NASA says it's found water, carbon and organic matter on an asteroid sample that returned to Earth last month https://t.co/n442kOKgM5 pic.twitter.com/m5TMzf6xUy — Reuters (@Reuters) October 11, 2023 Sounds like NASA got what it wanted from the asteroid Bennu. "If we're looking for biologically essential organic molecules, we picked the right asteroid, and we brought back …
Open Thread: Space, the Final-ish FrontierPost + Comments (79)
After looking at evidence declassified by the Pentagon’s UAP organization, AARO (“All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office”), the panel concluded that most reported UAPs were either balloons, drones, or airplanes. What does that tell you?
The number of drones that are up at any given moment is enormous — they’re just monitoring fires and gas pipelines and helping farmers monitor crops. There’s also a ton of balloons. It turns out that small amateur balloons below a certain size didn’t have to be reported to the FAA. There’s probably some regulatory cleanup needed to make sure that balloons at low altitudes are not a threat to pilots.Why is the U.S. government interested in publicly investigating UAPs now, after 70-odd years of inaction?
The Chinese balloon incident is very illustrative. There’s a class of events that are associated with unusual objects seen around U.S. Navy planes, particularly in the Pacific. It’s clear that the Chinese have an active program of monitoring the U.S. fleet. Understanding that class of events is absolutely within the military’s area of responsibility…How many UAP reports has the government investigated?
Right now, what we have is 800 events that AARO has looked at and studied, and they’ve explained many of them. The set of events they’ve explained is too small for machine learning. You’d like to have 100,000 reports of balloons by people taking multiple pictures of each one so that you can learn what balloons look like from different angles. That way, for any anomaly someone reports you can quickly say that’s a balloon or it’s not.Of those 800, how many are still interesting?
One or two percent…The panel’s report advises NASA to release a phone app that would allow people to record UAPs in a way that would generate the most useful data. How would that work?
Your cell-phone camera wants to enhance the picture so it looks better. For recording data, you’d rather not have that. Also, you could do things in the metadata to reduce the probability of spoofing — you don’t want people to edit in pictures of E.T. My hope is that an app would create a set of public data, and then citizen scientists could go through it and see what’s there. You can have an open discussion. If someone sees something and says, “This is weird,” it can be discussed. It removes some of the element of conspiracy.You’re a serious scientist. Did you ever think you’d find yourself investigating UFOs?
I actually see this as an opportunity for science education. There are a lot of people fascinated by the subject because the question of “Are we alone?” is fundamental. It’s a question that not only scientists ask, but lots of people. So there’s a lot of public interest in UFOs…Do you think that, just by making your data public and opening the discussion of it to the public, you can push back against pseudoscience?
That’s the hope. I mean, I don’t think we will solve the problem. But it takes a step. It’s important to say to people, “Look, we’re not dismissing your claim that you saw something strange. Don’t feel that because you reported seeing something strange that you’re crazy. It’s interesting you saw something strange. Let’s collect more data on the strange thing. Let’s see if other people collect it. That’s how we figure stuff out.” And if we get that message across to some fraction of the people, that, I feel, would be a success. If we figure out the nature of more of these events, that’s even more of a success. If it turns out to be something truly exotic, fabulous.
nasa, stone cold flying a robot helicopter on mars since 2021 https://t.co/dLjaOn8dn0
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) September 13, 2023