I’m sure many of you remember this campy scifi film from 1956. Roswell on steroids.
But did you know that there is a natural phenomenon on Earth that gives rise to reports of flying saucers on a regular basis? In fact there’s a mountain near me where they congregate. Observe:
That’s Mount Shasta in northern California. It has a long history of flying saucer visitations. Why I’ve seen people channel this with piles of mashed potatoes and inverted dinner plates.
On a more serious and factual note, these are lenticular clouds, created by the standing wave that occurs as air flows over the mountain, cooling it below the dew point. The one above is from a Facebook share by Hope Devenuto Photo from Mt Shasta Ca. 10-5-11, from my freind Yoj
Lenticular clouds (Altocumulus lenticularis) are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned perpendicular to the wind direction. Lenticular clouds can be separated into altocumulus standing lenticularis (ACSL), stratocumulus standing lenticular (SCSL), and cirrocumulus standing lenticular (CCSL). Due to their shape, they are often mistaken for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
Formation: Where stable moist air flows over a mountain or a range of mountains, a series of large-scale standing waves may form on the downwind side. If the temperature at the crest of the wave drops to the dew point, moisture in the air may condense to form lenticular clouds. As the moist air moves back down into the trough of the wave, the cloud may evaporate back into vapor. Under certain conditions, long strings of lenticular clouds can form near the crest of each successive wave, creating a formation known as a ‘wave cloud.’ The wave systems cause large vertical air movements and so enough water vapor may condense to produce precipitation. The clouds have been mistaken for UFOs (or “visual cover” for UFOs) because these clouds have a characteristic lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape. Bright colors (called Irisation) are sometimes seen along the edge of lenticular clouds.[1] These clouds have also been known to form in cases where a mountain does not exist, but rather as the result of shear winds created by a front.
Here’s one attacking the Keck observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii in 2002
I predict it will be only a matter of time before lenticular clouds are labeled “anti-science”.
😉
While the web abounds with multitudes of UFO like lenticular cloud photos, thanks in part to digital cameras becoming almost ubiquitous in cell phones worldwide, we don’t seem to be getting any fresh credible pictures of real UFO’s …or bigfoot.
It seems that technology saturation is gradually disproving those notions.
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Logan in AZ October 9, 2011 at 11:25 am
I believe that UFOs exist, and that some of them just might be alien craft, but: (1) The book by Paul Hill has nothing to do with the question. I haven’t read it, but the fact that someone can come up with a theory of how they work if they are alien craft, and only do this by making up his own physics (!), is essentially irrelevant. (2) The Disclosure Project is the work of Steven Greer, who trains people to be “cosmic ambassadors,” and uses meditation, Hinduism, etc. for this. (3) I’m not familiar with ufoevidence.org, so I can’t praise it or criticize it. It might be OK.
So I’ll give you a possible one out of three.
It doesn’t speak well of human nature that, without knowing anything about the evidence, some people scoff at UFOs and the hypothesis of alien visitation, while others as good as insist that UFOs must be alien craft. This is idiotic (and it’s a pretty good parallel to the global warming debate). What’s wrong with just not knowing, and either continuing to look into it, or leaving it to others to do so?
>>Smoking Frog says: October 10, 2011 at 4:56 am
>>That doesn’t seem very likely. You may be thinking of Giordano Bruno,
>>who was burned at the stake in 1600, but it is considered highly
>>questionable whether his ideas about extraterrestrial beings had much
>>to do with this.
I was thinking about Bruno. And I think his belief in extraterrestrials was a basis for his Pantheism, for which he was condemned to death by the Catholic Church, by burning alive at the stake.
The Catholic Church has had several problems with alien life, over the centuries:
Firstly, the ‘word of god’ (the Bible) forgot to mention them. God obviously has his/her ‘senior moments’, and gets a tad forgetful – and so the primary text of the Church was wrong.
Secondly, the existence of other beings negates the special/unique role that humanity has in the life of this god, according to Catholic doctrine. This again implies that the Church was wrong.
Thirdly, the existence of other worlds and other beings implies that there may be other gods to oversee those beings – making the Church wrong three times over.
.
