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What's HN's take on "Immaculate Constellation"? I'm pretty skeptical. UFO believers and the Ancient Aliens crowd don't typically adhere to the scientific metho
by echelon 2y ago
What's HN's take on "Immaculate Constellation"?
I'm pretty skeptical. UFO believers and the Ancient Aliens crowd don't typically adhere to the scientific method, and so news like this doesn't sway me much.
I usually ignore this stuff, but it is pretty wild to see congressional documents talking about "non-human intelligences" intercepting F-22s and forcing them to abort missions. Seems pretty fanciful.
What does HN think about this?
- namaria 2y agoConsidering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range.
- echelon 2y agoGiven how ridiculously long it took intelligence to develop on earth, I'm not so sure. Intelligence might be the hardest hard step. I do like your idea that we're in a quarantine though.
- maxbond 2y agoIt's been a while since I read it, so I can't promise it holds up, but I remember quite enjoying this novel with a similar premise (the solar system is quarantined in a giant bubble for unclear reasons, with a side of nanotechnology-driven apps for your brain). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarantine_(Egan_novel)
- namaria 2y agoThat's still enough time for it to have happened 3 times over in this universe.
- the_af 2y agoThree times doesn't exactly seem like a lot, right? And for UFOs-as-ETs, these intelligences would have had to spawn pretty near our solar system, and their existence overlap in time with mankind's tiny fraction of existence (truly a blip in the lifespan of the universe), and detect our existence (or at least our system as a worthwhile destination), and develop tech to take them here, and be interested in this undertaking, and have the resources for it, and not wipe themselves out in an accident, ecological disaster or global war, and after all of this choose to just do mysterious flybys and abductions and no formal contact with Earth. Too many "and"s for me...
- namaria 2y agoIt might be like a lot if there could have been intelligent civilizations 8 billion years older then us.
- the_af 2y agoI doubt any kind of lifeform can exist for that long, but even if it did, the rest of the objections apply. If it's in the other side of the universe, we will never meet. So it would have to be near, and [rest of my objections]. Seems very unlikely to me.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoThat does kinda fit with stories of the Anunnaki creating humans as an experiment. Keep the science project contained to see what they do.
- namaria 2y agoSumerian and early Mesopotamian mythology is very interesting reading. I won't say it's ''aliens'' but there are some strong hints of more going on at the rise of civilization then just neolithic people coming together and inventing writing. I have this idea that sedentary agrarian urban civilization was something created by nomadic peoples to farm slaves. Hunter gatherers and pastoral peoples would be very hard to control. But if they took children, and raised them to be sedentary and dependent on agriculture they could have a stable of slaves.
- tzs 2y ago> Considering the size and age of the universe, it would be very very weird if earth apes were the pinnacle of intelligence. It might depend on the origin of the universe. One theory involves an exponentially expanding spacetime driven by a quantum field. Fluctuations in that field can case a region of that expanding spacetime to greatly slow down its expansion and that region becomes a universe. If that's how it happened our universe would just be one in a very very large collection of universes. In particular the rate of universe creation would grow exponentially and so the fraction of old universes would be exponentially smaller than the fraction of young universes. If it takes a few billion years for the first human level intelligence to develop in a given universe and then hundreds of millions more years for the second intelligence to develop then of all the universes with at least one intelligence only a very very very small fraction of them would have more than one intelligence. > In fact I think the most likely explanation for the Fermi paradox is that we are kept isolated from other civilizations within range. Another interesting possibility is that civilizations isolate themselves. It seems very unlikely that neighboring civilizations would be at the same level of technological development--there is just too much luck involved in becoming a civilization and in developing technology. That suggests that first meetings between civilizations are very likely to involve civilizations with vastly different technology levels. They also are likely to have vastly different cultures and vastly different ethics and vastly different philosophies. Maybe the more advanced will see it as their duty to help the other progress. Or maybe they they will view them like Europeans viewed the occupants of the Americas in the 16th century. Or maybe they will see them as animals and give them about as much consideration as we give the animals on a patch of wilderness that we want to use for something. You can model how civilizations should behave when they learn of other civilizations using game theory. When a civilization learns of another than hasn't yet learned of them their choices are: (1) try to keep themselves secret from the other, (2) try to contact the other, and (3) try to destroy the other. (We would not be able to choose #3 because we aren't technologically advanced enough, but we know ways to do #3 that we'll probably be capable of in a few hundred to a couple thousand years from now). Assuming that a civilization puts much much much more value on its own survival than on the survival of other civilizations #3 is the option with the highest expected value. If you aren't to the point where #3 is possible than #1 gives the highest expected value. In short, we could be in a galaxy full of civilizations but they are all avoiding doing anything that would let others detect them because they don't want to be the target of someone else's option #3. A few months ago there was a PBS Space Time episode on this so called "Dark Forest" scenario, which you might enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXYf47euE3U
- magneticnorth 2y agoIn the 600 million years that our planet has had complex multicellular life, only about 130 of those years has any species here been able to communicate outside the planet. That's .00002% of the time, on a planet with multicellular life. Maybe the norm is that intelligent life lasts a long time and we just happen to be born in the first tiny fraction of humanity. But the observational evidence is that even given multicellular life, intelligence is extremely rare, and there is no evidence at all that it is likely to last very long.
