Comment by blincoln | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blincoln | Hacker News Reader

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> the object demonstrated awareness of their presence

That's certainly one interpretation.

> with the object demonstrating awareness of his presence by mirroring his maneuvers. Then he flew aggressively at it, and the object responded by rapidly flying away.

Sounds exactly like the historical reports of "foo fighters" to me.[1]

Look, I love the idea of aliens, but try to apply Occam's Razor here. What's less complicated?

a) An uncommon, but natural phenomenon in which a ball of plasma (or similar) is temporarily attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft.

b) An advanced, spacefaring race (or races) travel to Earth and spend over 70 years pulling pranks on military pilots.

Again, I'm no physicist, but consider something like walking through a cloud of flying dandelion seeds. The air currents created by the person walking through the cloud create little vortices that tend to pull the seeds in their "wake" toward them. That doesn't mean the dandelion seeds are "aware" of the person they're being pulled toward.

Consider also something like flux pinning, where two objects can be made to behave as if joined, even though they're separated by several centimeters or more.

"Red sprites" and similar are absolutely unreal-looking. If I saw one without knowing what it was, I'd be sure it was some kind of advanced technology too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_fighter, specifically "Pilots and aircrew reported that the objects flew formation with their aircraft and behaved as if they were under intelligent control, but never displayed hostile behavior."

>b) An advanced, spacefaring race (or races) travel to Earth and spend over 70 years pulling pranks on military pilots.

70years might not be that long for them if they are on mission across galaxies, they are operating on different timeframes.

> Look, I love the idea of aliens, but try to apply Occam's Razor here. What's less complicated?

I said nothing about aliens--you did. In fact, the only interpretation I offered was that the object appeared to demonstrate awareness of the aircraft sent to intercept it. Everything else I wrote was simply reporting the observations of the pilots and naval radar.

> An uncommon, but natural phenomenon in which a ball of plasma (or similar) is temporarily attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft.

Did you watch the video I linked? Your explanation bears no resemblance to the phenomenon observed by the Navy: Radar contacts were observed over several days demonstrating bizarre yet consistent behavior. When an aircraft was sent to intercept, the pilot made visual contact with two objects, one beneath the ocean surface and one maneuvering erratically 20,000 feet in the air. The airborne object began mirroring the pilot's movements and then retreated when the pilot flew at it. Radar contact with the object was then established 60 miles away at the position the pilot was returning to, as if the object was anticipating the pilot's intended movement.

In no way does the reported phenomenon bear any resemblance to "a ball of plasma attracted to fast-moving, metallic aircraft."

> An advanced, spacefaring race (or races) travel to Earth and spend over 70 years pulling pranks on military pilots.

I have not speculated on the provenance of the phenomenon--you have.

> Again, I'm no physicist, but consider something like walking through a cloud of flying dandelion seeds. The air currents created by the person walking through the cloud create little vortices that tend to pull the seeds in their "wake" toward them. That doesn't mean the dandelion seeds are "aware" of the person they're being pulled toward.

The charitable interpretation of your comments is that you haven't watched the video and listened to the commander's testimony--and why not? Alternatively, you have, but you're still posting these interpretations that bear no relation to the reported observations--and why would you do that?

I've watched all of the raw footage and either listened to or watched the testimony. I'm sure the pilots saw something. It's very easy to see awareness and intent where there is none.

As I said, it sounds exactly like WWII pilots describing "foo fighters". There were many, many reports of those in WWII, and they're completely indistinguishable from these accounts. It would be extremely difficult at best to build such a thing using today's technology. Probably essentially impossible with 1940s technology.

The most likely explanation, therefore, is that it's some sort of natural phenomenon. Something that looks unearthly, and that seems to be more likely to be encountered by military aircraft than civilian aircraft. Maybe that's due to altitude, speed, composition of the aircraft, area of operation, etc.

There are really only two main classes of alternative beyond that:

- Someone active in the 1940s had the ability to make supersonic glowing drone aircraft, and has managed to keep that technology completely secret ever since. - Aliens (or equivalent).

Neither of these seem particularly likely versus "atmospheric phenomenon".

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