Faster-than-Light Travel May be Possible After All, BUT . . .

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/05/is-faster-than-light-travel-possible.html

The link above is to a blog run by Dr, Sabine Hossenfelder.

Hossenfelder points out that we have no engineering basis for traveling faster than light, but that Einstein's equations do not forbid it.

We should also consider that very advanced technological civilizations on distant planets, may have mastered laws of nature which we do not know exist.

Also, to travel from one place to another need not require moving from point a, to b, to c, etc.  Jumps across intervening distances without occupying the intermediate points, while entirely speculative, are not ruled out in principle.  Quantum entanglement suggests a possible foundation for such an idea.

A few people with whom I have discussed this are very quick to brush aside Hossenfelder's comments, in some cases without having actually read them.  That indicates a level of bias and closed mindedness that is incompatible with scientific inquiry.

Hossenfelder has a Bachelor's degree in mathematics and a PhD in physics. She graduated at Frankfurt University, Germany.  She is a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies.

This does not necessarily mean that she is right, but only that she is worth hearing out.
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Mysterious Men-in-Blue

For many years there have been reports of so-called “men in black [suits]” who intimidate reporters into self-censoring their accounts of UFO sightings.

Furthermore, nearly every description of UFO crashes (or in some cases, landings) is accompanied by reports of military, or military-style, personnel responding to the scene very quickly, and absconding with all physical evidence of the crash.  In addition, potential witnesses to the event are either barred from approaching the site, or in some cases, ordered to remain silent.  Threats are made, either implicitly or explicitly.

The presence of uniformed men, arriving suddenly where dramatic UFO events have been reported to occur, is not limited to the United States.  Witnesses to the 1966 Westall Incident in Australia report that at least one man in uniform (either police or military) was soon on scene, and confiscated a teacher’s camera.  She had photographed the UFO. 

Of more concern is that a young student at the Westall High School, who was first to arrive at the site, was found either unconscious or hysterical (perhaps convulsing) at the scene, but she was found only after the UFO had lifted off.  Her name was Tanya.  She was carried (or helped) back to the school where an ambulance took her away.  Tanya was never seen or heard from again by her classmates.  One of them who tried to visit her at her house, was told that no one named Tanya had ever lived there.  What happened to her, both at the scene, and afterward?

The more recent, well-publicized case of military men responding to UFO sightings involves the now famous incident involving the USS Nimitz and USS Princeton.  Sailors report that immediately after the incident, military helicopters landed aboard the two ships.  Men disembarked from the helicopters, and confiscated all recordings of the incident.  Apparently, they did not quite get control of all of them, because video of the encounter was leaked to news media.

A curious detail of the incident is that the men who disembarked from the helicopters were not Navy personnel.  They wore Air Force uniforms.  (Men in Blue, as opposed to black.)  Also curious is that at least one of the Navy pilots insists that no such men ever landed on the ships.  Witnesses were ordered to sign non-disclosure agreements, effectively silencing them for years afterward.

It is a prominent feature of these reports, of mysterious men, that the reports tend to be inconsistent with each other, and without solid evidence that they ever occurred, despite the testimony of credible witnesses.

Perhaps the most curious feature of all is that, their one consistency (assuming veracity of the witnesses), lies in the rapid response of the men who show up.  They are often on scene within minutes, which given the circumstances, is an amazing feat.  How could this happen?  If the reports are true in this regard, it seems very much as if these men were already on alert before the incident happened.  It is not as if the men were performing unrelated duties at the time of the incident, and then unexpectedly called to the scene.  Likewise, some incidents involve rather large numbers of military men, equipped with trucks and tarps.  They also, show up within a very short time.

This makes it sound as if the response teams were already expecting to be called to action, and in turn, that makes it sound as if the UFOs involved were themselves part of a military project.  It also makes it seem that large numbers of men, at widely dispersed locations, are always at the ready, at least when there is scheduled activity on the project.

The question then arises, how could the military involve large, well-equipped quick-response teams, without someone, at some time, spilling the beans?  Can secrets be that closely held, across so many years, and by so many people?

It is plausible that they could.  Major military projects have been conducted in secret, with no leaks.  The development of stealth aircraft at Area 51 occurred with nothing more than rumors, until the aircraft were unveiled to the public. 

