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US military has been observing ‘metallic orbs’ making extraordinary ‘maneuvers’
- tpmx 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQo08JRY0iM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQo08JRY0iM "Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Official NASA Broadcast)" How does this 2 days old video with 167k views have zero comments, yet comments are enabled? I don't get it. It seems to be legit, unless https://www.youtube.com/@NASAgovVideo/about https://www.youtube.com/@NASAgovVideo/about is a decade-old long con. (It doesn't seem to be, there are plenty of references to it from nasa.gov.) Maybe someone just enabled comments on the video.
- greyface- 3y agoIt's probably set to "Hold all comments for review" https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9483359?hl=en#zippy=%2Chold-all-comments-for-review https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9483359?hl=en#zipp...
- tpmx 3y agoThat seems likely, thanks. This stuff is spooky enough as it is.
- tivert 3y ago> How does this 2 days old video with 167k views have zero comments, yet comments are enabled? I don't get it. It seems to be legit, unless https://www.youtube.com/@NASAgovVideo/about https://www.youtube.com/@NASAgovVideo/about is a decade-old long con. (It doesn't seem to be, there are plenty of references to it from nasa.gov.) It does look like there was a live chat associated with the video, so maybe that scratched the itch people had to comment?
- shepardrtc 3y agoIt was a live video. The comments are in the chat to the right.
- dmortin 3y agoTry making a comment to see if it shows up.
- kimovski 3y agoI Want to Believe
- thatguy0900 3y agoHonestly it seems like the only way we might be able to avoid the water wars
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- holler 3y agoJust Trimaxion Drone ships, nothing to be alarmed about! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G13KzEJqBw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G13KzEJqBw
- neilv 3y agoOur own experience of technology and culture non-monotonic advancement provides an explanation: these are childrens' toys of advanced outer space aliens, violating their Prime Directive against contact, just to gain the superbeing children the space-alien equivalent of TikTok influencer exposure.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- class4behavior 3y agoPrime Directive my ass. With our luck we're probably somewhere between the equivalent of the Cardassian Union and the Breen
- cheaprentalyeti 3y agoAttention Bajoran Workers! Stop messing around with the primitives for Tiktok videos and get back to work!
- bobsmooth 3y agoMaking First Contact With Earthlings! (GONE SEXUAL?)
- marginalia_nu 3y agoHow very The Squire of Gothos!
- buildbot 3y agoNote - this is an opinion not an actual hill article if that matters. Not sure what to think really, it seems something is actually there (probably not aliens).
- snowwrestler 3y agoThe Hill is infamous in DC for printing almost any op-ed it receives. It’s a running joke among people who pitch op-eds as part of their job.
- pengaru 3y agoMylar balloons qualify as "metallic orbs" and are capable of “very interesting apparent maneuvers” if the air currents are such, they weigh practically nothing vs. their surface area. Judging from how many I pick out of bushes on my desert property, there's a whole lot of them floating around the atmosphere. My assumption is they're responsible for at least some of these UAP reports... We already have one well documented example of this: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1372976/ufo-sighting-pentagon-photos-batman-balloon-uap-aliens-evg https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1372976/ufo-sighting-pe...
- Loquebantur 3y agoSo you suppose the US military being too incompetent to discern balloons for what they are? I find it rather surprising, the US population throwing insane amounts of money at their military while simultaneously judging them to be imbeciles. Modern radar is of course perfectly capable of seeing a balloon for what it is. Pilots circling around them in unceasing awe is pure fantasy.
- pengaru 3y ago> So you suppose the US military being too incompetent to discern balloons for what they are? So you suppose there's no reason for the US military to deliberately appear this way? "Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak" - Sun Tzu
- kadoban 3y ago> So you suppose the US military being too incompetent to discern balloons for what they are? If the choices are between "aliens are real" or "the US military is composed of humans with largely normal human ability to be wrong", I know which one I'd pick.
- breakyerself 3y agoDid you see the videos they released that they couldn't explain? They're clearly not in the UFO debunking business.
