8 ms·

I'll also put my tinfoil hat on, since I've had a long fascination with anamolous phenomenon. I still think the jury's out on what exactly is going on, but one

I'll also put my tinfoil hat on, since I've had a long fascination with anamolous phenomenon. I still think the jury's out on what exactly is going on, but one thing that's consistent worldwide is that balls of light are associated with UFOs, bigfoot, poltergeists, etc. My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously. Jacques Vallee is an astronomer and computer scientist (involved in early ARPANET) who's studied the phenomenon since at least the 70s. Here's a fun paper: https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/4/jse_04_1_vallee_2.pdf https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/4/jse_04_1_vallee... He essentially argues that the UFO phenomenon is neither extra terrestrials nor merely misidentified aerial craft. It's something even stranger! Also, if you find that paper interesting, here's one of this books (one of the most well-known in the anomalous phenomenon field): https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Flying-Saucers/dp/0987422480/ https://www.amazon.com/Passport-Magonia-Folklore-Flying-Sauc...

narrator 8y ago
I like the Zoo hypothesis. We do that to North Sentinel Island[1]. It is populated by 50-400 stone age tribes people. India does not prosecute them for murdering anyone who happens to land on their island. Previous contacts with these people led to them rapidly dying of diseases they didn't have immunity to, so staying uncontacted is literally a life or death issue for them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
- russdill 8y ago
  I think it's bizarre that the fact that we have absolutely zero evidence for aliens actually gives a little weight to things like the zoo hypothesis.
  - psandersen 8y ago
    Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight, plus our best available models of the universe show there should be billions of planets as habitable as ours. That is evidence in the abstract sense and we currently lack the technology to observe these candidate planets in enough detail to test the models further. We're like a person sitting in the desert at night with nothing but a candle concluding that the planet is completely deserted because they can't see anyone else.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight This sounds superficially right, but unfortunately there are too infinitely many possibilities to assign more than 0 weight to them just because they're compatible with the data. It's the same fallacy as "the sun either will rise tomorrow, or it won't. Two possibilities mean a 50-50 chance." A more practical approach will only assign weight to possibilities that might influence your decisions about what to do.
    - walkingolof 8y ago
      The problem is that we have basically no data, in general people (including pilots) are horrible bad at observing and recounting a situation like these and we have no other types of evidence either...
    - JamesBarney 8y ago
      Honestly if you were put on a random desert on a random world you'd be more often right than not about how many people were on the rest of the world.
    - russdill 8y ago
      I don't think I've ever been in a desert where just by waiting a short time, visual evidence of an advanced civilization wasn't available (or in most cases, immediately). If there's type II civilizations in our galaxy, we don't need to observe things in any more detail than we are now. If type III civilizations exist in other galaxies, we should be able to detect them as well.
      - TomMarius 8y ago
        What about the Dyson dilemma? We've indeed detected "voids", but we're unable to confirm their origin.
        russdill 8y ago
        If you have a dyson sphere, it glows very brightly in lower wavelengths, such as IR. We don't see that in voids. Additionally, looking back into cosmic history, we can see the formation of voids in the very early universe and their expected expansion.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    One gloriously eldritch way to look at that issue is: can an ant see us? Are they aware of our existence?
    - karmakaze 8y ago
      Not really the same unless ants have mapped out their universe with little left out. Unless it's just that we can't see far enough or into dark matter.
