All About UFO's

[WillBrink]

I too am a PhD in a biological field, at a research university.

There are many, many of us scientists around the world! But very few as confident as Dr. Nolan. Surely Dr. Nolan knows how to report/establish a scientific fact to his colleagues? If he's "100% sure" that aliens have visited us and continue to, that would seem to suggest he possesses peer-reviewable publication-worthy data.

Before you disparage someone like Dr Nolan, what specifically have you read of his, or watched of his, where addresses his approaches to the topic of UFO/UAP phenomena? He's very clear where his personal opinions exist and what the data/evidence supports. That's what I ask of any scientist, be clear what's your conjectures and opinions vs the evidence/data that exists. He seems to do an excellent job of differentiating the two.

I will say, his personal positions are based on personal experiences. That too is interesting. Per usual, we can conclude from that, he's crazy, he's lying, or it happened as he says it did. His presentation on material science and his work. I don't have a background in material sciences so can't comment on veracity/quality of the work there.

2022 paper on materials he's tested and results:

"Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics" Progress in Aerospace Sciences Volume 128, 1 January 2022, 100788​

Additional discussion:

 

[krabapple]

“there’s lots of stuff that science doesn’t understand yet”

Exactly, as evidenced, especially in Cosmology.

Thank heavens! Scientists need jobs too!

But absence of complete understanding doesn't mean every speculation is equally worthy. You have to make a case. It can start with 'maybe it's....?' but in the end it's: Where's the data? Scientists are a tough crowd. Credentials don't mean shit in front of an audience of them. You'd better have the data and you'd do well to tailor your claims to it. If you're gonna say you're "100% sure" , you'd better have some pretty solid proof.

 

[krabapple]

Before you disparage someone like Dr Nolan, what specifically have you read of his, or watched of his, where addresses his approaches to the topic of UFO/UAP phenomena? He's very clear where his personal opinions exist and what the data/evidence supports. That's what I ask of any scientist, be clear what's your conjectures and opinions vs the evidence/data that exists. He seems to do an excellent job of differentiating the two.

I will say, his personal positions are based on personal experiences. That too is interesting. Per usual, we can conclude from that, he's crazy, he's lying, or it happened as he says it did. His presentation on material science and his work:

Nuh-uh, not how it works. Science by TED talk (or SOL talk) isn't how claims get vetted.

I'm not a materials scientist (neither it he, afaict) so I'd defer to the peer comments on his published papers about this stuff. Can you point me to them?

As to having had a 'personal experiences', well, yeah, that's not great for keeping work bias-free. One thing I always wonder about is how these clever NHI seem to keep tailoring their manifestations so well to the cultural period. It used to be angels and celestial wheels and things with wings and a hundred eyes and four faces (if you've never studied the taxonomy of heavenly and hellish beings in Christianity, check it out. It's fascinating and pretty wild.) Now it's men in shiny suits riding saucers and rocket ships.

 

[WillBrink]

Nuh-uh, not how it works. Science by TED talk (or SOL talk) isn't how claims get vetted.

I'm not a materials scientist (neither it he, afaict) so I'd defer to the peer comments on his published papers about this stuff. Can you point me to them?

His published paper was added to my post and discussed in the vid. As someone who has attended many a sci/med conference, you're incorrect. That's where data gets shared all the time, often before it's found in a journal. It's vetted by those who attend, and is part of the overall vetting process in the community. I have seen some get ripped up and down at such conferences. Yes, J publication and peer review is the final and essential part of the overall process, but does not hold the weight it used to. That was no TED talk, so just stop. Paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376042121000907

As to having had a 'personal experiences', well, yeah, that's not great for keeping work bias-free.

We are all biased, especially to confirmation bias. I have to admit that if a huge silent craft were to float over me, it would bias me some.

One thing I always wonder about is how these clever NHI seem to keep tailoring their manifestations so well to the cultural period. It used to be angels and celestial wheels and things with wings and a hundred eyes and four faces (if you've never studied the taxonomy of heavenly and hellish beings in Christianity, check it out. It's fascinating and pretty wild.) Now it's men in shiny suits riding saucers and rocket ships.

