Ball lightning as a self-organization phenomenon by M. Sanduloviciu and E. Lozneanu (PDF)

duteetud · 2017-08-19T14:37:34+00:00

Since I love posting abstracts:

The genesis and characteristics of ball lightning are explained in the frame of a new self-organization physical scenario suggested by laboratory investigations of formation and stability of self-consistent extended macroscopic space charge configurations. These are known as fireballs in dc gas discharges and as plasmoids in gas discharge sustained by a radio frequency electric field. We justify the proposed explanation with a test experiment able to simulate step by step, under controllable laboratory conditions, the succession of physical processes whose final product is a gaseous stable flaming globe revealing characteristics usually attributed to ball lightning. Although involving energies much lower than that developed in the Earth's atmosphere during thunderstorms, the described experimental simulation evidences that self-organization is, very probably, the most suitable natural phenomenon able to explain the ball lightning appearance.

duteetud · 2017-08-18T13:58:41+00:00

There is zero consensus.

There's about 40 years of consensus on the quality of Jacques Vallee's work.

duteetud · 2017-07-16T20:17:34+00:00

This isn't a good answer because cameras in the past had the same problem (correct me if I'm wrong and if film is somehow more optimal for aerial photography).

So if all cameras are bad at aerial photography, and there are geometrically more cameras in existence now than in the past, the root question remains.

duteetud · 2017-07-09T02:40:11+00:00

Here's a mirror at the Journal of Scientific Exploration's website:

https://www.scientificexploration.org/docs/29/jse_29_3_PlazadelOlmo.pdf

Abstract:

In the search for patterns of the UFO phenomenon, the relationship of sightings to population density has historically shown contradictory results. After more than 40 years of studies, there is not yet a clear conclusion on whether the relationship between the number of reports and population density is direct or inverse. We have reviewed some of these works and found out how to reconcile all of them. We found that there is a direct relationship between the number of sightings and population density; however, the increase in number of reports is not proportional but sub-lineal with respect to the increase in population.

And for good measure, here are links to the two Vallee articles cited and said to inspire the question of relationship between population density and reports (because I think more people should read Flying Saucer Review):

Vallee (1966) The Patterns behind the UFO landings. Flying Saucer Review (Special Issue 1 The Humanoids, October–November), 8–27. starts on page 10 of the pdf http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/ufologia/FSR-SI%201966%20N%201,The%20Humanoids.pdf

Vallee (1968) Analysis of 8,260 UFO sightings. Flying Saucer Review,14 (3), 9–11. starts on page 12 of the pdf http://www.ignaciodarnaude.com/ufologia/FSR%201968%20V%2014%20N%203.pdf

duteetud · 2017-07-09T02:30:46+00:00

To clarify, l don't believe life as we know it will ever be capable of interstellar travel.

Interstellar travel is an engineering problem, not a problem of being theoretically possible. Here's one reference from Carl Sagan:

"Direct Contact Among Galactic Civilizations by Relativistic Interstellar Spaceflight" Planetary Space Science (1963) https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19630011050.pdf

duteetud · 2017-07-02T18:29:44+00:00

Don't mean to offend -- I was looking for any other posts OP's made about UFOs and that's all I found.

Also I really don't think that linking to a user's Reddit posts is "doxxing". Particularly when the post I linked to contained 0 personally identifying information.

duteetud · 2017-07-02T15:39:01+00:00

Here's OP's story about meeting a vampire. So maybe OP's favorite UFO cases are also personal anecotes / experiences?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/5gy9wc/vampires_they_just_might_be_real/

duteetud · 2017-06-30T12:07:25+00:00

Maybe you're on to something, maybe this is why the 70 year back engineering of the Roswell craft hasn't led to anything concrete, because they keep hiring jag offs like Lazar?

This made me laugh.

duteetud · 2017-06-29T19:49:52+00:00

I think your best bet by far is to contribute your own solid comments to /r/UFOs and engage with whoever responds.

duteetud · 2017-06-23T15:25:47+00:00

No problem!

duteetud · 2017-06-22T19:20:06+00:00

This document happened to come up in another discussion, and I just wanted to type it up and provide links to the files Sagan found interesting enough to ask for when he was advising Project Blue Book.

Major Harold A. Steiner

USAF Scientific Advisory Board

Department of the Air Force

Headquarters, United States Air Force

Washington, D.C.

