Just watched the 60 Minutes segment on UFO disclosure. Wow.

[garybeck]

Everyone should see this. With so much going on, big stories sometimes don't get the attention they deserve.

The government is acknowledging there is some kind of aircraft or spacecraft that moves faster than anything we have. They have video and they know it's real and it's not ours.

How is this not a huge story?

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ufo-military-intelligence-60-minutes-2021-05-16/

[Silent3]

1. 60 Minutes fucked up badly with that piece

They didn't at all give sufficient time to skeptical viewpoints and very reasonable non-alien explanations, and gave too much credence to people who don't deserve it.

[Sibelius Fan]

5. Yep. Until we or aliens can solve the challenge presented by the vast distances between our planet

and other planets, we are never going to see aliens.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

42. Bingo! Most people haven't a clue just how vast interstellar distances are,

let alone intergalactic distances. And how long it would take to cover those distances, even at 99% the speed of light. While not unanimous, the vast majority of scientists, meaning people like astronomers and physicists, are pretty sure FTL (faster than light) drive simply isn't possible. And spare me the "But the aliens are SO advanced!" nonsense.

Here's an example of how large the distance between stars is: As you may already know, our galaxy, Milky Way, which has about 300 billion stars, and Andromeda, which has about 1 billion stars, are on a collision course. They will crash into each other in about 4 or 5 billion years. Recently I asked My Son The Astronomer just how many of those stars will actually collide with each other. "We're not sure, but probably no more than ten." Think about it. Many more stars will gravitationally interact, but actual star/star collisions? Almost none.

[LiberatedUSA]

57. Making an honest Independence Day-like movie isn't as fun.

If they can get here, the fight is over.

I’ve always just assumed that UFOs were more likely top secret (even kept from the President) us using technology the oil industry won’t allow to get out, since it would likely cause energy to be free. I figured we are decades behind where we should be at, if we had stood up to big oil.

[triron]

52. WTF?!? What do you know about alien technological capabilities???

[wackadoo wabbit]

16. The f'ing MILITARY has video and says they don't know what the objects are

Don't you think if there were "very reasonable non-alien explanations" they would have already looked into them?

[garybeck]

25. Like what? That was not the purpose of this story

It is a false narrative to say that we have to be able to explain how they got here in order to accept that they are here. That is just backwards

[USALiberal]

45. You think they "are here"??

[CrackityJones75]

28. there was a guy on TV claiming Earth is round

there was a guy on TV claiming Earth is round And I am pissed that they didn’t give time to the guy who says the earth is flat.

[lagomorph777]

30. Neither the military nor CBS are claiming it's aliens; you read that into it.

They are only stating what has been factually observed.

[Marrah_Goodman]

36. Please do tell us what the reasonable explanations are

The Navy would be interested in what you know that they don't.

[Laffy Kat]

2. I so want to see us communicate with unearthly beings before I die.

According to Hawking, though, they may not come in peace. Still, I want to know!

[roamer65]

3. They are already here.

As to what capacity, who knows....but they are here.

[Sibelius Fan]

4. Says who? Susan Sarrandan?

[nilram]

6. Marianne Williamson, I think.

[underpants]

20. Hey! Hey!

Okay you got me.

[AdamGG]

10. Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken & Crispin Glover

...but they are cool aliens.

[roamer65]

35. LOL.

[garybeck]

26. No. Many people in the military who

Observe them regularly. Watch the segment

[Sugarcoated]

8. Yep

[PortTack]

14. Men In Black!

[Laffy Kat]

19. I want to see them! nt

[roamer65]

34. Be careful what u wish for...

😉

[USALiberal]

46. Lol! Ok! Nt

[triron]

67. I believe we already have. But you are not likely to know about it.

[nilram]

7. I'm surprised the R's aren't making a bigger deal of this

just to get the news cycle even further away from important issues.

[Chainfire]

32. If strong evidence of extraterrestrial visitation were to surface

It would throw the science hating Christians into a tailspin. If the objects were of earthly origins, but from an enemy that was so far advanced of us, there is no freaking way they could have kept the secret for 75 years.....

