Would NASA tell us about aliens?

[CrossCountryWoosh]

To be clear I dont believe the Big 3I/ATLAS conspiracies. I dont know enough about comets or space (or aliens) to say much but NASA's explanations make sense to me. Then again, if they were lying that is what they'd count on people thinking!

But it has got me wondering. Do you think NASA would tell us if it was aliens? With the rise of amateur astronomers and the ability for easier research (proper and via facebook) and more ways of telling people about it, would they find it harder to hide things like this?

All the "alien encouter" stories I know of (admittedly not many) seem to be difficult to collaborate eg someone says they are abducted but no one else saw it or an RAF pilot sees something when he is flying solo. But this is world wide and harder to hide from the masses.

They told people about 2024 YR4 while only 3(?) 🔭 telescopes could see it.

For those who dont know, Big 3I/ATLAS is an object that has come from a different galaxy. It is due to go past the sun on Wednesday. Some people are saying it is alien space craft because of it's size, it's behaviour eg inconsistant speed and route and it's tail being odd. Plus it looks like a bit has broken away which some are saying is a scout ship. NASA are saying it's an object from another galaxy so might be a bit odd but the route is just luck, the speed isnt unusual and the tail is due to it getting hot as it gets to the sun.

As an aside - I kind of feel a bit sad that technology, particularly mobiles, have destroyed a good comspiracy theory story. Nowadays the strongest argument against someone seeing an alien/fairies/ghost/Nessie/Big Foot is the lack of decent photographic evidence.

I cannot believe that you ask this question where there is a lot of information about disclosure from US Congress.
The main congressional group handling UAP (UFO) disclosure is the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, particularly its Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs. They hold hearings and oversee transparency efforts on UAPs.

There were serious people testifying about it: Admiral, pilots etc

Absolutely! They're having their budget cut all the time. Anything even vaguely interesting happens up there and their PR department (assuming they still have one) will be sure to let everyone know at the earliest opportunity

Technology is far from being set for us.

Physics there are still massive gaps in our knowledge. We know a lot, but we don't know everything. Otherwise we wouldn't need to construct machines like the LHC.

If you imagine what we knew 400 years ago, imagine what we might know 400 years in advance of now. And aliens might be thousands or even millions of years ahead of us in terms of technology.

People tend to assume ftl travel for aliens visiting us, and argue it is improbable because it still would take a long time, or defy the laws of physics.

But what if they could put themselves into suspended animation ? Or transmit their brains via light into robots that were sent here thousands of years in the past ?

Innovation technology can create innovative ways to bridge the distances in space. And when time becomes irrelevant so does distance. So people that rule out the presence of aliens based on our incomplete knowledge of physics and our relatively young and still developing technology are somewhat naive in my opinion.

We have a lot of physics yet to learn before we can rule out for example ftl travel.

I thought there was some sort of rule that they have to release information to the public as part of their mandate ...

... maybe something I learnt from watching The Martian !

But if true might go some way towards explaining why the government does not get them involved in issues that might involve national security.

I have to agree that Aliens would exist elsewhere. it just makes sense. As much as we are here but cant travel any meaningful distance, im sure that applies to other civilisations too.

However. We cannot travel great distances because of where we are at technologically, but look at how far we have come in the last 100yrs.

Its conceivable too, that there are civilisations that could be millions of years ahead of us. So imagine the technology gains that they would have in this timeframe, but that would still leave the gazillions of galaxies and planets for them to explore, some with alien lifeforms, even to them and thats before they get to us. So its a bit of a headspin when you think about it because the scenarios are endless.

Agree with this

Sure why not, the last decade has been such a shit show, why not add in aliens, maybe fairies and the loch ness monster too. At this stage, nothing would surprise me. I mean im sure aliens do exist. I would imagine though, that if theyre advanced enough to get here, they would be advanced enough to avoid detection. Who knows.

It doesn’t matter how much more advanced a civilisation is (even a type III on the Kardashev scale) they are still bound by the laws of physics. Nothing can travel faster than light. Therefore, the distances a likely intelligent civilisation would have to travel to get here just isn’t possible or worth the effort.
There are of course the theoretical possibilities of other forms of travel, using wormholes or a form of warp, but we just don’t know.