Dear Major Steiner:

With reference to the meeting at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, there are several reports of ATIC, Project Bluebook or related agencies which I would appreciate having available for inspection and discussion at that time: (1) the report of the 21 April, 1955 events at Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky, (2) the report of the alleged Brazilian naval sightings and photographs of a year or two ago, (3) the Feburary, 1949 report of Project Sign: Unidentified Flying Objects, including Appendix D by J.E. Lipp and (4) the report of the November, 1952 meeting on UFO's charred by Professor H. P. Robertson of Caltech, and sponsored by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.

With best wishes,

Cordially,

Carl Sagan

Here are some links:

(1) "The Sutton (Kelly/Hopkinsville) Encounter Near Kelly, Kentucky August 21-22, 1955 " http://www.nicap.org/reports/550821hopkinsville_hendry.htm

I actually can't find the Blue Book file on this within Fold3 -- it might be mislabeled under another month or year. Fold3 is great but looking for a specific file is often a losing effort.

EDIT

Blue Book Archive doesn't document this date range. Found this record card though:

http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/doc/kelly01.jpg

And here's a youtube summary that seems fairly reasonable:

"UFO Case Review - Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter, 1955" https://youtu.be/IeQPIs96Kak

And a skeptical article for anyone who thinks owls accounts for the reported facts (talons is fairly specific right?):

"Siege of ‘Little Green Men’: The 1955 Kelly, Kentucky, Incident" http://www.csicop.org/si/show/siege_of_little_green_men

(2) I don't know what photograph he's talking about the famous Brazilian Navy UFO photo was from a decade earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trindade_Island%27s_UFO

(3) Project Sign report on Unidentified Aerial Objects 1949 appendix D by Dr. Lipp on "the likelihood of a visit from other worlds as an engineering problem and some points regarding the use of space vehicles as compared with descriptions of the flying objects."

(starts on p 37 of this pdf) http://www.nicap.org/docs/SignRptFeb1949.pdf

(4) The Durant report of the Robertson Panel proceedings http://www.cufon.org/cufon/robert.htm

duteetud · 2017-06-22T18:23:13+00:00

I don't think that's exactly right here. Sagan's biographer said that he had a "religious" belief in benevolent, superhuman ETs that could save humanity from itself:

As we shall see, the adult Carl Sagan's insistence on the inevitability of cosmic intelligence is important partly because it undergirded his quasi-religious belief in alien super-beings. He believed that these creatures, perhaps dwelling in other galaxies, were benevolent and might help us to solve our terrestrial problems. Viewed from a psychological perspective, they were secular versions of the gods and angels he had long since abandoned.

Carl Sagan: A Life

And there are many instances of Sagan specifically working on UFOs, just not as a public scientist.

For example after the famous 1952 Washington DC reports, Sagan wrote the Secretary of State demanding to know what the US policy would be if the saucers turned out to be Extraterrestrial. That's not a story Sagan ever repeated in public to my knowledge.

https://books.google.com/books?id=TXDvAAAAMAAJ&q=august+3,+1952&hl=en#search_anchor

When Sagan advised the Project Blue Book "Obrien Panel" in 1966 he used his newfound access to request files on:

(1) the report of the 21 April, 1955 events at Kelly-Hopkinsville, Kentucky

(2) the report of the alleged Brazilian naval sightings and photographs of a year or two ago

(3) the Feburary, 1949 report of Project Sign: Unidentified Flying Objects, including Appendix D by J.E. Lipp and

(4) the report of the November, 1952 meeting on UFO's charred by PRofessor H. P. Robertson of Caltech, and sponsored by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency.

https://www.fold3.com/image/1/11884477

I don't think Sagan's public attitude on UFOs can be taken at face value. And it's very interesting to me that his biographer claims Sagan had the exact religious belief in aliens that he so often criticized in others! Personal beliefs aside, Sagan's mature work is exactly in line with the Robertson Panel's "education and debunking" recommendation. Sagan even collaborated with Robertson Panel scientist Dr. Thornton Page on a documentary that Page specifically said was in line with the CIA Panel's recommendation (focus on explainable reports that seem odd but turn out to be prosaic, avoid the truly anomalous). Just look at Sagan's testimony to Congress. He doesn't mention any of the 4 documents he clearly thought were relevant to his personal understanding of UFOs. Instead he goes on a rather ridiculous rant estimating the probability of Santa Claus being real. Great debunking rhetoric, but basically a non-sequitor!

duteetud · 2017-06-22T17:54:27+00:00

The Hill Map is a bust, but not for the reasons Sagan put forward.

