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It's possible as well that the technology used in such a device would be entirely indecipherable to us due to not just being more advanced, but due to being on

It's possible as well that the technology used in such a device would be entirely indecipherable to us due to not just being more advanced, but due to being on the other side of a technological 'leap' that we're nowhere near making ourselves. If you gave a broken iPad to the greatest minds of the mid-19th century and they expended all the resources at the world's disposal to study it, it's likely that they wouldn't learn anything about it at all, and it wouldn't advance technology a bit, at least not for a hundred years or so. If there's anything to this (and I don't really think there is), it's entirely possible that if the government is forced to reveal it, they're going to say, "We've had this thing since 1946, we've spent billions of dollars researching it, and all we can figure out is it's made of some sort of titanium-osmium metal foam that appears to be completely undifferentiated with no structures or power sources at all, but we know it used to work because we shot it down after it vaporized a Jeep".

fn-mote 3y ago
> if the government is forced to reveal it The government isn't even revealing the existence of search-warrant-type documents. Who do you imagine would have the ability to compel the revelation of a secret of this magnitude?
- CommieBobDole 3y ago
  Congress could pass a law requiring it to be revealed, the president could order it, leaking of additional information could cause public outcry leading to one of the above. I'm using 'forced' in the sense of 'circumstances cause it to become necessary to do', not 'some more powerful entity will make them do it'.
  - TechBro8615 3y ago
    I don't think the people allegedly involved in this alleged coverup have shown any respect for laws or norms. They can just keep lying and obfuscating. The only way they would ever disclose anything is if they wanted to. We can't even hold some NIH administrators accountable for funding research that led to a pandemic. It's laughably naive to think that we could hold accountable, nevermind investigate, whatever faceless perpetrators are responsible for a government program cloaked in so much secrecy that not even presidents have been aware of it.
avar 3y ago
The craft might also have had a contained self-destruct mechanism. The mid-19th century would make eventual headway with an iPad, but not much if all they were left with was the remnants of one that had been vaporized.
zeitgeistcowboy 3y ago
While people in the 1850s probably would not have been able to fix or turn the iPad on they would have been able to examine it. They could have taken it apart and looked at the various materials and perform physical and chemical tests on them. They could open up some of the electronics and look at them with a microscope. The understanding of electricity, circuits, and electrical devices in the 1850s was developed enough to learn something from an iPad. Perhaps they could examine the glass face and learn about that. Perhaps they could learn about new manufacturing techniques by examining the way the device was assembled and formed. I think humans would be able to glean similar types of information from alien technology even if we weren't able to actual use it in its intended way.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  Quite generous of you to assume the aliens are only (the equivalent of) ~150 years ahead of us. Would the ancient Egyptians have had as much success reverse engineering an iPad as some Victorian-era scientists? It seems the crucial element (pardon the pun) is that they wouldn't know what to look for. The Victorians knew enough about chemistry that they could figure out the material composition of various components. And we similarly know how to enumerate all sorts of chemical and physical properties of any exotic materials and objects we might come across. But it's all based on our own patchwork model of the physical universe, which has plenty of gaps we know about, nevermind those we can't even imagine. We don't know what we don't know. If we assume aliens are visiting then it's almost certain that their technology is thousands, if not millions, of years ahead of ours. And if we assume that follows an exponential curve (which may not be a valid assumption - we really only have ~200 years of history upon which we could base such a supposition), then it follows that their technology would be indecipherably complex for us to understand.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    All of that is valid points. But if the USA has retrieved crashed spacecraft then what the hell are these guys doing crashing in the first place? Humans barely lose any important spacecraft to crashes and we've only been playing this game for about 50 years or so.

fn-mote 3y ago

> if the government is forced to reveal it The government isn't even revealing the existence of search-warrant-type documents. Who do you imagine would have the ability to compel the revelation of a secret of this magnitude?

CommieBobDole 3y ago
Congress could pass a law requiring it to be revealed, the president could order it, leaking of additional information could cause public outcry leading to one of the above. I'm using 'forced' in the sense of 'circumstances cause it to become necessary to do', not 'some more powerful entity will make them do it'.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  I don't think the people allegedly involved in this alleged coverup have shown any respect for laws or norms. They can just keep lying and obfuscating. The only way they would ever disclose anything is if they wanted to. We can't even hold some NIH administrators accountable for funding research that led to a pandemic. It's laughably naive to think that we could hold accountable, nevermind investigate, whatever faceless perpetrators are responsible for a government program cloaked in so much secrecy that not even presidents have been aware of it.

avar 3y ago

The craft might also have had a contained self-destruct mechanism. The mid-19th century would make eventual headway with an iPad, but not much if all they were left with was the remnants of one that had been vaporized.

zeitgeistcowboy 3y ago

While people in the 1850s probably would not have been able to fix or turn the iPad on they would have been able to examine it. They could have taken it apart and looked at the various materials and perform physical and chemical tests on them. They could open up some of the electronics and look at them with a microscope. The understanding of electricity, circuits, and electrical devices in the 1850s was developed enough to learn something from an iPad. Perhaps they could examine the glass face and learn about that. Perhaps they could learn about new manufacturing techniques by examining the way the device was assembled and formed. I think humans would be able to glean similar types of information from alien technology even if we weren't able to actual use it in its intended way.

TechBro8615 3y ago
Quite generous of you to assume the aliens are only (the equivalent of) ~150 years ahead of us. Would the ancient Egyptians have had as much success reverse engineering an iPad as some Victorian-era scientists? It seems the crucial element (pardon the pun) is that they wouldn't know what to look for. The Victorians knew enough about chemistry that they could figure out the material composition of various components. And we similarly know how to enumerate all sorts of chemical and physical properties of any exotic materials and objects we might come across. But it's all based on our own patchwork model of the physical universe, which has plenty of gaps we know about, nevermind those we can't even imagine. We don't know what we don't know. If we assume aliens are visiting then it's almost certain that their technology is thousands, if not millions, of years ahead of ours. And if we assume that follows an exponential curve (which may not be a valid assumption - we really only have ~200 years of history upon which we could base such a supposition), then it follows that their technology would be indecipherably complex for us to understand.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  All of that is valid points. But if the USA has retrieved crashed spacecraft then what the hell are these guys doing crashing in the first place? Humans barely lose any important spacecraft to crashes and we've only been playing this game for about 50 years or so.