One big issue that isn’t often considered is that the universe is very old 13.8 billion years. What are the odds that a sufficiently advanced species, who has the technology to travel here, would be at that stage of development whilst humans are around? Homo sapiens have been on this planet for 300,000 years. That is 0.002% of the ‘life’ of the universe. So it is a vanishingly small probability that two sufficiently advanced civilisations would exist, in near enough proximity to spot each other.

Who knows, perhaps aliens are a previous advanced species who lived on earth and now live in the ocean depths? We know more about the moon than the deep ocean floor.

Unfortunately no one knows "the laws of physics", or has a complete picture of how the universe works.

All we can say is that from our current understanding is that faster than light travel appears to be impossible.

But there are some pretty big gaps in our fundamental knowledge of physics, including how gravity works at a microscopic scale (quantum gravity) and even the nature of what a lot of the mass of the universe is comprised of (dark matter).

You can search on Wikipedia for "Unsolved Problems in Physics" if you want to see some of the things we still don't know. And there is a lot of them.

I'm not sure that anyone in authority would reveal aliens' existence unless they absolutely had to/it was definitely necessary.

Having said that, while I do believe that the alien phenomenon is valid and real - in that something is happening, there are people who are having real encounters with something - I'm also not convinced that NASA or the government necessarily have a lot of understanding or knowledge of it themselves.

I read an interesting post on FB recently and I'm sharing some of it below (in bold.)

There will never be a full official "disclosure" of the truth about the UFO/alien phenomenon.
I wrote an in-depth article on this topic 16 years ago titled "UFOs, Aliens, and the Question of Contact," followed by a film of the same title.
The thesis still stands and has only been confirmed over the years. In due time, I will write an updated version. But here are some key points:
1. The government doesn't really know what's going on. Not even black-op projects, Area 51, or any other secret, clandestine programs.
Yes, some may have more awareness of the nature of the phenomenon and may even be in contact with these beings. But they are pawns to it, too.
No humans have full "control" over it.
This is because:
2. The phenomenon is primarily hyperdimensional and paraphysical in nature. We are dealing with spiritual realities.
It transcends the "nuts and bolts" materialist framework within which most of the disclosure movement operates.
These are not ETs flying in from distant planets.
They are forces that have been here all along for thousands of years, outside our range of perception, shape-shifting to match the zeitgeist of any age, appearing as fairies, demons, angels, gods, and now as "aliens" in "UFO spaceships."
3. No government will ever disclose the dark reality of alien abductions.
Researchers like Dr. Karla Turner and others documented thousands of cases of people taken against their will.
Harvested emotionally, energetically, and physically by beings who can alter perception, control thoughts, take over bodies, and disguise themselves as Jesus, loved ones, or "Pleiadians," whatever the abductee's belief system will accept.
The abduction data is the elephant in the room that the disclosure movement ignores, distorts, or denies, because it destroys the narrative.
No government "file release" will ever touch it.
4. Any official disclosure will be a managed disclosure, designed to further a specific agenda. It's the ultimate COINTELPRO operation.

Allow me to rephrase your question: "Would an organisation that is dependent on public money want to keep secret something that, if revealed, would instantly justify a massive increase in their budget?"

Yes, NASA would tell us about aliens. As would all the other agencies around the world who have telescopes, satellites and other sensors pointed outwards.

2. The phenomenon is primarily hyperdimensional and paraphysical in nature. We are dealing with spiritual realities.

Or, in other words, "they're magic so any contradictions or other flaws in my argument can be dismissed because when you're dealing with magic then no rules apply and I can make up whatever I want."

I'm surprised he didn't sprinkle in a few "quantum"s in there.

@GasperyJacquesRoberts

Well, I'm an occultist and pagan, so I do believe that non-physical realities and magic are real. I wouldn't necessarily ascribe what you've said above as conscious reasons for him stating the things he does. I think this is a view he sincerely holds, and I think he may be partially right about some aspects, but perhaps not fully right.