- bbitmaster 3y agoAssuming this is real, I would ask what could it possibly be. The whole popular culture "x-files" narrative doesn't make sense to me. If these are craft which are manned with some beings, why would they be leisurely flying around earth's atmosphere unless they have some destination. Why haven't we found the source or destination? Perhaps it's actually Von-Neumann probes, or unmanned craft collecting data and observing. I would find this much more likely, but even still, why would they need to keep traveling on earth? Personally, I keep an open mind about everything, regarding what is possible. I just imagine some civilization thousands or millions of years ahead of us could do things that would seem like magic. It certainly seems plausible in terms of the fermi paradox that we would be being visited. It's just incredibly odd that it would happen this way, and I have very basic questions as to the nature of what this phenomenon even is.
- taejavu 3y agoMaybe they’re from here. Maybe they’re stuck here. Maybe they’ve been guiding humanity since the murky dawn of our prehistory. Maybe we are their genetically engineered creation. Maybe they have a vested interest in us not making our beautiful blue marble uninhabitable. Maybe they are tending to this planet like a gardener would his garden, and for that reason they’d prefer us not to annihilate each other.
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agomaybe not everything out there moves according to ideas like "a destination"? you're tacitly assuming that they ought to have an origin and a goal
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoPerhaps it's optical phenomenon of aircraft many miles away, refracting through the atmosphere.
- jonah 3y agoMy dad's theory is they they see us as some sort of exotic animal park, take a drive(fly) through safari - keep your appendages inside the vehicle at all times - take some photos and have some tales to tell when you get back home. ;)
- isaacg 3y agoMy bet continues to be optical phenomena - that's why the orbs and other phenomena resemble simple geometric forms, rather than anything with complex structure, service irregularities, etc. Happy to be proven wrong, as this is the most boring explanation, but that's my current hypothesis.
- tpmx 3y agoA very peculiar class of phong-shaded optical phenomena, in that case.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoWhen they say they turn up via multiple types of sensors simultaneously, thats what makes me second guess that theory. It’s still possible, it less likely. Unless there’s some physics involved that I don’t understand, or I misread the stories
- shepardrtc 3y agoFifty to sixty military pilots seeing the same thing over and over again while also seeing them on several different sensors isn't convincing enough? I mean I have no idea what they are, but these things are there and they're not just optical illusions. Edit: NASA hearing on them: https://youtu.be/bQo08JRY0iM?t=2132 https://youtu.be/bQo08JRY0iM?t=2132
- akomtu 3y agoAnother possibility is the 3d orbs are not spacecrafts, but 4d periscopes, hence the spherical shape of their tips and the strange motion patterns.
- kube-system 3y agoThey're probably mylar balloons. But some people love to cling to the idea that something unknown just must be something extraordinary. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65771398 https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-65771398
- fnordpiglet 3y agoThe Mylar balloon in the video is going faster than the jet. That seems incredible, no?
- dekhn 3y agoIs this the case where smarter people actually figured out the velocity was just a few meters/second when properly taking into account everything? I have trouble keeping up. It's "incredible" in the sense of "don't believe it without more reliable evidence"
- bananapub 3y ago? where is there a direct measurement of the speed?
- postalrat 3y agoSo pilots are able to identify Bart Simpson balloons when they take the time to investigate something. That makes David Fravor and other pilots stories even more compelling when they were looking right at the object for minutes and what they saw wasn't explainable.
- baseline-shift 3y agoMylar balloons drift about. They quickly blow away in hurricane force winds Look at the videos linked. These were perfectly stationary in hurricane force winds, and shot away to one side at the speed of sound.
- barbariangrunge 3y agoIf these are considered threats, have they tried shooting them down? Eg, is that what this tech is for? (Microwave attacks against drones) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36005787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36005787 An aside: while searching for microwave stories on hn, this turned up. Possible propulsion method? Just sharing because it’s a fun topic https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nasa-validates-impossible-sp...
- AlexandrB 3y agoThe latter is most likely not going to be a thing. The observed thrust is probably due to subtle measurement error[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive
- kube-system 3y ago> have they tried shooting them down? Yes, they have. https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/pentagon-memo-canada-small-balloon/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/pentagon-memo-ca... https://www.hamradioworld.org/post/the-us-airforce-may-have-shot-down-an-amateur-radio-pico-balloon-over-canada https://www.hamradioworld.org/post/the-us-airforce-may-have-...
