(CNN, NYT) Navy pilots speak out on UFO sightings

(CNN) Navy pilots speak out on UFO sightings.

You might have a look at these articles, of which this is a continuation:

Since you are human, your brain is adapted to understand the world in a certain way that helps survival, but has nothing to do with science. This is why thinking about UFOs tends to the conventional, preferring solutions that represent improvements on what we already have.

The video includes objects moving with agility exceeding any physical object. Since this  is a DoD release, due diligence has been exercised to exclude:

  • Hallucinations.
  • “Ghost images”, also known as “lens flare”, which result from stray light bouncing around inside a lens.
  • Electronic errors within the sensor or image processor.

You can share the experience with a focused flashlight in a dark room. Flick it with your wrist, and watch the spot on the wall move with a quickness that a physical object cannot. The spot on the wall could be interpreted as a physical object, except that you know otherwise.

In UFOs: Let’s Get Serious; Why a Program Goes “Black” Part 2, I wrote,

What if an alien vehicle were not physically located where it appears to be? If it was a projection through a rent in space time, could we make sense of it by our tools of observation? What if the very fact of witnessing an event does not fit our conception of logic, which goes back to Aristotle?

Part 3 offers a list of possibilities. It may be too conservative. Most of it dates to classic sci-fi, in which relativity and space-time are favorite topics, but quantum mechanics is not. Going radical,

  • Fancy physics, yet in accord with material presence in our supposedly objective universe. This tends to focus on elaborate distortions of space-time, so the occupants can withstand being thrown around at thousands of gees.
  • Projection into our universe, through a “rent” in space-time. Some of the physical properties are carried along while others are not.
  • Hints of the physical, but with contradiction in logic as we know it.
  • A complete breakdown of objective reality, a core idea of quantum mechanics.

Since government UFO investigation began in 1948, not one iota of physical evidence has been recovered, other than spots of light on film, sensors, and retinas. This could be blamed on primitive equipment. From Part 3,

Since we have no fenders that fell off UFOs, how can we get a hint of whether they are material? If you have a sick child, you touch your kid’s forehead with the back of your hand. Heat receptors in your skin detect the fever. Regardless of whether your child has a fever, your child has a temperature. All material objects have temperatures. Actors, projections on the silver screen, do not.

Part 3 discusses how common laboratory instruments provide the basis to study this question:

Do UFOs have any attributes of physical objects?

The obstacle is that laboratory instruments are not designed to fly and engage rapidly moving targets, while military imaging hardware is highly specialized. Some newer imaging equipment is  hyperspectral, but the vast majority of it is not. Yet without it, we haven’t even started. Hyperspectral data is required to address the question.

Now suppose the question is properly studied, and no evidence of physical objects emerges, or the picture is quasi-physical, such as

  • Light without heat
  • Heat without light
  • Mass that comes and goes.
  • No convergence towards objective truth.

We might then be forced to concede that the underpinning of scientific thought, that objective reality exists, is deeply flawed. The Universe could be the biggest liar of all.

The Nature article, “Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself”, describes a paradox. In the situation contrived for the experiment,  observers must disagree. Have a look at the pop article, (Futurity) Thought experiment paradox divides quantum experts.

As with the “Schrodinger’s Cat” paradox,  there is a tendency to reject the implication, that objective truth is a weak concept. The alternative is a universe with the means to lie.  But what’s the motivation?

The motivation might come from what has been cited as a most basic principle of the universe, the Principle of Least Action, which shares a motivation with the programming technique lazy evaluation: to do as little as possible. Think, perhaps, of a chess game where the pieces are not moved when they should be, but only when a discrepancy would change another piece. If you imagine that the entire universe is a computer program, lazy this-and-that economizes on the size of the computer.

So things that happen when you are not looking might follow rules different from when you are looking. Anyone with a child knows this. A lot of people, including Einstein, dislike the idea that we live in a world where magic is possible, and might be common. In the end, we are frustrated by our human selves, with brains evolved to organize the world along the lines of objective truth.

As physics  grapples with the unknown and possibly unknowable, the concept of objective truth may end up in the trash. UFO research of substantial technical means, going beyond the search for sheet-metal wonders, could play an important role.

The most radical form of illusion was proposed by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1896.