I want the aliens to be real so much. But even if it doesn't turn out to be aliens, these sorts of events present an opportunity to study and explore as-of-yet unexplored or poorly understood phenomenon, which can be equally exciting. In particular, this example seems to be explained as follows:
> In 2020, Justus completed an extensive study of the high-altitude barium release clouds, concluding that what Carter saw was "totally consistent" with what was launched that evening from Eglin AFB.[13] Justus described several physical aspects supporting consistency, and submitted a copy of the report for archival at the Jimmy Carter Library.
And if we look up "Barium Tracer Cloud" on YouTube we can see images of what Jimmy Carter might've seen at the time, which has both a mundane explanation while being exceptionally magical in its own way.
There's also additional images in the report PDF [1].
> I want the aliens to be real so much. But even if it doesn't turn out to be aliens, these sorts of events present an opportunity to study and explore as-of-yet unexplored or poorly understood phenomenon, which can be equally exciting.
One of the main reasons why the UFO crowd discredits itself is the way that the crazies in the community are overrepresented, and look at "this flying object is not identified" and automatically jump to the conclusion that not knowing something somehow means it definitely must support an outlandish mythology.
The barium clouds in that video are a cool effect. Can that model explain the movement towards, then away from the group of witnesses? I guess wind, but is it so common for wind to blow clouds 1 way and then stop and then blow the other? Not a metrologist, don't know! Haha :)
If there are super advanced aliens out there who can get to us, we are screwed. I for one want any aliens out there to be so far away they we can only maybe talk
- "The AZURE mission is designed to make measurements of the atmospheric density and temperature with instruments on the rockets and deploying visible gas tracers, trimethyl aluminum (TMA) and a barium/strontium mixture, which ionizes when exposed to sunlight. The vapors were released over the Norwegian Sea at 71 through 150 miles altitude."
"... Carter himself later said that, while he had considered the object to be a UFO—on the grounds it was unexplained—his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft."
Can you imagine that someone this clear-headed was ever the President of the United States?
The thing which kills me is that I am still mystified (and outraged) by how in my lifetime we went from:
- I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence.
to:
- I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board.
That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.
I know, right? Of course, the American Electorate was quick to rectify its accidental moment of sanity by promptly voting him out after he installed Volcker and hiked rates to the moon (and then rewriting history to say that Carter was a bad president and Reagan tamed inflation).
He was not the president we deserved, but he was the president we needed.
>his knowledge of physics had meant he had not believed himself to be witnessing an alien spacecraft
One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.
This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.
For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones!
Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements.
To blow your mind even further he also wrote an entire book accusing Israel of Apartheid, which is an even more stunningly clear-headed claim for a US president to make.
...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today.
Us trying to 'interpret and judge' the technological level of such a civilization today would be akin to a never-contacted tribe seeing a helicopter and deducing that it cant be real because 'people cant fly'.
"I have a great relationship with the aliens. They love me. We’re going to do great things together. The aliens told me they’ve never seen a leader as strong as me. They said that."
Unfortunately some of Carter's contemporaneous head's of state were not so clear headed. In 1977 Eric Gairy, Prime Minister of Grenada, spent 45 minutes discussing his theories about UFOs to the United Nations. He claimed to have seen many and was convinced they were driven by “highly intelligent aliens of extraterrestrial origin." He even met with Carter about it. Two years later Gairy's government was overthrown by revolutionaries and he had to flee his home country - his strange obsession with UFOs is just an historical footnote.
- "I know I saw something that violated my laws of physics, but my knowledge of physics prevented me from believing it (was a physical object/ was real/ was actually behaving in the physics-violating way I saw)." or
- "From my knowledge of physics it was clear that aliens could not get here, so whatever I saw could not have been their craft."
Jimmy Carter may have been one of the most decent human beings the US has ever had as a President.
I think the way that the Republican party treated (both then and now) a southern, small family farmer who served in the military and taught Sunday school is one of those ironies that shows what values the Republican party actually believes in. And this has obviously only accelerated massively since Trump.