And rules do apply to magic. As an occultist who practices magic sometimes, there are rules that need to be followed if a spell is to have a chance (or higher chance) of working at all. You can't just do anything you want with magic, there are at least some basic protocols that need to be understood and used.

Sure. Does everyone involved in the occult and/or Paganism agree what those rules are? And are those rules reproducible, measurable and testable in the way that, say, the rules that describe the way heat energy flows through a block of iron are?

Surely it is inevitable that there is life on other planets, the question is why wouldn't there be? While I don't know if the public would ever be told if there is real proof (cue mass panic etc), I would guess that Trump has also not been told, given that he's completely bonkers and unable to control himself.
Having read The Three Body Problem trilogy, as mentioned by PPs above, I also think it a very bad idea to send signals, probes and the like out into space, thus giving away our presence ....

There isn't really anything outside the laws of physics.

That is pretty much by definition.

There is plenty of physics we don't understand though and emergent behaviour from complex systems can be very difficult to understand in terms of fundamental physics, even though the base units of those complex systems may be quite easy to model.

@GasperyJacquesRoberts

I would say that very knowledgeable and experienced magic practitioners have broad agreement on the basic rules that are needed in order for spells to have a decent chance of being successful. (Not all Pagans actually practice magic or even believe in it, although there is quite a bit of crossover between the two.)

However, not everyone involved in the occult is experienced or knowledgeable. That's gained over time devoted to study and practice.

I'm also not saying that all traditions of all forms of occultism have all the exact same rules. There is lots of diversity within occultism, just as there is diversity within other fields. There are rules that one needs to follow in order to become talented in the arts, but some of those rules will differ depending on what form of art they are pursuing. A painter may need to follow some rules for certain styles of painting and other rules for different styles.

I don't know, but I'd assume that sometimes rules vary depending on what sort of science someone is practicing? Would a physicist need to follow the exact same rules as a biologist?

So, to take it back to magic and the occult, differing traditions might be based around different methods and practices, which call for difference in which rules to follow. Christopher Warnock and Clifford Hartleigh Low practice a specific form of astrological magic that is based on traditional astrology and is based a lot around making astrological talismans. Given that this specific tradition is based around astrology, there are certain rules, such as astrological timings, that must be followed in this tradition in order to have a greater chance of success.

There are other traditions of magic that do not use any astrology at all, so such rules do not apply to those.

I'm also not saying there is no flexibility at all in magic. There is certainly room for flexibility, experimentation, innovation and substitutions. But these things need to be undertaken with understanding and knowledge of what the appropriate kinds of flexibility and substitutions are in order for the magic to be effective. This is why someone needs to understand the the system (or systems) they're practicing in order to experiment and substitute effectively, because not just any substitution would be recommendable.

Glory of the Stars: Real Magic Fake Experts

Occultist BJ Swayne wrote this blog post partly in response to some people in the magic community claiming that the practice of magic had no real rules at all and that "intent was everything." Intent is certainly an important part of practicing magic, but it's certainly not everything. It's worth reading in full to understand his full point, but some of what he says is below:

Originally I was just going to tweet "people who think magic never has any actual methodology clearly have never experienced real magic," or something like that.

Anyone familiar with forums knows that the most predominant idea in the magical and NeoPagan communities is "it's all about intention," "the only thing that matters is intention," "there are no rules, it's just whatever it means to you because it's about intention," "answers to your question don't matter, because what matters is how you feel because it's about your intentions."

Intention is important in magic, because magic is often accomplished through taking various mundane actions and combining them in a symbolic way and activating them through the intention to perform magic by doing them. Intention is important in the sense that magic is an intentional act. Even that is kind of a weak argument for intention because there is more to it than that. Not any actions performed with the intention of doing magic will always produce magic, and some actions might produce magic even without an aware intention on the part of the doer.

