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There is far more interesting evidence of potential advanced intelligence in our system, such as the Nimitz encounter [0]. The New York Post put together a gre

There is far more interesting evidence of potential advanced intelligence in our system, such as the Nimitz encounter [0]. The New York Post put together a great video highlighting "The Phenomenon." If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSY2Zc0goQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaSY2Zc0goQ Edit: I don't mean to shake up anyone's fragile worldview. Comment instead of downvote; it's a fascinating subject to debate.

kuango 7y ago
Must be the case that p(two independent alien visits) >> p(single alien visit)^2
api 7y ago
Maybe Oumuamua was a carrier and something got off. It would make sense. It could also have been a spent deceleration stage. All speculation of course, since we just didn't get a good look. Of course if whatever got off wants to ever go home it would need to set up shop somewhere and build a new multistage interstellar rocket. You could probably do that in the outer solar system and not be noticed. People who dismiss UFO sightings have among other points argued that the small craft sighted are too small to have the kind of crazy propulsion systems required for interstellar flight. That makes sense, but why assume those are interstellar? A staged fusion rocket or something would make more sense. The small craft would be interplanetary scale.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
Even if one were to assume the phenomenon in question was an advanced craft of some kind, an extraterrestrial origin is still among the least likely explanations.
- lend000 7y ago
  How did you come up with probabilities? It seems to me that probability becomes unhelpful and it's either 0 or 1, once we've ruled out everything for which we have reliable known probabilities. A terrestrial foreign superpower's technology seems like a plausible explanation at first if we can assign probabilities to them being more advanced than us (probably low but non-negligible). That would be compelling if this were the first reliable sighting of its kind (or if it didn't already occur 15 years ago), but apparently such sightings have been actively studied by the US gov for a few decades before this, so it seems quite impossible they would have had the capability in the pogrom/hard labor days, assuming there is some relation between current sightings and those happening decades ago.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    Even considering the most improbable scenarios, terrestrial explanations have one incredibly significant advantage: we know that intelligent life already exists here. When you consider the, quite literally, astronomical distances involved in interstellar travel and the corresponding time and resources required, combined with having no data whatsoever to suggest that advanced intelligent life exists anywhere within our galactic neighborhood, aliens look like a pretty damned unlikely explanation. Hell, it's more likely there's some Wakanda-like hidden advanced human civilization somewhere around here, or maybe a non-human one that inhabits our deep oceans or something. Even less likely than that is some form of time travel from future humans which, again, is still more likely than aliens because we know with certainty that human beings exist on Earth.
    - lend000 7y ago
      I don't think you can compare two completely unknown probabilities and make those conclusions. We also know that life has evolved on ~20% of well-known planets in the "habitable zone," are there are believed to be about 4e10 such planets in our galaxy. Even with a proper equation improving on the Drake equation and taking into account more factors about the composition of such planets and stars, can we really believe there is no life? Furthermore, as a relatively young planet and an extremely young civilization on a cosmic timeframe, could we really be the most advanced in our galaxy? Even with near-current technology, a civilization could traverse galactic distances on a reasonable cosmic timeframe. Given these points and the strange evidence we are trying to make sense of, it seems like the most logical conclusion to me.
nkrisc 7y ago
> it was noticed that the object had now dropped from 28,000 feet to near sea level in less than a second. Surely something accelerating to Mach 25 in atmosphere in less than a second would have made a hell of a sound.
- oso2k 7y ago
  On the Southern California West Coast, especially, in the 80s and 90s, sonic booms were quite regular.
- AnotherGoodName 7y ago
  In all seriousness it sounds like a shadow projected onto a stratus cloud. It's somewhat non-intuitive to people that shadows do not grow in size with distance in the air. A 747 casts a 747 sized shadow onto clouds since the sun is so far away its light rays are all effectively parallel. One thing that does happen to shadows is they get blurred at the edges (an aircraft won't completely cover the sun at a distance). An aircraft will tend to cast a vaguely "T" shaped shadow at a distance that's roughly the size of the aircraft. I can see a "t" shaped object in these images. Here's a video of a test flight of the Vahana aircraft. https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188 https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188 See the mysterious "t" shaped shadow it's casting? It moves erratically and doesn't match intuition of a shadow since shadows from the sun don't work the same way as indoors due to the parallel rays. You get these same shadows projected onto clouds as well. The real kicker is that in these videos they both show and report that the shadow rotates when the aircraft turns! Like guys what the fuck do you think it is? Haha oh dear.
  - lend000 7y ago
    These were IR videos, and the whole area was restricted airspace.
    - AnotherGoodName 7y ago
      Yes and all light casts shadows IR included. Take a look at any video of a plane casting a shadow onto clouds. eg. https://youtu.be/Vr_kYmUaykw?t=7 https://youtu.be/Vr_kYmUaykw?t=7 Notice the similarities? The halo and the matching of the recording planes movements which are explicitly mentioned in this.
Voloskaya 7y ago
> If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special . We know barely anything about Oumuamua, clearly not enough to decide what kind of object it is, even less about the Nimitz encounter and yet, based on two nothings, you are feeling confident enough to say that the would be civilization that build 'Oumuamua' is less advanced than the would be civilization that built the Nimitz object. Jumping the gun a little bit are we?
- lend000 7y ago
  Isn't this all speculation by everyone? My reason for such speculation is that if the Oumuamua was actually a probe, the little information which we can observe from it (speed, size, trajectory changes) is plausible in terms of our current technology and understanding of physics. What was seen by the Nimitz is not.

