Discovery Institute doesn’t believe in nuts&bolts aliens

For the rest of the encounters, we could consider all the really far-out hypotheses, visitors of other sorts such as extradimensional, alternate universe, occult, time traveling, or sources within humanity itself such as a supposed psychically-manifesting collective unconscious.

Note I am looking at the two cases you mentioned of physical evidence confirming the ETH hypothesis...but...

So there are real extraterrestrials and other entities/phenomena that merely ape extraterrestrials?

Isn't the simpler explanation that, given the lack of crafts or bodies, the evidence of ETH can be folded into the other explanations?

The reason why that is not obvious, is that it is simply not possible to anticipate what future technologies (or technologies built by aliens) can achieve!

I don't know what Turing would have said if he had been told the computing power of the computers that are built nowadays. He might even have baulked at the computing power of a smartphone.

I do remember a conversation I had with a microprocessor specialist sometime in the 1980's. He believed that we would soon have home machines with 1 megabyte of core memory. I didn't believe him!

By now, the only problem with obtaining such a computer is that nobody builds computer systems with such a puny amount of memory.

Nevertheless I doubt that spacecraft could be built to travel at such high speeds, because it would sweep out an enormous volume of space, and the tiniest spec of dust would wreck the whole thing.

However, I already described an alternative scenario. Suppose an early alien race had decided to keep tabs on what was happening in the galaxy, it might release a huge number of spacecraft that would travel much slower but would lurk inside an interesting solar system and wait for signs of life.

That of course is assuming that no way to cheat the speed limit of C exists.

David

I think it’s totally obvious that there are no future star wars technology enabling ffl once one understands that energy can’t come out of nothing (nothing comes from nothing, remember!).

I accept that interstellar travel spanning millions of years of flight time between stars and given huge advances in physics compared to todays physics might be possible.

I think it’s totally obvious that there are no future star wars technology enabling ffl once one understands that energy can’t come out of nothing (nothing comes from nothing, remember!).

Well even then there is Hawking radiation!

More generally, I suspect a lot of modern physics is a sort of mathematical fairy tale that is possibly blocking real advances because so many people believe these stories.

Think of quarks. Physicists looked for these like crazy, and then when all else failed - the theory was just too beautiful to be false and all that - one of them came up with a theory to 'explain' why the things never exist unbound!

The average guy in the street has probably heard of quarks, but I wonder how many of them realise that nobody has ever seen one!

The sad part is that it wouldn't take much to upend a lot of physics in a cataclysmic sort of way. So many measurements in cosmology depend on other ideas that may or may not be true, which in turn depend on others. Remember Halton Arp who seems to have acquired evidence that some relatively nearby objects in the sky have huge red shifts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EckBfKPAGNM&t=1313s

That effectively removes the ability to measure the distance of supposedly very distant objects like quasars.

I don't think anybody can put limits on future technology.

David

Note I am looking at the two cases you mentioned of physical evidence confirming the ETH hypothesis...but...

So there are real extraterrestrials and other entities/phenomena that merely ape extraterrestrials?

Isn't the simpler explanation that, given the lack of crafts or bodies, the evidence of ETH can be folded into the other explanations?

Occam's Razor is only an indicator of the probable most likely hypothesis being the simpler one out of the array of possible plausible alternate explanations , not a law dictating just that the simpler must really be the truth. In this case, the reported details of the apparently physical ETI-piloted UFO vehicles strongly indicate physical reality, not being some of the far-out alternate explanations like the psychic collective unconscious theory. So that compensates for and trumps Occam's Razor.

Well even then there is Hawking radiation!

More generally, I suspect a lot of modern physics is a sort of mathematical fairy tale that is possibly blocking real advances because so many people believe these stories.

Think of quarks. Physicists looked for these like crazy, and then when all else failed - the theory was just too beautiful to be false and all that - one of them came up with a theory to 'explain' why the things never exist unbound!

The average guy in the street has probably heard of quarks, but I wonder how many of them realise that nobody has ever seen one!

The sad part is that it wouldn't take much to upend a lot of physics in a cataclysmic sort of way. So many measurements in cosmology depend on other ideas that may or may not be true, which in turn depend on others. Remember Halton Arp who seems to have acquired evidence that some relatively nearby objects in the sky have huge red shifts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EckBfKPAGNM&t=1313s

That effectively removes the ability to measure the distance of supposedly very distant objects like quasars.

I don't think anybody can put limits on future technology.

