Real or Fake? You make the call "Dominican Republic, Haiti UFO Videos"

I'm not sure why the UFO sightings are such a big deal. It's highly improbable that we are the only intelligent life in the universe.

real fake, but real cool.

There's no way of proving its a fake, unless examination of the videotape etc showed signs of tampering/editing post the shooting. Anyway, those craft could be modified Moller-like devices? There's no way of proving these sightings are "genuine" either.

If a "genuine" alien craft landed in the middle of the Superbowl (for a silly example), and "real" aliens emerged, all on TV, then took off again... it would be undoubtedly be regarded as an excellent fake... How could one prove otherwise, unless the "aliens" did something aggressive (a very human quality). But there again, why should a race of beings, presumably way in advance of mankind re. their civilization (given the ability to traverse space in a way that circumvents relativity as we know it).... have to be encumbered with such human traits as wanton hostility?

Reminds me of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnxIITeNftE

Maybe Powerade should go to Haiti.

Personally, I'd be very disappointed if we actually are alone in the universe. That would be a tremendous waste of real estate! At the same time, Einstein hasn't been proven wrong yet, so visiting other star systems is obviously problematic at best, unless there is some way to violate the law of relativity we haven't discovered yet...

I think most UFO sightings are fake/wishful thinking, but there have been so many sightings, by so many people from all cultural/economic groups that at least a few would have to be real.

Not that difficult to fake something like this these days. The hand held feeling is a give away... It doesn't quite feel real. And the palm trees look fake to me. I'd say these were done entirely in something like Vue 6. http://vue6.com/

The palm tree between the two craft in the first one, and the palm tree just below and left of the craft in the second, are identical.

Rendered.

Interesting. I don't work with these tools, so my first response was "Holy shit!"

But after reading the comments and looking at examples from the linked to software, I can totally see how these can be rendered.

I think the psychology of this is interesting though. It started with FX houses figuring out how to add "flaws" such as lens flare to the rendered scene, then progressed through the BSG and Firefly look-- as if your space scenes were being shot by a handheld documentarian, complete with snap zooms, focus overshoot and camera shake. I especially like instances of camera wander, as if the operator were hunting around in the viewfinder for his shot.

Then there were the video game ads, that took all of that and added the "camcorder" look, so you got guys goofing around on "DV" when the meteorite hits or the ray gun does its thing or whatever.

All of that relies on the idea that "amateur equals truth", and it really does sell the verisimilitude. There's something about fx embedded in that "I just happened to be running my camcorder" look that is really persuasive. Which is ironic, because I assume the low res/funky thing actually hides a lot of rough edges and requires somewhat less polishing.

It's what makes the trailer for the JJ Abrams "untitled project" look so interesting-- flaming debris and bouncing Statue of Liberty heads just look more involving when it appears to be caught on the fly like that.

It's very much like the older motif of "hand-held 16mm black and white" that used to give a documentary (hence, "unmanipulated") feel to portions of some movies. And, like that strategy, I assume that as our exposure to manipulated video of all sorts increases the trick will stop working, as we no longer associate "hand held camcorder" with "real".

Is that bate? The probability of finding another life supporting planet in the universe is dismal, if you consider the fine tuning required.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

This principle applies to the earth as well as the universe.

Bullshit, snoopy.

'fine tuning'

it may be low, but it is certainly not lower than 1/the total number of planets in the universe.

One of the strangest (famous) UFO sightings was the Bentwaters (UK) case in 1980. So much has been written about this incident, and as of yet, it remains a genuine UFO... ie an unidentified flying object. Of course this does not necessarily mean that (it) was driven or controlled by "aliens"... although the happenings that night near the Bentwaters AFB were weird in the utmost. What a shame that the video/film footage that were taken of the object(s) by US military personnel from the base have never been seen since, in public that is.

One argument I've heard against the presence of other intelligent life in the universe (it's a specific someone's argument, I can't remember who) goes something like this:

On the galactic time scale, interstellar colonization is a "flash" phenomena. That is, once an intelligent, technological species develops the means to travel between the stars, the time it takes to pretty much overrun the galaxy is relatively short, next to the life of the universe.

Of course, that's a pretty massive ratio-- say, 200 millions years for the outward expansion vs. many billions year window of opportunity. 200 millions years because we don't want to rely on speculative FTL drives, which currently appear to be unlikely, but rather some kind of very advanced hibernation techniques, or massively extended life-spans, neither of which violate any fundamental principles that we know of.

So if there are any other intelligent species at all, we could reasonably expect that at least some of them would have arisen some hundreds of millions or years ago, and that at least some of those would have endeavored to travel between the stars, and that even at sub-light speeds that there has been plenty of time for such a race to have gone from world to world, establishing colonies which themselves would become capable of undertaking space flight (the time it would take for a colony to become a full fledged civilization is to brief to even consider, at these time scales).

So by this point they really ought to be too numerous to avoid. The argument against this theory is, of course, that intelligent life arose in the universe only fairly recently, and there in fact has not been time for the process of colonization to take place.

But its unclear why that would be true. Conditions in the universe have not changed appreciably in the last 200 millions years, it really isn't that long a span, universe-wise Same for the trial and error of evolution on a galactic scale-- if it was going to happen, 200 millions additional years doesn't increase the odds that much.

Of course, there are a lot of other speculative scenarios: technological civilizations almost inevitably destroy themselves, they are there but theirmeans of communication is something we aren't looking for, etc.

Myself, intuitively, I side with those that say the universe is an awfully big place for just us.

