NYT: US Navy, US Air Force vs UFOs. What do poets think?
 

Today's New York Times has two front page stories relating to unexplained seemingly physical aerial phenomena reported and studied by US military. There are links and excepts below.


* * * “Well, we’ve got a real-world vector for you,” the radio operator said, according to Commander Fravor. For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.
The radio operator instructed Commander Fravor and Commander Slaight, who has given a similar account, to investigate.
The two fighter planes headed toward the objects. The Princeton alerted them as they closed in, but when they arrived at “merge plot” with the object — naval aviation parlance for being so close that the Princeton could not tell which were the objects and which were the fighter jets — neither Commander Fravor nor Commander Slaight could see anything at first. There was nothing on their radars, either.
Then, Commander Fravor looked down to the sea. It was calm that day, but the waves were breaking over something that was just below the surface. Whatever it was, it was big enough to cause the sea to churn. * * *

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/u...ject-navy.html
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* * * James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”* * *
* * * Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.” * * *
* * * “I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain. * * *

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/u...arry-reid.html

There inevitably exists or has existed lifeforms elsewhere in the universe, which is more or less infinite and therefore has produced more or less infinite environments for life to exist, and that is only if we take into consideration what we believe to be the correct environment for life to exist. If we expand what we think of as being suitable for life, then the possibility expands as well.

I am less convinced they have visited us. But one night long ago in a car ride, I asked by NASA-employed father if aliens exist. He said yes and was about to say something further but stopped. Years later I asked him about this and he denied ever saying such a thing, although I know he did.

Thank you, Walter.

Perhaps more emphasis should have been put on the words "seemingly physical" in the original posting.

The great bulk of unexplained alleged observations reported so far have been just that, observations: reports of evidence that, if not illusory, is entirely mediated by electromagnetic radiation (such as visible light and radar) of one sort or other. It is well to consider what striking advances have recently been made in terrestrial manipulation of this spectrum. I will mention only holograms, which are beginning to be more than monochromatic, and recent demonstrations of "slowed light" that can be essentially stopped dead in suitable mediums. I will largely pass by very long-range quantum entanglement, which can involve photons. My point is that what one sees by radar or camera may not be necessarily physically what one expects from everyday experience. To be frivolous, an example could be that of a "Batman" image projected onto a New York building from New Jersey miles away that amazes people in the street. If the image flapped its cape or zoomed, it would still be a giant "magic lantern" display.

There is, of course, the famous Fermi paradox. In 1950 at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the renowned physicist Enrico Fermi walked to lunch with some colleagues who were discussing various topics, including recent UFO reports. Later, while seated at their table and taking about other things, Fermi suddenly said, “Where is everybody?”

Fermi’s fellow scientists laughed heartily because they understood the question referred to the earlier passing talk about UFOs and because they understood the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence and high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. There is no answer to the Fermi Paradox, only “possible explanations.” And if you ask a dozen different scientists what their guess is about the correct one, you’ll get a dozen different answers. The entire subject makes for fascinating reading.

Richard

What do poets think?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

I don't think Fermi's paradox is much of a paradox. Really, it is a strawman. The universe is immeasurably large (quite literally; we can only detect and thus measure what is inside the observable universe) not only in space but also in time. That we have not made contact is probabilistically normal. We have only been looking for the past 50 or so years and have only been emitting manmade radio waves for the past 100. That is such a small time as to not even be worth mentioning.

From where did life on this planet originate? If pressed to answer, I might say exogenesis. They have already come here and their single-celled, simple forms have become us.

Some interesting points, Walter, except, I think, for describing Fermi's paradox as a strawman. The point isn't only that we haven't found any intelligent extraterrestrial life by our limited and short time looking, but "they" haven't found us.

A fascinating examination of this issue, including grand visuals, can be found here

I highly recommend it.

Richard

Richard - Wow, and thanks. That link combined being one of the funniest and most sobering ever - and a great constrainer of poetic 'wonderings'.

Paradox. If we boil things down to a single word.