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Sci-Fi

Congress To Hold Another UFO/UAP Hearing (space.com) 137

Posted by BeauHD from the mark-your-calendar dept.
Longtime Slashdot reader thephydes writes: The hearing will go ahead on November 13 at 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT). Apparently, it will "further pull back the curtain on secret UAP research programs conducted by the U.S. government, and undisclosed findings they have yielded," according to a House statement. It's driven by two republicans, Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) and Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), who say: "Americans deserve to understand what the government has learned about UAP sightings, and the nature of any potential threats these phenomena pose. We can only ensure that understanding by providing consistent, systemic transparency. We look forward to hearing from expert witnesses on ways to shed more light and bring greater accountability to this issue." "Expert witnesses in the hearing will include Luis Elizondo, a decorated former counterintelligence officer who has claimed for years that the U.S. government is hiding knowledge of UAP, including materials recovered from crashed flying saucers," reports Space.com. "The House hearing will also include Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who observed unidentified submersible objects, arguing that 'these underwater anomalies jeopardize US maritime security.'"

"Other speakers at the hearing include journalist Michael Shellenberger, who has also claimed the U.S. government is hiding UFO crash retrieval programs, and former NASA Associate Administrator of Space Policy and Partnerships Michael Gold, who is a member of NASA's independent UAP study team."

Congress To Hold Another UFO/UAP Hearing More | Reply

Congress To Hold Another UFO/UAP Hearing

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  • This is the stupidest collapse ever (Score:4, Insightful)

    by locater16 ( 2326718 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @02:11AM (#64941895)
    how appropriate for America
    • I don't have a problem with congress wasting their time talking about UFOs.

      With both houses and the president controlled by the same party, wasting their time prevents them from doing really stupid things.

    • how appropriate for America

      This is a distraction. They want to talk about UFOs because the subject gathers media attention like shit gathers flies. The best practice when the government wants to discuss anything that seems quasi-questionable publicly is to start digging under the surface to see what type of nefarious shit they're trying to pull while this public spectacle is going on. Though during our transition period here, I'd think it's mostly about shuffling around egregiously stupid assholes into new roles. I can't imagine the

    • Glenn Grothman is a crafty bugger that uses PT Barnum style distraction to keep people voting for him as he helps the destruction of the family farm continue.
  • Explain like I'm five why a highly advanced space-faring civilization would visit earth and then only buzz military aircraft and engage in kidnapping cattle.

    • Re: Explain like I'm five (Score:5, Funny)

      by Raistlin77 ( 754120 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @03:16AM (#64941941)
      Anal probes! Don't forget the anal probes!

    • Re:Explain like I'm five (Score:5, Funny)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @03:43AM (#64941975)

      "Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets that haven’t made interstellar contact yet and buzz them.” “Buzz them?” Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him. “Yeah,” said Ford, “they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor unsuspecting soul whom no one’s ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennas on their head and making beep beep noises."

        Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

    • No one mentioned:
      * space faring
      * kidnapping castle

      We are talking about Unexplain(ed/able) Arial Phenomaena.

      Is unexplainable a good enough explanation for a five year old?

      • > Is unexplainable a good enough explanation for a five year old?

        UFOlogy, is a kind of religious cult. In an age where the conventional religions have lost credibility. People have to believe in something.

        Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies [wasabisys.com] (1958)

        • It is not about UFOLOGY.
          You must be living under a rock.

          Navy pilots and Carrier groups reported unexplainable areal things, and even unexplainable submarines.

          This is a FACT and not some stupid conspiration theory.

          The things are on radar of the carriers and ASIC cruisers, and on camara of the pilots: And no one can explain what it is!!

          Get a damn clue.
          Just look on youtube. Plenty of real life interviews with the US Navy pilots involved with the incidents.
          If you want to accuse them of lying: tell them into the

          • Do you think the Earth is flat too?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by e3m4n ( 947977 )

            The point people are missing is that we dont know the origin. Honestly I find the idea China or Russia being behind it more scary than Aliens. We cant match the performance and we sure as hell dont have the firepower to shoot it down. The third option is that it is US tech but completely off the books and secret. The appearances could be a way of testing and using the cover of UAP as misinformation.

            • This are basically my thoughts.

              That it is "alien" is obviously nonsense. There would be a gigantic star ship orbiting our planet.