I saw the math broken down at some point... Humans would have a hard enough time getting off of earth to usefully colonize planets within OUR solar system given the best case scenario predictions for technology -- you are still ultimately limited by light since communications take forever, the energy needed to support further exploration would be abysmally high etc etc. It is far more likely that if intelligent life existed out there it would have only been able to colonize local clusters of planets (if they exist) before we approach evolutionary time scales. Basically, we are either functionally alone in the galaxy or we are going to be fucked by our nearest neighbors -- but ultimately we can say that there will likely be no visits by intelligent species from the other side of our galaxy let alone other galaxies...

Personally, I believe all intelligent life destroys itself.

Okay. But since the other planets, or moons, cannot support life, we are alone in our solar system. Sure, we may send somebody to Mars, but life support must still come from Earth, no? So, if there are real UFOs, they come from nearby stars. Therefore, we don't have to look very far for them, but they are not right next door either. It sounds like you might agree with that.

Mars probably can support life right now (and probably has it in some form or another)

What? Yes, there may be some microbes there, but it cannot sustain intelligent life. No water supply, or am I mistaken about that? Maybe drill some wells? With a barren surface, I doubt there is water underground. Mars had water at one time, but lost it all because of its low gravity. This is part of the fine tuning I was referring to earlier.

The molecular weight of water, methane and ammonia are close together. Earth's gravity is just right for keeping water, yet losing much of the methane and ammonia. Just a coincidence of course.

Right, no way Mars cam support intelligent life. The larger point is that if it turns out that not only is it possible for other planets to harbor life in the universe, but also that our nearest neighbor does as well, it just really hits home that it's quite likely the known universe is littered with life. Statistically speaking, this would indicate there's probably a huge number of advanced civilizations.


No coincidence. It's quite probably the deciding factor that has led to our rise as a species. There are two things that concern me about comments like this though.

1) We as a people tend to be so narrow-minded and self-centered that we think anything related to life on earth must somehow be unique to our planet simply because it's not the same to any of the 9, scratch that, 8 other planets in our solar system. This is old-world thinking.

2) We continue to operate with tunnel vision and seek out planets that are inherently earth-like, under the false pretense that all life in the universe must conform to the same set of conditions that gave rise to life as we know it.

I have to say that I shot a snot rocket out of my nose from laughing. thank you. It's like you don't think humanity is worth the Earth's oxygen. There's an easy way to solve this on a personal level.

Unfortunately, research shows that confidence about eye-witness accounts (studying mundane things like witnessing a crime, etc) and accuracy of observation are inversely related. Whatever you think you saw, I'm sure that it was compelling, but it was almost certainly mundane. The probability that it was a reflection/mirage, the moon, venus, etc (not knowing any details -- nor supposing that I could explain what you saw), is orders of magnitude more likely than even experimental aircraft.

There is a LOT of water on Mars. There is even more recent suggestion that there is liquid water on Mars.

I agree with Jared Diamond, given the sordid history of "advanced" civilizations meeting primitive ones on our planet, we had better hope that (as intelligent beings) we are "alone in a crowded universe."

After travelling light-years to get to our planet, "aliens" are not going to be content to play Zaphod and do a little fly-by. They are going to initiate open contact, or they're going to flatten us: either way, we're going to _know_ when they're here. So, yes, every UFO sighting is completely mundane. This doesn't mean that there isn't some interesting things going on with respect to UFOs, but they aren't aliens.

Thanks for that link: Underground ice kept from escaping the atmosphere. It wouldn't help complex life develop on Mars, however, but it could be used by a colony of humans from Earth going there.

The liquid water is obviously not enough to do much good, and it would not stay around very long. Mars is simply too small, not enough gravity.

The late Col. Corso said a few interesting things about that... but there again, with so much material of this nature, it's impossible to satisfactorily prove, or debunk...

Col. Corso claimed that some of the technology that filtered into modern society in the late 1940s and 1950s evolved from material recovered from the wreckage of the alleged Roswell craft (!). I have no idea what to make of that incident; it may be the most famous "UFO" event in the public awareness, but it's by no means the most convincing. I remain most skeptical... but it does make one wonder about what actually happened there, considering that the government/military has provided no less than 4 different versions of the "truth"...implying that at least 3 of them are untruthful (or guesswork).

I see what you mean, but there have been so many public sightings, official investigations and sightings by military personnel that there must be some degree of truth to them. Whether it's aliens, or some type of 'Top Secret' earth technology remains to be seen.

Huh?

What does methane or ammonia have to do with the price of beans?

(and see what everyone else has said to your post)

An atmosphere of methane and ammonia does not support life. Look at planets heavier than Earth and see what their atmosphere is made up of. Earth's gravitational attraction is just right to release most of the methane and ammonia gases, yet retain water molecules.

Look up the molecular weights of these gases and you can see that the planet size must be just right for life to exist.

Life as we know it.

Bullshit.

You don't know jack shit. There was a time when people thought that life couldn't withstand subfreezing temperatures or superheated water, both of which we have seen on earth. There is nothing that currently suggests that ammonia and methane aren't conducive to life -- there are organisms that produce copious quantities of both and somehow they survive.

In other words, stop making shit up to support your view of a perfect universe, with one perfect planet. It is utterly and totally demonstrably false.

or a smiley face.

Errr! I thought this discussion was about intelligent life, high mammals, who might be responsible for the UFOs. I'm not aware that microbes are capable of such a feat.

How is methane or ammonia NOT conducive to intelligent life, theoretically?