Neil DeGrass Tyson on UFO's....

[Timewalker]

Nothing that hasn't basically been said before, repeatedly, but done with style, and evidently it still needs to be repeated over and over. Yeah, I also like how he drew a big red circle around the fallacy of, "It's unidentified, therefore aliens." It's quite the fallacy indeed.

There's a segment in the old Cosmos series where Carl Sagan applies this to speculation on what Venus was like (before we had images of the surface). He summarized it thusly: "Observation: We can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs!"

 

[Taylirious]

Is he able to identify what he just saw?

This is the Decepticon fleet!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Nothing that hasn't basically been said before, repeatedly, but done with style, and evidently it still needs to be repeated over and over. Yeah, I also like how he drew a big red circle around the fallacy of, "It's unidentified, therefore aliens." It's quite the fallacy indeed.

There's a segment in the old Cosmos series where Carl Sagan applies this to speculation on what Venus was like (before we had images of the surface). He summarized it thusly: "Observation: We can't see a thing. Conclusion: Dinosaurs!"

Here's the clip.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj5A0rKI0Ag[/yt]

I remember learning about the fanciful ideas of dinosaurs on Venus before watching Cosmos. It had been popularized in the SF novel Journey To Venus, which I'd been exposed to in a book on the history of SF, and I also remember reading somewhere, probably in science class in school, that many people actually believed it before the space age, or at least thought of it as a possibility, something more or less like canals on Mars.

Actually believing it is indeed the same basic fallacy, but what gives it an extra twist in the case of "It's unidentified, therefore aliens" is that people continue to associate unidentified flying objects with alien spacecraft. Tyson's point is that the word "unidentified" is right in the name, people! Treat it like it means something!

 

[publiusr]

the chart below:

Is he able to identify what he just saw?

Third from the left--top row..the plane under that.

Delta Dagger/Dart, or Mirage?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

the chart below:

Is he able to identify what he just saw?

Third from the left--top row..the plane under that.

Delta Dagger/Dart, or Mirage?

Hard to tell.

Probably Dagger. The one above it is a Mirage 2000.

 

[Silvercrest]

Actually believing it is indeed the same basic fallacy, but what gives it an extra twist in the case of "It's unidentified, therefore aliens" is that people continue to associate unidentified flying objects with alien spacecraft. Tyson's point is that the word "unidentified" is right in the name, people! Treat it like it means something!

I had an entertaining conversation with someone based on that mistake. I kept telling him, "UFOs are proven to exist". Every time he'd rail on about no physical evidence, no photographs, no reliable descriptions, etc., I'd just chime in with "Sorry, but it's been absolutely proven that UFOs exist." It took quite a while for him to catch on.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Here is a video of a guy analyzing a Jimmy Kimmel video with Obama about UFO stuff.

Interesting..

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgb2c0mawDc[/yt]

 

[publiusr]

O/T

Of all the stuff out there that is against the mainstream--this at least may have a bit of truth to it:
http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?157983-Confined-Uniton-Model&p=2305158#post2305158

http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0505/0505194.pdf


The only video I have seen that makes me wonder is the super-8 footage of the Great Daylight Fireball of 1972 that came in over the Tetons and left a nice, steady contrail.

It stayed in atmo for 1,500 km, and was set to do a resonant return.

Probably the best candidate for SETA yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoarchaeology#Probe_SETI.2C_or_SETA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Great_Daylight_Fireball

I have never seen a contrail that steady--with no sign of breaking up visible.


Still a lot of dumb in the internet. You even have ISS deniers now--and then there is this: http://www.universetoday.com/121842/revealed-mars-to-appear-larger-than-a-full-moon/

 

[Maurice]

the chart below:

Is he able to identify what he just saw?

Third from the left--top row..the plane under that.

Delta Dagger/Dart, or Mirage?

Hard to tell.

Probably Dagger. The one above it is a Mirage 2000.

The vertical stabilizer has a flat tip, which the Dart had, but the Dagger didn't. However, the trailing edge of the delta wings are wrong for either the Dart or Dagger or even the Mirage.

EDIT: Wait! It might be an Avro Arrow!

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

O/T



Still a lot of dumb in the internet. You even have ISS deniers now--and then there is this: http://www.universetoday.com/121842/revealed-mars-to-appear-larger-than-a-full-moon/

Seriously. What are they smoking?

ISS deniers you mean people that think there is no space station that's just hilarious