David

Engineering capabilites have changed a lot since the time of Halton Arp

For example, it doesn’t require any modern theoretical physics to assess that the universe is incredibly big. Anyone who has studied the celestial motion of objects with their garden telescope (as I have) understands that some objects like stars are much further away than, for example, the solar planets.

By looking at the incredibly large apertures of modern telescopes, such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will focus on arc angles of the sky smaller than that of a grain of sand, one can use simple Euclidean geometry to calculate that the objects directly studied are millions of light years away.

I will refrain from getting into the quark discussion, but if you can provide references to specialists in high-energy physics who refutes the evidence for quarks, I will look into it.

Contrary to you, I believe that modern physics provides highly accurate models of everything that will ever be relevant for life on this planet. Physics has been incredibly successful; it has enabled modern electronics, satellites for GPS and communication, airplanes that allow everyone to visit any spot on Earth, and nuclear power for clean energy.

By looking at the incredibly large apertures of modern telescopes, such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will focus on arc angles of the sky smaller than that of a grain of sand, one can use simple Euclidean geometry to calculate that the objects directly studied are millions of light years away.

I suspect there is an accidental omission here. To specify an angle in terms of a grain of sand, one also needs to specify at what distance - 1 mm or 1 mile will give very different angles.

Occam's Razor is only an indicator of the probable most likely hypothesis being the simpler one out of the array of possible plausible alternate explanations , not a law dictating just that the simpler must really be the truth. In this case, the reported details of the apparently physical ETI-piloted UFO vehicles strongly indicate physical reality, not being some of the far-out alternate explanations like the psychic collective unconscious theory. So that compensates for and trumps Occam's Razor.

Are there existing threads for the best cases that you feel truly show the validity of the ETH hypothesis?

I suspect there is an accidental omission here. To specify an angle in terms of a grain of sand, one also needs to specify at what distance - 1 mm or 1 mile will give very different angles.

A sand grain at an arms length. Actually  I got this size estimate from the focal length of the JWST:

Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe.

I would imagine the extremely large telescope to be able to focus on even smaller slices.

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas...verse-yet/

Are there existing threads for the best cases that you feel truly show the validity of the ETH hypothesis?

There are several threads where I posted a list of some of the best UFO encounters in terms of being very hard to explain away, and indicative of real physical vehicles, and where I posted some details on several of these. The threads with info. on the 1952 Nash-Fortenberry, the 1957 RB47, and 1948 Chiles-Whitted cases are listed below.

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...y#pid56677                  List of some of the best, classic sightings

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-w...y#pid55402                                Nash-Fortenberry 1952
https://www.academia.edu/83831064/Revisi..._July_1952                                     "                     (22 page analysis, ed.)

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-d...7#pid57592          RB47  1957

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...d#pid57113                          Chiles-Whitted 1948

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-t...-encounter?                             Minot AFB ND B52 case    (ed.)  pid=57159&highlight=1968+B52+case++Minot+AFB+North+Dakota#pid57159

Engineering capabilites have changed a lot since the time of Halton Arp

We are only talking about 12years since his death.

For example, it doesn’t require any modern theoretical physics to assess that the universe is incredibly big. Anyone who has studied the celestial motion of objects with their garden telescope (as I have) understands that some objects like stars are much further away than, for example, the solar planets.

I have never doubted that the stars are much further away than the planets, and that the moon is closer than the planets

By looking at the incredibly large apertures of modern telescopes, such as ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which will focus on arc angles of the sky smaller than that of a grain of sand, one can use simple Euclidean geometry to calculate that the objects directly studied are millions of light years away.

It would seem the ELT has not yet been finished. When it is, do you think any of its time will be spend testing distances to objects whose distances were previously estimated from their red shifts?

I will refrain from getting into the quark discussion, but if you can provide references to specialists in high-energy physics who refutes the evidence for quarks, I will look into it.

Well the question is basically philosophical - should physics build a whole theory (the Standard Model) around a particle that doesn't seem to exist?

Contrary to you, I believe that modern physics provides highly accurate models of everything that will ever be relevant for life on this planet. Physics has been incredibly successful; it has enabled modern electronics, satellites for GPS and communication, airplanes that allow everyone to visit any spot on Earth, and nuclear power for clean energy.

Those examples don't use any very advanced physics. That is part of the problem. Developments in physics used to generate new devices. I think physics that produces new 'stuff' is far more likely to be reliable than physics that just produces new papers. That is obviously nobody's fault, but it is a modern problem

David