Personally, I don't believe that the unidentified objects are "spaceships." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

My disbelief is based on possibly flawed logic; but supposing that the sightings were indeed from deep space. Apparently the source has not wanted to announce their presence. So you assume that they have the ability of interstellar travel but can't figure out how to remain unseen? It makes no sense. An entity that is advanced enough to travel around the galaxy gathering data on newly emerging technological species, could park out of range of our ability, settle down, watch TV, and find out everything they needed to know.....There would be no need to enter our atmosphere. If they did need to enter our atmosphere to gather data, why not do it with microchip sized, undetectable sensors?

If the source of the sightings did not mind being seen, If they did not have an ethical problem with interfering in arising civilizations, then they would have announced their presence decades, or perhaps hundreds or thousands of years ago.

The UFO stuff started gaining traction about the same time as WWII. By now, they should have figured out everything that they needed to know and should have either destroyed us as a rising danger, or written us off as an inconsequential planet with no redeeming social value, and moved on to more fertile grounds.

I will believe that aliens are visiting us when one abducts me. (I hope that they won't want me to breed with them, because that ship has sailed.)

The "Good Book" tels us "Seek and you shall find." It doesn't tell us that what we find is real.

[TxGuitar]

43. Those are earth centric assumptions!

I'm not disagreeing with you though. They could monitor us from a zillion miles away if they're advanced enough to travel interstellar distances.
Although your line "If they did not have an ethical problem with interfering in arising civilizations" does make the assumption that alien ethics would be the same as ours.

[Chainfire]

44. Earth centric is the only tool I have to work with.

[DanieRains]

9. Baalbeck Stone 1650 Tons We Couldn't Move It Today

But they put it in place 3,000 years ago.

[Aussie105]

12. Sure, easily explained with enough imagination!

Little green men, flying saucer, anti-gravity technology, right?

Maybe it was found where it is today, because the original sculptors discovered they couldn't move it?

Some suggest it's natural, despite appearances.

[BSdetect]

41. The quarry was being run by humans. Moving the stone is the issue to solve.

I agree that is a very interesting puzzle.

[USALiberal]

49. It is "Baalbek", and they didn't move it. Nt

[Chainfire]

66. What in the world makes you think that we couldn't move a stone that size today?

A Saturn V rocket weighed 2,735 tons and we made it fly! The old world engineers were pretty clever, they had big budgets and plenty of well motivated manpower. You don't need magic or extraterrestrials to explain the building of massive temples.

[Aussie105]

11. Someone explained the UFO blur:

Notice how UFO sighting are always grainy, blurry and blown up majorly, to the point of making your eyes ache?

Never a clear photo or video, with little green men waving back at the person with the camera?

The explanation was:
The clear photos and video reveal what they are, so flying objects, yes they are, but unexplained, no.

But the 'We are not alone' and 'UFOs are real' stories are entertaining, at least.

[underpants]

21. It's the Bigfoot or Nessie thing

Of all the times to grab that camera you still own that doesn’t really focus very well and THAT happens!!! Just imagine the odds.

[Kid Berwyn]

24. May have to do with ionization.

Rex Heflin, an Orange County employee, took four Polaroids at work in 1965. Analysis found blurring that could not be accounted for by the object’s motion, but might be by ionization.



PDF report: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.552.6587&rep=rep1&type=pdf

[Chainfire]

47. Not only that but they come in batches

UFO hunting was all the rage when I was in school, then cooled off for decades. I guess we are ready for another round. People will be coming out of the woodwork to describe their personal "close encounters."

Until I see tangible proof, I call BS.

[USALiberal]

62. +1000! Nt

[TomWilm]

13. Unidentified Sensor Artifact

My biggest question is why this media craze is taken so serious.

Flir1 (also called Nimitz, or TicTac) is a fuzzy blob in the distance. It does not move (although it jumps around when the camera changes zoom settings or does a gimbal lock correction). There's what looks like a final "zipping away at high speed" at the end of the video, but it's actually just the camera no-longer tracking the object, combined with a change in zoom that gives the illusion of speed.

