Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick had a few choice words for the public on his way out the door of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
Sean Kirkpatrick was once the man in charge of a D.C.-backed agency tasked with investigating claims into unidentified anomalous phenomena, the new term for what most people still call UFOs. He stepped down from the position in December, and has now published a excoriating farewell letter in Scientific American detailing some of the reasons why.
So why did he stop hunting for UFOs on behalf of the American government? In short: Because congressional leaders believe in conspiracy theories with absolutely no substantial proof. “Our efforts were ultimately overwhelmed by sensational but unsupported claims that ignored contradictory evidence yet captured the attention of policy makers and the public, driving legislative battles and dominating the public narrative,” Kirkpatrick said in Scientific American.
Here’s the link to the actual letter, for any one curious
it’s worth a read. Though, ask yourself… given the capability of interstellar travel, and knowing humans had the psychotic tendency to nuke themselves… multiple times… Would you visit here on vacation?
I just want to know what the lights on all those UFOs people see are for. Too dark in space?
Aliens obey FAA regulations regarding navigation lights.
navigation/position markers on helicopters, or some kind of sUAS, probably. If it’s dark enough, you won’t see the aircraft itself, especially at a distance, unless it occludes something lit behind it, and helicopters can move in ways you wouldn’t necessarily expect. (for example, these are full-collective RC helicopters. The only reasons we don’t see full sized birds doing that are the power to weight ratio, human limitations and… the unfortunately boring question of “why”)
edit to add: here’s the Wildcats demo team, they’re a UK based acrobatics team flying. The tictocs, inverted flying, etc, are things you see in rc heli 3d flying; a consequence of the ridiculous power to weight ratio and being able to adjust the throw on the swashplate so that the blades can go “negative pitch” (relative to the aircraft, the rotors would be pushing down instead of up. there’s no reason to do that on a full scale bird; besides making passengers vomit. Which is easy enough to do anyhow. Wildcats love taking fighter pilots up…)
I don’t think you realize how big space is.
Space is big. I mean, really really big. You may think it’s a long walk down the street to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
I do, actually. I’m just ignoring that discussion because it usually gets eyes to gloss over. (edit, and there’s a lot of handwavium that even JJ Abrams could be proud of there.)
So I’m going with the “would you want to visit a psychotic species that has nuked itself hundreds of times?” (only 2 were done in anger, but there were more than 500 atmospheric tests. Thousands of underground/sea tests, as well.)
Also, for clarification, I’m saying they’re seeing human-made aircraft, either helicopters or sUAS’s performing in ways that people who aren’t quite as familiar wouldn’t expect. if you can’t see the aircraft body and just guess off navigation markers, you can wind up with some rather wild assumptions.
That’s a relative statement.
That is one of the only cases where discussing size is not relative actually. Space is always big. It’s big compared to a person, it’s big compared to a planet, it’s big compared to a star system, it’s big compared to a galaxy, it’s big compared to a galactic cluster, and it’s approximately equal in size to the universe.
If you had the tech for FTL travel, you could destroy any planet with a single ship.
Just kamikaze it and your target literally couldn’t see it coming.
It makes a nuke look a balloon popping.
If they existed and knew about humans, and for some reason were scared of us… First contact would be Earth getting vaporized.
It would be the equivalent of a human putting down a rabid racoon to that species.
First, FTL travel cannot exist with our current understanding of physics. This is why you see most sci-fi going to either wormholes/jump drives - Orion’s arm, star gate, BSG; or by jumping into not-our-universe- Star Wars, also star gate, and andromeda. Maybe Star Trek, but Alcubierre drives themselves would not be able to go FTL. The short explanation is it would violate causality. (Wormholes don’t actually violate causality, but otherwise bridge two points in space-time)
Secondly, it should be noted that while technological advancement does impart military advantages… evaporating a space rock serves no real purpose; and doing so would represent a massive economic investment; further on this point, the sightings are insisting they’re visiting frequently.
Which given our instability (they have every season of the Jerry springer show, for example.)… the question isn’t would they decide to send us to oblivion, or not. But visit us.
And given the energies involved getting here, a species that hasn’t thought twice about nuking themselves isn’t going to think twice about reverse engineering their tech and doing exactly what you propose. And we are very likely to take their presence… the wrong way.
Final though: if aliens were to show up on earth? It’s either to harvest the only thing that makes earth special: life. (Aka they’re slavers or something.) alternatively, they’re space Mormons.
I might prefer the slavers.
Wouldn’t it be annoying if they were both?
We have mathematically worked out near light speed travel, we just lack the energy requirements to test it currently. There are two methods proposed, one being riding a wave we create and the other riding under space(this one was way more confusing). The wave one would accumulate debris ahead of the wave so you aim at a planet then stop short propelling everything the wave has gathered at near light speed into the planet, instant obliteration. We are trying really hard to solve fission which is the only thing holding us up right now. Optimistically we might see a practical test in our life time albeit very late into our lives.
No we haven’t. There is no known mechanism to create an alcubierre drive.
At the risk of being dismissive, there’s no known way to mess with things in such a manner- nevermind enough understanding to say what happened to debris in the path.
What we have are hypothetical models that assume we have these things. But everyone acknowledges they’re purely speculative. (Fun, even possibly useful, but speculation all the same.)
I think we humans are probably a bit self-centered or narcissistic in our fascination with aliens, like the belief they may wish to control or take our planet, or something. Objects in space are all pretty much made out of the same elements, so we probably have nothing they would need if having the technology to travel to us is trivial. Space is so vast it would be easier for them at that technology level to obtain whatever they need from uninhabited planets or asteroids and avoid any unnecessary hassle or contamination. I’ve often felt that if we’ve actually been noticed by any alien presence, we’re probably regarded much the same way an anthill at the edge of a truck stop parking lot is, rarely acknowledged, much less cared about when we are.
Guy who didn’t want the job whines about the job in public after refusing to do it
Half the congress tried to coup the government based on a conspiracy theory. Still not one charged or even investigated.
I don’t know man, sounds like something an alien would say
And as expected the conversation shifts from the facts gathered by the article to every other kind of speculation possible. Didn’t even have time to make popcorn.
Shout-out to the All Domain Research Office’s reporting website, that requires being a federal employee and submitting unclassified proof.
Nothing worth knowing will be unclassified, that’s his basis for “nobody submitted any proof”
Submitting classified information would be illegal. How in the world could they require anything else?
Was that the only way to reach out or submit proof?
That’s the only one I could find.
Also, AARO didn’t even have a website until August 31 2023. Sean Kirkpatrick admitted to speaking with people like David Grusch prior to officially starting his role. But, since these didn’t go through official reporting channels they never got reviewed. DOD even released a report admitting to failing at documenting UAP.
All these sweaties have no imagination.
I dont need faster than light travel, I just have to have developed earlier than you.
You know what a Von Newman probe is? Its a machine that is capable of self replication.
So lets say that thousands of years ago an alien species identifies solar systems with planets inside their habitable zones and launches Von Newman probes at them - no faster than light travel required.
Also explains crashes, the mini-probes, built by the “mothership” are literally that - expendable.
We are literally talking about doing something similar to Alpha Centurai
You know what a Von Newman probe is?
No, please do tell us what a Von “Newman” probe is.
He’s actually upset about continued interest in UFOs despite unsubstantiated theories and contradicting evidence rather than conspiracy theories.
But it isn’t all contradicting evidence and unsubstantiated, and Congress gets to choose how to spend money anyway, so this is actually a weird article about this one guy who’s unreasonably upset people are investigating UFOs.