And that's an important discussion that's ongoing. It may be as simple as humans assigning religious and folk lore attributes to some NHI visitors, or it may be something very different, or as believed by some in the DOD right now, they're demonic entities. Dr Jacques Vallee actually agrees with you and something of an outsider in UFO community and science community due to his take on the phenomena: "They" are not what many think they are. While I'm not religious, I can't completely reject and ignore the possibility they are something way stranger than we can fathom, in the paranormal realm, hopefully not demonic!

 

[voodooless]

hopefully not demonic!

If so, they’re doing a piss poor job… I guess they must think humanity can handle their demise all by themselves

 

[PierreV]

This wasn't a "Rant" against real science, quite the opposite, it's the only thing we have to figure out the Universe, i just meant to say that we (still) know almost nothing really for sure, so that means we don't know for sure if FTL is possible or not, we currently lack the knowledge, (about a lot of things) and may never know.

We _know_ FTL travel is not possible for a ton of reasons (energy requirements, time issues and paradoxes, symmetry violations, etc).

We _could_ be wrong.

We will revise what we know as soon as we have solid experimental evidence that, somewhere, some time, in the Universe FTL anything happened.
So far, we do not.

 

[WillBrink]

If so, they’re doing a piss poor job… I guess they must think humanity can handle their demise all by themselves

I'm not fully tracking. If they're demonic in the classic religious sense, from where I sit, they seem to be doing a great job of messing with us on various levels and things aint looking to good for humanity.

 

[voodooless]

I'm not fully tracking. If they're demonic in the classic religious sense, from where I sit, they seem to be doing a great job of messing with us on various levels and things aint looking to good for humanity.

Why would you assume we need some external influence for that?

 

[WillBrink]

Why would you assume we need some external influence for that?

I don't, I'm simply attempting to follow the thought process and logic of those who believe in demonic entities, who are generally convinced they play an active role in humanity and its foibles. On topic, per Dr Vallee, it's possible they are something different, called spirits, ghosts, fairies, demons, etc by humanity over our history.

 

[Petrushka]

All of our technologies utilize phenomena that are observed to occur in nature. No exceptions.

Things that are claimed to occur in nature are ESP, PSI, remote viewing, and precognition. All of these have long histories of observation and study. The problem with them is that the more you study, the less phenomena.

UAPs are like that.

I’ve watched a lot of stage magic, and the good stuff is utterly baffling to me. But I do not conclude that it is real, Harry Potter magic.

 

[WillBrink]

We _know_ FTL travel is not possible for a ton of reasons (energy requirements, time issues and paradoxes, symmetry violations, etc).

We _could_ be wrong.

We will revise what we know as soon as we have solid experimental evidence that, somewhere, some time, in the Universe FTL anything happened.
So far, we do not.

I bet we are closer than you may imagine. Have you actively been following the topic? It's not viewed impossible by NASA for example, and advances in theoretical knowledge advancing rapidly. Via NASA channel:

 

[PierreV]

I bet we are closer than you may imagine. Have you actively been following the topic? It's not viewed impossible by NASA for example, and advances in theoretical knowledge advancing rapidly. Via NASA channel:

Yes, I have actively followed this field by reading the papers (up to my mathematical knowledge limit, which is, I will readily admit, insufficient in many cases) and the papers quoting those papers.

But I have not been following this field through youtube videos. While there are quite decent youtube content creators (Anton Petrov comes to mind) most of the other channels produce stuff meant formost to reach an audience and be inspiring. When the drawbacks deserve a mention, they are often skipped over by the audience.

Even in this NASA video, the "massive requirement of negative energy" comes listed first in the challenges. That is the "small problem" I already alluded to above in this thread... There was one interesting response with a link to a 2024 paper that went around that requirement but for sub-luminal speed.

And no, the field is not advancing rapidly. What we have are numerous theoretical conjectures, not unlike the many theoretical speculations about the Universe in general (multiverse, black-hole, m-theory, etc...), most of them unrealistic pure thought exercises which is the reason why the more recent paper considered a more reasonable scenario.

NASA also got involved in the infamous "EM Drive". It is perfectly fine, if they don't at least try to think and experiment out of the box, they would be failing. But they did not continue when the EM Drive was conclusively shown not to work.