Extraterrestrial life has long been troubling for the Catholic Church, and so perhaps you can see why students of the Enlightenment, the Illuminated ones, have promoted this ‘new’ philosophy of the Grey/Green Alien. Besides, it is a foregone conclusion that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, and so it is about time that mankind faced up to reality.
PLR, PLR
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@Ralph: “For intersteller comms, you need a carrier that is not inhibited by pesky things like matter and electro-magnetic interference. Try a neutrino receiver and decoder.”
Doesn’t that mean your message would get there before it was sent?
Dave Springer;
Interesting. When you built your own hot rods did you dig your own iron ore and forge your own steel? Smelt your own glass? Make your own tires and rims? Did you grow your own potatoes or formulate and inject the polyvinyl chloride pipe for the barrel?>>>
I don’t know what I’ve said or done to raise your ire, but you seem to have taken a liking to making the most ridiculous accusations against me. Fine. Have at it. In addition to supposing that building a hot air baloon that was mistaken for a UFO is evidence that I mutilated dead animals, you now purport to know what I did or didn’t learn from building things myself. I dare not respond of course as you’ve already warned me that should your accusations provoke me to rash action, you carry a gun and are prepared to use it.
G’day.
(a) Name here is _Jim. Too many ‘Jims’ to keep thing straight otherwise. That name is also Googleable (is that a word?) whereas ‘Jim’ returns 763,000,000 results.
(b) Neutrino’s are not my ‘bag’ just as weak signal reception is probably not yours .. fair enough?
(c) The ‘applied and practical’ EM community does not as a matter of course concern itself with neutrinos either …
.
I thought flying saucers were most likely to be seen through the bottom of an empty whiskey bottle, after having drained the contents into one’s belly.
Ralph October 10, 2011 at 7:04 am
I was thinking about Bruno. And I think his belief in extraterrestrials was a basis for his Pantheism, for which he was condemned to death by the Catholic Church, by burning alive at the stake.
What was the basis of his belief in extraterrestrials? He had no empirical basis for it. Everything was philosophical.
The Catholic Church has had several problems with alien life, over the centuries:
Firstly, the ‘word of god’ (the Bible) forgot to mention them. God obviously has his/her ‘senior moments’, and gets a tad forgetful – and so the primary text of the Church was wrong.
You’re leaving out the fact that Aristotle said that multiple worlds are impossible. Without Aristotle, the Bible’s silence on the question would have mattered far less, and it mattered little enough, anyway. Not only Nicholas of Cusa talked about other worlds, but so did William of Ockham, Jean Buridan, and Nicole Oresme. How can you explain the fact that they, but especially Cusa, never got into trouble for it?
Secondly, the existence of other beings negates the special/unique role that humanity has in the life of this god, according to Catholic doctrine. This again implies that the Church was wrong.
A person who thinks there are no extraterrestrials would not be making sense by saying that man is special.
Thirdly, the existence of other worlds and other beings implies that there may be other gods to oversee those beings – making the Church wrong three times over.
How does it imply it? I say it does not.
Extraterrestrial life has long been troubling for the Catholic Church, and so perhaps you can see why students of the Enlightenment, the Illuminated ones, have promoted this ‘new’ philosophy of the Grey/Green Alien.
Has long been troubling? You make it sound as if it were still troubling for them. It is only still troubling for them in a trivial sense of the word; there have been discussions of what the “status” of ET’s might be; e.g., are there worlds on which the Fall did not occur? A few years ago, the Vatican Academy of Sciences held a conference on ET life, and Osservatore Romano wrote that there was no conflict between the existence of such life and Catholicism.
Besides, it is a foregone conclusion that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists, and so it is about time that mankind faced up to reality.
How can you call something for which there is no evidence a “foregone conclusion” or “reality”?
PLR, PLR
What does that mean?
Short answer: we haven’t heard anything from outer ‘space’ either.
To support the contention that there isn’t life out there, anywhere, let me provide the support rationale, basis and background for that assertion from a ‘radio’ perspective.
Let’s consider a ‘developmental’ timeframe and event-path for an ‘alien’ world, which, I think would develop much like our own. One can then presume that ‘broadcasting’ at some point in time was ‘invented’ much as we saw in our own period from the early 1900’s and continuing.
