I'm not sure where to start... There was a point I wanted to make and then I spotted this:
"A healthy skepticism about extraterrestrial space travelers leads people to disregard U.F.O. sightings without a moment’s thought. But in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States."
Terrorists from Mars! It could be the title of a really bad B movie... only the NY Times is telling us we should really be afraid. Ok, I know it's a stretch... The article doesn't specifically mention extra-terrestrial terrorists in UFOs. But how the hell do you get from UFO sightings to terrorism? sigh
What's the point of this post anyway? I got myself all worked up and now I'm wondering what the heck this has to do with HN? I guess UFOs are kind of geeky and interesting to hackers, but surely someone could have come up with something better than this.
As I understand it the whole UFO idea was created by the Air force as counter intelligence to cover up spy plane missions. Basically, if people in the US started talking about UFO’s so would people in the USSR. So it acted like Radar jamming where people would see a fast moving speak in the sky and think Aliens not Air Force.
I like to think of it as a great social hack much like the idea that Facebook could be worth 15billion.
I agree completely. What self respecting hacker doesn't like the occasional UFO diversion? I just suspect that in this case I was lured in by a Reddit troll.
The idea that some hostile foreign power could be sending low-observable aircraft to spy on the U.S. is beyond ridiculous. No one else has that level of technology. Even the U.S. government itself can just barely afford it.
Of course these things should be investigated. Would we want the Iranians to investigate unknown aerial objects in their skies with little radar return? Probably not, but it's the smart thing to do.
I love UFOs because they represent transient, non-reproducible aerial phenomenon. Yet during the times we make observations, it seems we're able to do so in a variety of spectra. It gets directly into the question of what reality is. Is it what credible witnesses perceive? Well, credible witnesses can mis-interpret phenomenon. But if we don't have credible witnesses, we've only got reproducible experiments, which obviously doesn't work with transient phenomenon. Does that mean we have nothing of value here? No -- that's crazy talk. When people see things, their observations have to mean _something_.
Some folks talk about finding materials. I'm not sure that isn't changing the subject -- the point is how we deal with unknown aerial phenomenon, not objects found on the ground. Heck -- it all could be swamp gas for all I know.
1. It's the NY Times Op-ed page.
2. It's written by the guy "in charge of U.F.O. investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994."
I don't believe in UFOs but it makes me stop to think when I read something like this - considering the sources.