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It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So stop. Please just stop
- nrjames 4y ago... ok, but it's more fun to pretend it's aliens.
- nytesky 4y agoYou should read “The Dark Forest”…
- bell-cot 4y agoTrue. But billions of people Want Something To Believe In. And "it's aliens!" is (relatively speaking) a harmless belief. So - every once in a while, try to care more about other humans than you do about being Right On The Internet.
- dokem 4y agoIt's not harmless. If enough people believe there are aliens the government can use that to do basically whatever they want because now were in danger from the ultimate boogieman. Re covid hysteria.
- IncRnd 4y agoA general disbelief in aliens will not stop the government from doing as it wants.
- bell-cot 4y agoHistory suggests that governments wanting to get away with crap do not need anything remotely resembling "the ultimate boogieman" to do it. And - my impression is that folks who believe in aliens tend to believe that the aliens are less dangerous (to ordinary people) than the government. BTW, what if people started believing in near-earth asteroids? Imagine what governments could justify then...
- daveslash 4y agoI agree with you. It's not harmless. When I was a kid, I'd tuck a small FM radio under my pillow and secretly listen to Coast-to-Coast with Art Bell when I was supposed to be sleeping. The stories about aliens, immortals, bigfoot, the Philadelphia Experiment, and holes to hell were mysterious, intriguing, exciting. I grew out of that and looked back on it as "harmless fun", like telling ghost stories around a campfire. I've changed my tune in recent years, seeing how destructive these conspiracies can be to society as a whole. Any single one conspiracy or ghost story isn't so bad, but they compound and result in a dysfunctional society less capable of digesting fact and thinking critically about nuanced topics. (In retrospect, I now recognize Art Bell himself never took it seriously and considered it Entertainment, almost satire, like the World Weekly News. But many people didn't pick up on that and did take it seriously...)
- LinuxBender 4y agoAnd if it is ever aliens please for the love of humanity please do not shoot at them. They might return fire assuming they even see us as a threat.
- zabzonk 4y agonot a threat? after our raptors have just shot down four of them? get real!
- LinuxBender 4y agoI forget which episode it was, but there was an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation where a primitive people fired on the Enterprise. It barely registered on their instruments and certainly did nothing to the shields. I suspect we would be playing the role of the primitive people. Our civilization(s) have had many set-backs.
- bilsbie 4y agoOn the other hand spiders can kill us despite our advanced knowledge and technology.
- weard_beard 4y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLGDKVJlqL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLGDKVJlqL0
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- PM_me_your_math 4y agoYou have to assume they already know we are, at best, inherently dangerous, and at worst, a threat. Anyone observing has detected the nearly 2,000 nuclear weapons tests we've conducted in the past. Those tests produce gamma rays that can be detected at cosmic distances, and the frequency of events would have been a curiosity. So imagine yourself an alien observer. Over the course of decades, you watch flashes of gamma rays originate from one location in the galaxy. Naturally curious, you send a probe or scout to get a closer look. From observable techno-signatures, you deduce there is an advanced civilization in a great war or a species crazy enough to explode powerful weapons on their home-world for shits & giggles. Would you want to visit?
- millerm 4y agoTalking to you, Tom DeLonge!
- icare_1er 4y agoPretty poor article. In summary: "the universe is big -> it's unlikely aliens can visit -> so it's not aliens". Thanks for that, that's ground-breaking.
- abzolv 4y agoAny alien race with technology to reach Sol will also have superior technology to defend themselves. Only start worrying when the “balloon” shot down the F-18s and F35s that were scrambled to shoot it down.
- PM_me_your_math 4y agoI bet the mentats never saw that AIM9X coming. See what happens when you destroy all of your thinking machines?
- GalenErso 4y ago> Sol It's called the solar system. "Sol" is not an official name.
- mach1ne 4y agoThat’ll change at some point, and it’s difficult to make a case for a better name.
- rootusrootus 4y agoI like Helios better.
- IncRnd 4y agoYou might be interested to know that Sōl is Latin for Sun and has also come to refer to our solar system.
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- yoyohello13 4y agoIs the Sun (the actual star) not also known as "Sol"?
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- jdmtheNth 4y agoI'd like it to be aliens, but knowing that about myself, I'm going to need rock-solid proof.
- guardiangod 4y ago>It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So stop. Please just stop Yes, but what if it's really aliens? (cue Not Saying It's Alien But It's Alien meme)
- papito 4y agoIf it is ever aliens, we will know about it.