kuango 7y ago

Must be the case that p(two independent alien visits) >> p(single alien visit)^2

api 7y ago

Maybe Oumuamua was a carrier and something got off. It would make sense. It could also have been a spent deceleration stage. All speculation of course, since we just didn't get a good look. Of course if whatever got off wants to ever go home it would need to set up shop somewhere and build a new multistage interstellar rocket. You could probably do that in the outer solar system and not be noticed. People who dismiss UFO sightings have among other points argued that the small craft sighted are too small to have the kind of crazy propulsion systems required for interstellar flight. That makes sense, but why assume those are interstellar? A staged fusion rocket or something would make more sense. The small craft would be interplanetary scale.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

Even if one were to assume the phenomenon in question was an advanced craft of some kind, an extraterrestrial origin is still among the least likely explanations.

lend000 7y ago
How did you come up with probabilities? It seems to me that probability becomes unhelpful and it's either 0 or 1, once we've ruled out everything for which we have reliable known probabilities. A terrestrial foreign superpower's technology seems like a plausible explanation at first if we can assign probabilities to them being more advanced than us (probably low but non-negligible). That would be compelling if this were the first reliable sighting of its kind (or if it didn't already occur 15 years ago), but apparently such sightings have been actively studied by the US gov for a few decades before this, so it seems quite impossible they would have had the capability in the pogrom/hard labor days, assuming there is some relation between current sightings and those happening decades ago.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  Even considering the most improbable scenarios, terrestrial explanations have one incredibly significant advantage: we know that intelligent life already exists here. When you consider the, quite literally, astronomical distances involved in interstellar travel and the corresponding time and resources required, combined with having no data whatsoever to suggest that advanced intelligent life exists anywhere within our galactic neighborhood, aliens look like a pretty damned unlikely explanation. Hell, it's more likely there's some Wakanda-like hidden advanced human civilization somewhere around here, or maybe a non-human one that inhabits our deep oceans or something. Even less likely than that is some form of time travel from future humans which, again, is still more likely than aliens because we know with certainty that human beings exist on Earth.
  - lend000 7y ago
    I don't think you can compare two completely unknown probabilities and make those conclusions. We also know that life has evolved on ~20% of well-known planets in the "habitable zone," are there are believed to be about 4e10 such planets in our galaxy. Even with a proper equation improving on the Drake equation and taking into account more factors about the composition of such planets and stars, can we really believe there is no life? Furthermore, as a relatively young planet and an extremely young civilization on a cosmic timeframe, could we really be the most advanced in our galaxy? Even with near-current technology, a civilization could traverse galactic distances on a reasonable cosmic timeframe. Given these points and the strange evidence we are trying to make sense of, it seems like the most logical conclusion to me.

nkrisc 7y ago

> it was noticed that the object had now dropped from 28,000 feet to near sea level in less than a second. Surely something accelerating to Mach 25 in atmosphere in less than a second would have made a hell of a sound.

oso2k 7y ago
On the Southern California West Coast, especially, in the 80s and 90s, sonic booms were quite regular.
AnotherGoodName 7y ago
In all seriousness it sounds like a shadow projected onto a stratus cloud. It's somewhat non-intuitive to people that shadows do not grow in size with distance in the air. A 747 casts a 747 sized shadow onto clouds since the sun is so far away its light rays are all effectively parallel. One thing that does happen to shadows is they get blurred at the edges (an aircraft won't completely cover the sun at a distance). An aircraft will tend to cast a vaguely "T" shaped shadow at a distance that's roughly the size of the aircraft. I can see a "t" shaped object in these images. Here's a video of a test flight of the Vahana aircraft. https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188 https://youtu.be/S-5JeapSsbE?t=188 See the mysterious "t" shaped shadow it's casting? It moves erratically and doesn't match intuition of a shadow since shadows from the sun don't work the same way as indoors due to the parallel rays. You get these same shadows projected onto clouds as well. The real kicker is that in these videos they both show and report that the shadow rotates when the aircraft turns! Like guys what the fuck do you think it is? Haha oh dear.
- lend000 7y ago
  These were IR videos, and the whole area was restricted airspace.
  - AnotherGoodName 7y ago
    Yes and all light casts shadows IR included. Take a look at any video of a plane casting a shadow onto clouds. eg. https://youtu.be/Vr_kYmUaykw?t=7 https://youtu.be/Vr_kYmUaykw?t=7 Notice the similarities? The halo and the matching of the recording planes movements which are explicitly mentioned in this.

Voloskaya 7y ago

> If Oumuamua is indeed an interstellar probe, it would seem to have come from a civilization far less advanced than whatever seems to have been observed by various militaries and analyzed by this New York Post special . We know barely anything about Oumuamua, clearly not enough to decide what kind of object it is, even less about the Nimitz encounter and yet, based on two nothings, you are feeling confident enough to say that the would be civilization that build 'Oumuamua' is less advanced than the would be civilization that built the Nimitz object. Jumping the gun a little bit are we?

lend000 7y ago
Isn't this all speculation by everyone? My reason for such speculation is that if the Oumuamua was actually a probe, the little information which we can observe from it (speed, size, trajectory changes) is plausible in terms of our current technology and understanding of physics. What was seen by the Nimitz is not.