vested interest as well, If he see little spacmen they might get a few more billion to spend at NASA ? And his job security is more assured?

Just a thought.

Spiral

 

[munk]

I neither believe nor disbelieve.

They're out there- just don't know if they could make it here.


Keep Watching the Sky.



munk

 

[spiraltwista]

Im certain they are out there, & think theve probably been here.

I just am wary of vested intrests.

Spiral

 

[Josh Feltman]

Danny--I believe in UFO's, but I'm not sure what they are. I'm also not sure exactly how you are trying to relate the scientific method to Paul Hill's observations. So far it looks like we've only made it to step 1: observe a phenomenon. How would you go about developing an experiment to test it?

--Josh

 

[Josh Feltman]

Something else to stir the pot. Below is a photograph of Buck Nelson, one of the most famous contactees from the 1950's:

Buck claims to have made contact with Space Brothers who took him on board their craft to the Moon, Venus, and Mars. They also cured some of his chronic back problems. Unfortunately, they didn't learn him his letters very well. Notice the backwards S and the use of the inverted V as an A in "craft". If not for the stencils, one can asssume that more letters would have been flipped. Now I don't post this to suggest that Buck was stupid, or a liar. I see flipped N's on stenciled signs everywhere I go. However, it seems to represent a stereotype that many people have about UFO contactees or even people who are interested in UFO's. How does one sort through all the information out there in an objective fashion? Danny, you mentioned earlier that you thought George Adamski's UFO pics seemed genuine because they fit with Brown's predictions or descriptions of what an electrogravitic craft would look like.

Fair enough, but how do you reconcile that with Adamski's contention that all the planets in our solar system are inhabited by aliens who are very similar physically to Earthlings? If Adamski is correct, that all of our astronomers are wrong, because I've never heard a single one of them suggest that any planet besides Earth in our solar system is capable of supporting human life. Don't get me wrong; I'm a huge fan of the early contactees, and would give anything to have been able to attend one of Buck's Space Craft Conventions. I have almost all of Adamski's books, including a nice first edition hardcover of Inside the Space Ships. I've been rereading a lot of his stuff lately, and I guess I'm having trouble accepting it because of some of the claims he makes. If some of the things someone says are false, does it call everything they say into question?

--Josh

 

[munk]

Nice hat.

Look- we are 'stuff'. Anywhere there is 'stuff' there is going to be similar lines of structure and develpment. Molecules are molecules, gravity gravity.


munk

 

[Josh Feltman]

Munk--that's true to a certain extent, but if we can believe any of the data all our space probes have been sending back over the past decades, the temperatures and atmospheric pressures found on other planets are not conducive to supporting human bodies, which really only function in a narrow range of environmental conditions. Let's just look at our closest planetary neighbors as examples. Venus has an average surface temperature of around 460°C--a bit warm for a picnic. Venus also has an atmospheric pressure 90 times higher than that of Earth. Mars, on the other hand, can have surface temps as low as -123°C, and has an atmospheric pressure so low that liquid water would rapidly boil away. It's hard to see how humans could live under such conditions.

--Josh

 

[munk]

Josh, anything born out of a pressure of thousands of tons is not much we could talk to right now-

With infinity as measure, the 'narrow range' of conditions required for life will happen elsewhere. Development will be different, but I think recognizable. You are assuming life will develope under grossly different parameters which may be true, but is even more speculative than the thread title.

munk

 

[ruel]

As I see it, there's really no need for sustained counter-arguments. In science, the burden of proof (evidence, actually -- important difference) is always on the one making the claim. In this case, it's up to alien-visitor proponents to demonstrate their position with compelling facts and logic, not for skeptics to refute them. In the absence of compelling evidence, we must assume the null hypothesis (ie. there are no alien spacecraft humming over the Earth collecting slack-jawed yokels).

It's clear that fuzzy photos and unsubstantiated eyewitness accounts (even from "experts") do not constitute compelling evidence, so the open-minded individual must reject the present case for alien contact.