I keep hearing folks say this in a way that grossly overestimates the capabilities of most modern camera phones. I have to ask, just how clearly does your phone take images of airliners, drones, high-altitude balloons, and satellites? Don't get me wrong, I'm not into claims of extraterrestrial visitations, but I am annoyed by the habits of lazy armchair skeptics, whose snark does more to distance true believers from rationalism than they may realize.
There are absolutely scads of purported "lights in the sky" style UFO videos taken from mobile phones on the prominent UFO subreddits.
I personally put zero faith in them, because quite a few are obvious fakes, and the rest are just completely unverifiable, so they are not worth thinking about.
But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...
While the link itself is not political, it seems to be inviting the people who want to turn HN into a place where they can say why their preferred candidate is the best, or more typically why the other candidate is just about the worst person in human history.
HN is better when politics are discussed elsewhere.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
This was a discussion about historic presidents. It certainly interested me, as a person who is curious about American history of the late 70s and early 80s. If there were any politics in that discussion—I’m sure there were, it is hard to leave politics out of interpretations of history—they didn’t affect the thread in a way that made it less interesting.
Say it really was an alien spacecraft, then the color changes could be blue- and redshift as your technology lets you seemingly alter the order of events of an acceleration and a deceleration at a far away destination. Giving a solution to GR that would create this effect is much beyond me but I would love to investigate the implications of such a universe.
> In 2016, the hosts of episode #561 of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast read a letter forwarded by a member of the Carter family from Carl G. "Jere" Justus, giving his explanation of Carter's UFO sighting:[12]
After recently reading the book Georgia Myths & Legends, by Augusta Chronicle columnist Don Rhodes, specifically Chapter 5, "Jimmy Carter and the UFO", I am virtually certain that I have identified the source of what it was that President Carter saw. In the 1960s and early 70s, I worked on an Air Force sponsored project that studied the upper atmosphere using releases of glowing chemical clouds, produced by rockets launched from Eglin AFB rocket range in Florida. Some of these chemical clouds, notably sodium and barium, were visible by the process of resonance scattering of sunlight. Clouds of this type had to be launched not long after sunset or not long before sunrise. This was due to the fact that the cloud had to be in sunlight at high altitude, while it was still dark enough at ground level for the cloud to be visible against the dark sky. In Carter's official 1973 UFO report, as given in the Rhodes book, he stated that he had seen the phenomenon in October, 1969, at 7:15 pm EST. However, it has been determined from Lions Club records that Carter must have seen the "UFO" when he spoke to their Leary, GA Chapter on January 6, 1969. The report "U.S. Space Science Program Report to COSPAR, 1970" (QB504.U54, Appendix I, page 154) documents that there was a barium cloud launched from Eglin AFB (Rocket Number AG7.626) and released on January 6, 1969 at 7:35 pm EST (January 7, 1969, 0035 UTC) [COSPAR stands for Committee on Space Research]. The reported altitude for this cloud was 152 km. With a distance between Leary, GA and Eglin AFB, FL of about 234 km, this cloud would have appeared in the sky at an elevation of 33 degrees (consistent with Carter's estimate of a 30 degree elevation). Carter's report notes that stars were visible, so the night must have been clear. I can verify from personal experience that under clear skies, a barium cloud such as this would easily have been visible from the distance of Leary, GA. Carter reported the UFO "appeared from West". The direction of Eglin AFB from Leary, GA is approximately WSW. Thus this barium cloud at Eglin is consistent with Carter's reported "UFO" as to time, elevation, and direction. Furthermore, the appearance reported by Carter is totally consistent with a high-altitude barium cloud. His report stated that it was "bluish at first, then reddish, luminous, not solid". A neutral barium cloud would initially glow bluish or greenish, with parts of it taking on a reddish glow as some of the barium becomes ionized in the high altitude sunlight. The size and brightness, reported as being about that of the moon, would also be consistent with a barium cloud at Eglin, as viewed from Leary, GA. Carter has been reported as saying that he never believed that he had seen an alien spacecraft, but that he had no idea exactly what it was. I'm interested in exploring if this information could be relayed to President Carter, so that if he wishes to, he can better understand what it was that he saw back then.