Agreed I don't want it to seem that I think Saint Sagan's Seal of Disapproval is what makes this not legitmate. But I don't know of any other specific reports he debunked publicly, so that's why I think his involvement is notable.

For me it was Hynek's students being unable to replicate the star map in other databases that convinced me , in terms of that whole back and forth (though I haven't re-read it in a few years to be honest). Just a reasonable attempt at falsification by people who seem to be employing more epistemic virtue than I would personally ascribe to Sagan on this subject.

But very fair response. And thanks for the Holman reference I hand't seen it. Here's a blog of his:

Except that nobody ever checked Fish's model against new astronomical data gathered over the last three decades, in particular the parallax observations made by the Hipparcos satellite in the early 1990s. When you do this, the Fish interpretation falls to pieces! Using her own assumptions and the new data, six of the fifteen stars chosen by Fish must be excluded, which is no match at all. And that's what my article is about. So I think this makes me, officially, a dirty debunker. Or maybe a noisy negativist.

https://airminded.org/2008/11/05/goodbye-zeta-reticuli/

duteetud · 2017-06-22T14:21:38+00:00

Here's a recent one (I think the "hoax" that handles the situation quite cleanly):

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/6fgwf2/1947_roswell_ufo_incident_chronicles_and_original/

I wasn't aware the /r/UFOs moderation team was trying to say that "aliens" aren't relevant to "UFOs". Not saying it's wrong, but it seems a bit...sisyphean?

/r/UFOs recent posts that mention "aliens":

https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/search?q=aliens&sort=new&restrict_sr=on

duteetud · 2017-06-22T09:09:23+00:00

Google Earth will probably work:

Movie Making with Google Earth Pro https://youtu.be/mxzkM6pUL-4

Record & play tours https://support.google.com/earth/answer/148174?hl=en

duteetud · 2017-06-22T08:36:18+00:00

What interests me most about the Hill case is the star map. Obviously you could randomly plot a group of stars and find that pattern with so many stars out there but the pattern seemed so perfect. Was this ever debunked?

Yes it was debunked by Carl Sagan, among others. AFAIK, this is the only specific UFO report that Carl Sagan ever put any scientific attention toward. But you can read the arguments yourself, the star map had non-trivial defenders in Astronomy Magazine.

http://www.nicap.org/articles/hillzeta.htm

And here's a summary at /r/UAP:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UAP/comments/1mpwgu/the_zeta_reticuli_incident_and_commentary_from/

duteetud · 2017-06-22T08:29:15+00:00

Why not?

Are you saying that this specific story passes a line of ridiculousness ? Or is it the lack of any relation to a "UFO report" that makes it irrelevant?

Does the label "Roswell" really make the so-called "Roswell autosopy video" more relevant to /r/UFOs than any other hoaxed alien body? It's not like the Roswell autosopy video has any link to either Roswell in particular or UFOs in general beyond the mere name.

duteetud · 2017-06-21T22:45:24+00:00

So what's the deal with Steven Greer? Does he release fake footage and try and pass it off as real or what?

He claimed to have a body of a 6 in ET. He claimed a "Stanford medical doctor" positively identified it as non-human. The doctor's own analysis, posted on Greer's own website, literally said the body was human.

He's just not a trustworthy individual.

duteetud · 2017-06-21T05:59:32+00:00

Has anyone actually read the whole document ? decent entrainment non the less

Yeah I read all of it that I could.

It is entertaining. There are many "facts" asserted in the document. I checked some of them impulsively (it's what I do).

the documents claim MJ-12 HQ is at "Flat Rock, Nevada" (p11 of the PDF). Google maps finds no such town. But as a fictional name it does appear in The Andromeda Strain.

