How easy is it actually to reverse engineer a UFO?
- Thread starter valkyrie013
- Start date
If anyone tried to take it apart using the tools they had back then, it would most likely be irreparably damaged. What looks like a piece of silicon contains billions of microscopic components!! In 1920 the first computer was still a couple of decades away and the first attempts at miniaturization forty to fifty years away. An Ipad would have been incomprehensible.
Yeah, I'm informed it's hard enough trying to take an iPad apart with the approved Apple tools. Someone in the 1920s wouldn't have had much clue what the integrated circuits and other miniature surface-mounted components did at first glance. It would have been relatively easy to identify resistors, capacitors, inductors, and probably diodes by direct measurement but this could damage voltage sensitive components. Digital circuitry didn't come to the fore until WW2 and that used vacuum tubes. Creating a stable DC power supply to allow operation wouldn't have been a problem provided the voltage and polarity were displayed on the case (I assume this is so - I don't use Apple products). Of course, there would be no wi-fi to connect to and getting past a login screen that required a password would have been well nigh impossible. Maybe there's a way around the latter problem by reverting to factory settings but this is likely not obvious.
That was a rethorical question.
If Ouamuamua were a tumbling Orion type pusher plate with simpler electronics to survive time...it might actually be behind our level of tech, but above our level of scale and ambition. Some of the Roswell believers have it that the Mogul bal—I mean the saucer—wasn’t even a saucer at all... but a lifting body. Now as a one way lander, there is nothing wrong with that.
Starships—even FTL—is less a problem to me than the tiny, modest shuttles that go up in one tiny stage from planetside to ship.
Only the winged craft from AVATAR looked like it had the muscle to pull that off.
Starships—even FTL—is less a problem to me than the tiny, modest shuttles that go up in one tiny stage from planetside to ship.
Only the winged craft from AVATAR looked like it had the muscle to pull that off.
I have a flip phone. Imagine it being sent back in time a century, to 1921. Could the genius level scientists/engineers of that era understand the electronics? (And if they did, could they duplicate the components of such?). Would they even realize that it is a communications device?
On the other hand, the hinge would be rather straight forward.
On the other hand, the hinge would be rather straight forward.
You have a flip phone? Have you just dropped in from the 1990s?
The engineers of 1921 would not understand much of the electronics for reasons already stated. They would be able to work out the general purpose from the appearance of the device and the presence of a speaker, microphone, and battery. A SIM card would be a mystery as would integrated circuits. Discrete surface mounted components would be recognised as resistors, capacitors, diodes etc. from their electrical characteristics once they were isolated from the circuit board. The potential of individual transistors as switching and amplification devices would be recognised and the component semiconductor materials analysed to permit reverse engineering, albeit crudely to start with.
Whether this is what happened at Bell Telephone Labs in December, 1947, following another event that supposedly occurred earlier that year, I doubt. The discovery of asymmetric electrical conduction across the contact between a crystalline mineral and a metal was made by Braun in 1874. Bose was the first to use a crystal for detecting radio waves in 1894. This primitive form of diode was developed into a practical device for wireless telegraphy by Pickard, who invented the silicon crystal detector in 1903. During the mid 1930s, researchers at Bell Labs recognized the potential of the crystal detector for application in microwave technology. Researchers developed point-contact diodes (crystal rectifiers or crystal diodes) during World War II for radar applications. It was probably about this time that it was realised that semiconductor devices might be able to replace vacuum tubes for performing switching and amplification.
The principle of the field-effect transistor (FET) was proposed by Lilienfeld in 1925 and also by Heil in 1935, although neither produced a working device. Bell Labs developed the first bipolar junction transistor (BJT), which works on a different principle from the FET*, but its invention stemmed from research on the properties of semiconductors by Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain. The first FET to be successfully built was the junction field-effect transistor (JFET), patented by Welker in 1945. The static induction transistor (SIT), a short channel form of JFET, was invented by Nishizawa and Watanabe in 1950.The now ubiquitous metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) was invented by Atalla and Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959.
* A BJT is bipolar and uses both electrons and electron holes as charge carriers. A FET is unipolar and uses only one kind of charge carrier.
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Microfiche perhaps more than any other tech pointed the way forward—and Xerox.The microfiche readers would make good computer housings. Microform needs to make a comeback in case of EMP.
I can just see Oumuamua as giant slabs of microform.
Light and a scope’ are all you need.
I don’t think it was a sail—but what better way for us to read it than through microform AS retroreflectors...
