Also, despite running some lifestyle-oriented segments on it, it's not dominating anyone's headlines. In a few weeks, it'll just be fodder for reality shows.
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From The NY Times: The Pentagon's Secret UFO Program
- Thread starter IsaacKoi
- Start date
The Roswell Mummy
Paranormal Novice
I understand that this alone is not going to change the perception of the general public. It does feel a little contrived as Chris states...I get it and I'm not fully buying into it all just yet. Been down that path too many times. All I"m saying is that this field has had to deal with such nonsense and fake news before that was even a term. This is the first time in a long time that I recall something potentially positive regarding the UFO field. We should be embracing this with open arms and I'm really just asking that you help bring more information forward with guests regarding this.
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
Well at least we'll get to see some nice butts while everyone has their head in the sand
DaveM
Paranormal Adept
In 2010, Robert Bigelow enters into an agreement with MUFON. Bigelow wants access to MUFON’s database of UFO sightings. In turn, Bigelow will pay for that access. A few years later we find out Bigelow is given $22 million from the Dept. of Defense/CIA for info on UFOs. I wonder where that information came from? Did all those people who filed reports all these years ever think that this info would find its way right into Big Brother’s hip pocket?
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
Robert Bigelow is a billionaire... 22 million USD is pocket change. Access to classified DOD info that has the potential of helping his aerospace corp (...and his personal interest) in exchange for his help in analyzing the data is a good deal for him.
Another dump of pocket change for semi-exclusive use of MUFON data is also an excellent deal for him but a sad deal for those that have any hope to getting to the bottom of the phenomena story. If this trend continues and billionaires control the information, ideas of eventual breakaway civilizations will start making sense
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
He's working to get a monopoly of the best information on the planet concerning the phenomena. Some guys collect butterflies or bitcoins... this guy with an aerospace industry perspective collects UFO data and materials. Reverse-engineering 'Corso-style' for eventual cash is the game
LOL fun stuff
DaveM
Paranormal Adept
If you think you know the agenda of a reclusive billionaire, you probably don't know.He's working to get a monopoly of the best information on the planet concerning the phenomena. Some guys collect butterflies or bitcoins... this guy with an aerospace industry perspective collects UFO data and materials. Reverse-engineering 'Corso-style' for eventual cash is the game
LOL fun stuff
Well, Tom Delonge was pretty upfront from the beginning that he was working with the approval of military/DoD - that's what he said in one of the first Coast-to-Coast 4 hour long interview what - a year or 2 - ago. That he "talked with them with respect" and so on and somehow got their approval to provide the info - in the needed light ("You will know that [they] are heroes") - to the younger generation.
I didn't believe him then - because he had nothing to show for himself except his empty words, and Sekret Machines was just a good thriller/detective story that hit all the ufology checkboxes which anyone who does any reading about the subject will know (I learned them all not more than 2 years ago, as ufology is almost nonexistent in my country).
But I'm starting to believe his story now, at least I think it's true from his perspective. The question now is whether it is a real effort by the Pentagon and the military to bring the topic up for discussion - even if it's made with the needed PR angle ("we are the heroes/protectors"; I bet we'll never hear about milabs), or he's just their useful idiot and it's a preparation for project bluebeam type psyop.
SRL+
Paranormal Adept
So much for Elizondo’s bluster …
The Truth About Those 'Alien Alloys' in The NY Times UFO Story
One of the authors of the Times report, Ralph Blumenthal, had this to say on MSNBC about the alloys: "They have, as we reported in the paper, some material from these objects that is being studied so that scientists can find what accounts for their amazing properties, this technology of these objects, whatever they are." When asked what the materials were, Blumenthal responded, "They don't know. They're studying it, but it's some kind of compound that they don't recognize."
Here's the thing, though: The chemists and metallurgists Live Science spoke to — experts in identifying unusual alloys — don't buy it.
"I don't think it's plausible that there's any alloys that we can't identify," Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, told Live Science. "My opinion? That's quite impossible."
Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They're very common — in fact, Sachleben said, they're more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are — and very well understood. Brass is an alloy. So is steel. Even most naturally occurring gold on Earth is an alloy made up of elemental gold mixed with other metals, like silver or copper. [8 Important Elements You've Never Heard Of]
"There are databases of all known phases [of metal], including alloys," May Nyman, a professor in the Oregon State University Department of Chemistry, told Live Science. Those databases include straightforward techniques for identifying metal alloys.
If an unknown alloy appeared, Nyman said it would be relatively simple to figure out what it was made of.
For crystalline alloys — those in which the mixture of atoms forms an ordered structure — researchers use a technique called X-ray diffraction, Nyman said.
"The X-ray's wavelength is about the same size as the distance between the atoms [of crystalline alloys]," Nyman said, "so that means when the X-rays go into a well-ordered material, they diffract [change shape and intensity] … and from that diffraction [pattern] you can get information that tells you the distance between the atoms, what the atoms are, and how well-ordered the atoms are. It tells you all about the arrangement of your atoms."
With noncrystalline, amorphous alloys, the process is a bit different, but not by much.
"These are all very standard techniques in research labs, so if we had such mysterious metals, you could take it to any university where research is done, and they could tell you what are the elements and something about the crystalline phase within a few hours," Nyman said.
Sachleben agreed.
"There are no alloys that are sitting in some warehouse that we cannot figure out what they are. In fact, it's pretty simple, and any reasonably good metallurgical grad student can do it for you," he said.
Nyman said that if metals did fall from some mysterious aircraft, some forensics experiments would quickly answer a lot of questions about that aircraft. [UFO Mysteries: These Sightings Have Never Been Solved]
"How has the hunk of metal changed?" Nyman said. "From my scientist's perspective, that's the kind of question I'd be asking. Maybe, if it has to do with world politics, and we want to know where the metal comes from, maybe there's some analysis that can lead you to where it was mined, or what country uses that particular alloy, that kind of thing."
If the aircraft had come from space, Nyman said, that travel would leave telltale signs in the metal as well, in the form of spacefaring debris and ionization (changes to the electrical charges of the substance's atoms).
Even if a chunk of alloy that hadn't been seen before did fall to Earth from outer space, both Nyman and Sachleben agreed that it wouldn't necessarily have come from an alien craft. In fact, Sachleben said, alloys strike the planet regularly — space-traversing alloys like those found in fairly common nickel-iron meteorites — leaving behind telltale signs. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was even identified by the rare-Earth metals it left behind in certain geological formations in Earth's crust.
It's important to point out that while Blumenthal did go on cable news and say the alloys were unidentifiable mysteries, helping to spur speculation, that's not what his article actually stated. Here's the full quote from Saturday's piece:
"The company [involved in the DOD research] modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that … program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft."
From this statement, there's no actual sign that there's anything unusual about the alloys themselves. All the Times wrote was that the DOD researchers tasked with finding weird UFO stuff collected some metal, interviewed some people who had claimed startling experiences with it, and decided that it was UFO-related.
In an email to Live Science regarding these metal alloys, Blumenthal said, "We printed as much as we were able to verify. Can't go beyond that."
As for whether there's an explanation at least for the metals themselves, Sachleben said: "There's not as many mysteries in science as people like to think. It's not like we know everything — we don't know everything. But most things we know enough about to know what we don't know."
The Truth About Those 'Alien Alloys' in The NY Times UFO Story
One of the authors of the Times report, Ralph Blumenthal, had this to say on MSNBC about the alloys: "They have, as we reported in the paper, some material from these objects that is being studied so that scientists can find what accounts for their amazing properties, this technology of these objects, whatever they are." When asked what the materials were, Blumenthal responded, "They don't know. They're studying it, but it's some kind of compound that they don't recognize."
Here's the thing, though: The chemists and metallurgists Live Science spoke to — experts in identifying unusual alloys — don't buy it.
