UFO's Confirmed (Part 2)
What can we make of the recent news about UFO’s being confirmed by the Pentagon? Let’s take a closer look.
With claims as tantalizing as a seeming confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence by the US government, it’s incumbent on us to scrutinize the claims being made and critically evaluate the implications.
The goal of a critical examination is to prove the claims wrong, contrary to many people’s understanding of the scientific method. A good model’s value is measured only in its ability to predict, not retroactively explain, and this is why any model that seems to explain something is put to the most extreme tests we can conceive.
Let’s start by looking at generic claims of extraordinary events. The first question that must be asked is how did we become aware of this event? Was it recorded by imaging equipment, was it a single witness or perhaps several, was it a second-hand account?
Eyewitness testimony is one of the most beleaguered types of evidence, as people are prone to a host of visual and psychological factors that can lead to a distorted impression of reality (see yesterday’s post for more). Compounding this difficulty is that one’s belief that they are recounting the truth isn’t related to any objective measure, people can genuinely and sincerely recount a belief (even passing polygraph tests) while being entirely wrong about what they saw. Being convincing (and convincing yourself) and being accurate are two entirely separate things. You can read more here:
Imaging technology has allowed us to document things that were previously impossible and has opened up new worlds to us, quite literally (see the Hubble Deep Field https://www.spacetelescope.org/science/deep_fields/). But it has brought a host of dubious ‘evidence’ of supernatural claims as well. This topic is worth another article by itself! There are countless videos posted by amateur videographers with little familiarity of their equipment who are quick to proclaim they’ve captured irrefutable poltergeist activity while in reality are just tracking internal lens flaring in their camera, and even more footage of bugs crawling across the warm lenses of outdoor security cameras appearing like a fuzzy blob that is billed as proof of otherworldly beings.
Knowing the source is important.
In the case of these recent UFO videos (The Pentagon Released U.F.O. Videos. Don’t Hold Your Breath for a Breakthrough.), let’s say for the sake of argument that the images have been sufficiently vetted and confirmed to be authentic, does that prove aliens yet?
Still not quite. There are numerous factors that affect radar tracking and infrared imaging, but we’ll get to that in a minute. If these videos truly do show incontrovertible evidence of objects accelerating and maneuvering at seemingly impossible speeds, we need to be careful about how we label that. Is it extraordinary? Yes. But it’s important to note that objects moving fast and maneuvering doesn’t inherently violate any of the laws of physics as we understand it. It represents technology that surpasses what is widely known and commercially available, but this is a claim of engineering as opposed to science.
When the CIA’s U-2 spy plane was first introduced, it was highly classified and only a select few knew about it, even within the government. When commercial airline pilots, who then thought they were they highest thing in the sky, would spot the U-2’s, they were so fast and so much higher than the airliners that the pilots would report them as UFO’s to the FAA because they didn’t think it was possible for a man made craft to achieve the altitudes they were observing. Subsequent cross-referencing of UFO reports to U-2 missions accounted for the overwhelming majority of UFO sightings in this period.
The infrared images in our modern footage seems very compelling, however most of us don’t have any familiarity with the routine behavior of infrared images or the equipment that’s involved. Do these captured images represent something from another planet or possibly some anomalous behavior that might be readily apparent to the design engineers? As outsiders not involved with the sophisticated (and usually classified) development and testing process, we don’t have a sufficient baseline of experience to draw on, so we can’t make a conclusion either way.
What if all of the footage and testimony really does show us something we haven’t seen before? If so, then all we can say is that we don’t know what it is, that it’s unidentified. Scientists have been in this position for millenia, seeking to understand something that seems almost like magic until it’s explained. From magnetism, to gravity, and now with particle physics (see the Higg's Boson), all we can do is systematically observe, take measurements, document, and formulate hypotheses that are then tested and implemented if successful until the next better explanation comes along. We’re just at the beginning of the process, if this is all true.
And in the case of these UFO videos, that’s a big ‘if. If you’d like to read more, the following article takes an in-depth look at the evidence and claims. To summarize, the chances of these being true advanced extraterrestrial craft are slim to none. Read more here:
As Carl Sagan used to say, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
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