UFODAP supposedly has about a hundred automatic cameras around the world, mostly in the US. You can buy the hardware. It's a pan-tilt-zoom camera under a plastic dome, with hardware that looks for moving objects in the sky, photographs, and tracks them. Analysis software recognizes birds and aircraft. If two sites connected to the same control program lock onto a target, they can triangulate. It's possible to use ADS-B data for filtering out known aircraft.
The hardware is good enough to detect and track the International Space Station.
But they don't see to be catching much.
Incidentally, hobbyists have been flying triangular jet-powered high speed drones since at least 2017.[2] Watch the video. That would look like a UFO if it wasn't a clear day and the pilot wasn't making low passes. Many of the "flying triangles" are probably something like that.
Russia, Ukraine, and Iran all use something similar, in various sizes.
> Incidentally, hobbyists have been flying triangular jet-powered high speed drones since at least 2017.
There's advanced hobbyists who have much more sophisticated drones as well [1]. Nothing outside the reach of more advanced advanced engineering with fuel cells. Though it could be some covert government program or research group and possibly even foreign governments.
The drone in Tuscon AZ outran police helicopters for over an hour:
> Typical commercial drones cannot travel 100 mph even under the best conditions.
> Eventually, the helicopter ended up flying toward Mount Lemmon at an altitude of 14,000 feet, thousands of feet above the helicopter. The pilot wrote the drone would circle the helicopter at 100 mph.
> "[T]his did not appear to be any off-the-shelf" drone, the pilot wrote.
> Another helicopter crew member wrote it appeared to be a "very sophisticated/specialized" drone that was "able to perform like no other...I have observed."
This is great for skywatching but at 32GB it only takes brief photos, and rarely video.
A real setup needs multiple 4K cameras, some kind of LWIR, MWIR, etc. as well as SDR with proper antennae for each of their respective performance envelopes.
I think it's good, but it will not be good at picking up the "targets of opportunity".
It's not flying saucers, it's weird orbs / spheres. There is volume of footage, and sufficient quality. I think we're past the point of "is it real" and more at "okay so what is this really and what is it doing".
If we could take Tier 1 reports from NUFORC, have tons of metrics available with sensor data, we can make a better guess.
(Yes, there are almost certainly other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. No, they have not been here. In the 1950's my brother became very interested in UFO sightings and maintained files of 3x5 cards detailing them. Then he grew up.)
I'd love to believe you, but as a European who - for some reason - never get these sightings unlike Americans, I find it hard to do so. Either our mysterious alien friends really love USA or you guys have some condition that the entire Europe does not, e.g., permissions to test military equipment without having to announce it to the public, let alone the freedom to move around in a large area without it becoming a political drama.
Imagine if the German military started doing unannounced missions in neighboring countries... now imagine if a military base in the US send a couple of fighter jets from one state to another state and back. Only one of those situations would give a cluster f** of international drama, thus "odd sightings" i.e. covert military operations could be more common in the US than the rest of the world.
I'd love to believe... but it always only happens in USA.
> Either our mysterious alien friends really love USA
The USA is the best, who'd blame them! Perhaps aliens love American cheeseburgers and milkshakes from their time in Roswell. ;P
> you guys have some condition that the entire Europe does not, e.g., permissions to test military equipment without having to announce it to the public, let alone the freedom to move around in a large area without it becoming a political drama.
That's an interesting take. Though surely Germany or others have some more remote areas. Scotland has lots of empty land and the UK airforce right?
Then again, the amount of empty space in the wester US is not to be underestimated. I live near Mountain Home Idaho. If you drive over the desert to Nevada you cross air force land with big signs warning about it being an active test grounds. Lots of people have had fighter jets fly up and do simulated bombing runs on them as they drive through.
Spaniard there; there used to be UFO's in the 70's... coincidentally near the US military bases ;)
There was an infamous one in the Canary Islands.
Also, weird events under Huelva. A few paranormal, but some of them not religion/spiritual based.
If the aliens were real, their technology for sure would look as magic for humans. No, forget flying saucers or whatever. These kind of civilizations would have totally different ways to travel thousands of kilometers across the galaxy.
Teleporting "magic" would just be mundane technology for them.
A simple AM radio receiver with a wire, a coil and a magnet would just be sorcery for even the upper elite from the medieval times. And today an Elementary kid can build a simple receiver with junk from a junkyard or scraps from a workbench.
among many others. I think this comment from the marginalrevolution link is compelling:
"I write science fiction professionally, and I would cheerfully bet against these sightings being any alien technology. Why? Because zooming around in Earth's atmosphere and playing chicken with fighter planes doesn't fit any rational notion of why someone would go to the considerable trouble of sending a mission to the Solar System. (Jokes about alien teenagers aside.)
If the goal is to make contact, then there are much better ways of doing it than flitting around the atmosphere being coy.
If the goal is not to make contact, then contemporary human tech could already do a better job of observing while staying hidden. A big telescope on a near-Earth asteroid could watch us in considerable detail during close approaches. Small satellites could do the same. And small robotic probes disguised as -- say -- seagulls or cats could do all the sampling and exploring of the Earth's surface with nobody the wiser.
As it is, we have a phenomenon dating back at least 70 years and possibly thousands of years which never seems to DO anything.
My conclusion: it's probably a lot of different phenomena, mostly involving human perception. Maybe, if we're very lucky, there's some rare atmospheric phenomenon causing some of these sightings, and we might learn a little by studying it."