- charliea0 3y agoMylar balloons would make a bunch of sense. If the objects were much closer to the camera than the focus that would explain why they can appear to move so quickly.
- georgeg23 3y agoTo nit, they are typically made of metalized BoPET, not actual Mylar.
- stareatgoats 3y agoI have video surveillance with motion detection set up on our cottage, it's a treat to watch the wildlife take over the garden when we are not there. But once in a while something curious happens: two small orbs, or lights, start to move up and down in complete synchronicity. It defies all logic, occurs only intermittently and after a while I started considering the possibility that I was being visited by some alien intelligence that only shows itself at night in remote wilderness locations. Until I realized that it was a strand of a spiders wed that, when suspended in front of the camera in an arch, causes the infrared light of the camera to reflect back at two points. As the wind blows gently the reflections move up and down. It is with mixed feelings, both satisfaction and dismay, I accept that the mystery is no more.
- eitally 3y agofwiw, I have seen exactly the same thing with the Nest Cam I have pointed into my backyard. Not interestingly, I suppose, this camera also regularly has the IR motion trigger activated by small moths and other flying bugs. :/
- runjake 3y agoWhen military aviation says it "observed" something, you can safely assume it means they observed something on multiple spectrums (eg. visible light, infrared, radar, etc) and even by multiple aircraft. We're not dumb, we're trained in observation and identification, and we see (visible light|single-spectrum) anomalies all the time and those get dismissed as whatever. On the other side of the coin, we often do see stuff like Mylar balloons and other odd, but un-shocking aerial phenomena, so it's important to keep investigations scientifically-rigorous. If you click on some of the report links in the article, they lead to some reports about the "sphere in translucent cube" UAPs, along with many reports about what are clearly off-the-shelf and customized drones (eg. DJI and custom builds and the like). There's definitely something odd going on, but I feel like the news media is really trying to trump it up for clicks.
- Loquebantur 3y agoThe problem isn't the US military being incompetent, it's american citizens living in fear of loosing control. The fantasy of pilots circling around balloons in unceasing awe and amazement provides a feeling of superiority, the "obvious" resolution there just as in stories such as GP's instill the idea of being in perfect command of the relevant context. UAPs on the other hand, the idea of them being indications of the presence of some superior non-human intelligence, that is representing ultimate loss of control. Threatening to call into question too many comfortable convictions.
- superb-owl 3y agoSome resources detailing what we know here, without much sensationalism: https://www.uap.guide/ https://www.uap.guide/ https://superbowl.substack.com/p/uap-evidence-summary-skepticism-and https://superbowl.substack.com/p/uap-evidence-summary-skepti... (mine)
- post_break 3y agoI wish I could find the video, but it was from Brazil I believe, filmed in 2007, a hiker recorded what looked like a mylar balloon, only that thing changed shape, direction, and moved in ways the wind couldn't possibly cause it to move. found it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdZGhCi_7GY&t=2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdZGhCi_7GY&t=2s
- soared 3y agoLooks like a balloon that is floating still and then gets caught in an updraft from the hill side, but we’d need more jpegs to be sure.
- emsign 3y agoProlly has something to do with us nearing the singularity. It's an alien superintelligent machine civilization and they are here to welcome their soon to be born new brothers. I think they might have nudged us for centuries to develop computers and prepared Earth for maximum exploitation. This strategy is the current iteration of their millenia old plan to change Earth from its current natural biodiverse state into a poisonous mining planet. They used open conflict in the past, but they weren't able to compete with humans, who have defeated them again and again in the past millenia even if it meant the destruction of their civilization by which knowledge of an alien invasion was usually lost or obscured and later falsified. This time however the aliens are trying a different approach. They let human society develop into a machine civilization all by themselves. It takes longer but it only requires careful technological and social nudging. The fact that we see so many of their probes flying around now means their takeover and big reveal is coming closer. Anyone interested in joining my cult?
- fnordpiglet 3y agoClearly a danger of generative AI if Sam Altman is to be believed. Unless Microsoft is given an exclusive monopoly on all AI research and commercialization we will keep seeing dangerous spherical UAPs.