 

[munk]

In the absence of compelling evidence, we must assume the null hypothesis (ie. there are no alien spacecraft humming over the Earth collecting slack-jawed yokels). > Ruel

INcorrect- we 'must' do nothing. We neither assume life nor refute it. We may assert there is no proof. I think before the Earth was proven Flat it was suspected as much, though the math took a little longer.

as for the slack jawed yokels, many have tight grips and vicious bites.



munk

 

[Josh Feltman]

Josh, anything born out of a pressure of thousands of tons is not much we could talk to right now-

With infinity as measure, the 'narrow range' of conditions required for life will happen elsewhere. Development will be different, but I think recognizable. You are assuming life will develope under grossly different parameters which may be true, but is even more speculative than the thread title.

munk

munk-- I'm not assuming life will develop anywhere. It's certainly possible, maybe even probable, but that's not really what I was talking about here. I was addressing George Adamski's statement that all of the planets in this solar system are inhabited by humans, or human-like aliens. This is according to information he received from Orthon, a person who supposedly lives on Venus. Based on what mainstream science knows about conditions on other planets in this solar system, this is clearly impossible. This is not to say that other forms of life could not thrive on other planets with conditions that wouldn't support human life. Archea and bacteria are able to live in some amazing conditions on Earth--hot springs, thermal vents on the ocean floor, even nuclear reactors. Aside from an occasional dip in a hot spring, humans would not be able to survive for extended periods of time in any of these environments.

--Josh

 

[munk]

Looks like I missed your context.


.......

What Ruel said is vey good- but I would argue though we have no evidence, it is 'logical' and within our judgement not to be surprised if there is life on other planets in other places. If we take a position of 'none', then we have scientific bias. Why have any bias at all? I'd use Ruel's model of approach for each incident- prove the metal is from space, prove incident.

Otherwise, Pluto did not exist until we discovered it.


munk

 

[ruel]

Hi Munk,

INcorrect- we 'must' do nothing. We neither assume life nor refute it. We may assert there is no proof.

To do science, you really must make theoretical assumptions. If you don't, you can't test anything, and the whole idea behind science is that phenomena can be described through observable, repeatable, and measurable tests (ie. experiments).

To design an experiment, you must have competing theoretical assumptions -- hypotheses. This consists of a null hypothesis ("nothing's happening") vs. one or more test or experimental hypotheses, in which various explanations are asserted as causal variables. Because the latter are asserting the claims, the burden of evidence is on them, meaning we assume the null unless demonstrated otherwise (usually operationalized as some level of statistical confidence).

 

[ruel]

Looks like I missed part of your other posts.

* Arguing the existence or not of life elsewhere in the universe is as yet untestable, so while the topic is scientific the methodology, as yet, isn't. Therefore, we're free to speculate based on statistical descriptions from data we've collected, and indeed the numbers do seem to favor it. But yeah, if one of these UFO hunters would volunteer their salvaged Roswell scraps, that would certainly be eligible stuff to experiment on.


*

as for the slack jawed yokels, many have tight grips and vicious bites.

It's their guns I worry about!

 

[Kismet]

Dunno.


Now, for something completely different.

There were two parental units, Beldar (Dan Aykroyd) and Prymaat (Jane Curtin) and a teenage unit named Connie, a.k.a. "Conjaab" (Laraine Newman). Originally, Beldar & Prymaat were dispatched to the planet Earth by Remulak's High Master to seize all major centers of radio and television communications and inform the earthlings of their intent to take over the planet. Beldar was to read a speech which began: "People of Earth, I am the Timekeeper from the planet Remulak, your weapons are useless..." Unfortunately, Beldar lost the rest of the speech with all the instructions including dates, places, and orders to the United Nations. He also accidentally crash-landed their anti-gravity powered space ship into Lake Michigan. Trapped on Earth, because their planet had just cut back on funding to their space program, they adopted the guise of Fred & Joyce Conehead. Beldar supported his family be taking a job as an insurance salesman and later as a driving instructor. Their daughter Connie, who knew her parents were a bit different, never suspected that they were from outer space. She had a hard time in school with inquisitive kids, however. "They want to know where I come from, Daddy? Where do we come from?" She was instructed "France! Just keep telling them you come from France!"