- tapeloop 4y agoyou know who wants us to think that? ALIENS
- marktangotango 4y agoIf Star Trek taught me anything, it's that Aliens don't want to interfere with lesser lifeforms! Unless it's for our own good, then they will but try to hide it [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Watches_the_Watchers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Watches_the_Watchers
- NoGravitas 4y agoJ. Posadas also made a strong case for this.
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- bilsbie 4y agoTell that to SETI.
- dsr_ 4y agoIf it's aliens, it's either going to be very very obvious for years before they arrive or never going to be noticed until they want to be noticed. Positing a sweet spot between our competence and their incompetence is not reasonable. It does make for better stories.
- jobs_throwaway 4y agoAbsolutely nothing of meaning in this article
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- greenonions 4y agoI know that it will never be aliens, but it's really really fun to imagine it being aliens.
- morelinks 4y ago“I want to believe” is the saying! You hit the nail on the head. Is it aliens? No. But I enjoy entertaining the theory that it might be. It’s harmless and adds mystery and excitement to my world. If you were young in the 90s, I’m sure you can remember the wonder that everyone seemed to have. I’m only sad that Art Bell isn’t here to speculate with us.
- lamontcg 4y ago> It’s harmless not really sure about that. it opens up a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories to get lost in, while we really need a grounded and educated electorate.
- orblivion 4y agoI feel like hardly anybody is all that serious about it in the first place.
- drewcon 4y agoMy current theory (other than nefarious state actors) is that it’s somehow just industrial inflatable gas storage devices that got filled with lighter than air gas and took off. https://m.indiamart.com/proddetail/portable-biogas-balloon-10714158448.html https://m.indiamart.com/proddetail/portable-biogas-balloon-1...
- mach1ne 4y agoEh. It’s extremely probably not aliens this time, though there is a very small chance it is. Given the trajectory of humanity, the alien scenario explaining an unexplained phenomena is not unreasonable, though almost always very unlikely. I find that a major portion of people fear the possibility so much that they’re unable to entertain the probability.
- adastra22 4y agoIt is unreasonable. It defies physics and all common sense.
- nucleogenesis 4y agoIt defies known and well understood physics.
- skc 4y agoExcept when shooting them down apparently.
- adastra22 4y agoPhysics never does an about face. Whatever new physics is out there must be compatible with the physics that we know and use today. And we know enough about physics at planetary and solar system scale phenomena to know that UFO-type intelligent aliens visiting us is a physical impossibility.
- exclusiv 4y ago> Physics never does an about face. Whatever new physics is out there must be compatible with the physics that we know and use today. According to who? How is that compatible with the history of physics?
- adastra22 4y agoHow isn’t it compatible? Einstein didn’t overthrow Newton, he just clarified what happened at high speed and high energies. There are a few cases where physicists found new capabilities which weren’t known before, like Faraday discovering induction, or Einstein discovering mass-energy conversion. But even then the basic principle of energy being conserved is respected, and physical limits obeyed.
- maxbaines 4y agoThe Roswell incident, has not helped the whole weather balloon thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident
- breck 4y agoHuman tribes branched before recorded history and pursued different rates of technological advancement. Thus, invasions from more technologically advanced "alien" branches of life have been happening for all of recorded history. The last one I can think of was a mere 225 years ago (Hawai'i). It's foolish to expect history to not repeat.
- coding123 4y agoIt's not aliens because we wouldn't have made a dent let alone "shot it down"
- korroziya 4y agoI get fatigued when people at bars or parties try to preach at me about how alien life is obviously behind the UFOs and if I don't believe them I'm a "sheep". Same goes for the wave of girls who think they're witches because they bought Tarot cards off Amazon. It's depressing how uneducated, gullible people think they're clever for having "super secret" info no one else has.
- rootusrootus 4y agoIt's super depressing how stupid the average person is. It gets worse when I try to justify to myself that I'm not right there with them.
- werdnapk 4y agoSounds like you're hanging out with the wrong crowd.
- korroziya 4y agoSometimes I think that's the case, and sometimes I think the wrong crowd is rapidly becoming the only crowd. It's legitimately everywhere. The spread of baseless conspiracy theories, belief in magic and the occult, flat earthers, etc. has measurably gotten worse, I want to recall a few HN articles about the topic.
