Discovery Institute doesn’t believe in nuts&bolts aliens

My skeptical stance toward ETH is based on the fact that there are so many Weird cases that involve either creatures that seem to be alien or more directly craft that look like UFOs/UAPs but involve bizarre Weird events.

So yeah, if there were only the cases of witnessed vehicles and radar I would think the ETH as more plausible.

How much of a barrier should we regard what our current physics knowledge says regarding FTL travel? That I think it more difficult to judge, since we aren't in a position to fully evaluate what our future physics might say.

The core mistake is to discard good quality data because it doesn't fit current theories.

UFO's are difficult, primarily because the military may or may not seize the best information and distort the evidence.

That is why I don't really follow UFO evidence much at all - or discuss UFO's much here.

I do hope we get to the point where astronauts get far enough from Earth (e.g. to man experiments at L2) that some of them can do ESP experiments.

If thought can travel faster than light, I guess that would boost the possibility that other things can too. Is it possible that advanced beings could transmit plans for craft by thought, which then assemble themselves into physical craft at their destination?

I'm not sure why you think weird stuff points against physical UFOs.

David

Einstein clearly used a lot of imagination to come up with GR - yes scientists do fantasise, and then use whatever they come up with as the basis for calculations or experiments.

David

Nonsense!  He started with facts, those facts suggested possibilities and he then tested those possibilities using realistic, rational thinking.  Science would be severely held up if scientists chased fantasies all the time!

Nonsense!  He started with facts, those facts suggested possibilities and he then tested those possibilities using realistic, rational thinking.  Science would be severely held up if scientists chased fantasies all the time!

Fringe society won’t stop the rest of the world from moving forward. In 2035, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna project will launch three satellites into space to further study gravity and the concept of gravitational waves, first verified in 2015, 100 years after they were predicted by General Relativity.

David doesn’t believe that ESA, Cern,  (and other academic institutions) is truthful about their observations confirming General Relativity, quarks, viruses, and other scientific concepts that don’t align with his worldview. All this without any evidence (even directing me to Nazi propoganda to support his anti-Einstein rant). While we share the same physical world, our perspectives differ greatly. Without a level playing field, our discussions lack meaningfulness. Therefore, I respectfully ask David to disregard my posts moving forward, and I will do the same with his. His views make it difficult for me to engage constructively. It feels reminiscent of past experiences on Skeptiko.

I'm not sure why you think weird stuff points against physical UFOs.

It just strikes me as quite odd that the phenomena of UFOs/UAPs, which goes back into recorded history and includes Deep Weird cases, also includes actual alien craft crossing light years to come here.

There's also the fact that attempts to produce evidence of physical craft leads to so many questionable reports/photos/etc. The best thing we have is radar, but we know physics-based technology has been used to investigate paranormal phenomena related to Survival and OOBEs.

So we have a variety of issues with the supposed physical craft, and a variety of cases that suggest the UFO/UAP phenomena is both older and weirder than the time oddities started showing up on radar.

There's also the question of how these craft are detectable by radar but also defying known physics while in our air space.

To me the question is why continue to think there are Nuts & Bolts craft? If there ends up being some good evidence I'm happy to reconsider but right now I think it's safe to say it doesn't seem likely.

All this without any evidence (even directing me to Nazi propoganda to support his anti-Einstein rant).

Where precisely did I link to such propaganda?

I linked to Professor Paul Fishbane's article. He illustrated what he wrote with a rather tasteless image, but He was supporting Einstein!

David

I don't think anybody is asserting with absolute certainty, I just think people are saying, "be realistic for goodness sake!"  We know nothing of the sort and therefore the subject shouldn't come up in any rational discussion.  Purple goblins might exist and might steal fairy dust but let's not discuss that because it is too far away from what we can actually know.

I was responding to SBU's comments in this thread such as these:

Contrary to you, I believe that modern physics provides highly accurate models of everything that will ever be relevant for life on this planet.

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.

Yes of course I’m certain. The problem is that you completely fail to understand the point that interstellar travel is impossible which is also explained in the OP linking to the article by Discovery Institute.

It should be obvious that it’s not possible to build an engine that can accelerate your nuts-and-bolts spacecraft to anywhere near the speed of light.

Keep in mind I am not unsympathetic to sbu's skepticism.  I think its appropriate based on the combination of our current understanding of the universe and any current, potentially contrary evidence (i.e., its pretty scant).  What I am challenging is the certainty of the impossibility of near/FTL travel.  Who knows what's left to be discovered?