          • Yeah, some of them are pretty interesting. For example there's one where someone is using some type of night vision scope on a military ship and sees a triangle like object in the sky. An alarm is raised and stuff happens. Makes it into a UFO report and it stumps a ton of people, including some in congress. Then you get a youtube comment which points out that the night vision camera they were using uses a triangle aperture and that we're seeing in the video is exactly what an out-of-focus bright object

            • I do not think there are aliens.

              It is either US armed forces themselves toying with the Navy, or some other nation toying with them.

              Point is: the flying objects and the under water objects are real.

              And we do not know what they are.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            It's a fact that people have reported such things, yes.

            Lots of other people can explain what it is. You just don't like the explanations because they're not mysterious enough. It will be fun to watch US congressmen get all excited and discuss their very serious national security while watching videos of triangle shaped stars again though.

            • You just don't like the explanations because they're not mysterious enough.
              If you in this sentence means me.

              Then You are an idiot.

      • I think it's pretty cool that Tim Gallaudet can unidentify things. (sez the summary)

        • I guess the summary is just fucked up, or the original article.

          Point is: Navy pilots saw stuff, which they do not know what it is.

          That includes unidentifiable under water crafts.

          I think this is a fact and there is nothing to discuss about it.

          Unless people want to claim the US Navy is participating in a gigantic prank/conspiracy.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by e3m4n ( 947977 )

            Unless people want to claim the US Navy is participating in a gigantic prank/conspiracy.

            Why would that be hard to believe? Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. Reagan used the same tricks to bankrupt the USSR. After 9/11 I suggested making a big Hollywood production to disclose a secret underground facility where we were capturing enemy jihadists and cryogenically freezing them in stasis. No dying a martyrs death. No afterlife with Allah. No 77 virgins in heaven. We cryogenically froze your soul. Nothing is more powerful than psychological warfare to weaken your enemies resolv

          • Indeed.

            Consider that the US Navy is going to be the biggest flyers of aircraft with serious sensor equipment in 'weather'. But operated by non-scientific trained pilots and crew for the large part.

            So they get something they don't know, they report it to their chain of command. It gets routed to better experts, who probably categorize like 99% without a problem. Now we're having hearings on the remaining 1% or so.

            • Exactly.
              But I wonder what is worse? Conspiracy theorists or "anti Conspiracy theorists"?
              I actually would prefer those stuff is investigated, so we know (in the end) what it is about.

              • It is investigated, around 3 levels of investigation. A person on ship or base, then a team at the pentagon, then even select NASA people. It is just that at the end of the day, "not enough information" is a possible result.
                It could indeed be a weird craft like the B-2 bomber back when it first started flying. These days it could be a drone with a fancy shell.
                It could be an unusual weather event.
                It could be an animal
                It could be a sensor malfunction
                Some sort of optical illusion
                A combination of the above.

                I

                • I just know that it is unlikely to actually be chupacabra or an extraterrestrial craft.
                  We are not talking about extraterrestrial crafts.

                  We are talking about man made objects, which we could not identify.

                  That is all.

                  What you think why UFO got renamed to UAP?

                  To make pretty clear that the people involved are not UFO nutters, but people who saw something, have it on camara and on radar: and for funk sake, have no damn clue what it is!

                  Animals do not outfly an F18 hornet. They do not pop up on radar, unless it is

                  • We aren't just talking about man-made objects, but a whole range of things, many of which are not man made or even flying. Thus the renaming from UFO TO UAP makes perfect sense. Note how I didn't mention UFO once.
                    Now, I do believe that the congressional hearings are at least partially due to beliefs that some of them are extraterrestrial in origin, and not in the sense of a meteor or other natural space object. Which is why I mentioned it.
                    I mean, no where did I call those reporting to be "UFO nutters".

                    • The hearings are not about extraterrestrial things.
                      They are about the "flying objects" that harass US carrier groups since 20 years.

                    • The hearings are not about extraterrestrial things.

                      Are you aware that you seem to have problems with reading comprehension? There's a difference between "they think it involves" and "it involves".

                      Yes, this is about stuff we've been recording since we first started putting cameras on planes.

                    • Perhaps you are, no idea.