- brewdad 4y agoJesus is going to descend from the heavens. The Second Coming! We'll send him to the bottom of Hudson Bay.
- crazygringo 4y agoGenuine question, because I just realized I don't know. Is the obsession with aliens/UFO's a human thing, or just an American thing? Like is the average person from France, Nigeria, or China just as excited about "ooh what if they're aliens?" Are human beings in general so captivated by extraterrestrial contact that shooting down balloons immediately tantalizes them? Or does the rest of the world go, "oh those loony Americans who've been watching too many movies." If you said "Area 51" to people outside of North America, does it mean anything at all? And if so, is it just a joke?
- originalvichy 4y agoAmerica is the one superpower that both has the security apparatus that playsibly could hide major things, as well as a cultural environment to feed grand narratives as plausible alternatives, whether it would be religious or more secular in nature.
- duxup 4y agoDo they? If they were hiding the existence of aliens that would be pretty extraordinary. Secrets sure but a secret of that magnitude for how long? I’m skeptical.
- JohnFen 4y agoIt defies belief. Secrets can be kept for a long time, but how long is inversely proportional to how many people know the secret and how earthshaking the secret is. Look at it this way -- the US couldn't even keep the development of the atomic bomb a secret. The Earth might be getting visited by aliens -- I mean, it's technically possible -- but it's even less likely that it could be kept a secret by the government if the government were aware.
- corbulo 4y agoHas it been kept a secret? I think its more of a question of whether you believe whats out there or think there isn't sufficient explanation for what 'definitive' evidence there is (tic tac video for example).
- 404mm 4y agoThis whole fuss around UFO and all other acronyms is a self perpetuating clusterfuck that feeds off the unknown and resulting to unhelpful labels. Including the headline of this article. Stuff is flying in our airspace and we need to focus on identifying those objects. Of course the likelihood of alien technology is rather low. That’s not the point. The point is we need to stop labeling and jumping to conclusions so we can open up to actual discussions that may lead to proper scientific examination of evidence.
- sigspec 4y agoWell said. It is very on brand for us to be arguing about semantics and labels instead of the actual issue.
- simonh 4y agoI don't think it is at all established that unidentified stuff is flying into our airspace, Chinese spy balloons notwithstanding. This narrative doesn't take one other factor into account. The notorious, well known, extremely well documented and researched fact that humans are incredibly poor witnesses. The flaws and failure modes in our perceptive and recall facilities are so extensive it's amazing we survived as a species at all. I suppose it comes down to the fact that as long as perceiving a potential danger that isn't there doesn't directly get you killed, it's better to err on the side of caution rather than risk ignoring something that could be an actual threat. So before we start considering the infinitesimally low but possibly non zero chance that an unexplained observation is actual extra-terrestrials that travelled many lightyears to stick a probe up someone's butt, lets first consider the chance that the detection was simply mistaken. After all, we have huge numbers of very well documented cases of people, including pilots, navigators, radar operators, etc including even whole teams of specialists definitively and provably getting something wrong. It happens alarmingly often. Aircraft and nautical navigation errors, collisions, target misidentifications, blue on blue incidents. Tragedies such as the highly trained command crew of the USS Vincennes getting target identification and tracking systematically wrong at multiple levels of review despite multiple contra-indicators and shooting down an airliner. So wouldn't we expect there to be quite a large number of such cases where we never discover the source of the error, or ever positively identify the actual reason for the inaccurate observation. Given the number of provable known cases, it seems plausible that we should expect there to be a rather large number of unproven ones, whether aliens exist and are occasionally flying around over our heads or not. So really, large numbers of unexplained but false detections are to be expected, right?
- anwhi 4y agoThere are aliens in the universe and they want nothing to do with us. We're coming off as desperate.
- 41amxn41 4y agoI don't even think there's such thing as "aliens", and if there is, it's like the most primitive life on Earth (microbes and such). The idea of being visited by anthropomorphic yet foreign beings from another planets is fun, but I'm certain it will never happen. >inb4 the drake equation
- jackcviers3 4y agoWe already know that the object over the great lakes was a balloon with metal structural support, different in size and payload than the one we shot down over the Atlantic coast, but a similar object. There was a memo released about it reported on CNN. What concerns me is that the countermeasures (missiles) we are using to destroy these things likely cost an order of magnitude more than the balloons cost to create. Certainly less than spy satellites that can do the same job. If we are going to defend our airspace from these surveillance platforms, we have to find more cost-effective means of taking them down than $1M missiles.
