Neil Tyson talks about UFOs and the argument from ignorance.

[PCarr]

Here's another testable area in which I am almost certainly wrong, but I think a real investigation is possible: Bracewell Probes. We can posit a reasonable concept of operations for a Bracewell Probe, try to figure out what the observables might be, and then go looking for them. I offer the hope that there are already astronomical data out there that may contain confirming evidence. This needs more development, but I think that conducting the search would be highly instructive.

 

[marduk]

Here's another testable area in which I am almost certainly wrong, but I think a real investigation is possible: Bracewell Probes. We can posit a reasonable concept of operations for a Bracewell Probe, try to figure out what the observables might be, and then go looking for them. I offer the hope that there are already astronomical data out there that may contain confirming evidence. This needs more development, but I think that conducting the search would be highly instructive.

I agree.

The problem with searching for advanced probes that I see are:
1. they might be small. Like really, really small. In 100-1000 years we might be making such probes the size of baseball or golf balls.
2. they might not want to be found.
3. we might not recognize them as technology at all.
4. if they don't communicate via radio waves, we might miss them.

Personally I'd look for odd orbitals, and certainly things that shift orbits. High albido, but again they'd have to want to be found.

Higher thermal output that can be accounted for via blackbody radiation is another one. Like it or lump it, but RTGs are damn efficient, easy to build, and simple -- meaning they could conceivably last thousands of years (Am for example could last 1000 years), with the added plus of keeping your probe from freezing.

If I were to send such a thing to a solar system that might contain life, I'd send a few thousand in a carrier probe, and then shotgun them upon insertion to the system. They could communicate short-range with the carrier, which then could tight-beam laser back home.

Thousands would make the odds of success high, and you wouldn't sweat losing 99% of them.

If they were small you could use ion propulsion or something to let them scatter about the target system seeking life or whatever else you were looking for.

 

[marduk]

In the meantime, we should be ethically studying the experiencers themselves. We just have to stay away from recovered memories, which I think we now know are unreliable at best. Peter Resta is doing work like this.

He's a shrink.

How is that going to be helpful except as therapy?

I'm a well-adjusted happy successful family dude. I don't need to feel better about my experiences. I don't need to accept them, move on, or integrate them into my ego.

I want reasoned, rational approaches to WTF is going on.

 

[boomerang]

I will go all Vallee on us again and say there may not be a way to study the UFO without some kind better understanding of individual witnesses and how their consciousness interacts with the phenomenon. As things now stand, witnesses themselves are our evidence. Outside of statistical studies in search of unexpected correlations, I have no idea how we could rationally do this.

This does not mean a search for psychiatric or neurological dysfunction. I should hope we are beyond that. Even Hynek noted that cases with the highest "strangeness indices" were more likely to be reported by the most credible witnesses.

 

[manxman]

aye will be easy for the people, on a planet WE visit in the future, when we are the ET's to do statistical studies, on OUR advanced craft in their primitive skies,cos no matter where we go in future, it will be industry/corporation driven, and our craft will have QANTAS or AMERICAN AIRLINES plashed all over them.

 

[PCarr]

He's a shrink.

How is that going to be helpful except as therapy?

I'm a well-adjusted happy successful family dude. I don't need to feel better about my experiences. I don't need to accept them, move on, or integrate them into my ego.

I want reasoned, rational approaches to WTF is going on.

The reasoned approach is take a close look at what evidence we have, which is nearly all human memory. The more we study human memory, the more complicated and less like a tape recorder it gets. We can't understand the experience without understanding the experiencer - there's nothing mystical or woo woo about that, it's simply the material we have to work with.

The contact that I've have with experiencers lead me anecdotally to conclude that they are by and large sane people. Lots of researchers say the same thing - there are a few nut jobs, but by and large these are people who can establish and maintain relationships, make a good living, and live in peace with others. Some of the experiences, however, do cause some emotional distress to some experiencers, which a good therapist can help people with.

 

[marduk]

The reasoned approach is take a close look at what evidence we have, which is nearly all human memory. The more we study human memory, the more complicated and less like a tape recorder it gets. We can't understand the experience without understanding the experiencer - there's nothing mystical or woo woo about that, it's simply the material we have to work with.

The contact that I've have with experiencers lead me anecdotally to conclude that they are by and large sane people. Lots of researchers say the same thing - there are a few nut jobs, but by and large these are people who can establish and maintain relationships, make a good living, and live in peace with others. Some of the experiences, however, do cause some emotional distress to some experiencers, which a good therapist can help people with.

So in that way it's unlike every other phenomena we encounter in the natural world?

Jane Goodall didn't need to reverse engineer her memory and experience to do her thing with the chimps, and she developed a family relationship with non-humans.

Particle physicists working at CERN don't concern themselves with memory.

Why would this be different?

 

[PCarr]

So in that way it's unlike every other phenomena we encounter in the natural world?

Jane Goodall didn't need to reverse engineer her memory and experience to do her thing with the chimps, and she developed a family relationship with non-humans.

Particle physicists working at CERN don't concern themselves with memory.