(It's also easy to make an argument that we have been visited by aliens, in the same way that it's easy to make an argument that the Earth is flat or that humans never landed on the moon ... easy if one doesn't adhere to basic principles of rational discourse.)
UFODAP supposedly has about a hundred automatic cameras around the world, mostly in the US. You can buy the hardware. It's a pan-tilt-zoom camera under a plastic dome, with hardware that looks for moving objects in the sky, photographs, and tracks them. Analysis software recognizes birds and aircraft. If two sites connected to the same control program lock onto a target, they can triangulate. It's possible to use ADS-B data for filtering out known aircraft. The hardware is good enough to detect and track the International Space Station.
But they don't see to be catching much.
Incidentally, hobbyists have been flying triangular jet-powered high speed drones since at least 2017.[2] Watch the video. That would look like a UFO if it wasn't a clear day and the pilot wasn't making low passes. Many of the "flying triangles" are probably something like that.
Russia, Ukraine, and Iran all use something similar, in various sizes.
[1] https://ufodap.com/technology
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGDAZyQ44k
There's advanced hobbyists who have much more sophisticated drones as well [1]. Nothing outside the reach of more advanced advanced engineering with fuel cells. Though it could be some covert government program or research group and possibly even foreign governments.
The drone in Tuscon AZ outran police helicopters for over an hour:
> Typical commercial drones cannot travel 100 mph even under the best conditions. > Eventually, the helicopter ended up flying toward Mount Lemmon at an altitude of 14,000 feet, thousands of feet above the helicopter. The pilot wrote the drone would circle the helicopter at 100 mph. > "[T]his did not appear to be any off-the-shelf" drone, the pilot wrote. > Another helicopter crew member wrote it appeared to be a "very sophisticated/specialized" drone that was "able to perform like no other...I have observed."
1: https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/valley/tucson-poli...
https://www.twz.com/40756/new-details-emerge-on-the-highly-m...
A real setup needs multiple 4K cameras, some kind of LWIR, MWIR, etc. as well as SDR with proper antennae for each of their respective performance envelopes.
I think it's good, but it will not be good at picking up the "targets of opportunity".
It's not flying saucers, it's weird orbs / spheres. There is volume of footage, and sufficient quality. I think we're past the point of "is it real" and more at "okay so what is this really and what is it doing".
If we could take Tier 1 reports from NUFORC, have tons of metrics available with sensor data, we can make a better guess.
Indeed, rational people know it's not real.
(Yes, there are almost certainly other intelligent lifeforms in the universe. No, they have not been here. In the 1950's my brother became very interested in UFO sightings and maintained files of 3x5 cards detailing them. Then he grew up.)
Imagine if the German military started doing unannounced missions in neighboring countries... now imagine if a military base in the US send a couple of fighter jets from one state to another state and back. Only one of those situations would give a cluster f** of international drama, thus "odd sightings" i.e. covert military operations could be more common in the US than the rest of the world.
I'd love to believe... but it always only happens in USA.
The USA is the best, who'd blame them! Perhaps aliens love American cheeseburgers and milkshakes from their time in Roswell. ;P
> you guys have some condition that the entire Europe does not, e.g., permissions to test military equipment without having to announce it to the public, let alone the freedom to move around in a large area without it becoming a political drama.
That's an interesting take. Though surely Germany or others have some more remote areas. Scotland has lots of empty land and the UK airforce right?
Then again, the amount of empty space in the wester US is not to be underestimated. I live near Mountain Home Idaho. If you drive over the desert to Nevada you cross air force land with big signs warning about it being an active test grounds. Lots of people have had fighter jets fly up and do simulated bombing runs on them as they drive through.
There was an infamous one in the Canary Islands.
Also, weird events under Huelva. A few paranormal, but some of them not religion/spiritual based.
If the aliens were real, their technology for sure would look as magic for humans. No, forget flying saucers or whatever. These kind of civilizations would have totally different ways to travel thousands of kilometers across the galaxy.
Teleporting "magic" would just be mundane technology for them.
A simple AM radio receiver with a wire, a coil and a magnet would just be sorcery for even the upper elite from the medieval times. And today an Elementary kid can build a simple receiver with junk from a junkyard or scraps from a workbench.
I think it is difficult to make an argument in either direction. But almost certainly they’ve not been flying weirdly shaped disks
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1468rqs/cmv_e...
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/05/th...
among many others. I think this comment from the marginalrevolution link is compelling:
"I write science fiction professionally, and I would cheerfully bet against these sightings being any alien technology. Why? Because zooming around in Earth's atmosphere and playing chicken with fighter planes doesn't fit any rational notion of why someone would go to the considerable trouble of sending a mission to the Solar System. (Jokes about alien teenagers aside.)
If the goal is to make contact, then there are much better ways of doing it than flitting around the atmosphere being coy.
If the goal is not to make contact, then contemporary human tech could already do a better job of observing while staying hidden. A big telescope on a near-Earth asteroid could watch us in considerable detail during close approaches. Small satellites could do the same. And small robotic probes disguised as -- say -- seagulls or cats could do all the sampling and exploring of the Earth's surface with nobody the wiser.
As it is, we have a phenomenon dating back at least 70 years and possibly thousands of years which never seems to DO anything.
My conclusion: it's probably a lot of different phenomena, mostly involving human perception. Maybe, if we're very lucky, there's some rare atmospheric phenomenon causing some of these sightings, and we might learn a little by studying it."
(It's also easy to make an argument that we have been visited by aliens, in the same way that it's easy to make an argument that the Earth is flat or that humans never landed on the moon ... easy if one doesn't adhere to basic principles of rational discourse.)