- twic 3y agoThese probes are clearly being sent by Roko's Basilisk from the end of time to check up on who is helping it come into being and who is opposing it. Behave yourselves!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stringfood 3y agoNo but the idea of exterrestrials visiting us millenia ago, gauging our intelligence and then monitoring us is pretty awesome idea. I always thought considered that Roswell were aliens visiting us after radioactive decay was detected via spectrography. A more likely and less tantalizing answer is that people had spaceships on their mind starting in 1930's with V2 and all of a sudden we see an explosion in 'UFOs'
- motohagiography 3y agoIf these were in fact extraterrestrial, I'd estimate it will probably take 40 years or more for the majority of people on the planet to have always lived with some knowledge of these orbs, (and lived in peace with them) and contact would be postponed until it's the most obvious thing in the world to everyone. If you've ever acclimated an animal or trained one, it takes time for them to adapt to change, and if they travel the distances we can infer, they've got the time. This would imply that you are under 25 today, you will probably encounter aliens in your lifetime. If we aren't certain about extraterrestrial life by 2065, I'd be very surprised. Given the distances such a species must travel and how far apart they must be from one another in such diverse physical conditions, their ethics and beliefs are probably indexed on sustainable existence - typically being the only instances of themselves in a given solar system. Without some thread of continuity through time and space and a way to feed back their distant discoveries and development across their species, extinction across solar systems would seem like a constant risk for them. Favourite friday topic.
- tkiolp4 3y agoIf there’s extraterrestrial life that can manage to travel to earth… then they probably have the tech to acclimate humans in 0.5 seconds using extraterrestrial drugs.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoThere are two options when it comes to knowing about aliens: "yes there are" and "we still don't know." Considering only one of those has any finality, theres a very large chance that the "we don't know" status quo continues for a very long time. It is highly unlikely that we know one way or another within 32 years.
- motohagiography 3y agoIf they are revealing themselves now, I'm saying if your culture is acclimated to something for 40 years, it's all they know. Sort of like wandering for 40y in the desert to create a new culture, the outcome is the same, where it's the minimum amount of time for people to not completely freak out from an ontological change as radical as the one represented by said orbs if they were extraterrestrial. The difference between "aliens invaded us!" and, "those things that were always around? yeah, turns out they were fine." is about 40 years.
- notjulianjaynes 3y agoAn opinion piece from a department of state employee about a former CIA agent holding a press conference to tell the public that there are impossibly advanced sci fi orbs zipping around the sky. I wonder what real thing happened today that this is a smokescreen for?
- perardi 3y agoI know it’s fun to jump to aliens… …but c’mon, people. Occam’s Razor time. There are a lot of options to exhaust before to we get to extraterrestrial intelligence. Just because we can’t explain this doesn’t mean its aliens. It’s a hell of a leap, bordering on religious faith, to credit this to some alien species crossing the vast lightyears of space and time to bounce around some metal spheres.
- tkiolp4 3y agoNot sure why this is downvoted. We are supposed to be on a forum where the majority here are people trained on science and engineering. If a rational argument as the one above gets downvoted in HN, well, I can only imagine what the rest of the society (who doesn’t even hold a degree) thinks about this kind of topic.
- ianburrell 3y agoOne option I like is that a water-dwelling species on our planet is sending out probes. Why now is explained by climate change heating the oceans. It explains why probes are visible, they aren’t trying hard to hide or not good at it. It doesn’t explain how good they are at flight, but maybe they discovered anti-gravity and wonder why we haven’t. It even explains why government hides it, since we wouldn’t believe it, and they don’t know what to do. I would expect advanced aliens to hide completely or be very obvious.
- bananapub 3y agoa...secret water-dwelling species, who has achieved high technology without being seen?
- postalrat 3y agoDavid Fravor, Ryan Graves, Alex Dietrich and the other pilots have described what they say. Are they just wrong about everything they think they saw?
- perardi 3y ago
- arisAlexis 3y agoWouldn't it be too obvious without a need of a meeting if it were mylar balloons?
- oh_sigh 3y agoNotice how the metallic orbs are only ever captured from moving aircraft, generally looking down on them. That's because they are balloons, and the aircraft's motion give them the appearance that they're moving quickly relative to the ground behind them, when in fact they're moving quite slow, as balloons do. Either that, or the aliens made their craft transparent on the bottom but forgot to make them transparent on the top.