I don't want to sound rude or anything but the "Have you actively been following the topic?" question seems a bit loaded. You seem to automatically imply no one has done their homework.

 

[krabapple]

His published paper was added to my post and discussed in the vid. As someone who has attended many a sci/med conference, you're incorrect. That's where data gets shared all the time, often before it's found in a journal. It's vetted by those who attend, and is part of the overall vetting process in the community. I have seen some get ripped up and down at such conferences. Yes, J publication and peer review is the final and essential part of the overall process, but does not hold the weight it used to. That was no TED talk, so just stop. Paper:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376042121000907

Thank you! Alas there is no comments section for that (indeed peer-reviewed) journal's website, where I might hope to see expert commentary, but that's not terribly unusual.

Credentialing: I see four authors, and digging further, none of them appear to be expert in metallurgy. Apart from Nolan, one was/is a biologist, another is a retired aerospace guy. One is Jacques Vallee. Tant pis. Anyway, on to impact: it's been cited all of 5 times -- one citation is a navel-gaze of academic sociology, a paper about "Faculty perceptions of unidentified aerial phenomena", another is about doing social work in space (!), and the rest seem to be written by SOL members, and/or involve investigating mysterious objects in the sky (one's authored by physicists and concludes of their sky surveillance blobs and lights: "At this point, none can be classified as true anomalies, although further study of remaining ambiguities may alter this conclusion." Darn!) So it seems like I'm not gonna find a detailed review of it in the materials sciences/metallurgy pro literature.

Turning away from the ivory towers of elite science, but still loathe to abandon the 'printed' word for Youtube videos, I tried searching SKEPTIC magazine at least, but found zip. I'll bet there's *something* there, but I'm too lame to find it.

But still: man proposes, the internet disposes, and it took 10 more google-seconds to crowdsource two eye-wateringly detailed comb-throughs of the article, the longest on Metabunk , a site "dedicated to the art and pastime of honest, polite, scientific investigating of unusual claims. It is primarily a discussion forum, however the focus is on providing concise useful resources, and attempting to avoid repetitive debate and arguments." (<---ASR, take heed!)

Is "Improved Instrumental Techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke 2022 a useful paper?

This is a consideration of "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics." Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, published in Progress in...

www.metabunk.org

and the other on good ol' Reddit (r/skeptic)

https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1aq1hun/i_watched_the_garry_nolan_presentation_from_the

I'll hunker down with these.

 

[WillBrink]

Yes, I have actively followed this field by reading the papers (up to my mathematical knowledge limit, which is, I will readily admit, insufficient in many cases) and the papers quoting those papers.

But I have not been following this field through youtube videos. While there are quite decent youtube content creators (Anton Petrov comes to mind) most of the other channels produce stuff meant formost to reach an audience and be inspiring. When the drawbacks deserve a mention, they are often skipped over by the audience.

Can't disagree with any of that, vids usually try and appeal to widest audience, which means general knowledge level vs detailed per se. I use vids mostly because in our modern times, people seem to respond best to them. I use what ever route information gathering I can, and can understand. Physics not my strong point. My background more in the biological sciences. I do wish I'd focused more on physics, but I try to keep up on the major topics and developments in cosmology, etc.

Even in this NASA video, the "massive requirement of negative energy" comes listed first in the challenges. That is the "small problem" I already alluded to above in this thread... There was one interesting response with a link to a 2024 paper that went around that requirement but for sub-luminal speed.

PBS SpaceTime channel tends to be a much higher level of information, no doubt limits their audience too. I use NASA channel because for some, it's more credible. YT, for obvious reasons, often has a credibility problem.

And no, the field is not advancing rapidly. What we have are numerous theoretical conjectures, not unlike the many theoretical speculations about the Universe in general (multiverse, black-hole, m-theory, etc...), most of them unrealistic pure thought exercises which is the reason why the more recent paper considered a more reasonable scenario.

Well, that does open up a big can of worms. One of the biggest debates in physics is so much of what's offered can't make testable predictions and thus, according to detractors, fall under philosophy vs science. It's fun to note that that was the case when GR came out, and our tech had to catch up with GR. Took 100 years to test the last major prediction of GR. Will that happen with current theories like extra dimensions, multiverse etc? I hope so!

