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I've seen two UAPs in my life. The first time with a friend and the second time by myself. Each time the "device" moved in a zigzag fashion I never saw before and have not seen since. Unearthly and viscerally strange.

It seems like the phenomenon is coming in from the sidelines of our collective experience, and appearing more openly in plain and very public sight. Maybe the point is to make it impossible for us to deny their existence any longer. I suspect some big time ontological shock is coming our way, real soon.

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This is incredible. Why are people not up in arms over this? This reminds me of the alleged "Chinese spy balloon" the we inexplicably allowed to traverse the ENTIRE COUNTRY and did nothing about until it was FINALLY shot down off the coast of South Carolina in January/February of 2023. I never understood that, nor did I buy the official story. This seems potentially hundreds of times worse. We need to demand answers!

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One thing I'll say about that balloon is that it was huge, with a heavy payload. My understanding is that they were concerned if they shot it down, the debris could do serious damage or even kill someone, which is why they waited until it was over the water.

Not sure I buy it, but it kind of makes sense when you see the platform that thing was carrying.

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It's crazy. Check out my postscript I just added to the post. That Assemblyman is FIRED UP.

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This is really exciting! Thanks for compiling all of that.

If those videos towards the start of the post are indeed of "real UAPs," then they're the clearest videos I've ever seen of the creepy critters. Though I'm uncertain why they'd be playing the "jet flying overhead" sound effect, as is happening in one of the videos. I always assumed UFOs were silent. Unless maybe that's part of the "fairy glamour," by which they're trying to seem like planes to us?

Quite humorous that the press spokeswoman had to clarify, "There's no so-called 'mothership' launching drones towards the United States." I mean, "mothership?" That's meant to be the pedestrian explanation, yet it sounds whimsical, if not ludicrous, itself.

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In breaking news, the U.S. Navy has reclassified the new USS Gerald R. Ford from an aircraft carrier (CVN-78) to a mothership (MON-78). The N for nuclear power was retained in the new hull symbol. Critics denounced the change as proof of further feminization of the military...

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Re: Though I'm uncertain why they'd be playing the "jet flying overhead" sound effect, as is happening in one of the videos.

I hear it in all of the videos. If these are pranksters I am a little disappointed, they should have used more spacey sounds. Here are some of the commercially available model aircraft sound systems:

https://www.google.com/search?q=model+aircraft+sound+systems

Look at the second video. The aft end of the fuselage is almost identical to the F-117 Nighthawk. The tail look very much like the tail of the F-4 Phantom perhaps with reduced anhedral on the horizontal stabilizers. The wings and forward fuselage are reminiscent of some of NASA's blended wing concepts. Clever ETs, eh?

There is no sign of jet engine flame, so I am betting on ducted fan propulsion:

https://www.google.com/search?q=model+aircraft+ducted+fan

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Here is a video of what is possible with model aircraft:

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

I think these things should be required to carry air traffic transponders!

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I understand and respect that you're looking for prosaic explanations, but I only posted a fraction of what's out there about this.

Everyone who is encountering these things says they're anomalous. They fly low enough that they're at the treetops, which is why people are getting close up videos. They are flying below stall velocity for standard aircraft. They are causing battery failures in private drones sent up to get a better look. They were reported by the governor of NJ to "go dark and disappear" whenever they try to get near one (presumably with a helicopter, and there have been many helicopters up there looking). They have been reported to be immune to drone jamming. They loiter for hours, which means a fuel or power supply which is unconventional. Some look like planes, but others are quite clearly orbs. The Pentagon has stated that they are not ours, and they are not those of any known foreign entity.

The fact that they have been flying over military installations and sensitive infrastructure through restricted airspace means that they are not subject to standard geofencing. One police helicopter pilot got close enough to one to be nearly overhead, then reportedly felt "unsafe" being near it and let it go. (I want details on that encounter).

I've seen videos of people trying to fly drones over Area 51, and they down them within seconds of breaching the perimeter. These have been acting with impunity for weeks. Not a single one has been taken down. A Twitter mutual who is covering this says he has soldiers DMing him from military bases in shock because these things are flying overhead and they can't do anything about it.

These are not normal. Whatever they are, something is keeping them from being apprehended or studied.

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Sure, I get that. Each case has to be looked at individually, which is why I am limiting my comments to the New Jersey sightings, in part due to the impressive videos. And looking at these individually means the contra is also true: just because we have a list of sightings with impressive performances doesn't mean that ALL sightings have ALL of the impressive performances. The skeptic in me wonders if cases are being blended together.