- Nathanael_M 4y agoIsn't the whole "existence of aliens" question functionally religious? If you believe in God as an origin of life, we are the only intelligent life in the universe. If you believe in abiogenesis, we aren't. Obviously that's a big generalization and there's lots of room for fun sci-fi speculation, but that's kind of the big turning point, no? As for explaining UFO's/UAP's as aliens, that seems to be the least likely explanation, but shutting down all talk of UFO's/UAP's because of the association of the terms with aliens/"I want to believe" people is silly. There's plenty of room for conversation both valuable (what terrestrial technology and motives could be behind these?) and just fun and enjoyable (wild speculation about technology and motives). I love scifi, this strikes me as a community filled with people who love scifi, I am excited about secrets and technology and a future filled with continued technological advancement. I'll never stop enjoying this type of speculation.
- rhn_mk1 4y agoI only agree inasfar as the Christian religion goes. There's nothing fundamentally preventing religions from claiming that humans aren't the only ones (scientology anyone?). There's nothing fundamentally requiring non-religious people to claim that there are others.
- sigspec 4y agoThe reality is the universe doesn't care what we believe.
- DamnYuppie 4y agoI don't know which religion you are referring to but I am not aware of any scripture that says we are the only creations of God. Only that God created life and man.
- grondo4 4y agoChristianity states that the only ensouled and conscious creatures are the descendants of Adam and Eve.
- widowlark 4y ago
- david-gpu 4y agoExtraordinary evidence requires extraordinary funding, as Avi Loeb says. We aren't going to get definitive proof if we continue having a knee-jerk reaction to ridicule the subject. If we don't know what an object is, then we don't know what it isn't either. This much is obvious. The people jumping to the conclusion that it _must_ be mundane are making the same mistake as the people who claim the opposite. We simply need better evidence.
- rambojohnson 4y agoit's best to look at the likelihood of what it is, occam's razor and all that...
- david-gpu 4y agoSure, our past experience will inform our priors. But if we stubbornly refuse to even consider the possibility that anomalous observations could have anomalous causes, we won't make progress in our understanding. That attitude is dogmatic and anti-scientific. Do I believe aliens are visiting Earth? Frankly, I do not. But I can't dismiss it outright either, because we don't know what we don't know.
- widowlark 4y agoIt's the least likely explanation, far, far down the list of much more real, plausible, and actionable facts - entertaining this particular one above the others in order to placate illogical fantasies is a grave mistake we should stop repeating
- widowlark 4y agoWay to flip the script on the real statement: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - in other words, this speculation can be dismissed without additional proof
- david-gpu 4y agoYou are quoting Carl Sagan. I am quoting another Harvard astronomer, Avi Loeb. What Loeb is pointing at is that in the real world you can't expect extraordinary scientific evidence while refusing to fund the research that could produce such evidence. I am not claiming that these observations are caused by aliens. I am merely pointing out the inherent contradiction behind statements like "we don't know what this is, but [we sure know] it is not aliens".
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoSMBC had a comic about this. A scientist says "we just don't know". They mean "There are several reasonable competing theories but we haven't the data to know which is true." The public hears "It's magic, aliens or Jesus"
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- moremetadata 4y agoMy primary school age UFO Alien abduction experience was just a hallucinogen and hypnotherapy, with crappy 1970's BBC special effects, which the state are now trying to cover up, perhaps by coming out of the ECHR. Probably secret Autistic Psychopathy experimentation which is a life long experiment if my life of being exposed to extreme violence is anything to go by. Not really on imo, because you dont get a say in it! Edit. Keep being censored by ycombinator. In response to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34791803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34791803 Yeah... but have you noticed that Youtube is towing the Govt line and preventing anyone from seeing the scene where the military create a spoof train wreck to evacuate people from the area? Was Steven Spielberg trolling the govt all those years ago? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=close+encounters+of+the+third+kind+train+wreck+evacuation https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=close+encounter...
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoIt isn't aliens. Life that has advanced as far as human life is a freak of nature, a number pulled out of an infinitely long string of random numbers that happened to be the correct seed at the perfect time. It.Will.Never.Be.Aliens.
- emocin 4y agoIt’s not aliens, it’s a campaign to distract us from the clusterfuck literal train wreck in Ohio and the US bombing the nord pipeline.