- grkvlt 8y ago
  Looking at the wiki page, it seems the population on the island is decreasing. Hopefully they will either all die, thus relieving us of the ethical dilemma, or India will come to its senses and stop the abuse of these poor people and actually help them. Its criminal that they are allowed to carry on without access to any of the modern world's technology or services. And of course the islanders that killed those fishermen should also be forcibly removed and punished - murder is murder, and the fact that someone is pretending they are still in the stone age has never been a recognised defense...
  - mveety 8y ago
    On the punishment for murder end of things, they neither know or accept Indian sovereignty, so applying Indian law on them doesn't make sense. As far as the Sentinelese are concerned they're being invaded. This is more similar to a case where a soldier that doesn't know the war is over kills someone. It doesn't make sense and isn't fair to prosecute them because they're working on old information that would make the murder they committed okay legally. I completely disagree that it's wrong to not introduce them to modern technology. To do that it would require one of us to go visit them which would probably kill them because of our diseases. I would argue it's more wrong to kill them than to not give them access to modern technology.
    - kijin 8y ago
      As far as the Sentinelese are concerned, war is not over. Every time someone visits them, the invasion begins anew. Meanwhile, we do have the technology to contact them without giving them lethal diseases. It doesn't have to be like the Americas all over again. We can screen potential visitors for a wide range of pathogens, make them wear protective suits, vaccinate the local population, and treat them if they get ill nonetheless. The problem is that they want none of it, so any attempt to vaccinate or treat them will end up being forceful.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
timothevs 8y ago
That paper was quite a fascinating read. Thank you for the recommendation.
minota 8y ago
Interesting. A possible explanation for some strange and poorly understood phenomenon accompanied by bright lights could be "earthquake lights", bright lights that appear in the sky around the time of an earthquake. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEwKrvepH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEwKrvepH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMTSDzU1Z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMTSDzU1Z4 Not to say that it applies to this particular case. Just goes to show that there is much to this natural world we don't understand yet.
- gnulinux 8y ago
  Huh. I've seen this exact blue/purple light in my hometown when I was a small kid (like 15 years ago). It was late night, we were in the patio with my family, eating nuts and talking, just a normal summer evening. We saw this light, and it deeply spooked us children. For years I was wondering what the hell was that. But since an earthquake didn't hit us that night (thanks god) I suppose it likely was something else.
- jupiter90000 8y ago
  Man, the comments on those videos... just wow. Thanks for the entertainment.
- joshuaheard 8y ago
  I have been through several earthquakes and have seen power pole transformers spark and explode as the oil inside splashes about and is ignited by the electricty. This could be a possible explanation for "earthquake lights".
  - xattt 8y ago
    This is the most plausible explanation. I’ve seen this effect during ice storms.
- PuffinBlue 8y ago
  Does anyone actually take the 'evidence' in those videos seriously? At 1:50 in that first video, the 'light' occurs and then amazingly the electricity goes off. What a coincidence that is. Also coincidentally the 'light' has similar colour characteristics to the arc flash of a high voltage electrical line/transformer shorting out. And coincidentally at 4:40 the same scenario repeats! It would have repeated again in the first minute if they'd been closer to the electrical circuit that faulted out. The rest of the videos appear as borderline CGI (floodlights washed out in truck area)or some video of clouds.
dingbat 8y ago