Area 51 is special, I doubt their air defense infrastructure is replicated in many other places. Look at how long it took the USAF to do anything on 9/11.

There was a couple of instances back in the 1970's when helicopters entered U.S. airspace from New Brunswick and flew over the nuclear weapons depot at Loring AFB. The culprits were not shot down and were never caught.

So I don't find defense failures to be inexplicable at all, they are the norm. If the NJ sightings are model aircraft then they are literally under the radar.

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People in the "New Jersey Mystery Drones- let's solve it." FB group are reporting seeing drones in Wake Forest, NC above Wegmans, Raleigh, and Leland, NC.

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I looked for them all night while I was working. I thought I saw something erratic flying the opposite way, but never got a good look.

So far, they’re not where I am.

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It sounds a little like I was only being facetious, but in fact I do find this fascinating. I'm out of the loop, and this is the first I was hearing about the New Jersey "drones."

It really is puzzling, isn't it? I don't find a prosaic explanation convincing (not yet anyway), but they're also a bit different from what my starry-eyed self would expect of a UAP sighting, especially in the clarity of these videos and in the sounds they're making.

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I have to admit that I don't personally know enough about UFOs to have an informed opinion on what this could really be. Though I agree that the "Iran is doing it" story is comically absurd.

Maybe one of the reasons so many people are indifferent is that UFOs have just been going on for such a long time. Just think about it - flying saucers, alien abductions, every variation on the "lights in the sky" theme you can imagine - they've been a pop culture phenomenon since the 1950s. Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out in 1977. You've had people saying for the last seventy or so years that "first contact" was imminent, or had already happened, or that soon the UFOs would change everything... and it never panned out. Whoever is behind these UFOs, whatever they've come to Earth to do, it doesn't seem to involve actually communicating with the great masses of humanity or changing the way we live. So we get bored and move on.

I recall as a young child reading the memoir "Leap of Faith," by Gordon Cooper, one of the Mercury 7 astronauts. The first section of the book is the most "typical," talking about the author's early life, his experiences as a military test pilot, and his space flights in the Mercury and Gemini programs. And it's also the only section that reviewers seemed to pay any attention to, because the later parts get really, really weird... you have long accounts of UFO encounters supposedly related to Cooper by his trusted acquaintances, detailed descriptions of the (mostly benevolent) ETs who are slowly revealing themselves to mankind (including a story of how a certain man with a better-than-average gift for receiving psionic messages had received a warning about a design flaw in the Space Shuttle and helped NASA fix it), and elaborate conspiracy theories revolving around wireless power transcription, ELF waves, and various unfinished inventions of Nikolai Tesla.

It was a fun read for an 11-year-old and for a while I believed a lot of it. But as I got older I got to thinking: if all this was real, then why hasn't it had any apparent consequences in the lives of people who aren't already UFO enthusiasts?

I think this represents, in microcosm, a thought process of most people regarding UFOs. If the phenomenon goes on long enough without any apparent resolution - without UFOs doing anything that either forces the skeptics to acknowledge their existence, or even just get the UFO enthusiasts to agree on what they're doing here and why - then most of us will get jaded and stop paying much attention to it, no matter how many bizarre and hard-to-explain videos are out there.

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From my essay "Are There Aliens?"

Often in my planetarium Q&A I would be asked “Are there aliens?” I usually began by citing the fact that astronomers are the group that spends the most time outdoors at night, knows the night sky the best, and makes the fewest UFO reports. I would conclude by staring off into space and quietly say with a bit of drama “That means that alien UFOs aren’t real, or else we astronomers are working for them.” People usually laughed, but once a young man shot me a look that said “I knew it!”

I also liked and used the quote “If aliens exist, that’s profound, and if they don’t exist, that’s profound.”

https://thomasfdavis.substack.com/p/are-there-aliens

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I understand all the rational objections to this, but if you actually go down this rabbit hole, you’ll find that there’s something real here - and it’s often disturbing.

Eric Weinstein is a scientist and empiricist, but he said publicly that despite his own skepticism, there is a mountain of anecdotal evidence that can’t be ignored. The lack of direct evidence is what bothers him.

But this seems to be a feature, not a bug.

UFO and paranormal experiencers have been found to have certain physical traits that are unusual - like an enlargement of the caudate and putamen in the basal ganglia, which is believed to be tied to intuition and foresight. While listening to incredible stories of ESP among autistic kids in The Telepathy Tapes, I decided to look this up, and sure enough, autism correlates with a more developed caudate and putamen.