- exclusiv 4y ago"Hersh uses the testimony of one person, mixed alongside that aforementioned historical or political commentary, as evidence for every significant aspect of the alleged conspiracy. Here is the first mention of that source: Last June, the Navy divers...... according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning." "Hersch was asked by the Russian news agency TASS about the identity of his source. He told them that, "It's a person, who, it seems, knows a lot about what's going on." https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-sabotage/ https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/02/10/hersh-nord-stream-sab...
- uhtred 4y agoI think a lot of us desperately want it to be aliens because life is so dull.
- kcplate 4y agoSo when it’s politically problematic for there to be public animosity against the CCP, especially after a confirmed spy balloon overflight gets folks all riled up, we get UFO narratives flowing into the media about 3 more additional “objects” making their ways into our airspace. So now we are talking UFO and aliens invasions rather than the CCP. Amazing how misdirection works. The old mythologies still work well to avert our eyes and hearts.
- cafard 4y agoThere are a lot of people--not necessarily CCP-friendly--who want to hear it.
- kcplate 4y agoExactly, that’s why it’s so effective. It’s mythology that only needs a little bump [1][2] from the government to start the misdirection snowball. They don’t have to even say “aliens”, we fill in that blank for them. [1] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3857321-white-house-no-indication-objects-were-part-of-china-spy-program/ https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/3857321-white-ho... [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-mystery-objects-get-shot-down-u-s-sets-up-new-task-force-on-ufos-afa4d12c https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-mystery-objects-get-shot-dow...
- JohnClark1337 4y ago[dead]
- prirun 4y agoI think there are two separate questions: 1) is there other life in the universe? 2) is other life visiting Earth? Considering the number of stars in the universe and the potential number of planets around those stars, IMO it is extremely unlikely that our particular star & planet are so special that we are the only life that exists and has ever existed. If you believe that yes, we are that unique, then of course you cannot believe in anyone visiting Earth. If you do believe there is other life in the universe, it's reasonable to believe they travel around, just like we have traveled around. But also, because of the vastness of the universe, if there is other life, IMO it's likely to be so far away that we will never cross paths. It's like 2 grains of sand on a beach getting next to each other.
- laverya 4y ago> It's like 2 grains of sand on a beach getting next to each other. Unless the grains of sand are "Grabby". An aggressively expansionist species (as in, one new colony per colony every 10,000 years) fills up a galaxy really remarkably quickly.
- roncesvalles 4y agoThere's also the dimension of time. Two such civilizations need to be both spatially and temporally proximal. One of the "explanations" for the Fermi Paradox is that humans are too far out from the temporal peak, i.e. too late or too early to the scene.
- Balgair 4y agoI want to point out the currently known composition of the universe, because I think that the whole aliens thing wraps up with it: ~5% matter. Most of this is H and He though, bit of Li in there too. And it's all mostly burning in a star's gravity well. Like, 99.99999% of it. The stuff you and I are made of (C, N, P, Fe, etc), that we would wish aliens would be made of too, is really rare. ~25% dark matter. We know a little about it. We know that it falls down and doesn't like to touch just about anything. But that's really kinda it. ~70% dark energy. It falls ... up (?!). We know pretty much nothing about it. And it's the large majority of 'stuff' in the universe. If there are buddies out there, then we may want to look at stuff that is a bit more common.
- ankaAr 4y agoI'm just seeing Three Body tv show and you do t want to have aliens.
- dragonwriter 4y agoOn the one hand, that seems reasonable On the other, it’s exactly what a collaborator working with the aliens would say.
- ninjagoo 4y ago> It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. Borrowing from the world of Finance: past performance is not a guarantee of future results :-)
- rocket_surgeron 4y agoAny entity capable of interstellar travel will possess the ability to harness energy in ways that are almost impossible for us to imagine. If they transit space rapidly (on a human scale) they will be able to discharge energy in amounts so vast as to be incomprehensible. If they transit space slowly (on a human scale) they will be able to store energy in amounts so vast as to be incomprehensible. They'll be able to pluck individual hydrogen atoms out of the vast emptiness of interstellar space and reconstitute them into any element whose existence is possible. They'll be able to generate and arbitrarily manipulate gravity. They'll be able to approach, disassemble, store, and reassemble entire stars. They won't be lazily floating in a car-sized object above the Canadian wilderness, bouncing around in the jet stream.