^ and is why nobody anywhere claims the Chelabynsk Event was a UFO sighting or an alien attack or something equally weird. Too many people saw what actually happened for conspiracy theories to have any credibility.
Neil DeGrass Tyson on UFO's....
- Thread starter Gingerbread Demon
- Start date
The point about the widespread cameras is that if a spaceship lands anywhere around humans, there would be a dozen videos and a thousand photographs of the event. Not one picture, an unfakeable multitude of such. It gets more and more difficult to not capture something of that scale immediately. Which is further decreasing the likelihood of it happening and us not knowing about it, and that's before taking into account the number of telescopes looking at the sky.
And as Neil DeGrass Tyson pointed out in the video, one photograph doesn't count because it can be faked. Although if it is a real one, it might work – something in it might stand out and reveal it as real.
OTOH, things can still happen without the world at large (scientists or otherwise) knowing about it. Unknown species known locally, for example, are discovered from time to time. Even with so many eyes on everything, we can still miss things. So you could, hypothetically, imagine aliens arriving before you had millions of telescopes looking up (ENT: Carbon Creek style, but before Carbon Creek), settling on Earth unnoticed by anyone except some locals, etc. It's not impossible for us to miss them if that happened, however without evidence of it happening probably it didn't. But that's nothing more than the usual "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence", although in this case it partially is:
We can safely discount aliens landing on regular basis to abduct people. There is no way for visits as frequent as alleged to ever be missed.
And as Neil DeGrass Tyson pointed out in the video, one photograph doesn't count because it can be faked. Although if it is a real one, it might work – something in it might stand out and reveal it as real.
OTOH, things can still happen without the world at large (scientists or otherwise) knowing about it. Unknown species known locally, for example, are discovered from time to time. Even with so many eyes on everything, we can still miss things. So you could, hypothetically, imagine aliens arriving before you had millions of telescopes looking up (ENT: Carbon Creek style, but before Carbon Creek), settling on Earth unnoticed by anyone except some locals, etc. It's not impossible for us to miss them if that happened, however without evidence of it happening probably it didn't. But that's nothing more than the usual "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence", although in this case it partially is:
We can safely discount aliens landing on regular basis to abduct people. There is no way for visits as frequent as alleged to ever be missed.
It has something to do with the Illuminati, reptiles, Hitler and Kanye West. 
It has something to do with the Illuminati, reptiles, Hitler and Kanye West.
Your forgot to include dinosaurs
We have unknown flying objects pretty much EVERYWHERE, it's strange to think restricted airspace would be the exception.\
Here's the thing about unidentified flying objects: the only thing you know about them is that they're unidentified. EVERY flying object is, in fact, an unidentified flying object until it has been successfully identified.
A significant event will not go unnoticed because of the sheer volume of cameras roaming around the world. "Something that looks unusual now that I'm looking at it" certainly will. THAT isn't such a serious problem; the universe is full of stuff that LOOKS weird.
Well, you're right about that. The Phoenix Lights incident of 1997 demonstrates this. Much footage was filmed by many different people on that night.
Not everyone believes the Air Force's explanation of the lights being flares dropped by A-10 Warthogs on a training exercise.
Even former governor Fife Symington III later admitted in 2007 that he had witnessed one of these craft, and couldn't explain what is was. And this was coming from a pilot.
And "Phoenix Lights" is a truly EXCELLENT example of this phenomenon. Because a similar event happening in 2007 or 2017 would have something like 6,000 different cameras pointed at it from almost as many angles. Identification would be that much easier to obtain, and EVERY aspect of the report would have some corroborating video evidence.
And we would soon discover that the video evidence provides a relatively straightforward explanation. Human perception and memory are fallible, but digital photography is pretty effective, especially form multiple sources.
Which illustrates Tyson's point nicely: why do you assume a pilot is in a better position to identify a flying object than an average person on the ground? That's like asking a cab driver about a strange-looking object in a department store window.
