Serious scientific interest in UFOs/UAPs

It appears that some elements of the scientific establishment, in response to the continual good to high quality sightings going back many years plus all the controversies concerning them, are now taking the phenomenon quite seriously, enough to find funding for and conduct seriously thorough scientific investigations. These are credentialed scientists who evidently don't take seriously most of the often ignorant scepticism.

In the following short video Dr. Kevin Knuth, professor of physics at the University at Albany SUNY, Albany, NY, (and of the Sol Foundation), as a portion of a larger event, gives a short talk devoted to his and his colleagues' (especially Dr. M. Szydagis (also of Department of Physics, University at Albany) recently devised plan to attract UFO/UAPs for scientific detection, imaging and analysis using a small portable nuclear reactor. UFOs have been known many times to be attracted to reactors and to nuclear weapons. It is yet to be seen whether these scientists will be able to overcome the many regulatory hurdles, but Dr. Knuth believes they are navigable using a certain type of very safe and compact reactor design using lithium as the fissionable material.
The video is here.

The following link is to a preprint version of their lengthy 43 page scientific paper documenting the fully analyzed experimental results from a preliminary trial of a full-fledged scientific investigation of UAPs/UFOs, accomplished by going to a known "hot spot" with a raft of instrumentation. Their experimental results came out a few months after this talk. This expedition didn't yet include the nuclear attractor idea, but was still bent on obtaining scientific proof of anomalous objects or vehicles by an array of scientific instruments and cameras. It turned out that they were successful- their recording devices picked up an anomalous object which did not appear to have any prosaic explanation.

The full scientific paper on Arxiv (Elsevier), for anyone interested, is at https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.00558 .

From the Abstract of the paper:

"In July 2021, faculty from the U Albany Department of Physics participated in a week-long field expedition with the organization UAPx to collect
data on UAPs in Avalon, California, located on Catalina Island, and nearby. This paper reviews both the hardware and software techniques which this collaboration employed, and contains a frank discussion of the successes and failures, with a section about how to apply lessons learned to future expeditions.
................................................
This is an initial effort in the still-nascent field of hard-science-based UAP studies, with an ultimate goal of identifying UAPs without confirmation bias toward either mundane or speculative conclusions."

Another video:  Full lecture by physicist Dr. Kevin Knuth on the physics of UFOs:  at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlYwktOj75A .

Information on The Sol Foundation, showing the existence of at least one professional scientific society devoted to serious investigation of UFOs/UAPs: 

"The Sol Foundation brings together experts from academia and government to address the philosophical, policy, and scientific problems raised by the likely presence on the Earth of UAP.

Our Research:
The time has come for serious, well-funded, and cutting-edge inquiry into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Sol’s research agenda cuts across the natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities, engineering, and policy to consider the implications of UAP for our understanding of aspects of nature, such as physics and energy, as well as human institutions like politics, economy, law, and religion."

[Laird]

Very interesting. I watched the video(s) but only skimmed the paper. A minor note:

Another video

This is the full video from which the earlier clip was taken.

It is especially interesting in light of the ongoing forum debate over "nuts-and-bolts" UFOs, aka the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), for several reasons:

Firstly, (and this is from memory, so I might get some of the minor details wrong) Kevin asserts that if a craft from a close-ish star could be sped up to close to the speed of light, although the journey from the perspective of the planet from which it left would take hundreds of thousands of years, from the perspective of the craft it would take only a day or so. If he's right (I'm not familiar enough with relativity theory to know), then, though the problem of how to obtain enough power to accelerate the craft to that speed remains, the problem of the time taken to get here is solved - at least, assuming that back-and-forth travel is not required, since hundreds of thousands of years would have elapsed on the home planet by the time the travellers returned, even though only a couple of days would have elapsed from the travellers' perspective.

Secondly, he describes how certain observations of (electro)magnetic fields generated by UFOs accurately predict the observed probability of car engines restarting after having been stopped in the presence of the UFO. This suggests a physical presence at least as indicated by the generation of an (electro)magnetic field.

Finally, his calculations of the observed acceleration of certain UFOs combined with their estimated weight suggests that they do have access to huge amounts of power, such that although we don't know what that power source is, it could very well be sufficient to accelerate craft to near enough the speed of light for the "day trip" referenced earlier to be possible.

There might be others that I've missed, but that was definitely an eye-opening presentation.

Very interesting. I watched the video(s) but only skimmed the paper. A minor note:


This is the full video from which the earlier clip was taken.

It is especially interesting in light of the ongoing forum debate over "nuts-and-bolts" UFOs, aka the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH), for several reasons:

Firstly, (and this is from memory, so I might get some of the minor details wrong) Kevin asserts that if a craft from a close-ish star could be sped up to close to the speed of light, although the journey from the perspective of the planet from which it left would take hundreds of thousands of years, from the perspective of the craft it would take only a day or so. If he's right (I'm not familiar enough with relativity theory to know), then, though the problem of how to obtain enough power to accelerate the craft to that speed remains, the problem of the time taken to get here is solved - at least, assuming that back-and-forth travel is not required, since hundreds of thousands of years would have elapsed on the home planet by the time the travellers returned, even though only a couple of days would have elapsed from the travellers' perspective.