Let me further introduce another factor and state this: If there is a high likelyhood of at least one more world (inhabited planet) THEN there is the highly likely probability that there are more than just those two … with the upper limit being that number of planets that offer similar environs to our own. This factor of ‘many more than just two inhabited worlds’ becomes apparent further below. Let me also state that these ‘societies’ have not and are not developing in synchronism, but rather in some staggered fashion. What this results in then are periods of ‘radio broadcasting’ much like our own spanning a time frame of about 100 years, therefore, during any period of we should be ‘receiving’ from space a multiplicity of ‘carrier’ signals from broadcast operations from inhabited planets throughout the universe.
Okay, back to broadcasting. The result of all this ‘broadcasting’ will be a multiplicity of ‘carriers’ (as well as the information-containing sidebands) generated from said broadcast operations, initially from AM broadcast operations then later on AM/vestigial sideband TV broadcasting (Digital TV has a ‘pilot’ signal that looks like a carrier, but it is not as pronounced as much as carrier for an AM VSB NTSC TV signal.) It should be noted that these carriers are ‘detectable’ in space and not just within the confines of the surface of the ‘the earth’. Power levels in the Megawatt ERP (Effective Radiated Power) are routinely used in the UHF TV broadcast band. HF SW (shortwave) stations in the Megawatt ERP range as well, but the carrier spacing station-to-station is irregular. Domestic US AM Broadcasts are limited to 50 KW transmitter outputs but the use of Directive Arrays (DA) can bring the ERP up to up over the 200,000 W ERP range. Station carriers every 10 kHz for domestic US AM Broadcasting (MW) and 9 kHz for most of ROW … every 6 MHz for NTSC AM VSB carriers (US), and even with DTV ATSV every 6 MHz there exists a pilot ‘carrier’ as well.
I’m going to ignore HAM and military radio for the moment but I might have to include the formerly Navy SPASUR (now renamed Air Force) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Space_Surveillance_System since it too provides such a potent RF carrier signal into space. I could include Time/Frequency reference stations, such as WWV, WWVH that are spaced at regular intervals as well (5 MHz apart from 5 thru 20 MHz plus 60 kHz and 2.5 MHz).
Weak signal ‘carrier’ detection. Weak carrier reception using small or narrow Bandwidths (BWs) improves S/N ratio such that extremely weak signals, carriers, which are pure, CW (continuous wave) signals to be received in the presence of other ‘background’ celestial of terrestrial signals, be they the traces of lighting discharges or other man-made signals of differing origin.
Some examples of ‘weak’ signal detection using earth-bound (the only signals we have observed that had any intelligent origin in the universe):
Moonbounce (EME) UHF TVDX
Examples of ‘hobbyist’ equipment for VHF/UHF extra-terrestrial comms:
The first Amateur Lunar tests & contacts |1st part: 1953-1965
More weak signal VHF/UHF gear (contemporary)
The Gallery of the EME Arrays
EME, SETI, Radio Astronomy, DSP and Radio Amateurs
For variety: TV DX videos on YouTube
… to date, we have _not_ received any carriers, or other signals* …
Now, did I have to be specific as to all these details? Yes, mostly because the un-EM practiced probably hasn’t considered these aspects since they haven’t had the years of exposure or ‘practice’ that someone involved intimately with ‘radio’ has had …
References:
*SETI – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_extraterrestrial_intelligence
.
Smoking Frog says:
“What should we assume (in this area) other than what we know about physics? “Anything is possible” is not about anything in particular. One might just as well use it to assume anything at all, e.g., that my dog could talk, or that my car could fly.”
You misrepresented what I wrote by putting quotation marks around “anything is possible”. Next time, cut ‘n’ paste what I wrote and argue with that. Fabricating quotes is a strawman argument.
I’m not assuming anything; just the opposite. You seem to be assuming that we understand physics enough to know that FTL communication is impossible under any circumstances. That’s an argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy.
If you spoke with a physicist 120 years ago about wave/particle duality, he would have argued that it was impossible. But the double slit experiment shows conclusively that photons are either waves or particles, depending on the observer’s presence or absence.
Just because FTL communication – or FTL travel – doesn’t fit into what we currently know about physics does not absolutely preclude their existence. At this point, we just don’t know what we don’t know.