"I don't think it's plausible that there's any alloys that we can't identify," Richard Sachleben, a retired chemist and member of the American Chemical Society's panel of experts, told Live Science. "My opinion? That's quite impossible."
Alloys are mixtures of different kinds of elemental metals. They're very common — in fact, Sachleben said, they're more common on Earth than pure elemental metals are — and very well understood. Brass is an alloy. So is steel. Even most naturally occurring gold on Earth is an alloy made up of elemental gold mixed with other metals, like silver or copper. [8 Important Elements You've Never Heard Of]
"There are databases of all known phases [of metal], including alloys," May Nyman, a professor in the Oregon State University Department of Chemistry, told Live Science. Those databases include straightforward techniques for identifying metal alloys.
If an unknown alloy appeared, Nyman said it would be relatively simple to figure out what it was made of.
For crystalline alloys — those in which the mixture of atoms forms an ordered structure — researchers use a technique called X-ray diffraction, Nyman said.
"The X-ray's wavelength is about the same size as the distance between the atoms [of crystalline alloys]," Nyman said, "so that means when the X-rays go into a well-ordered material, they diffract [change shape and intensity] … and from that diffraction [pattern] you can get information that tells you the distance between the atoms, what the atoms are, and how well-ordered the atoms are. It tells you all about the arrangement of your atoms."
With noncrystalline, amorphous alloys, the process is a bit different, but not by much.
"These are all very standard techniques in research labs, so if we had such mysterious metals, you could take it to any university where research is done, and they could tell you what are the elements and something about the crystalline phase within a few hours," Nyman said.
Sachleben agreed.
"There are no alloys that are sitting in some warehouse that we cannot figure out what they are. In fact, it's pretty simple, and any reasonably good metallurgical grad student can do it for you," he said.
Nyman said that if metals did fall from some mysterious aircraft, some forensics experiments would quickly answer a lot of questions about that aircraft. [UFO Mysteries: These Sightings Have Never Been Solved]
"How has the hunk of metal changed?" Nyman said. "From my scientist's perspective, that's the kind of question I'd be asking. Maybe, if it has to do with world politics, and we want to know where the metal comes from, maybe there's some analysis that can lead you to where it was mined, or what country uses that particular alloy, that kind of thing."
If the aircraft had come from space, Nyman said, that travel would leave telltale signs in the metal as well, in the form of spacefaring debris and ionization (changes to the electrical charges of the substance's atoms).
Even if a chunk of alloy that hadn't been seen before did fall to Earth from outer space, both Nyman and Sachleben agreed that it wouldn't necessarily have come from an alien craft. In fact, Sachleben said, alloys strike the planet regularly — space-traversing alloys like those found in fairly common nickel-iron meteorites — leaving behind telltale signs. The meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was even identified by the rare-Earth metals it left behind in certain geological formations in Earth's crust.
It's important to point out that while Blumenthal did go on cable news and say the alloys were unidentifiable mysteries, helping to spur speculation, that's not what his article actually stated. Here's the full quote from Saturday's piece:
"The company [involved in the DOD research] modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that … program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft."
From this statement, there's no actual sign that there's anything unusual about the alloys themselves. All the Times wrote was that the DOD researchers tasked with finding weird UFO stuff collected some metal, interviewed some people who had claimed startling experiences with it, and decided that it was UFO-related.
In an email to Live Science regarding these metal alloys, Blumenthal said, "We printed as much as we were able to verify. Can't go beyond that."
As for whether there's an explanation at least for the metals themselves, Sachleben said: "There's not as many mysteries in science as people like to think. It's not like we know everything — we don't know everything. But most things we know enough about to know what we don't know."
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Forgive me if these points have already have been made, but the existence of this program disproves that governments can't keep secrets, and that they haven't been investigating UFOs. So the skeptics have to eat dirt on these two facts. They can't deny it, so they've been buzzing like crazy trying to diminish the significance. OK fine. It's true that there's not much disclosure here, but let's consider the fact that this program was superficial to say the least. It wasn't even classified, and we still didn't know about it. So we'd have to be completely naïve to think that this is all they've got.