It's crazy to me how this link gets upvoted in HackerNews but not David Grursch's (former NRO/NGA Intel Officer) claims don't. He testified under oath to the Intelligence Community Inspector Generals, both Senate/House Intel Committees, and a public House Oversight Committee under oath that the USG has recovered crashed/landed non-human intelligence craft. The ICIG referred Grusch's claims to the intel committees as being "credible" and "urgent".
David Grusch is not some random whistleblower we should be ignoring. He was a GS-15 intel officer read into over 2000 special access programs. He handled the presidential daily briefing, which they do not give to just anyone. Take a look at his resume to see how highly cleared he was https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20230726/116282/HHRG....
And let me just clarify - this is not just one person's claims. His work in the UAP Task Force had 40 people with direct, first hand knowledge of the programs. Some of whom worked on the NHI craft. He had these people testify to the ICIG, providing documentation, imagery, and other evidence.
Listen, I know this sounds insane to most folks. The meat of his claims, beyond the craft, are that factions of the USG have *not* been properly giving congress(and even some presidents) oversight of these alleged Special Access Programs. The ICIG has most likely referred this case to the justice department, and his claims have started a congressional UAP Caucus in the house.
Take a look at this interview with Marco Rubio, the ranking member of the Senate Intel Committee, as he's talking about the 40 whistleblower's claims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hmaflNoKU
If you haven't watched the HOC hearing, or any of his other interviews, I highly recommend you do so. Or at the very least, read his opening statement he was giving to the HOC
I'm not saying the claims are true. I'm just saying, the allegations are worth investigating and should not be dismissed outright.
Edit: One final note. After Grusch's claims released, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced an amendment to the NDAA 2024 titled "UAP Disclosure Act" which would've set up a presidential panel to declassify and release information that the USG has on the subject. It references the terminology "non-human intelligence" 27 times. The amendment was gutted by certain house members and unfortunately did not make it through in its initial form, but it's worth the read. https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/uap_amendment...
At least it's getting discussed now. I think part of the reason could be Grusch is like "the deep end" for many people. Whereas Carter seeing a maybe-UFO is an easier introduction, which is perfectly fine! Everyone is at a different stage at this point :)
At the bottom of the page you can find a search bar with which you can discover that David Grusch's claims and the UAP phenomenon in general have been done to death here.
There is no real discussion to be had on the topic. People choose to believe Grusch and others because of their own faith in the ET/UFO narrative as a first principle. People doubt Grusch and others because none of them ever present compelling evidence, and their claims in aggregate are ridiculous. The former camp mocks the latter camp, the latter camp mocks the former. Eventually the discussion splinters into talk of Von Neumann probes, generation ships and the Fermi Paradox. Lather, rinse repeat.
But here we all are still waiting for the "catastrophic disclosure" that should have happened by now. And for what it's worth the government's own investigations have consistently come to the conclusion that no extraterrestrial or physics-defying technologies are involved, and the vast majority of what's been presented as undeniable proof via video and photographic evidence turns out to have mundane explanations. But of course one can simply write that conclusion off as part of the conspiracy.
There's strict protocols for aircraft flying near the president's aircraft. There's no way in hell the airbase would allow take off while the president is in the air and he wouldn't have been told about it.
TheAceOfHearts|1 year ago
> In 2020, Justus completed an extensive study of the high-altitude barium release clouds, concluding that what Carter saw was "totally consistent" with what was launched that evening from Eglin AFB.[13] Justus described several physical aspects supporting consistency, and submitted a copy of the report for archival at the Jimmy Carter Library.
And if we look up "Barium Tracer Cloud" on YouTube we can see images of what Jimmy Carter might've seen at the time, which has both a mundane explanation while being exceptionally magical in its own way.
There's also additional images in the report PDF [1].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUAqsxYJtHc
[1] https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/What_Jimmy_Car...
chipdart|1 year ago
One of the main reasons why the UFO crowd discredits itself is the way that the crazies in the community are overrepresented, and look at "this flying object is not identified" and automatically jump to the conclusion that not knowing something somehow means it definitely must support an outlandish mythology.
klyrs|1 year ago
https://eos.org/science-updates/ionospheric-fireworks-illumi...
keepamovin|1 year ago
A good overview of "state of UAP" right now is: https://www.uap.guide/quotes/introduction
In addition, for fun, here's some other political figures (including some famous ones) and their UFO experiences:
- Democrat presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich admits he saw a UFO during the 2007 debate: https://www.cleveland.com/openers/2007/10/kucinich_at_debate...