Vallee is a serious person worth paying attention to, a rarity in that field. Spielberg used him as the model for that French scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Another good book of his is "Messengers of Deception", expands greatly on the non-extraterrestrial idea.
jonhohle 8y ago
I've been developing a theory about abduction stories overlapping with MK Ultra-type experimentation. There seem to be a fair number of parallels in the type of activities done to subjects of the MK projects (allegedly) and casting the alien abduction story on the victims makes deniability straight forward. I haven't thought much about UFO sightings. I always find the ones with video, especially from arial sources interesting.
- dmix 8y ago
  It wouldn't be a conspiracy talk without someone bringing up MK Ultra...
  - starbeast 8y ago
    We can tick off the flowchart as the conversation progresses. - https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUv7tx-DOTQ/UXKqqtaZ7CI/AAAAAAAAEoA/07uueHMiSJ4/s1600/Crispian's+Conspiracy+Flowchart.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUv7tx-DOTQ/UXKqqtaZ7CI/AAAAAAAAE...
  - boomboomsubban 8y ago
    For good reason. We know that the CIA dosed people with LSD without their knowledge, which alone would explain most bizarre phenomena, and we know that the CIA claim to have destroyed most of their records of what they did in the program. Pretty easy to link anything to the program, and it's often one of the least strange options.
    - fit2rule 8y ago
      We also know that MK ULTRA and programs very similar to it, have been continued to present day.
      - rocqua 8y ago
        Source?
      - krapp 8y ago
maxden 8y ago
Thanks, reading the paper now. I liked how, when describing possible alien visitation to earth he wrote: "sophisticated interaction with the human and animal lifeforms present on the planet."
kromem 8y ago
The time travel argument I've always found to be far more compelling than the extra terrestrial argument. For example, similarity of physical form (with exaggerated evolutionary aspects relating to modern society, such as bigger eyes/brains, and diminished aspects that would be obsolete, such as weakened physical strength). And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best. And yet there's zero evidence of even life, let alone advanced life, in our near proximity. Wouldn't it make more sense that the advanced species that's in near physical proximity to ourselves (i.e. humans) would be responsible for flying objects very similar to our own flying objects and supposedly operated by bipeds looking very similar to ourselves? And the physical rules bring broken to enable time travel are roughly the same rules that would need to be broken for faster than light travel, so the scientific likelihood for time traveling UFOs is roughly the same as for extra-terrestrial UFOs, but the former makes a lot more sense in other regards than the latter.
- a1369209993 8y ago
  > And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best. I think this is something that doesn't get enough attention; in a universe like our's, almost all first contact events will consist of relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life. (Say three billion years before humans evolved versus a generous million years of human 'civilization' gives a three thousand to one ratio.) We should not expect to see anything remotely near our point in the developmental timeline. (If "relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines" sounds unlikely, let me remind you that every star in the sky is a massive pile of valuable raw materials that has unfortunately caught fire and needs to be extinguished as soon as possible.)
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    "in a universe like ours, almost all first contact events will consist of relativistically expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life." You talk as if that's a certain fact. (Even estimating a probability) I'm no expert in the area, but why? Is that justified? What's that based on? (Not to mention the last sentence 'reminding me' of another odd 'fact'.)
starbeast 8y ago
>My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously. I read through that and it immediately reminded me of Miller's flying saucer theory from Repo-Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE

narrator 8y ago

I like the Zoo hypothesis. We do that to North Sentinel Island[1]. It is populated by 50-400 stone age tribes people. India does not prosecute them for murdering anyone who happens to land on their island. Previous contacts with these people led to them rapidly dying of diseases they didn't have immunity to, so staying uncontacted is literally a life or death issue for them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island

russdill 8y ago
I think it's bizarre that the fact that we have absolutely zero evidence for aliens actually gives a little weight to things like the zoo hypothesis.
- psandersen 8y ago
  Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight, plus our best available models of the universe show there should be billions of planets as habitable as ours. That is evidence in the abstract sense and we currently lack the technology to observe these candidate planets in enough detail to test the models further. We're like a person sitting in the desert at night with nothing but a candle concluding that the planet is completely deserted because they can't see anyone else.
  - thaumasiotes 8y ago
    > Technically every hypothesis that fits our data should get a little weight This sounds superficially right, but unfortunately there are too infinitely many possibilities to assign more than 0 weight to them just because they're compatible with the data. It's the same fallacy as "the sun either will rise tomorrow, or it won't. Two possibilities mean a 50-50 chance." A more practical approach will only assign weight to possibilities that might influence your decisions about what to do.
  - walkingolof 8y ago
    The problem is that we have basically no data, in general people (including pilots) are horrible bad at observing and recounting a situation like these and we have no other types of evidence either...
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    Honestly if you were put on a random desert on a random world you'd be more often right than not about how many people were on the rest of the world.
  - russdill 8y ago
    I don't think I've ever been in a desert where just by waiting a short time, visual evidence of an advanced civilization wasn't available (or in most cases, immediately). If there's type II civilizations in our galaxy, we don't need to observe things in any more detail than we are now. If type III civilizations exist in other galaxies, we should be able to detect them as well.
    - TomMarius 8y ago
      What about the Dyson dilemma? We've indeed detected "voids", but we're unable to confirm their origin.
      - russdill 8y ago
        If you have a dyson sphere, it glows very brightly in lower wavelengths, such as IR. We don't see that in voids. Additionally, looking back into cosmic history, we can see the formation of voids in the very early universe and their expected expansion.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  One gloriously eldritch way to look at that issue is: can an ant see us? Are they aware of our existence?
  - karmakaze 8y ago
    Not really the same unless ants have mapped out their universe with little left out. Unless it's just that we can't see far enough or into dark matter.
grkvlt 8y ago
Looking at the wiki page, it seems the population on the island is decreasing. Hopefully they will either all die, thus relieving us of the ethical dilemma, or India will come to its senses and stop the abuse of these poor people and actually help them. Its criminal that they are allowed to carry on without access to any of the modern world's technology or services. And of course the islanders that killed those fishermen should also be forcibly removed and punished - murder is murder, and the fact that someone is pretending they are still in the stone age has never been a recognised defense...
- mveety 8y ago
  On the punishment for murder end of things, they neither know or accept Indian sovereignty, so applying Indian law on them doesn't make sense. As far as the Sentinelese are concerned they're being invaded. This is more similar to a case where a soldier that doesn't know the war is over kills someone. It doesn't make sense and isn't fair to prosecute them because they're working on old information that would make the murder they committed okay legally. I completely disagree that it's wrong to not introduce them to modern technology. To do that it would require one of us to go visit them which would probably kill them because of our diseases. I would argue it's more wrong to kill them than to not give them access to modern technology.
  - kijin 8y ago
    As far as the Sentinelese are concerned, war is not over. Every time someone visits them, the invasion begins anew. Meanwhile, we do have the technology to contact them without giving them lethal diseases. It doesn't have to be like the Americas all over again. We can screen potential visitors for a wide range of pathogens, make them wear protective suits, vaccinate the local population, and treat them if they get ill nonetheless. The problem is that they want none of it, so any attempt to vaccinate or treat them will end up being forceful.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

timothevs 8y ago

That paper was quite a fascinating read. Thank you for the recommendation.

minota 8y ago

Interesting. A possible explanation for some strange and poorly understood phenomenon accompanied by bright lights could be "earthquake lights", bright lights that appear in the sky around the time of an earthquake. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEwKrvepH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEwKrvepH8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMTSDzU1Z4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKMTSDzU1Z4 Not to say that it applies to this particular case. Just goes to show that there is much to this natural world we don't understand yet.

gnulinux 8y ago
Huh. I've seen this exact blue/purple light in my hometown when I was a small kid (like 15 years ago). It was late night, we were in the patio with my family, eating nuts and talking, just a normal summer evening. We saw this light, and it deeply spooked us children. For years I was wondering what the hell was that. But since an earthquake didn't hit us that night (thanks god) I suppose it likely was something else.
jupiter90000 8y ago
Man, the comments on those videos... just wow. Thanks for the entertainment.
joshuaheard 8y ago
I have been through several earthquakes and have seen power pole transformers spark and explode as the oil inside splashes about and is ignited by the electricty. This could be a possible explanation for "earthquake lights".
- xattt 8y ago
  This is the most plausible explanation. I’ve seen this effect during ice storms.
PuffinBlue 8y ago
Does anyone actually take the 'evidence' in those videos seriously? At 1:50 in that first video, the 'light' occurs and then amazingly the electricity goes off. What a coincidence that is. Also coincidentally the 'light' has similar colour characteristics to the arc flash of a high voltage electrical line/transformer shorting out. And coincidentally at 4:40 the same scenario repeats! It would have repeated again in the first minute if they'd been closer to the electrical circuit that faulted out. The rest of the videos appear as borderline CGI (floodlights washed out in truck area)or some video of clouds.