To me it's clearly a smokescreen. I mean think about it. While Chris is trying to setup cameras on top of poles and keep birds from crapping on them, they've already got reconnaissance satellites out past the Moon, plus an orbiting network of more satellites closer in, plus a worldwide network of every kind of detector imaginable, plus supersonic interceptors equipped with more cameras and sensors. They can read license plates from space and detect underground facilities. Are we really so gullible as to believe they don't have a lot more than we're being told?
To me it's clearly a smokescreen. I mean think about it. While Chris is trying to setup cameras on top of poles and keep birds from crapping on them, they've already got reconnaissance satellites out past the Moon, plus an orbiting network of more satellites closer in, plus a worldwide network of every kind of detector imaginable, plus supersonic interceptors equipped with more cameras and sensors. They can read license plates from space and detect underground facilities. Are we really so gullible as to believe they don't have a lot more than we're being told?
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Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Excellent post, and I completely agree. This whole thing smacks of a Robertson Panel setup. Create excitement with a story that is initially very intriguing, then deflate it so anyone who believed it in the first place looks like a fool. The logic in the article is also why I don't buy into some of the ideas I've heard expressed that assume that we couldn't identify alien technology as technology because there could be too wide a technology gap. That argument was fine up until we were able to see and make things with individual atoms. We now have access to the fundamental building blocks of this universe. There's pretty much nothing we couldn't figure out if we had direct access to it for long enough.
Seventy years of increasingly compartmentalized data sealed off in succession by a series of individuals/groups in charge of gathering it means, as I see it, that no one has access at this point to the totality of what has become known about the modern ufo phenomenon by military and intelligence researchers. Sen. Reid would not/could not have been informed of all of the scattered, compartmentalized, information accrued over this long history. Likely there is no one 'in authority' sufficiently informed today.
Compartmentalization effects the loss of a comprehensive store of information. It seemed necessary to the military and intelligence agencies to employ compartmentalization so that no one had access to all of the data, but in the long run the practice has been destructive of our societal interests in understanding what has gone on in the past. At least this recent Pentagon project, compartmented as it was , and the departure of Elizondo and others from it -- and their desire and will to publicize some of its findings -- has reopened the subject to public discourse again.
Perhaps these developments will put sufficient pressure on those in power in this country to finally undertake an open, transparent, public investigation of UAPs. The only problem is that we don't actually know who holds enough 'official' power in this country to bring about that kind of investigation. We only know that the elected government has sold off its power and access to this kind of information to private corporations. It's the MIC that first requires investigation. Who's going to investigate it?
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
Here's where we hit the boundary between the rabbit hole and earth-centric 'humans are the best of the best of the best' argumentation...
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/12/four-new-elements-officially-added-periodic-table
Four new elements added last year
.... yawn... how many more in 1000 years ? 
DaveM
Paranormal Adept
This goes along with the idea of the US returning to the Moon. China and Russia have been making noises about establishing bases on the Moon. The US/NASA hasn't made a peep about all this.
I have to believe that the US government would not sit idly by and let others claim the space high ground. My belief is that the US probably has bases on the Moon and if not on Mars, they are working towards that goal.
Do I have one shred of evidence towards this? No I haven't. I just can't believe the US would allow their sworn enemies to take control of space.
I have to believe that the US government would not sit idly by and let others claim the space high ground. My belief is that the US probably has bases on the Moon and if not on Mars, they are working towards that goal.
Do I have one shred of evidence towards this? No I haven't. I just can't believe the US would allow their sworn enemies to take control of space.
SRL+
Paranormal Adept
Four new elements added last year
I have the sneaking suspicion we won’t be around to find out.
Ezechiel
Paranormal Adept
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That at least is a safe bet.
Articles of faith.