- 40th US President Ronald Reagan was initially open about having been part of a group of passengers who witnessed a very fast UFO aboard an aircraft in 1974: https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/ronald-r...
- Army Gunner and Canadian parliamentary minister Paul Hellyer said he saw a UFO with his wife and friends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Hellyer#Extraterrestrial_...
- Arizona governor Fife Symington was among witnesses of the Phoenix lights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fife_Symington#Phoenix_Lights
- Kirsan Ilyumzhinov President of Kalmykia and head of World Chess Federation said he was show the inside of a UFO by NHIs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsan_Ilyumzhinov#UFO_experie...
barbariangrunge|1 year ago
perihelions|1 year ago
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/90497/colorful-clou... ("Colorful Clouds Glow Over Virginia" (2017))
https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasa-launches-two-rockets-... ("NASA Launches Two Rockets Studying Auroras" (2019))
- "The AZURE mission is designed to make measurements of the atmospheric density and temperature with instruments on the rockets and deploying visible gas tracers, trimethyl aluminum (TMA) and a barium/strontium mixture, which ionizes when exposed to sunlight. The vapors were released over the Norwegian Sea at 71 through 150 miles altitude."
dieselgate|1 year ago
wbl|1 year ago
macintux|1 year ago
vertnerd|1 year ago
Can you imagine that someone this clear-headed was ever the President of the United States?
WillAdams|1 year ago
- I am selling my family farm because I don't want there to be a perception of influence.
to:
- I am keeping all of my companies and property and will be charging the Secret Service which has the duty to protect me room and board.
That said, the whole UFO thing is pretty ridiculous --- it's _hard_ to bring an object which is under power and moving at speeds which allow interstellar travel into our solar system at a relative velocity which allows interaction --- witness ʻOumuamua which despite being "just" a dead chunk of rock was detected and photographed.
jdewerd|1 year ago
He was not the president we deserved, but he was the president we needed.
daghamm|1 year ago
schiffern|1 year ago
One of our known scientific facts is that we know our understanding physics is incomplete (namely, QCD and GR are incompatible), so obviously we can never put 100% confidence into Carter's negative claim.
This is just Epistemology 101, and totally uncontroversial.
For all people, our perceptions are influenced by what we expect to see. European explorers attributed "lost white tribes",[0] and native people saw dragons instead of sailing ships. No doubt many of their people said those who saw dragons were the "clear headed" ones!
Maybe (just maybe!) we should remember our history, and think twice before being hasty with confident-sounding "End Of History / End Of Knowledge" style pronouncements.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn4bvjMh4vc
ak_111|1 year ago
zrn900|1 year ago
...of our contemporary civilization. If you think objectively about it, there is no reason for the technological level of any potential alien visitor to be in a range that we can understand - solely for the act of traveling great distances that are required to reach a distant star, they would need to have discovered physics paradigms far beyond our understanding today.
Us trying to 'interpret and judge' the technological level of such a civilization today would be akin to a never-contacted tribe seeing a helicopter and deducing that it cant be real because 'people cant fly'.
unknown|1 year ago
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ta1243|1 year ago
belter|1 year ago
perrygeo|1 year ago
keepamovin|1 year ago
- "I know I saw something that violated my laws of physics, but my knowledge of physics prevented me from believing it (was a physical object/ was real/ was actually behaving in the physics-violating way I saw)." or
- "From my knowledge of physics it was clear that aliens could not get here, so whatever I saw could not have been their craft."
or something else?
sgnelson|1 year ago
I think the way that the Republican party treated (both then and now) a southern, small family farmer who served in the military and taught Sunday school is one of those ironies that shows what values the Republican party actually believes in. And this has obviously only accelerated massively since Trump.
canadianfella|1 year ago
[deleted]
api|1 year ago
[deleted]
stavros|1 year ago
sdiupIGPWEfh|1 year ago
JohnBooty|1 year ago
I personally put zero faith in them, because quite a few are obvious fakes, and the rest are just completely unverifiable, so they are not worth thinking about.