Gimbal is a saucer-shaped infrared glare. It rotates because the camera is rotating to counter gimbal lock. We can prove this because there are other light patterns in the sky that rotate at the same time the glare rotates. The video is consistent with a jet engine several miles away. it does not have any sudden acceleration.

Go Fast is what looks like a cool object moving rapidly across the surface of the ocean. However, the angles and range on the screen allow us to triangulate the position and speed of the object. It turns out it's actually moving quite slowly (under 50 knots) and is quite high (13,000 feet). It does not accelerate at all. In fact, it most closely resembles a balloon, or possibly even a large gliding bird.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/are-the-navy-ufos-real-or-just-in-the-low-information-zone.10921/

https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/pentagon-ufos-to-the-stars-academy-ttsa-ufo-media-frenzy/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7wjzg/the-skeptics-guide-to-the-pentagons-ufo-videos

I was a long time member of an investigative UFO association. I would like to believe in all this funny stuff, but is also educated as a journalist...

[NJCher]

18. Info in this post

Very helpful.

[Xoan]

15. Maybe because the cameras are so shitty.

[NJCher]

17. No one is claiming there are beings

It’s U A P.

End of story. Those of you who are talking about little green men are overstepping the bounds of what was originally put out there.

[RandiFan1290]

22. OP does not mention "little green men".

I believe the pilots know what they saw.

I think they know more than armchair experts on the internet.

[NJCher]

33. i know

post 12 does, though.

[Klaralven]

23. If there were aliens here, they would have fumigated the place by now

If you just look down from 30,000 feet, it's obvious that the earth has a really bad case of mange.

[garybeck]

27. Your statement is an assumption.

The truth is, if they are here, we have no idea how long they've been here we have no idea why they are here we have no idea what their intentions are and any assumptions about this are nothing but assumptions.

[CrackityJones75]

29. I seriously don't get the jerkiness

people are so rude when it comes to this subject and I don’t get it at all. I ill admit hat I am about to make a generalization but it usually seems to be men that act this way with the man-splaining to everyone else about what it is what it is not and why everyone is so small and stupid for having their thoughts on it.

There are people here from this community that have had experiences themselves and they are belittled by people for relaying what they saw. Why? Why do people have to be so rude? It is strange?

We are talking about something that people cannot identify. Why are people so offended by other leople’s thoughts on it? Who know if there are aliens or not visiting us... But I do know us dipshit humans have been searching for life for a long time.

I guess I just don’t get why people are so personally aggravated over it.

[lagomorph777]

31. +1 Willful ignorance, rudeness, and denialism are Republican specialties.

We're supposed to be the decent, curious ones.

[Klaralven]

37. It's unclear why we need a second Project Blue Book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book

Many of the true believers are as detached from reality as Qanon. In fact, I'm surprised that Qanon hasn't incorporated aliens into its Grand Conspiracy Theory.

They have sites like https://www.begin.newmessage.org/alien-intervention/ with books like:

Read "The Greater Community"

Read the free book that reveals the spiritual solution to the threat of alien intervention:The Greater Community: Contact with Intelligent Life in the Universe. God is now alerting and preparing humanity for our destiny within the Greater Community of life. It is only through Divine revelation that we could come to understand these things and to learn about the reality and spirituality of life in the universe.

It's the same collection of charlatanry and crackpottery.

[CrackityJones75]

38. that's a strong statement.

I haven’t seen people making about UFo’s talking about blood libel and child blood harvesting. Maybe they do.

However more specifically what I am taking about is the way people act here. On this site. Well elsewhere also but for sure here and in this thread even.

[Klaralven]

39. Actually, there is an intersection between aliens and Qanon

Contemporary belief in reptilians is mostly linked to British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who first published his book "The Biggest Secret" in 1998. Icke alleged that "the same interconnecting bloodlines have controlled the planet for thousands of years," as the book's Amazon description says. The book suggests that blood-drinking reptilians of extraterrestrial origin had been controlling the world for centuries, and even originated the Illuminati — a fictitious group of world leaders that conspiracy theorists say control the world.

https://www.insider.com/lizard-people-conspiracy-theory-origin-nashville-bomber-qanon-2021-1

And how else would extraterrestrial reptilian Illuminati get here than by UFOs?

