I'm gonna propose to the alien believers a different explanation of UAPs: they're black projects. Yes all those physics defying things are man made, and they probably have an understanding of physics we don't currently know about in the wider public.
Technology trends exist. We can see them. It's no wonder that every generation's stereotype of unidentified craft always always always mimicked the latest generation of military flight tech. That's what's been true since the inception of the whole thing. It's true today too, thirty years from now we'll get a public look at the crafts they're testing out in the skies today. Be that because they get used or because they become obsolete. Thats how it goes.
So why the hearings in Congress? Because they're black projects. We're talking trillions in this rabbit hole. Congress very much has an urgent want to understand what they military might be keeping from it, vis a vis private contractors. We're talking multiple times the budgets of nation-states and we're getting receipts that are basically "trust me bro"s.
But Congress can't very well tell the truth of all that without undermining the American military, and thereby America itself. So they go along with the same "aliens" reasoning, "uhh yeah, let's go with that, okay", and keep pressing for more information.
Is that crazy? Yeah, you bet. But it's no crazier than believing all that and that there's aliens. Because the alien conspiracy crowd asserts virtually everything I just said, just, with aliens. Aliens aren't necessary for any of it though.
In the history of nations there's never been a more sure-fire way to lose democracy than making an enemy of the military complex propping it up. So Congress ought to be careful too, keep a little plausible deniability for themselves.
If a private, but not secret agency has access to the physics and can't engineer it, there's a question of why. As much as we'd like to disassociate engineering from discovery, they're linked together. Engineering leads to further observation leads to discovery and vice versa back the other direction. It's entirely possible there's "new physics" at play even if they're only theoretical to the Discovery Channel right now. Who's to say, really?
So while I'm not gonna disagree with you, and you're right there's a difference between engineering technology and physics itself, I still don't really see the distinction as that important to the discussion here.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, after all. We're talking about exactly that level of technology, commonly being called physics-defying by many engineers today. That's magic to common understanding, for all intents and purposes, even if it's possible that we could all eventually understand and demystify it given the education to do so.
Until then? Hard to close doors other than just "do we need this for the story". And aliens don't need to be there, hence my whole line of thinking above. That's just another example of "any secret is the exact secret I want it to be" kind of thinking. See also "everything I don't understand is a communist" or more recently, "everything I don't like is woke". I like to make reference to dinosaurs, because no one ever does. Why not? It could be dinosaurs in those crafts too! There's more evidence for that than aliens, right? We know 100% dinosaurs existed, here. They would've had much much more time to develop technology than we did, eons longer. So again why not? "Because it's absurd." Yep. It is. Every argument against it counts against aliens too.
I strongly suspect all solutions will either be invalid, or be limited to the speed of light.
The universe seems to have a lot of weird quirks (the speed of light being 1) what they have in common is that they make time paradoxes impossible. This points to some deeper physics causing these disparate effects. Anything travelling faster than C can be configured as a time machine, and so create paradoxes.
It’s disappointing in its limitations, yes, but another step in bringing warp-driven travel into a more mainstream conversation and line of theoretical research in physics.
As with Albucierre’s proof, theoretical research always starts with the corner solutions and odd cases to reduce the variables.
As a retro enthusiast, I’ve been following this project for a while and it’s been great seeing all the improvements over the years. I recommend checking out this video on its current state: youtube.com/watch?v=nWjAxNHXd_8
Equally, or possibly more interesting, is their Ladybird browser, which is cross-platform. Its been making great progress as well, and I sincerely hope that it can compete with the big two some day - would be nice to have a major browser/engine that’s not based on Webkit or Gecko.
I wish 90s interfaces would make a comeback, I really miss the aesthetics of that era. Luckily there are some excellent themes out there that scratch that itch, like Chicago95 for XFCE - and here’s bonus a screenshot of it running on my Galaxy Fold 4:
Yeah, good luck with that. There’s the famous case of Munich (I think it was Munich?) moving their governmental workers from Windows to Linux. After a few years they went back. Unfortunately the average working enduser is still not ready to just use Linux. Especially not if its a Word/Excel/PowerPoint type of job.
I’m specifically interested in seeing how the transition from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice goes. My boss has been pondering the possibility of migrating us from Word and Excel to Writer and Calc. My concern, as someone who exclusively uses LibreOffice at home, is those edge-cases where another entity sends us a document that has some weird behavior that might not be properly replicated in LibreOffice. I don’t know much about the German government’s typical document practices, but I think this will be a good case study on the viability of LibreOffice in a more serious production environment.
I always wondered why spacecraft couldn’t be wrapped in magnetic coils (with the pressurized volume like the center of a solenoid) to duplicate the effects of Earth’s magnetic field. Looks like it is possible but was not practical until recently.
arstechnica.com
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