dingbat 8y ago

Vallee is a serious person worth paying attention to, a rarity in that field. Spielberg used him as the model for that French scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Another good book of his is "Messengers of Deception", expands greatly on the non-extraterrestrial idea.

jonhohle 8y ago

I've been developing a theory about abduction stories overlapping with MK Ultra-type experimentation. There seem to be a fair number of parallels in the type of activities done to subjects of the MK projects (allegedly) and casting the alien abduction story on the victims makes deniability straight forward. I haven't thought much about UFO sightings. I always find the ones with video, especially from arial sources interesting.

dmix 8y ago
It wouldn't be a conspiracy talk without someone bringing up MK Ultra...
- starbeast 8y ago
  We can tick off the flowchart as the conversation progresses. - https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUv7tx-DOTQ/UXKqqtaZ7CI/AAAAAAAAEoA/07uueHMiSJ4/s1600/Crispian's+Conspiracy+Flowchart.png https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NUv7tx-DOTQ/UXKqqtaZ7CI/AAAAAAAAE...
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  For good reason. We know that the CIA dosed people with LSD without their knowledge, which alone would explain most bizarre phenomena, and we know that the CIA claim to have destroyed most of their records of what they did in the program. Pretty easy to link anything to the program, and it's often one of the least strange options.
  - fit2rule 8y ago
    We also know that MK ULTRA and programs very similar to it, have been continued to present day.
    - rocqua 8y ago
      Source?
    - krapp 8y ago

maxden 8y ago

Thanks, reading the paper now. I liked how, when describing possible alien visitation to earth he wrote: "sophisticated interaction with the human and animal lifeforms present on the planet."

kromem 8y ago

The time travel argument I've always found to be far more compelling than the extra terrestrial argument. For example, similarity of physical form (with exaggerated evolutionary aspects relating to modern society, such as bigger eyes/brains, and diminished aspects that would be obsolete, such as weakened physical strength). And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best. And yet there's zero evidence of even life, let alone advanced life, in our near proximity. Wouldn't it make more sense that the advanced species that's in near physical proximity to ourselves (i.e. humans) would be responsible for flying objects very similar to our own flying objects and supposedly operated by bipeds looking very similar to ourselves? And the physical rules bring broken to enable time travel are roughly the same rules that would need to be broken for faster than light travel, so the scientific likelihood for time traveling UFOs is roughly the same as for extra-terrestrial UFOs, but the former makes a lot more sense in other regards than the latter.

a1369209993 8y ago
> And in a universe where different systems could be billions of years different in age, the UFOs have always seemed closer to a few thousands of years off from current technology at best. I think this is something that doesn't get enough attention; in a universe like our's, almost all first contact events will consist of relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life. (Say three billion years before humans evolved versus a generous million years of human 'civilization' gives a three thousand to one ratio.) We should not expect to see anything remotely near our point in the developmental timeline. (If "relativisticly expanding spheres of von Neumann machines" sounds unlikely, let me remind you that every star in the sky is a massive pile of valuable raw materials that has unfortunately caught fire and needs to be extinguished as soon as possible.)
- yesenadam 8y ago
  "in a universe like ours, almost all first contact events will consist of relativistically expanding spheres of von Neumann machines impacting planets populated solely by nonsapient life." You talk as if that's a certain fact. (Even estimating a probability) I'm no expert in the area, but why? Is that justified? What's that based on? (Not to mention the last sentence 'reminding me' of another odd 'fact'.)

starbeast 8y ago

>My rational mind doesn't really believe in all of this, but if it did, I think I'd take Jacques Vallee's theory seriously. I read through that and it immediately reminded me of Miller's flying saucer theory from Repo-Man - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRJ5cCP0ZPE