                      Definitely a reading comprehension problem then. I mean, I only mentioned that it's "unlikely" to be extraterrestrial craft several times. Nowhere do I mention it actually being extraterrestrial craft.
                      Numerous TV shows and plenty of people claiming to have met extraterrestrials, been kidnapped by them, etc... indicates that no, there are indeed people "stupid" enough to assume that extraterrestrials are flying around planet Earth.
                      I'm not one of them. It's mostly my bent for not claiming unprovable absol

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rossdee ( 243626 )

        "We are talking about Unexplain(ed/able) Arial Phenomaena."

        Its a mystery why the aliens use San-Serif fonts

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      Explain like I'm five why a highly advanced space-faring civilization would visit earth and then only buzz military aircraft and engage in kidnapping cattle.

      I figure maybe they're a little bit stoned. First, they get all paranoid, worried that the feds might go after them, so they buzz the aircraft to scare them off. Then, they get hungry and go for a burger.

      • “after humans have ventured out into the stars .. They colonized star systems, discovered new technology, realized that no one else lived within walking distance, and went back to what they did best: fighting amongst themselves [patriotsbooks.com].”

        Haaar!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JamesTRexx ( 675890 )

      Well, a lot of peple believe the fantasy characters from very old stories are real and created lifestyles based on them, so it's not a surprise for some of them to think relatively recent science fiction characters are real as well.
      People like that are easier to control.

    • Maybe they just havnt figured out the cows arent in charge yet?

      Like how Ford Prefect (Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) chose his name when visiting Earth based on the very minimal research he had done, meaning he ended up thinking automobiles were the dominant lifeform and that "Ford Prefect" was going to be perfect for blending in.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )

        It was the mice running the experiment. The one ruined by the Vogon construction company building a bypass.

    • Most people have no concept of the speed of light, what a light-year is, or how hostile the universe is beyond the surface of the Earth. No idea how far the nearest potentially habitable planet is, nor a grasp of how likely it is that distance will increase as our knowledge grows. No idea how much it would take in terms of resources and time to get a living creature from a planet circling one star to a planet circling another.

      But you can explain it to them.

      UFO / alien abduction / cow mutilation / crop cir

      • UFO / alien abduction / cow mutilation / crop circle people? They are absolutely immune to education.

        How many of those have you actually met?

      • You seem to have an incredible amount of blind faith that a bunch of dumb apes who've had computers less than 100 years and lack a unified model of physics already possess such vast expertise we can conclusively rule out any method of effective ftl travel, even those not ruled out by current understandings of physics.
        Personally I'm not arrogant enough to possess the faith required to believe that even a million years from now, we won't ever find some clever workarounds to make it possible, or even just per

        • You're comfortable with magical thinking and discounting - likely out of ignorance - the Relativity of Wrong effect. And then you're compounding that with a layer of stupid in your effort to mock my post.

          There is zero reason to believe the speed of light is optional, and unknown physics doesn't include enough unknown space to change that. As for longevity... Yeah, if I could live a thousand years and command the energy budget to send a starship across the void... I'm going to pop over to Earth for a few n

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      Just because its UAP doesn't mean it’s automatically aliens. Some of these maneuvers defy what we currently understand is humanly possible. That leaves 2 options. 1) aliens from off world or 2) a world power has had a sudden and very secret advancement in technology. Option 1 is less scary than option 2. Option 2 means that if it isnt the US, we are seriously behind. If it is the US that also makes sense. Reagan used ufo misinformation as well as the Star Wars Defense Initiative (SDI) to bankrupt the

      • Isn't error of interpretation more likely than either 1 or 2?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )

          error? from multiple navy pilots, AGIS radar systems, aircraft carriers, etc? This includes video recorded from the F-18 Super hornet aircrafts. There's no question that some of these reports are factual. The source of the technology is what is in question. The rate that the objects suddenly change direction seem to defy the physical limits a human could withstand. That doesn't necessarily imply they arent some unmanned vehicle. But the speed they accelerated exceeds anything that even the navy pilots are

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            seem to defy

            Key phrase. Looking at the videos yeah, it *seems* very impressive. Crunching the numbers, much less so. I haven't seen any of these videos that are actually impressive, but if you've got one in particular you're thinking of, post it.