I was responding to SBU's comments in this thread such as these:





Keep in mind I am not unsympathetic to sbu's skepticism.  I think its appropriate based on the combination of our current understanding of the universe and any current, potentially contrary evidence (i.e., its pretty scant).  What I am challenging is the certainty of the impossibility of near/FTL travel.  Who knows what's left to be discovered?

Silence, my comments should not be seen as 'certainty,' even though I may have missed several of the more subtle nuances of the English language when making my points. As described in the article being linked to, there is unlikely to be an energy source in the universe that would allow for fast interstellar travel, as explained in said article. This is meant as food for thought for the nuts & bolts community. My argument about energy serves as a counter to those who believe in David Grusch being informed, in the course of his official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program, despite being denied access (without any supporting evidence).

Silence, my comments should not be seen as 'certainty,' even though I may have missed several of the more subtle nuances of the English language when making my points. As described in the article being linked to, there is unlikely to be an energy source in the universe that would allow for fast interstellar travel, as explained in said article. This is meant as food for thought for the nuts & bolts community. My argument about energy serves as a counter to those who believe in David Grusch being informed, in the course of his official duties, of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program, despite being denied access (without any supporting evidence).

I don't take Grusch seriously at all.

I do think the radar readings and sightings are interesting but the latter seem to often be disks, spheres, cubes, triangles and other assortment of basic shapes. And their flight patterns are more akin to what we see described in paranormal cases.

Can there be a technology that lets an alien race travel across light years without undergoing time travel AND defy known physics on Earth? I doubt it but I see it as possible.

As such I'm not against pressing governments for disclosure, but my guess is reports will not deviate substantially from the reports we already have save perhaps for some military personnel themselves experiencing some of the Deep Weird stuff that haunts the UFO/UAP subject across history.

David doesn’t believe that ESA, Cern,  (and other academic institutions) is truthful about their observations confirming General Relativity, quarks, viruses, and other scientific concepts that don’t align with his worldview.

Right, this is probably the essence of our disagreement.

If you think back to the days of the great physicists - Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. they more or less worked for themselves, advancing science and soaking up the glory for what they achieved. Often they funded their experiments themselves and they had an overpowering desire to get atthe truth.

Most of their experiments were also relatively simple by modern standards.

Now if you think of modern scientific collaborations, such as CERN, we see a vastly different situation. Physicists work in such establishments as one of a large team. Ultimately the funding comes from the general public, and it is seen as ESSENTIAL to drum up funding for yet more research.

If, for example, the LHC had not produced an important particle after all that money and effort, it would have been extremely hard to get money for an even bigger collider.

The number of raw collisions is 10^12 per second, and at this rate a great deal of filtering has to be performed just to squash the data into available computer storage.

As it is, nobody can reproduce the exact data processing that took place after the event. If the detectors contain flaws then these will not be revealed - at least as I understand it, maybe SBU will claim something else.

Perhaps the LHC effort should have been postponed until those volumes of data could be stored.

The other aspect of these large experiments, is that they only make sense if all the crew are utterly incorruptible. People are just coming face to face with the fact that a lot of science is wrong - often deliberately. This is most easily seen in the biological sciences, but is it reasonable to assume that physics is just too pure for people to cheat?

David

David doesn’t believe that ESA, Cern,  (and other academic institutions) is truthful about their observations confirming General Relativity, quarks, viruses, and other scientific concepts that don’t align with his worldview.

Right, this is probably the essence of our disagreement.

If you think back to the days of the great physicists - Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. they more or less worked for themselves, advancing science and soaking up the glory for what they achieved. Often they funded their experiments themselves and they had an overpowering desire to get atthe truth.

Most of their experiments were also relatively simple by modern standards.

Now if you think of modern scientific collaborations, such as CERN, we see a vastly different situation. Physicists work in such establishments as one of a large team. Ultimately the funding comes from the general public, and it is seen as ESSENTIAL to drum up funding for yet more research.

If, for example, the LHC had not produced an important particle after all that money and effort, it would have been extremely hard to get money for an even bigger collider.

The number of raw collisions is 10^12 per second, and at this rate a great deal of filtering has to be performed just to squash the data into available computer storage.

As it is, nobody can reproduce the exact data processing that took place after the event. If the detectors contain flaws then these will not be revealed - at least as I understand it, maybe SBU will claim something else.

Perhaps the LHC effort should have been postponed until those volumes of data could be stored.

The other aspect of these large experiments, is that they only make sense if all the crew are utterly incorruptible. People are just coming face to face with the fact that a lot of science is wrong - often deliberately. This is most easily seen in the biological sciences, but is it reasonable to assume that physics is just too pure for people to cheat?

David