[lagomorph777]

53. Nice character assassination by association, there.

You think the fringes of a movement represent typical beliefs?

[Kid Berwyn]

40. Taboo. Tradition. Teaching.

Unscientific, whatever the reason. An example from Dec. 30, 2014:

CIA admits to being responsible for at least half of UFO sightings in the 50s and 60s

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10026021551

PS: A hearty welcome to DU, CrackityJones75!

[USALiberal]

50. I saw a unicorn, believe me? Nt

[CrackityJones75]

55. interesting. I saw something I can'y identify. Believe me?

And if you don’t does it help to be a jerk about it?

[USALiberal]

56. I need more proof than a fuzzy video! Nt

[CrackityJones75]

58. Wait...

You ned more proof than a fuzzy photo of something that someone cannot identify in order to determine if they can’t identify something?

Do me a favor go outside today and take a photo of an i flight plane with your phone or a standard point and shoot camera. Then tonight go outside and take a picture of a constellation in the sky. And then come back here and post those pictures.

Let’s see how they come out.

[USALiberal]

59. So the jet fighters that cost millions of dollars are using a camera like my phone? Wow! Nt

[Chainfire]

65. I think people make light of it just as they would if people were talking about their experience

with the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy or other magic. If folks want to call unidentified phenomena alien spacecraft, they have a lot of explaining to do before I will be impressed.

One of my heroes, Dr. Carl Sagan said that the one thing he hoped he left his students with was a functioning bullshit meter. There are plenty of things we, as a species, don't understand and we have been making up answers at least since we started walking upright. That is how religions came about.

Some of us ridicule positions that we find absurd. No one would be ridiculed for describing something that they saw, it is when they start spinning yarns in their interpretations of what they saw that brings out the worst in us skeptics.

Some of us understand that we don't understand even a tiny part of what the Universe is about, but when someone tries to "explain" it to us we want, proof and hard evidence; "Just the facts Ma'am."

I consulted my crystal balls and I predict that this phase will come and go like it did in the 60s.

[Mr. Sparkle]

48. Its one of the highest viewed 60 minutes videos on youtube,with over 7 millions views after 11 days

The interest in UFO's at the moment is sky high!

[triron]

51. It's clearly extraterrestrial in origin. No way the Chinese or Russians (or any other earth based

entity has this).

[hunter]

54. The space aliens visiting earth permeate everything. They don't need unidentified flying objects.

.

[Kali]

60. no, they are sick of frivolous FOIA filings

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

61. I, for one, welcome our alien overlords, who have been here thousands if not millions of years

All those stories from all the ancient religions of sky gods coming down and mating with humans are true.

The hybrid breeding program has been going since they turned apes into humans, deal with it.

They own us, puny earthlings will be assimulated.

Yea verily

[RegularJam]

63. Here is the part I just can't get past when it comes to extra terrestrial life.

Which I do believe is out there.

We tell ourselves they are coming in crafts somewhat similar in size to our planes, have all of this advanced technology but have to get close to take a look(human nature), and go fast as could be.

Maybe what we are seeing is us. There is some research going on in this world that is truly disturbing. From cloning and splicing to mechanical and energy related. Much of which has almost no oversight in certain countries.

I’ve seen a UFO. It did things that aren’t possible given public knowledge. I still don’t think there were two big eyes and a green body piloting it(another endearing human thought. In one way or another there is some resemblance to us).

[Mr.Bill]

64. I'll just throw this out there...

Maybe they are time travelers from right here on earth. That's just as believable as them being from a planet that may be thousands of light years away.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

68. Or interdemensional creatures, only have to travel a few feet from one realm to another, or inches

Frequencies, popping in and out, higher planes of vibrational resonances, or panes, or something, no wonder they glow