UFO hunters and the scientists on Skinwalker ranch are finding that often times, UAPs do not show up on the visible light spectrum, but only on infrared. Night vision goggles and FLIR can pick them up even when they can’t be seen with the naked eye - but you have to know to even bother looking.

Ryan Graves, a former Navy FA/18 Superhornet pilot, says they only started seeing a ton of these when they upgraded the fleet’s sensor packages. After that, they encountered them every day.

Human beings have evolved a limited sensory apparatus. Mantis shrimp have 4 times as many color channels in their vision as humans. They can see colors we can’t conceive of. Pit vipers see in thermal. There are entire frequencies of sound humans can’t hear but multiple animals can. There’s actual evidence of extra sensory perception in some animals. Peer reviewed research was done on a parrot that could read its owner’s thoughts and vocalize them.

The world is so much weirder than we know, and we go around with epistemological blinders on.

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"UFO hunters and the scientists on Skinwalker ranch are finding that often times, UAPs do not show up on the visible light spectrum, but only on infrared."

OK, so, do we have both types of imaging devices pointed at the same place, with identical software generated timestamps, and a custodial chain that proves videos weren't altered into deep fakes? I remember one of the Big Wigs at Skeptical Inquirer stating such steps are required.

Yes, the world is awesome. Did you know that a sizable fraction of the human female population sees two distinct primary shades of blue? I just found that out earlier this year. I agree that the best science begins and ends in awe, but it does require some hard-headedness in the middle.

I'd love it if someone would make a matrix of these sightings so that patterns might be seen.

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AFAIK, they do exactly this at SWR. Season 5 was big, because they introduced simultaneous infrared imaging of their experiments. Multiple times nothing could be seen with the naked eye, but the infrared was picking up lots of activity.

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Dec 12
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The theory I’ve heard that strikes me as most plausible is that they’re using mimicry to acclimate us to their presence in a more familiar form.

I think like a storyteller, so I always think, “how would I make this make sense if I were writing a novel?” And this tracks. If they ARE NHIs and they mean us no harm, they might simply be making their presence known in a way we can get used to. Kind of like the people who dress in panda costumes to feed pandas at the zoo.

Perhaps their true form would be disturbing enough to provoke an adversarial response.

I can make it make sense, I can’t say I have any certainty that it’s true.

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Steve:

I've worked for many years at a public astronomical observatory, and I can report from firsthand experience that most people cannot estimate the altitude and size of aircraft at night. Even weirder things have happened. One night a single engine propeller driven aircraft flew over. My eyes were dark adapted (I see very well in the dark, and can read books under a full moon). I could dimly see the outline of the plane. The propeller sounded like thousands of others. Strobe lights were flashing on it, and the flash timings and speed and altitude created odd optical illusions: it looked as if it flew ahead, then backed up a bit, then flew ahead, over and over. There was a mild zig-zag effect too. The public viewers were convinced the motions were real and therefore it was a UFO.

So I would not claim anything definitive about the speed and altitude and size of the reported appearances.

Moreover, the New Jersey videos can be easily explained as very clever model aircraft. I would say these ARE airplanes, but they have features that appear to blend that of several real aircraft. There really are some large model aircraft, almost SUV size if wingspan is included. Engine sound systems are available. What also makes me consider this is the fact that the sightings are in one area (NJ), which suggests the area is their point of origin.

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My guess is that it's something spiritual, and probably not good. Probably the only thing we can really do is collectively clean up our act.

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Reminds me of the “crop circles” hoax of the 90’s. I used to watch in fascination as Unsolved Mysteries would air episodes dedicated to crop circles popping up in rural English farms. No human could possibly do this! We ran radioactive test, spoke to experts and everyone agrees this is not a man made phenomenon. Then the hoaxers came forward and showed how they made those perfect circles.

I thought that UFO’s defied physics and made impossible change of direction, were silent, moves at incredible speeds? These are UAP’s that….act like drones but bigger….

The FBI at a loss is not surprising. They are a law enforcement agency, they issue subpoenas for digital information, interview witnesses, collect evidence, write warrants

. They do not specialize in aerial phenomena. The X-files they are not.

Remember cattle mutilations? The phoenix lights? Skinwalker ranch? We were on the cusp of something big…..never mind. The Chinese flew a slow balloon over our whole country, before action was taken. These things are either hoaxers or foreign intelligence. Not inter dimensional gray beings who get here and deploy…..human like technology.

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Seems like you have all the answers. Nothing to discuss.

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