          • Error of interpretation doesn't mean there isn't something there that they are measuring, but it is easy to arrive at the wrong conclusions about what the measurements mean. Especially with a new technology where carrying forward assumptions that were accurate for the previous technology may lead to weird places. I'm not an engineer and can't speak to radar with any confidence, but when I did science at the bench, any really shocking results were usually a mistake (whether human error, instrument error, o

    • Explain like I'm five why a highly advanced space-faring civilization would visit earth and then only buzz military aircraft and engage in kidnapping cattle.

      Possibility: Future humans come back to study Earth that was and have a firm mandate not to directly interfere with the timeline while they fuck around with animals, sometimes probe a motorist, and rarely have a run-in with other craft that are airborne. Not that I believe it, but it's one of the more plausible conspiracy theories floating around out there.

  • UFOs, "History" Channel Bible mysteries, flurr-idation Mandrake, booga-booga-boo! Pay no attention to the Russian behind the curtain.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jsepeta ( 412566 )

      Mandark.

      https://greatcharacters.mirahe... [miraheze.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      UFOs, "History" Channel Bible mysteries, flurr-idation Mandrake, booga-booga-boo! Pay no attention to the Russian behind the curtain.

      In many ways I blame the mainstreaming of this BS on the advent of 24-hour news stations. It wasn't actually possible to fill 24 hours (or even the eighteen or so hours where majority of the population on a continent are awake) with news people actually care about, so they started filling in between news shows with opinion pieces and other fluff. Then those fluff-pieces got higher ratings than the content that the network was ostensibly created for.

      After this happened to 24 hour "news" stations, it happen

      • That too, but there was a parallel development where it got hard to sustain an ad-supported channel on legitimate content. The premium cable networks got too good at everything, so the basic ones had to go very, very stupid to find a stable audience. Middlebrow is no-man's-land, apparently.

        On the bright side, it pushed people who are for real to start creating streaming content, and it's unlikely that six-hour professional-grade academic documentaries on a specific topic would ever be produced otherwis

  • ...by putting a stop to idiocy like this. The UFO (now "UAP", because...why?) freaks can go have their conference somewhere else, on their own dime.

    On X, someone also published a list of some of the ideas funded by the government. There's plenty of waste going around. It would be cool if Musk can actually pull the plug on some of this crap. A few million here, a few million there, pretty soon you're talking real money...

    Maybe worth tossing out there as a last observation: The UFO stuff is fed by the gover

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Sometimes you have to try the nonsense just in case some of it actually works. Even Musk probably realises that until we find a better method of propulsion than chucking hot gas out of the back of a rocket we're never really going to leave our back yard space wise.

    • Maybe Musk can make the raging success out of the government that he's made of Twitter.

    • Re:Reduce government spending... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @07:49AM (#64942247) Homepage

      A few million here, a few million there, pretty soon you're talking real money

      I thought people on slashdot were supposed to be good with math, because 1% of the US Federal Budget is 67.5 billion fucking dollars. Giving a shit about a few *dozen* million here and there amounts to spending effort and resources hunting the couch for coins to save up for a fucking Porsche 911 GT3 RS.

    • Why are you unconcerned with potentially-enemy technology invading US airspace unimpeded (per endless DoD testimony)?

  • To unidentify (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pjt33 ( 739471 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @03:15AM (#64941939)

    Tim Gallaudet, a retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral who unidentified submersible objects

    I'm fascinated by this verb. Someone else identified an object as e.g. a whale and he said "No"?

    • It's an easy problem to solve, just reidentify them.

    • True. The whale was traveling at 300 knots according to his interviews.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Sounds appropriate. The modern UFO play loop goes something like this:

      1. Someone posts blurry video showing something weird and unidentified

      2. Internet commentators hunt down minute details and show the video is actually compatible with several ordinary explanations, usually some combination of balloon, duck, windblown plastic bag, airliner, etc.

      3. UFO enthusiasts say no.

  • Apparently even a lot of the believers don't believe what he says. Seems the man is little more than another grifter leaching off the gullible. There's probably a good reason he's a *former* counter intelligence officer.

  • First they waste billions hiding stuff and producing miss information. They they spends billions to wade through the miss information looking for anything they missed.

  • Give it up already (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dlarge6510 ( 10394451 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @06:05AM (#64942135)

    I mean I'm 100% confident of the existence of other civilisations out there, we exist thus they can exist.