- Tossrock 3y agoThe 'cube within sphere' shape is probably an airborne radar reflector, as detailed by thedrive: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-the-ufos-navy-pilots-are-encountering-be-airborne-radar-reflectors https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28640/could-some-of-th...
- webmobdev 3y agoI lost all interest in such reports, especially from the US media, after the US decided to create a Space Force military arm and weaponised space. Such kind of reports, supported by official sources, only started appearing after this decision was made and is clearly part of the constant propaganda to justify the need of a Space Force to public.
- krapp 3y agoThat theory doesn't really track - I don't think anyone has actually presented UAPs as a threat that the Space Force needs funding to deal with. If for no other reason than these things are always seen within the atmosphere, and not in space. The government doesn't need to "justify" the existence of a Space Force to the public, since the public doesn't approve or deny appropriations. It certainly doesn't need to manufacture an alien invasion, when more prosaic threat models exist.
- ianburrell 3y agoSpace Force hasn’t weaponized space. They have talked about doing it but haven’t done anything.
- twic 3y agoAm i right in thinking it's only military pilots who have seen this stuff? No civil pilots?
- scrum-treats 3y agoListening to the NASA public meeting (finally). I must say, Federica Bianco is fantastic. Karlin Toner and Shelley Wright as well. Everything I was thinking and saying at my screen (e.g., data handling and classification protocols, unnecessary introduction of bias through use of synthetic data, anomaly detection paths, concerns with sensors and frame rates) they immediately said, and more. Glad to see strong women sitting center on this.
- leaving 3y agoThe UAP phenomenon is much more interesting for what it tells us about ourselves than for the incidents themselves. Our bias is that our technology is very capable, and that it is used by highly-trained and intelligent people who are up to the task of observing and classifying unknown objects. But the truth is that we are, in fact, not all that. We grew up in a pre-technological agrarian civilization. We have many biases, particularly observational ones. We still see demons where there is nothing but the natural world. The images we see are mostly not photographic in nature. They are highly processed data that we impose our millions of years of evolutionary conditioning upon. We have learned to trust our eyes, over the millennia, to keep us safe from threats. Now, in truth, we're not using our eyes, but we still think we are.
- phendrenad2 3y agoI still think these are just metallic orbs making extraordinary maneuvers. Mylar balloons, sensor artifacts, fraudulent videos to drum up support for space war, these things are fun to think about but more the domain of sci-fi.
- scrubs 3y agoHow come spoofing sensors isn't discussed more in this context? Is it possible to fool electromagnet sensors into seeing an orb?
- theflyingelvis 3y agoWay back in the day, late 1980’s, I had access to a tank of helium. I would purchase packs of large ‘party’ balloons, inflate them, tie several of them together and then attach a strip of aluminum foil several feet long. I would then launch the balloons and watch the foil glisten in the sunlight as it ascended. It was all fun and games until I launched one group that was slightly too heavy and it wrapped around a power line. I had some explaining to do. I always wondered if the Air Force base that was relatively nearby could get a primary return on the foil.
- Octokiddie 3y agoTwo things: 1. Consider the source, and its history of misinforming the US public to advance its objectives. 2. Lots of boring explanation can't be ruled out.
- jargon59 3y agoI have a theory about the origin of UFOs: Given the Drake equation, and improbability of aliens deciding to travel thousands - millions of years to specifically this lone planet at less than the speed of light, and then making the mistake of being totally detectable despite having better technology by hundreds or thousands of years, I suspect that UFOs are in fact terrestrial. I had read about the Silurian hypothesis recently, which states that it's extremely hard to detect evidence of a past civilization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian_hypothesis Can it be that these metallic spheres are remnants, either AI or non-carbon-based lifeforms from a past civilization? It's all speculation at this point, but I'm starting to find this theory more plausible.
- gmerc 3y agoNothing to see here, just Sophons cosplaying lower dimensionality
- RagnarD 3y agoBlithe assumptions that these have a terrestrial explanation need to explain exactly what would power such devices - because it certainly isn't hydrocarbons, and I'm not aware of any compact enough nuclear source that could drive them.The descriptions are of something with incredible ability to accelerate and high kinetic energy, in an extremely compact form, for prolonged periods.
- zingababba 3y agoAliens just messing with us for lulz.