But there's no shortage of modern-day pictures and videos...
solarengineer|1 year ago
likeabbas|1 year ago
4dregress|1 year ago
bsuvc|1 year ago
HN is better when politics are discussed elsewhere.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
runarberg|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
shrimp_emoji|1 year ago
ganzuul|1 year ago
junon|1 year ago
kcplate|1 year ago
But admittedly he was better than the current candidates we have available to us in November.
wizerno|1 year ago
dahart|1 year ago
xandrius|1 year ago
> In 2016, the hosts of episode #561 of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast read a letter forwarded by a member of the Carter family from Carl G. "Jere" Justus, giving his explanation of Carter's UFO sighting:[12]
likeabbas|1 year ago
David Grusch is not some random whistleblower we should be ignoring. He was a GS-15 intel officer read into over 2000 special access programs. He handled the presidential daily briefing, which they do not give to just anyone. Take a look at his resume to see how highly cleared he was https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO06/20230726/116282/HHRG....
And let me just clarify - this is not just one person's claims. His work in the UAP Task Force had 40 people with direct, first hand knowledge of the programs. Some of whom worked on the NHI craft. He had these people testify to the ICIG, providing documentation, imagery, and other evidence.
Listen, I know this sounds insane to most folks. The meat of his claims, beyond the craft, are that factions of the USG have *not* been properly giving congress(and even some presidents) oversight of these alleged Special Access Programs. The ICIG has most likely referred this case to the justice department, and his claims have started a congressional UAP Caucus in the house.
Take a look at this interview with Marco Rubio, the ranking member of the Senate Intel Committee, as he's talking about the 40 whistleblower's claims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hmaflNoKU
Rep Jared Moscowitz, after a SCIF meeting with the ICIG, said "Based on what we heard many of Grusch claims have merit!" https://twitter.com/JaredEMoskowitz/status/17458524006304566...
If you haven't watched the HOC hearing, or any of his other interviews, I highly recommend you do so. Or at the very least, read his opening statement he was giving to the HOC
* HOC opening statement https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Dave_...
* HOC hearing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSCEWo2yjds
* Initial interview with Ross Coulthart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLZzDhDYMcw
* Initial article https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-re...
* Interview on JRE https://open.spotify.com/episode/6D6otpHwnaAc86SS1M8yHm
* Interview with Tucker Carlson https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1735083523050975277...
I'm not saying the claims are true. I'm just saying, the allegations are worth investigating and should not be dismissed outright.
Edit: One final note. After Grusch's claims released, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced an amendment to the NDAA 2024 titled "UAP Disclosure Act" which would've set up a presidential panel to declassify and release information that the USG has on the subject. It references the terminology "non-human intelligence" 27 times. The amendment was gutted by certain house members and unfortunately did not make it through in its initial form, but it's worth the read. https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/uap_amendment...
keepamovin|1 year ago
BTW this was a really good summary!!! :)
krapp|1 year ago
There is no real discussion to be had on the topic. People choose to believe Grusch and others because of their own faith in the ET/UFO narrative as a first principle. People doubt Grusch and others because none of them ever present compelling evidence, and their claims in aggregate are ridiculous. The former camp mocks the latter camp, the latter camp mocks the former. Eventually the discussion splinters into talk of Von Neumann probes, generation ships and the Fermi Paradox. Lather, rinse repeat.
But here we all are still waiting for the "catastrophic disclosure" that should have happened by now. And for what it's worth the government's own investigations have consistently come to the conclusion that no extraterrestrial or physics-defying technologies are involved, and the vast majority of what's been presented as undeniable proof via video and photographic evidence turns out to have mundane explanations. But of course one can simply write that conclusion off as part of the conspiracy.
So yeah. Let us know when there's a there there.
tarcon|1 year ago
mig39|1 year ago
https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-105
This was the podcast referenced on the John Oliver show recently, when Oliver talked about Jimmy Carter's UFO incident.
They also had a bit of followup (decades later) on the latest Skeptics Guide episode.
The current thought is that he saw some aircraft from a nearby airbase.
likeabbas|1 year ago
wizerno|1 year ago
[deleted]
oksteven|1 year ago