    I'm open to the idea of alien probes navigating the cosmos, we have been thinking of doing the same.

    I'm excited by the prospect of finding life elsewhere in our solar system, not because it validates there IS life, but it will finally shut up those who think there isn’t.

    I'm interested in ideas surrounding life moving through the cosmos on comets etc seeding worlds.

    But unless there happens to be a colony here in our solar system, I'm very doubtful of visitation. Probes passing through the solar system, maybe. Little Green men actually landing and walking about etc, no. Not because it’s impossible, as it isn’t, the dice might come up with the right numbers and a "generational ship" actually did set up camp here in the solar system, it’s not impossible just very improbable.

    We will get out there, we will land on other planets in other systems. We MIGHT find evidence of another civilisation by finding WHAT THEY LEFT BEHIND, but I doubt we will ever actually find them (a civilisation at least) as I see the distances way too vast and the time to travel them could mean the difference between detecting signals of a civilisation only to find by the time you finally get there they are long gone.

    And so that leaves me generally sceptical regarding the "what" in these UFO videos. In most cases it clearly is a bird. The last set of videos all showed something the size shape and speed of birds. Yet we had loads of idiots, including the pilots, who claimed otherwise. This even though that all the data they needed to correctly identify the "object" was ON SCREEN. One such video showed some kind of FAST MOVING OBJECT that the pilots were all happy about having managed to lock on with their camera system. It sure looked fast moving! But, if you actually looked at the in-flight data, shown on the video itself, you can glean several important details regarding the planes speed and direction. Those details then show that the relative speed between the plane and the "object" WAS WHAT WAS FAST, that the plane was moving FAST and the "object" was moving slow, about the speed of... a seabird flying towards the shore (which was the direction of travel for that “object”).

    The difficulty they had in locking onto the target was actually due to THEIR speed relative to the slow object coupled with the fact they were VERY FAR AWAY and the "object" was TINY, all of which can be calculated FROM THE DATA IN THE VIDEO!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Combined with this strange idea that somehow, pilots are in possession of "super vision" and are "highly trained" to see things way better than the plebs wandering along the ground resulted in a "it must be true as a pilot saw it" mentality.

    Well, the truth is pilots have human eyes, which are piss poor at the very least. They can’t distinguish between a flying plastic bag and a bird and an errant drone half the time. They all look like generic specs, and flying at speed makes them look to move in and out of visual sight very fast. They saw SOMETHING but have no real clue what it was, so how the hell does anyone think these videos have any more credibility?

    Remember the viral video of a UFO shot at night by a guy on a Naval vessel who thought he was seeing aliens? Turned out it was a DRILL with drones launched by his own ship that he simply stumbled upon. Right place, right time, didn’t know about the drill.

    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and the videos we did see in the last "investigation" all explained themselves if you looked at the flight data and assumed you were looking at something no more odd than a flying swan.

    • In most cases it clearly is a bird.
      A bird that is on radar of most ships of a carrier group?
      A bird that flies faster than an F14 Tomcat? Which is pursuing it, and filming it? And does not look like a bird, but like a cigar? Must have very fast flapping wings. And must be pretty big to show up on radar. (Normally flesh does not show up on radar, you need special radar system to detect swarms of birds. A single bird 20km away: no way you see that on radar!)

      Otherwise I agree with most what you say.

  • OK, last time they didn't tell us everything, but they were just testing the waters to see if the American people could accept the truth. So, this time, they will reveal all. Unless they don't. In which case, we know UFOs are real because they keep having these meetings to not tell us about them. That's just basic logic. You can't deny it!

  • Retired military pilots have books to $ell (Score:3)

    by sinkskinkshrieks ( 6952954 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @10:55AM (#64942625)
    This is a total waste of time and money. Ain't no aliens. Most of these videos have to do with chasing false video artifacts of the optics.

  • We need to expend all available resource and monies on these claims until all conspiracy theories have been proven true. All blurry videos must be sharpened until we see aliens in 4K HD.

  • ..when we need him. I wish more people would watch his videos on Youtube.

  • These special access programs are supposed to tell Congress what they are doing and instead they are hiding it. This is the main reason why Congress is involved, they do not want their power usurped. If the military has gone rogue and is doing things without telling Congress and the Commander In Chief, that would be a very bad thing.

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