The author argues that the recent Congressional hearing on UFOs featured credible testimony from military witnesses that UFOs exist and the government has covered up information about them for decades. The author, a retired Navy admiral, vouches for the integrity of the witnesses. He believes society should demand that the government disclose what it knows about UFOs. This could lead to scientific advances that transform our understanding of physics and the universe. Studying UFOs could also improve international security and cooperation. The author contends that failing to study UFOs would be arrogant given how little we understand about the universe.

  • HumbleFlamingo@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    It sounds like BS to me. We’re asked to believe there is an alien civilization that is so advanced that it can travel the stars. So sure of their ability they would travel themselves. However they are also somehow incompetent enough that they crash a ship on our planet? So highly advanced we can’t even fathom how they could travel so far to us, but they don’t have redundant systems?

    This is political theater and a distraction. I believe there is life out there, but it’s out there, really really, REALLY far away.

    • stergro@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      This. If it was about robotic propes and landers I would give it a lot more attention. I can even imagine humanity sending unmanned propes to other stars in a century or so, but the first ones would probably be flyby missions. Space could also be full of low tec probes such as Voyager.

    • bermuda@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      And not only have they crashed, they have somehow yet to make their presence known on a large enough scale to enough people. They apparently always want to land in the desert or in the ocean, instead of where the artificial light emanates the brightest. Imagine if we somehow managed to travel the stars and stumbled upon an alien planet, and instead of landing where there were massive buildings and seas of artificial light, we landed miles away where there is nothing… it just doesn’t make logical sense.

      Like, devils tower is a really cool premise for close encounters of the third kind, but I think they’d be more interested in the burj khalifa (or the world trade center back when the movie came out)

      • millie@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        Personally, I think this whole thing is likely a distraction. That said, why would they land in the middle of a city? You think they want to cause a riot? Hundreds of simultaneous heart attacks?

        If UFOs started showing up over major cities without some sort of prior contact and announcement, that’d be cause for concern. We consider it a huge breach of security to have unauthorized planes in our airspace, I’d imagine that they’d take it as good etiquette not to be zooming around highly populated areas.

        • bermuda@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          The problem with your comment is you’re using our logic, culture, and military tactics to describe a scenario in which an alien race comes to earth. How do you expect them to know about these? Do you think “breach of airspace” is a galactic doctrine?

          Imagine if we found large non-natural structures in say… Neptune. Why woudlnt we want to go analyze those and take samples and figure out what’s going on??

          • millie@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            I would expect that we’d attempt to observe them as much as possible before interfering with them directly in order to avoid a disaster.

            There’s a big difference between seeing some weird looking stuff on Neptune that’s ambiguous at best and seeing a planet whose night side is lit up like a Christmas tree. Casual observation of our planet from anywhere remotely nearby makes it very obvious that it’s inhabited by a technologically advanced species.

            Idiotic as the guy in charge of them may be, we have a massive satellite network blanketing the globe at this point. There’s no way that gets missed by any species capable of interstellar travel unless it’s something capable of space travel without the accompanying technological advancement we associate with escaping a gravity well and surviving the vacuum, then having the means to cross the immense distances involved to get to even the closest stars.

            Major metropolitan areas look incredibly distinct from the surrounding wilderness, and all the lights are a dead giveaway.

            If you manage to fly all the way from another solar system to come take a look at Earth, you definitely know that it and especially its cities contain complex life. Any showing off will likely be intentional if it’s from anything more complex than something like the Voyager.

    • madkarlsson@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      But there are honestly a shit ton of assumptions in this statement. Who says they are traveling themselves? This might just be “scouts” or drones doing basic survey and mapping of the universe and might be automates.

      Don’t get me wrong, i beleive this is BS. But assuming they actually want to land, or that they need to, is a bit of a fallacy the we tend to get stuck on

      • HumbleFlamingo@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        I was under the impression that there were passengers. I recall from the testimony something about non-human-biologics being inside, or something like that.

        • madkarlsson@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          These hearings and there witnesses doesn’t really seem to cover one event just, but a continuous effort and knowledge from the military to keep it under wraps. Just 3 people with knowledge of talking to people that know about multiple events (sounds legit hrm). One event they have talked about is about an alleged landing with alleged biologics, but they are also referencing other video releases over the past few years from fighter jets