I can just see Oumuamua as giant slabs of microform.
Light and a scope’ are all you need.
I don’t think it was a sail—but what better way for us to read it than through microform AS retroreflectors...
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Oumuamua was smaller than a pixel in the best optical telescopes when it was nearest to Earth.
as for the Cell phone in the 20's
Looking at it, they would eventually come to the conclusion that this is a wireless phone. just from the keypad itself, now a smart phone would be more difficult, especally if it didn't have a charge.
They would look at it, see what part does what, then they'd build one with 1920's technology, and it would be the size of a room. What i said about "inspiring" a technology.
Now, take a smart phone back to say, the 60's.. How far ahead would that push the computer sector just from studying one!
Looking at it, they would eventually come to the conclusion that this is a wireless phone. just from the keypad itself, now a smart phone would be more difficult, especally if it didn't have a charge.
They would look at it, see what part does what, then they'd build one with 1920's technology, and it would be the size of a room. What i said about "inspiring" a technology.
Now, take a smart phone back to say, the 60's.. How far ahead would that push the computer sector just from studying one!
Not much point in building a cell phone if you don't have a cell network for it to connect to.
Plus reverse engineering a cell phone should be child's play compared to do so with a starship.
Hmm, maybe not, since you already know what the device is for, in a spaceship you would be looking for everything that is needed to do what it is supposed to do, you need computers, engines, energy sources, fuel, etc etc etc, they might be incredibly advanced but at least you do know what it is you want to find.
If the craft uses anti-matter, miniature black holes, or exotic matter of some sort as fuel or to generate energy, we might be hard pressed to recreate any of these in sufficient quantity unless detailed plans were also found for other technologies known to the aliens. Similar difficulties apply for advanced nanoengineering, computronium, and neutronium devices. We could probably figure out the composition but have no clue about the manufacturing techniques that were used.
Except that as I said before you're looking at miniaturized, possibly molecular-sized computer components, unknown kinds of interfaces, unknown languages (it took Champollion twenty years to decipher Egyptian in spite of having the Rosetta Stone, unknown safeguards against intruders (you don't think that these aliens are so stupid that they let anybody access their main computer, do you?) Plus we DON'T know what we are supposed to find, for a good reason, and that's because outside of sci. fi; fantasies, we don't have spaceships!!! It would be like saying that a roman gladiator knew what he was supposed to find in a modern car!!!
If the spaceship uses anti-matter for instance... We don't know how to make more than a few atoms of anti-matter at a time... If we had more than a few grams of it we would most likely end up blowing ourselves up in a spectacular explosion as we have absolutely no experience in how to handle it.
C
Captain pl1ngpl0ng
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They didnt manage to reverse-engineer the ufo that crashed after the teenage-aliens had
taken the small ship without permission and was on a joyride when they crashed on earth. (a-51)
They where unexperienced and also under the influence of (')nahvi-klakk as we call it (C2H5OH-C₂₁H₃₀O₂) ,
no wonder they crashed.
The mothership did not take the chance to retrieve them, their lifesigns where non-existent anyway.
A tragic but not an uncommon story in this quadrant.
Anyway, the f-117 nighthawk was just a shadow of the original ship,
the humans could never understand the technology. Stupid humans....
taken the small ship without permission and was on a joyride when they crashed on earth. (a-51)
They where unexperienced and also under the influence of (')nahvi-klakk as we call it (C2H5OH-C₂₁H₃₀O₂) ,
no wonder they crashed.
The mothership did not take the chance to retrieve them, their lifesigns where non-existent anyway.
A tragic but not an uncommon story in this quadrant.
Anyway, the f-117 nighthawk was just a shadow of the original ship,
the humans could never understand the technology. Stupid humans....
A few years ago there was footage from a gun camera of U.S. warplane that supposedly showed a UFO.
Why didn't the fighter pilot shoot the UFO down or at least try and shoot at it?
If he shot it down, we would have alien technology to advance the human race with. If he missed, then we could have developed better guidance systems.
Since he did neither, are there members within the government who are being subverted by alien influences?
What would you have done?
I would have shot it down, taken the discharge and exposed the truth.
Why didn't the fighter pilot shoot the UFO down or at least try and shoot at it?
If he shot it down, we would have alien technology to advance the human race with. If he missed, then we could have developed better guidance systems.
Since he did neither, are there members within the government who are being subverted by alien influences?
What would you have done?
I would have shot it down, taken the discharge and exposed the truth.
You would shoot down a non-threatening craft and potentially murder innocent beings?
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