Why would this be different?

In that we don't know how to instrument it, yes. I think you answered your own question. The particle physicists at CERN (or any other good lab) bend over backwards to check and double check everything out and make sure it's properly calibrated and that false positives are identified, at least statistically. At no point do they have to rely on human memory for any of their data, and they require a 5 signal signal for confirmation (that's pretty tough).

With high strangeness experiencers, memory is pretty much all we have, my efforts and the efforts of other researchers notwithstanding. I'd love to catch one of these experiences in the wild, but I have no reliable information that this has ever happened. There is a Canadian lab (name escapes me) where they can induce certain kinds of similar experience with powerful magnets - that's the sort of research we need, and leads me to the hypothesis that the reason we don't catch these things in the act is that they're not visible to anyone but the experiencer.

I don't know much about Goodall, but I recall there is lots of film and photographic documentation and copious field notes.

 

[PCarr]

I agree.

The problem with searching for advanced probes that I see are:
1. they might be small. Like really, really small. In 100-1000 years we might be making such probes the size of baseball or golf balls.
2. they might not want to be found.
3. we might not recognize them as technology at all.
4. if they don't communicate via radio waves, we might miss them.

Personally I'd look for odd orbitals, and certainly things that shift orbits. High albido, but again they'd have to want to be found.

Higher thermal output that can be accounted for via blackbody radiation is another one. Like it or lump it, but RTGs are damn efficient, easy to build, and simple -- meaning they could conceivably last thousands of years (Am for example could last 1000 years), with the added plus of keeping your probe from freezing.

If I were to send such a thing to a solar system that might contain life, I'd send a few thousand in a carrier probe, and then shotgun them upon insertion to the system. They could communicate short-range with the carrier, which then could tight-beam laser back home.

Thousands would make the odds of success high, and you wouldn't sweat losing 99% of them.

If they were small you could use ion propulsion or something to let them scatter about the target system seeking life or whatever else you were looking for.

Well yes, I can think of even simpler reasons why they might not be found. The search space is vast, and the data set is sparse. There might be a 100 meter long BP out there spending most of its time beyond the orbit of Neptune, and we might never know it. It might be a failed derelict, no longer giving off any waste heat.

Based on what we know, a robotic probe would take hundreds, maybe thousands of years to complete its journey. It would have to be designed for very long life (hundred of thousands of years is my guesstimate), but it's probable that any in our solar system now would be way past their warranty and may not be operating.

How a BP would "phone home" is anybody's guess, although it might be just a very low bit rate electromagnetic telemetry stream that we would be lucky to ever intercept.

If you want to read Bracewell's original paper, well, last I checked it was still behind Nature's paywall. I might have a recommendation concerning that if you DM me.

 

[RU_Insane]

Neil Tyson on UFOs again:
Cosmic Queries: UFOs | StarTalk Radio Show by Neil deGrasse Tyson

People not well informed about a certain topic come in with their own ideas about what the subject of that topic should be like. This is no exception.

1. The 'saucer' type UFOs clearly aren't built to use aerodynamic principles of flight. Tyson realizes this...which means he's attacking a straw UFO. The lift and thrust required must come from some other source. I'm no aeronautical engineer, but I read a book on UFOs written by one who explained the basic concepts of aerodynamic flight very well.

2. Anti-matter annihilation?! That would be horribly inefficient given the time and cost. One book tells me it would take a million years using FermiLab and CERN to develop one milligram of antiprotons (enough to reach escape velocity). Interstellar travel is out of the question, and I don't think that's a human limitation either.

 

[PCarr]

2. Anti-matter annihilation?! That would be horribly inefficient given the time and cost. One book tells me it would take a million years using FermiLab and CERN to develop one milligram of antiprotons (enough to reach escape velocity). Interstellar travel is out of the question, and I don't think that's a human limitation either.

This is hardly an argument against the possibility of interstellar travel. The scientific community is pretty unanimous that interstellar travel is hard, but not at all impossible. We tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in the short to medium term, but underestimate the long term.

For one thing, if an advanced civilization saw accelerators like the LHC, they would think it was just adorable. What clever little primates! Still, no more than a child's toy compared to what is possible. The materials and energy are there, but it takes time to bootstrap the economics. Instead of a few nuclear power plans, we could someday tap the free energy of an entire gas giant planet, which is enormous. at present, the entire power generating capacity of our civilization is only about 2 Terawatts, which is peanuts compared to the power that is out there.

Also, we don't necessarily need to send much mass to another star to colonize it. Materials and energy are already there, we just need information and some basic machinery to receive the information and boot up the replication process. The notion of sending hundreds or even thousands of people in a generation ship already is starting to seem quaint. If we are going to go the low mass route, we don't need relativistic velocities, and as Daniel Cartin has shown, the maximum range our starship needs to have for one trip is only about 10 light years (that may be a little optimistic, but not by an order of magnitude).

 

[RU_Insane]

Interstellar travel is possible, but with antimatter? I dunno, but you look knowledgeable about it. I'll read the links you posted.