[And BTW, there’s a YouTube video showing a dog saying “I love you.” And of course flying cars have already been built.]
This doesn’t seem like a good place to discuss ET & UFO. Too much emotion, too little info. I note with amusement, however, that I made an unproveable remark
Well, I know there is excellent evidence beyond the level of information Ralph appears to be acquainted with, but I cannot prove this to Ralph if he chooses to stay with his level, nor can I prove my remark to anyone else who does not choose to research to the depth I have done. Therefore, I might look as if I am lying or deluded or misled – though I know I am not. However, I believe I have good allies, including Tesla and Newton.
>>RichieP says: October 10, 2011 at 7:58 am
>>Neutrinos: Doesn’t that mean your message would get there
>>before it was sent?
Neutrinos are subject to the same limits of C as everything else.
.
>>Smoking Frog
>>A few years ago, the Vatican Academy of Sciences held a conference
>>on ET life, and Osservatore Romano wrote that there was no conflict
>>between the existence of such life and Catholicism.
Only because they have been dragged into the 21st century by the Enlightenment movement. Last I heard, they had given up roasting people on hot coals too. And they haven’t held any world famous scientists under house arrest recently either. I even heard that they now understand that the Earth orbits the Sun, although I don’t remember an apology for the previous assertions. Things do improve, slowly.
.
>>Smoking Frog
>>PLR, PLR
>>What does that mean?
An occult symbol of the Enlightenment.
.
>>_Jim
>>Short answer: we haven’t heard anything from outer ‘space’ either.
Did you try those neutrino bands, Jim? Thought not.
Assuming that an advanced alien species would be using the same comms equipment as 21st century humanity, is a tad presumptuous and decidedly erroneous.
.
>>Lucy Skywalker
>>Well, I know there is excellent evidence beyond the level of information
>>Ralph appears to be acquainted with.
Sorry, Lucy, I am well beyond your level.
PLR, PLR.
.
You and the Daily Mail must be on the same wavelength. Here’s more unusual photos. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047384/UFO-cloud-mountain-captured-amateur-photographer-Russia.html
Wow, that’s incredibly stupid. Climate changes all the time, on all timescales.
Believe it your way Ralph, if that makes you happy. But you haven’t really demonstrated any evidence to back your definitive statements, whereas I have at least admitted I cannot necessarily prove my point to others. And I admit to being too lazy to present the evidence that might help prove my point. I’d rather stay with Climate Science here.
I think there’s a reason we don’t see new pictures of UFO’s, Bigfoot, etc.
You see, everyone has gone to digital cameras, and the aliens have infiltrated all the chip manufacturers. When you try to take a pic of an alien spaceship, or of one of those aliens walking the earth in their natural form, a chip in your camera is activated and the image of what your eyes are seeing gets filtered out. Who are you gonna’ believe: Your digital photo, or your lyin’ eyes?
/sarc
Smokey October 10, 2011 at 10:19 am
You misrepresented what I wrote by putting quotation marks around “anything is possible”. Next time, cut ‘n’ paste what I wrote and argue with that. Fabricating quotes is a strawman argument.
I didn’t fabricate any quote. My quote marks around “anything is possible” were ironic. I wouldn’t like to write “the argument that anything is possible …,” because I don’t think “anything is possible” deserves the name “argument,” and yet it underlies many things that people say, such as what you said.
I’m not assuming anything; just the opposite. You seem to be assuming that we understand physics enough to know that FTL communication is impossible under any circumstances. That’s an argumentum ad ignorantium fallacy.
Yes, you’re assuming something. Either you’re assuming that FTL communication is more likely of being possible than some other things (else what gives it any merit?), or you’re assuming that anything is possible. You offered no argument for the 1st, so I figured you were assuming the 2nd.
I am not arguing from ignorance. I am arguing from physics. You are arguing from ignorance of whether FTL communication is possible, but we are not ignorant of it in the sense of having no reason to believe one way or the other. We have reason to believe that it is impossible. (This doesn’t mean that it is impossible that we are wrong.)