There are a large number of eyewitness testimonies over the years from pilots, police, and other military and first responder types whose jobs (in part) were to remain highly observant in potentially stressful events. That is why they are generally considered a "better position to identify a flying object than an average person on the ground" (or off). The Washington Press Club event from 2013 was a good example of these rather intriguing testimonials (although the article is less than favorable on the subject). These weren't a bunch of backwoods hillbillies looking for 15 minutes of fame, but trained veterans of their respective fields of expertise risking their privacy and reputation to go on the record. Not an insignificant thing there, IMO.
Which again doesn't change the fact that "trained to be observant under stress" is NOT the same thing as "trained to identify distant objects by sight alone." A very calm person looking at something he's never seen before is in no better position to identify it than a frantic astronomer.
Pilots are trained to observe their instruments, the condition of their aircraft, their relative position in the sky, and their relative position with respect to other aircraft. Nowhere in that description is "The capacity to instantly identify flying objects in the sky with you" a useful trait. This is especially true for combat pilots, who no longer rely on visual data and get most of their information from radars and sensors.
Same example as above: if you spot a suspicious-looking object by the side of the road, you probably aren't going to ask a bus driver.
Just so I get this right, based on this statement, it is no longer possible and/or feasible and/or necessary for a combat pilot now-a-days to be trained to visually discriminate a potential enemy aircraft based on its silhouette from a friendly one without electronic instrumentation? They're not even technically looking out the window anymore?
Really??
It was NEVER done by silhouette alone, even during the Second World War when pilots actually WERE trained to memorize the silhouettes of enemy aircraft. This is because the silhouettes themselves aren't reliable identifiers in combat, and mistakes were often made between similar types of aircraft (there's that famous story where a squadron of Me-109s flying in bad weather accidentally joined a formation of P-51s en route to Berlin and neither of them noticed until the 109s opened their landing gears and the American pilots had a collective "oh shit" moment).
This is the whole reason why IFF transponders were invented: because visual identification is unreliable at any sort of distance or at any relative speed significantly higher than "zero". It's also the reason why aircraft fly with huge, highly visible markings on their wings and tails: so that they CAN be visually identified as belonging to one country or another even if you aren't totally sure what type of aircraft you're looking at.
More importantly, you're assuming pilots would be trained in GENERAL observation skills rather than simply memorizing a set of known silhouettes to match against.
So one day while sitting in a helicopter you see this:
Now assuming that this pilot is trained to recognize the silhouette of every combat in the world, particularly those from the chart below:
Is he able to identify what he just saw?
Perhaps not, but he sure could likely identify what it isn't!
Yeah, he'd probably say something like
"I'm a pilot and I know just about every machine that flies. But that thing is enormous and inexplicable. It has a geometric outline, a constant shape. That's not like any aircraft I've ever heard of. Who knows where it came from?"
And that was Tyson's point, basically. "I don't know, therefore aliens." is not a logical explanation for UFOs.
The Russian fighters are tricky as hell since every Sukhois plane since 1983 has the same basic silhouette (and the Mig-29 looks similar as well even if it is a bit smaller).
Well the purest definition of the acronym UFO is Unidentified Flying Object and while the implication of extraterrestrial life has monopolized the term, a vehicle of terrestrial origin is, granted, always more likely (USO's, however, are a different kettle of fish). Yes, just because something is unidentifiable should never automatically equal aliens, and the fringe crackpots of that subculture have done that particular field of study no favors whatsoever. Sure, there is no proof extraterrestrials exist amidst the piles of circumstantial evidence, neither is there any proof that they don't exist, and that gives me hope.
C'mon, man, this is a Trek board! Why can't there be aliens out there? I WANT TO BELIEVE!!!
Nothing is unidentifiable. Just unidentified.
That's part of the distinction there: somebody who "believes in" UFOs would see something unusual and go to extraordinary lengths to reject ANY attempt to identify it. As you yourself just implied, "He'd be able to tell what it isn't." That's a process of elimination that goes nowhere but is very useful to people who are trying to claim "Aliens!"
Because they're already IN HERE!
Heh...well, yeah... 
Similar threads
- Locked