- andrewflnr 2y agoPinnacle of intelligence within the solar system is still pretty likely, even if not in the universe. People forget how brutally hard star flight is if you're not using scifi cheats.
- ben_w 2y agoNobody knows how hard interstellar travel is yet, owing to us not being at that economic level. What we think we know, says that self replicating systems are possible because we are ourselves an example, and that PV and lasers are possible, and that light imparts momentum. All of this suggests that it is possible for a civilisation that only doubles in numbers every 30 years to be able to make a Dyson swarm in 30 * log2(mass of mercury/mass of a minimal human colony and support equipment) years, which even in the most pathologically extreme case for lightweight starting colonies isn't going to be more than 2174.5 years. It appears that with a Dyson swarm, much of the future light cone of the universe can be colonised directly without needing to focus on nearby stars first. But we don't know until we try.
- hnthrowaway0328 2y agoCheck out Vlad the astrophysicist, it's interesting.
- krapp 2y agoI get strong "Majestic 12" vibes from it. Which is to say, I assume by default it's a hoax. The name alone just seems too on the nose.
- madspindel 2y agoWhat would be the purpose of a hoax like that?
- krapp 2y agoMisinformation? I don't know. I'm not basing my opinion on anything but vibes.
- pc86 2y agoSo is everyone else (myself included). At least you're honest about it.
- IAmGraydon 2y agoTo force our enemies to question whether there’s a chance we could have been in touch with aliens and received some of their technology. That seriously changes the calculus when deciding whether to launch in a MAD scenario.
- Rzor 2y agoI'd say that nuclear bombs themselves already change that calculus, which the US obviously has. No need to account for aliens.
- superfist 2y agoAnd what if "Majestic 12" was not a hoax...?
- krapp 2y agoIt seems to me that the document was pretty demonstrably proven to be a hoax. You can find the arguments and evidence online, I'm not really in a mood to hash it out here. But anyone will believe anything they like. If you want to believe it isn't a hoax you have to contend with the typographic and other anomalies that seem to show otherwise.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- parpfish 2y agoOne thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols. Disclosing things that the military deemed anomalous reveals a lot about military capabilities. Simple things like where groups were, but… imagine you were an adversary doing a drone exercise and you see the US reporting it as UFOs. That would tell you a lot about limitations in US sensors AND that US drone tech was so far behind that they concluded it wasn’t a drone. The military will always err on the side of not oversharing. So of course the military isn’t going to disclose. If we want to take this seriously, we need a non-military org that will monitor and report that is designed from the ground up for transparency. Seems like something a scientific agency like NASA could be well suited for
- revscat 2y ago> One thing that bugs me about the UFO/UAP disclosure folks is that they assume all military secrecy is part of some sort of coverup and not just normal military protocols. Who? This feels like a straw man argument. I am not aware of anyone who takes such a (ridiculous) position, and I follow this subject fairly closely. > scientific agency like NASA could be suited for. That agency was created a couple of years ago. It is called AARO. They just released their FY 2024 report: https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY24-CONSOLIDATED-ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-UAP-508.PDF https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY2...