NASA also got involved in the infamous "EM Drive". It is perfectly fine, if they don't at least try to think and experiment out of the box, they would be failing. But they did not continue when the EM Drive was conclusively shown not to work.

I don't want to sound rude or anything but the "Have you actively been following the topic?" question seems a bit loaded. You seem to automatically imply no one has done their homework.

Many (most?) of the responses in this thread commenting on the topic of UAP/UFO clearly come from members who have not done their homework. They clearly don't follow the topic, yet offer (often rude and condescending) declarative statements about the topic, which are factually and demonstrably wrong and covered over and over and over in this thread. I asked you specifically just to know how much information to offer and where to start. It's obvious your physics background likley exceeds mine and I can post J articles and start from further along in the topic vs from the beginning. Hopefully that makes sense.

 

[WillBrink]

Thank you! Alas there is no comments section for that (indeed peer-reviewed) journal's website, where I might hope to see expert commentary, but that's not terribly unusual.

Credentialing: I see four authors, and digging further, none of them appear to be expert in metallurgy. Apart from Nolan, one was/is a biologist, another is a retired aerospace guy. One is Jacques Vallee. Tant pis. Anyway, on to impact: it's been cited all of 5 times -- one citation is a navel-gaze of academic sociology, a paper about "Faculty perceptions of unidentified aerial phenomena", another is about doing social work in space (!), and the rest seem to be written by SOL members, and/or involve investigating mysterious objects in the sky (one's authored by physicists and concludes of their sky surveillance blobs and lights: "At this point, none can be classified as true anomalies, although further study of remaining ambiguities may alter this conclusion." Darn!) So it seems like I'm not gonna find a detailed review of it in the materials sciences/metallurgy pro literature.

Turning away from the ivory towers of elite science, but still loathe to abandon the 'printed' word for Youtube videos, I tried searching SKEPTIC magazine at least, but found zip. I'll bet there's *something* there, but I'm too lame to find it.

But still: man proposes, the internet disposes, and it took 10 more google-seconds to crowdsource two eye-wateringly detailed comb-throughs of the article, the longest on Metabunk , a site "dedicated to the art and pastime of honest, polite, scientific investigating of unusual claims. It is primarily a discussion forum, however the focus is on providing concise useful resources, and attempting to avoid repetitive debate and arguments." (<---ASR, take heed!)

Is "Improved Instrumental Techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke 2022 a useful paper?

This is a consideration of "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics." Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, published in Progress in...

www.metabunk.org

and the other on good ol' Reddit (r/skeptic)

https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1aq1hun/i_watched_the_garry_nolan_presentation_from_the

I'll hunker down with these.

The beauty of your post is, a clear willingness to dig and learn, and expand the knowledge base. If you watch the vids, Dr Nolan is very clear as to what's anomiolus and what is not. Much of it is nothing special as to materials examined, some of it is, none a smoking gun (as far as this non expert can tell) any sort of NHI involved per se. In the context of the total event as to where the materials come from and so forth, again, unless all fabricated, high strangness involved. Again, that's one reason I enjoy hearing it directly from him at al as to context as to how it came into his posetion and so forth. I do from interviews more testing and papers are in process for that and other materials. I will read links you provided asap and see what other info I can gleen.

 

[solderdude]

Again, the evidence for UAP is far better than the claims made for audio claims and audio claims of magic and yet elucidated physics can be disproved by A/B blinded comparisons which ends the subjectivists claims.

The claims made for UAP are not backed up with any hard evidence. It is merely said there is but none is shown.
The claims made for 'magic' in audio can be found in any website, manufacturer brochure, audio forum etc.
That is just as real for them (the 'we don't know everything in audio yet folks, and we don't know how to measure it yet, I can clearly hear it, I am not imagining it folks) as the existence of UAP is to you... why ... because they are fully in to it and only look for confirmation. And for both plenty of 'confirmation' is found everywhere.

Nah ... there are parallels to subjective audio.
What is clear evidence to you is also clear evidence for lots of audiophiles.
It is a belief.
A belief is an 'ensured reality' for the believer but just 'some fantasy' to the outsider.