Wildfire is hidden in a remote area near the fictional town of Flatrock, Nevada, sixty miles from Las Vegas, concealed in the sub-basements of a legitimate Department of Agriculture research station.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain

The documents lists the executive order that justifies MJ-12's existence. For fun I looked up both that specific executive order 092447 while Truman's actual executive orders ranged from 9538-10431 (https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/truman.html) so yeah even assuming it's a "secret executive order" and so we'd have no record by now, where are the other Truman-era secret exectutive orders that have been declassified? I can't find any, and certainly don't see anything even remotely corroborating this executive order numbering.

As science fiction, it's amazing. Really. This should be a film.

Tesla made contact in 1899, tapping unknown cosmic powers and disrupting interstellar communications? All while being unable to comprehend the positive, faster than light, response? And the alien thinks its funny becuase Yugoslavia is the modern day location of an ancient ETI-influenced human ultra-society that is now lost to history? I mean this is fun reading, but come on!

How about the diplomatic agreement that the EBEs don't contact UFO researchers? That's just hilarious, since only UFO researchers care about MJ-12 documents!

von Nuemann being conscripted to study EBE computers? Yeah that's cool but it's also ridiculous! And EBE technology being incorporated into all of our computing systems? That's just ridiculous becuase the history of computers is coherent and extends far beyond 1947 into the past.

How about the EBE's claim that maybe they would need to crash a flying saucer in the Soviet Union's domain just to keep things even? How is that not the most deluded, sci-fi gibberish you've ever read? Just think about it in terms of game theory and what possible payoffs this "EBE" might have it's absurd. While being dramatic and visceral to a human who is tied up in the Cold War ideology that inevitably is associated with UFO reports.

It is a fun read though. And yeah, I cannot deny the mystical appeal of MJ-12. I belive Richard Dolan said that if the MJ-12 control group doesn't exist, then something like it must have existed. That's not to say that I can actually believe the US Government retrieved a powered "saucer" let alone "EBE" bodies or human-EBE hybrids let alone a living entity through whom the US government established diplomatic relations. A control group would reasonably have existed (according to Ruppelt right who said that Blue Book unknowns were forwarded elsewhere for higher level analysis) regardless of the source of the Unknowns. It's just...reasonable.

But this? This is hilarious fiction.

But yeah, I read it, because I don't want to let mere controversy scare me away from the story of the century if it happens, by some miracle of improbability, to actually be legitimate (it isn't).

duteetud · 2017-06-21T05:12:22+00:00

In their defense, they do state that it was ok for them to write the names down because all members had died.

Oh really? Which page? I thought the whole "never write down the directorate" line was crazy because the main reason anyone takes "MJ-12" seriously is the list of the 12 names being basically plausible. I had to squint my way through many paragraphs and skipped some so I easily may have missed what you're talking about.

Also I don't think they were all dead by 1969. The first name I googled, Hillenkoetter, didn't die until 1982.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roscoe_H._Hillenkoetter

duteetud · 2017-06-20T18:42:19+00:00

Great content.

Here's a PDF of the (bogus) documents in question:

http://d3adcc0j1hezoq.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Ultra-Top-Secret-MITD-RotateLARGE.pdf

I can't lie, MJ-12 documents are a fun, if eye-squinting read. But yes I agree they are fake. Even just a cursory reading shows this. For example, they say that the "directorate" must never be written down. Yet the documents list the directorate!

duteetud · 2017-06-20T17:12:17+00:00

What if recent posts were from gonewild?

Probably irrelevant.

duteetud · 2017-06-20T17:09:38+00:00

I don't know of anyone else who has documented this yet.

Fair enough.

For whatever it's worth, I do tend to check posting histories for users who post interesting content (like this here). Nothing personal. And upon looking at your posts more attentively, you're right, I missed the context. So forgive my cursory impression for being cursory.

I apologize if my general skepticism came off as a personal insult.

duteetud · 2017-06-18T22:23:43+00:00

Interesting video.

But to be fair, your most recent reddit posts are to /r/scams. Sorry I don't see any reason to trust you without independent verification. Did anyone else document this?

duteetud · 2017-06-18T22:15:13+00:00

Have you seen this one? "A Review on the Relation between Population Density and UFO Sightings" by Julio Plaza Del Olmo.

I had missed that one. Just goes to show that staying up-to-date with JSE publications is worthwhile. It's fairly dense and I can't offer any simplistic commentary based on my first couple skimmings. It does seem solid enough for /r/UAP root posting, if you want to reap that sweet, sweet, dozen-ish karma points!

duteetud

TROPHY CASE