Secondly, he describes how certain observations of (electro)magnetic fields generated by UFOs accurately predict the observed probability of car engines restarting after having been stopped in the presence of the UFO. This suggests a physical presence at least as indicated by the generation of an (electro)magnetic field.

Finally, his calculations of the observed acceleration of certain UFOs combined with their estimated weight suggests that they do have access to huge amounts of power, such that although we don't know what that power source is, it could very well be sufficient to accelerate craft to near enough the speed of light for the "day trip" referenced earlier to be possible.

There might be others that I've missed, but that was definitely an eye-opening presentation.

This is all speculation though.  We still have no evidence of nuts and bolts alien craft or that the above is at all possible.  I personally doubt it is.

[Laird]

This is all speculation though.

No, it's science: relativity theory; electromagnetism combined with statistics from reports of car engines stopped by UFOs; the basic physics of accelerating masses with a force.

The only speculation is that the way UFOs did or do get here is/was by speeding up to close to the speed of light via some unknown incredible source of power, with their home planet receding hundreds of thousands of years into the past from its own frame of reference, while their trip takes only a day or two from their own frame of reference.

We still have no evidence of nuts and bolts alien craft

Only if we deny the evidence that's already publicly available, such as the Tic Tac incident(s) acknowledged by the US Navy.

or that the above is at all possible.

You doubt that science predicts what's possible? That's an odd position to take.

I personally doubt it is.

Oh, don't worry, we're well aware of that!

The conclusion from the experiment according to the paper in the OP:

With one possible exception, ambiguous observations ended up being identifiable. At this point, none can be classified as true anomalies, although further study of remaining ambiguities may alter this conclusion. The greatest successes from this work were equipment stress-testing in the field, creation of new software of broad applicability, and valuable lessons for any future field work.

Still no nuts&bolts aliens - they should have looked in the american desert instead.

The conclusion from the experiment according to the paper in the OP:


Still no nuts&bolts aliens - they should have looked in the american desert instead.

Based on Laird's summary it is interesting.

But as you point out the conclusion seems to be nothing definitive.

It's intriguing though, and I accept the possibility of Nuts & Bolts. This seems like a decent argument for some cases possibly being real craft from outer space...But if these aliens are leaving their planet behind and accepting thousands of years will pass...they seem strangely non-committal in doing anything overt on this planet?

Will have to dig into the paper myself I guess, but these aliens having incredibly advanced craft having technology whose behavior is akin to a human car starting? That seems odd at first glance.

[Laird]

Based on Laird's summary it is interesting.

Oh, my summary was of points he made in his talk (the full video), and yes, it is interesting. The paper is something different.

But as you point out the conclusion seems to be nothing definitive.

Yep, but the paper simply describes a limited, initial attempt at systematically looking at a region of sky with a bunch of sensors. It wasn't very successful. His talk is where I got all the interesting stuff from.

It's intriguing though, and I accept the possibility of Nuts & Bolts. This seems like a decent argument for some cases possibly being real craft from outer space...But if these aliens are leaving their planet behind and accepting thousands of years will pass...they seem strangely non-committal in doing anything overt on this planet?

Yep, I don't think it's the most likely scenario, but it does put paid to the "It would take so long to travel here that they'd all be long dead by the time they arrived" sort of objection (assuming they had the power to accelerate up to a fast enough speed).

Will have to dig into the paper myself I guess, but these aliens having incredibly advanced craft having technology whose behavior is akin to a human car starting? That seems odd at first glance.

Again, that's in the video, not the paper, and worth checking out because I think you've slightly misinterpreted that part.

Oh, my summary was of points he made in his talk (the full video), and yes, it is interesting. The paper is something different.


Yep, but the paper simply describes a limited, initial attempt at systematically looking at a region of sky with a bunch of sensors. It wasn't very successful. His talk is where I got all the interesting stuff from.


Yep, I don't think it's the most likely scenario, but it does put paid to the "It would take so long to travel here that they'd all be long dead by the time they arrived" sort of objection (assuming they had the power to accelerate up to a fast enough speed).


Again, that's in the video, not the paper, and worth checking out because I think you've slightly misinterpreted that part.

Sounds good. Right now my best guess is that adjacent universes overlap ours to some extent, and what we're seeing is technology from realities that don't quite work like ours.

This is admittedly "blue sky thinking", and I'm not claiming to have evidence. I just think as unlikely as I find ETH, and as strange as the Deep Weird cases are, the phenomenon definitely seems to present itself as involving some flying craft some of the time.

Why are there very old records of "shields" in the sky fighting each other? Why are there Nordic type looking people coming out of vehicles?

Some of this can be explained away as mental breakdowns or exaggerations-to-lies, but the phenomenon has been with us for so long and has so many witness accounts...