It is also plausible that whenever secret projects are conducted, for example flight tests, quick response teams are scheduled to be at the ready in case something goes wrong.  They could be directed, very efficiently, to the anticipated location of need.

These plausible speculations suggest that the government knows far more about UFOs than they are revealing to the public.  We should not be surprised if they are.  How many governments are involved?  The greater mystery is whether the UFOs that crash, or land, are from our own planet, or some other.

Both possibilities introduce further mysteries and inconsistencies.  It is a tangled web indeed.

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Some Interesting UFO Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRgoisHRmUE

This is a very clear and well-presented, first-hand, plus

reenactment, documentary, the best I have seen about the USS Nimitz UFO

encounter.  Eye witnesses included.

Of incidental interest is the view of Navy life aboard ship.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPHVvg-dXOs

Westall UFO

This report on an Australian local news station

interviews several schoolgirls, 50 years later,

who witnessed a UFO.

What I find to be the weirdest part is at about minute 7.

A girl from the school who witnessed the UFO was quickly taken away

by authorities and never heard from again, and what's more,

visitors to her house were told that no such girl had ever lived there.

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The Westall UFO (2)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPHVvg-dXOs

This is another, more detailed report
on the Westall UFO

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Might UFOs be Earthly Aircraft?

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The most popular explanations of UFOs include theories that they are technological artifacts from other planets, alien civilizations.

However, there are also people who believe that they might be some secret technology developed and produced right here on earth.

There are some reasons to accept that theory, but much stronger reasons to reject it.

The reasons to accept it include the fact that, indeed, there are secret aircraft being produced and tested right here on earth.  The stealth aircraft used by the United States Air Force are no longer secret.  At least, their existence is well publicized.  They are seen relatively often in the skies, and have been deployed overseas in combat.

However, during the in-flight testing phases, such aircraft were sometimes seen by members of the public, who reported them as Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).  Some people speculated that they were from other planets.  Of course, they were wrong.

We can plausibly assume that there is more secret research going on, well concealed, to test advanced technologies, including aircraft.  Therefore, it seems possible that some of these aircraft will on occasion be seen, and will be misidentified as alien spacecraft.

However, the sightings of UFOs include reports of aircraft performing high velocity changes in acceleration and / or in direction that no human pilot could survive.  Even if they were unmanned drones, the performance of many UFOs exceeds anything that earthly technology can produce.  If an earthly government could produce them, that government would be in possession of technology with which they could rule the planet.  The spin-off technology would be dramatically advanced.  The scientific principles they evidence would be Nobel Prize developments.

In short, the long-term concealment of such things would seem to be both impossible and counter-productive.

There is a hybrid theory.  Some people speculate that alien spacecraft have crashed on earth, and have been recovered by the government.  Such wrecks, the rumor goes, have been taken to secret government laboratories and studied.  The studies have produced limited results, but perhaps enough has been learned to enable the development of primitive prototype aircraft that can perform a few of the aerial acrobatic feats described by witness reports.

An even more dramatic speculation is that, not only have alien space-craft come into the possession of our government, but also, even nonhuman crewmembers of those space-craft.  Some say that crashed space-craft recoveries have rescued downed space-men.  Others propose that alien space travelers did not crash, but are interacting with our government voluntarily in some kind of diplomatic capacity.

All of the foregoing theories have problems with them, but that is not to say that we in the general public can rule them out.  We can, however, be very skeptical of them, and with good reason.  Governments can be very good at keeping secrets for a long time; but if those secrets are valuable and exploitable for advantage, those exploits eventually become evident, and the secrets spill out.

Some people claim that there has been such spillage.  They have attributed earthly advances in science and technology to captured alien spacecraft; but none of those advances violate known natural law, as many UFO sightings describe them.

Once again, without having access to government secrets, we can only make estimations, but the evidence for the extraordinary claims of copied alien technology is vague and unconvincing.

Ironically, the most extraordinary claim is the most plausible, which is that the UFOs are spacecraft from alien civilizations on faraway planets.

Even there, however, one encounters some paradoxes, such as, why can we detect UFOs at all?  If they are so advanced, they should have foolproof stealth.  Or, if they do not wish to hide, why can’t we see them all over the place, all the time?  What makes the least sense is that they seem to try to hide, but get seen anyway.

In the end, we are left with the unsatisfying theory that UFOs are phenomena that we cannot begin to understand in terms of our present paradigm.

That, however, seems to be the case.

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