 

[Taiga]

Thank you! Alas there is no comments section for that (indeed peer-reviewed) journal's website, where I might hope to see expert commentary, but that's not terribly unusual.

Credentialing: I see four authors, and digging further, none of them appear to be expert in metallurgy. Apart from Nolan, one was/is a biologist, another is a retired aerospace guy. One is Jacques Vallee. Tant pis. Anyway, on to impact: it's been cited all of 5 times -- one citation is a navel-gaze of academic sociology, a paper about "Faculty perceptions of unidentified aerial phenomena", another is about doing social work in space (!), and the rest seem to be written by SOL members, and/or involve investigating mysterious objects in the sky (one's authored by physicists and concludes of their sky surveillance blobs and lights: "At this point, none can be classified as true anomalies, although further study of remaining ambiguities may alter this conclusion." Darn!) So it seems like I'm not gonna find a detailed review of it in the materials sciences/metallurgy pro literature.

Turning away from the ivory towers of elite science, but still loathe to abandon the 'printed' word for Youtube videos, I tried searching SKEPTIC magazine at least, but found zip. I'll bet there's *something* there, but I'm too lame to find it.

But still: man proposes, the internet disposes, and it took 10 more google-seconds to crowdsource two eye-wateringly detailed comb-throughs of the article, the longest on Metabunk , a site "dedicated to the art and pastime of honest, polite, scientific investigating of unusual claims. It is primarily a discussion forum, however the focus is on providing concise useful resources, and attempting to avoid repetitive debate and arguments." (<---ASR, take heed!)

Is "Improved Instrumental Techniques...", Nolan, Vallee, Jiang, Lemke 2022 a useful paper?

This is a consideration of "Improved instrumental techniques, including isotopic analysis, applicable to the characterization of unusual materials with potential relevance to aerospace forensics." Garry P. Nolan, Jacques F. Vallee, Sizun Jiang and Larry G. Lemke, published in Progress in...

www.metabunk.org

and the other on good ol' Reddit (r/skeptic)

https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1aq1hun/i_watched_the_garry_nolan_presentation_from_the

I'll hunker down with these.

Thanks for the metabunk link on the paper.

 

[Mart68]

The claims made for UAP are not backed up with any hard evidence. It is merely said there is but none is shown.

The USN footage of UAP and testimony from USN fighter pilots is certainly evidence by any legal definition - not sure what the difference is between evidence and 'hard evidence.'

One swallow does not make a summer but you need to have a very tight definition of 'evidence' if you're going to say that isn't evidence.

 

[solderdude]

blurred images of 'something' or radar images is different from sharp images that shows detail and has been 'recorded' in good clarity by several independent sources of the same object.

The blurred images and testimonies of professional fighter pilots are equally 'trustworthy' as subjective observations of people working in the high-end audio industry for years.

At least one object should be needed for this and would need to be verified NOT to be man-made.
So far this has not happened yet.
Just like the high-end audio industry guys have never done a public and controlled valid blind tests showing they were 'right'.
In both the audio and UAP 'world' it seems to be important that the mystery remains.

 

[Mart68]

blurred images of 'something' or radar images is different from sharp images that shows detail and has been 'recorded' in good clarity by several independent sources of the same object.

The blurred images and testimonies of professional fighter pilots are equally 'trustworthy' as subjective observations of people working in the high-end audio industry for years.

At least one object should be needed for this and would need to be verified NOT to be man-made.
So far this has not happened yet.
Just like the high-end audio industry guys have never done a public and controlled valid blind tests showing they were 'right'.
In both the audio and UAP 'world' it seems to be important that the mystery remains.

The USN official position is that the footage shows UAPs. That is to say, they do not know what it is, therefore it is classed as an 'unidentified aerial phenomenon.'

Your claim was that there is no evidence for UAPs - but there is. Now your requirement is that it cannot be a UAP until it is verified that it is not man-made. In that case it would no longer be a UAP since it would be identified.

There is no confluence with high end audio there. To get to that confluence we have to jump to declaring that the UAP is a non-human craft despite there being no evidence that is the case. I am not taking that position nor have I ever.