- parpfish 2y agoBut AARO is still in the department of defense. We need an agency that has nothing to do with the military
- revscat 2y ago> What’s HN’s take Usually when UAP-related news items like this make it to the HN front page they don’t last very long. If this lasts even two hours I’ll be (pleasantly) surprised. Most HN readers, it seems, feel the subject to be abjectly ridiculous and downvote accordingly.
- Baljhin 2y agoYou've noticed that too? It's almost as if there's a cadre of actors (not just on HN) who's job it is to quickly jump on any UFO -related topic and ensure they post as much misinformation and nonsensical points to muddle any serious discussion. Hmm... You would think they would finally give up, given the cat is outta the bag, even the minuscule but legitimate evidence provided by insider govt sources, since at least 2017. At least the upvoting ratio seems to be good on this thread, let's see how long that last.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoFrom the hearing last week my main takeaway was that there is a program that nobody in Congress has oversight of. That alone is alarming but not entirely surprising given the abdication of Congressional authority to Executive agencies. I want to believe that the rumors of advanced craft recovery starting in the 40s are real. But, the reality is that UAPs are likely secret advanced human technology. The one thing that irks me about that conclusion is that historically acquisition/discovery of superior technology has been used for domination by the discoverer. Nobody has done that. None of the reported UAPs have been hostile. That alone seems to go against human nature. So, I'm left with a conclusion that doesn't make sense in human behavior terms. The hearing just made me feel like "Independence Day" may have had it right. People in government know but don't tell the president for plausible deniability and non-permanence of the position.
- ben_w 2y ago> The hearing just made me feel like "Independence Day" may have had it right. People in government know but don't tell the president for plausible deniability and non-permanence of the position. I really do need to finish writing that novel inspired by all the things wrong with that film. Turns out climactic battles are much harder to write than I was expecting.
- tiahura 2y ago“advanced human technology”. The idea that we’ve kept some advanced propulsion technology “secret” for decades seems farfetched
- tastyfreeze 2y agoPossibly. Given the era that this started it is more believable. If a small group secreted it away in the 40s it wouldn't be that difficult to keep it secret. I think that is where all the UFO reporter discrediting came in handy. Anybody that was in the know didn't share and outside reporters were painted as kooks which discouraged others from speaking up. Throw in a few "disappearances" of credible reporters and nobody wants to talk about it. Fortunately we can all talk to millions of strangers around the world in an instant now. Even the kooks can find a community to share to that might be able to coorberate their story.
- gregw134 2y agoI think some country has developed some very cool drones with non-traditional propulsion. I'm imagining gyroscopes inside mounted on gimbals, and when pressure is applied to the gyroscopes they cause the spheres to spin and bend through the air like a ping pong ball, but in a controlled fashion. The spheres are supposed to be 3-6m wide, so filled with helium could have enough lift to counterbalance 50 pounds of equipment.
- tastyfreeze 2y agoPossibly for some of the reports. Does that explain foo fighters from WW2? How about the "F-22 escort" report?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- talldayo 2y agoI will admit, I'm not easily shaken but that F-22 intercept report has been living in my head rent free for the past few days.
- bloopernova 2y agoMay I please have a link to the intercept report you refer to?
- talldayo 2y agohttps://www.metabunk.org/attachments/cannon-212_20241113_154539_ocr-pdf.73054/ https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/cannon-212_20241113_154... Metallic Orbs Intercept F-22 on CONUS Air Surveillance and Control Mission: While performing aroutine Airspace Surveillance and Control Mission in the Eastern Air Defense Sector, an F-22 fighter observed multiple UAP contacts at mission-altitude. Moving to intercept, the F-22 pilot noted multiple metallic orbs - slightly smaller than a sedan - hovering in place. Upon vectoring towards the UAPs, a smaller formation of the metallic orbs accelerated at rapid speed towards the F-22, which was unable to establish radar locks on the presumed-hostile UAPs. The F-22 broke trajectory and attempted to evade but was intercepted and boxed in by approximately 3-6 UAPs. One UAP maneuvered in proximity (> 12 meters) to the area directly starboard of the cockpit; there the UAP established a rigid spatial relationship with the F-22, maintaining its exact position and orientation parallel with the F-22' s cockpit despite multiple evasive rolls and maneuvers. Surrounded by the presumed-hostile UAPs, the F-22 was forced out of the mission area under the escort of the UAP formation.