Your problem is that “FTL communication is not impossible” is logically equivalent to “FTL communication is possible,” but this means that you need reason to believe that it is possible. Maybe you’ll object to that formulation and say that you believe that FTL communication might be possible, but this won’t get rid of the need for reason to believe it. By analogy, if I say that my wife might be at the supermarket, I am not picking this out of the blue. I wouldn’t say that she might be crossing the North Atlantic, and if I say it is impossible that she is doing so, I do not mean that I have God-like knowledge that she is not. You are treating “know” as if it referred to God-like knowing.
If you spoke with a physicist 120 years ago about wave/particle duality, he would have argued that it was impossible. But the double slit experiment shows conclusively that photons are either waves or particles, depending on the observer’s presence or absence.
No, it does not. In the absence of an observer, how would anyone know that they were particles?
A physicist 120 years ago or earlier would not argue that wave-particle duality was impossible or possible unless he was entertaining the idea, e.g., because someone had asked him about it, or because it had occurred to him. There was no belief “wave-particle duality is impossible.” No one had even heard of wave-particle duality.
Just because FTL communication – or FTL travel – doesn’t fit into what we currently know about physics does not absolutely preclude their existence. At this point, we just don’t know what we don’t know.
Again, you are treating “know” as if it referred to God-like knowing.
Ralph October 10, 2011 at 12:25 pm
Well, you seem to be unable to answer most of my argument.
Smoking Frog says:
“In the absence of an observer, how would anyone know that they were particles?”
Sorry, I’m not going to debate with someone who doesn’t understand the double slit experiment.*
Smokey October 11, 2011 at 3:48 am
Smoking Frog says: “In the absence of an observer, how would anyone know that they were particles?”
Sorry, I’m not going to debate with someone who doesn’t understand the double slit experiment.*
I think I do understand it. You said, “But the double slit experiment shows conclusively that photons are either waves or particles, depending on the observer’s presence or absence.” Maybe I should have asked how, in the absence of an observer, anyone would know that they were waves. I chose “particles” because I assumed an implied “respectively” at the end of your sentence. Maybe I was wrong. So I’ll rephrase:
How, in the absence of an observer, would anyone know that photons are whichever of the two you associate with the absence of an observer? It’s a perfectly sensible question. WIthout an observer, nothing is observed.
That’s not the only problem with your statement. The double-slit experiment was first performed in 1803, and by 1817 or so it was taken to be part of a conclusive showing that light is a wave. The particle theory of light was abandoned. How come physicists in those days didn’t see it as showing conclusively that “photons are either waves or particles, depending on the presence or absence of an observer”?
Smoking Frog,
To answer your questions about an observer, click on the asterisk in my post above.
Smokey October 11, 2011 at 3:48 am
Smokey, I forgot something. Even if I didn’t understand the double-slit experiment, this would have no bearing on whether what I said at the beginning (October 10, 2011 at 5:22 am) is wrong.
I did neglect something. With regard to your word “hubris,” I neglected to say that I agree that we should not assume that we know “everything about everything,” but the assumption that radio is the fastest possible means of communication is not an assumption that we know everything about everything.
Smokey October 11, 2011 at 5:15 am
To answer your questions about an observer, click on the asterisk in my post above.
I don’t have time to wade through all that to find out if there’s something that you’ve misinterpreted, or if someone in one of those Google hits shares your misconception. I’ve picked one from the list:
any experimental design that attempts to determine which slit a photon has passed through (test for its particle nature) destroys the interference pattern (its wavelike nature)
You see, there’s an observer in both cases, not only one. Your statement “photons are either waves or particles, depending on the presence or absence of an observer” is incorrect, to say the least. Actually it’s nonsense, since, without an observer, nothing is observed.
SF,
Thanx for the cherry-picked link.
That link concludes:
That is why when there is a human observer the pattern is completely different than when, in the exact same experiment, there was no observer present.
Smokey October 11, 2011 at 7:10 am
The quote you’ve provided does not support your statement “But the double slit experiment shows conclusively that photons are either waves or particles, depending on the observer’s presence or absence.”
Your statement unmistakably associates one and only one of (waves,particles) with the absence of an observer. That’s incorrect, no question about it.
Smoking Frog,
Thank you for your opinion. It is wrong, as the link above shows, but you know what they say about opinions… ☺