The idea that magic is about what you intend to manifest, and that magical acts are relatively meaningless in the face of your intentions is a nonsensical sort of misunderstanding and one which is very easily demonstrably false. If this were the case, we wouldn't ever need to learn any magic, we could just intend for things to happen. We wouldn't ever run into mistakes or mishaps in magic, because our real intentions will just show through no matter what we do. Everyday acts would all be magical because we would always have some intended outcome, and things would always match our intentions.

Obviously, I am not a strictly by the book magician. I'm an educated magician, but I have all the messy eccentricity that just about everyone who grew up with bits and bobs of magic and the influence of spirits they encountered as children shaping their early experiments in magic. I think experimentation, innovation, and substitution are necessary. I also think these things are better when people have a good base knowledge of the system they're working with and other systems. I also know that there are things which can go wrong when symbols, materials, names, and spirits are used without understanding them or without working with them in the correct ways.

When we consider that simple tools can have that kind of power we must consider that there are correct and incorrect ways to use those tools. This isn't meant in a moral sense. I'm not saying if you want to destroy some village because someone offended you at a dinner party that that is an incorrect use of magic. It would be a pretty awful thing to do and I'd hope you weren't going to do it. I'm saying I've seen things that let me know that that is possible. I've seen things that let me know that completely innocent uses of magic can go horribly wrong when we don't understand how the tools we're using work or how they assemble into the effects we're trying to create.

So when someone says "these things shouldn't be used together because of the way their effects combine or cancel," or "this should be used in this way but not this way because chances are this will happen," we should ask why and explore whether or not the advise is reasonable. We shouldn't mock the idea that the advise exists because it's all about intention.

If your answer is "I lazily spin in my chair while wearing three talismans and sitting next to a bowl of crystals and I'm fine," then yeah, you probably are fine. You're probably also not doing any actual magic and aren't equipped to answer questions about actual magic. Your practice of feeling empowered is probably great for you, but that's probably most of what you've got going on.

It would be very easy to read what I'm saying here as reactive and sensationalist. A lot of real magical work won't do things which are cataclysmic if we make a little mistake here or there. More likely, we'll make a mistake and get no meaningful result, or we'll make a little mistake and our result will be misdirected off from our goal. The damage here is simply the loss of opportunity to get what we wanted or needed. This kind of problem can be a great learning experience for tweaking method. If we don't recognize that methods have an impact then we don't consider making those tweaks. Not understanding that there is a reality to magical acts limits us from improving.

     <strong> As we become more proficient and move on to more intermediate and advanced methods - if we can really consider them in that kind of hierarchy - we start to encounter possibilities which might have more consistently powerful effects. Depending upon the moment and the magician super simple super basic things can have very powerful effects. There are also approaches that tend to be more likely to produce those because of the spirits or the natural powers which are involved in effecting them.</strong>

And are those rules reproducible, measurable and testable in the way that, say, the rules that describe the way heat energy flows through a block of iron are?

No, not in that way, almost certainly not - but I've never seen anyone seriously claim that they are.

I would say that they are reproducible and testable in the sense that if someone follows the basic methodology of a particular magical tradition, then they will see consistent results of the spells having effect.

Yes thats what i think
I think its more bizarre that there wouldnt be other alien life in the whole of the universe ,wether we would ever have the technology to contact then or vice versa is a different matter.

I like watching ancient aliens... so many questions unanswered, or just bonkers. Who knows?
But if it's evidence for the existence of Aliens then what would be the consequences of knowing for certain?

I think it would be equivalent to telling small kids that the monsters under the bed are in fact real.

Some people would be able to deal with it, but a lot wouldn't.

The idea that a force of aliens may operate on Earth, and be beyond any control of any authorities, that would scare some people a lot. Basically an organisation that could operate with impunity, beyond any laws or punishment or sanction. And to ends nobody would be that clear on.

People aren't really capable of assessing risk very well. As you see from endless posts on here.

The fact that billions of people live on Earth before it was announced and billions would live afterwards in pretty much the same way would be lost on a lot of people, who would be scared shitless about what they might do to them and their family, even though the probability that the aliens might have interest in any individual might be vanishingly small.

If they are to be well received I think the message of their existence has to be coupled with exactly why they are here - what they want and what they hope to gain from their interaction with us. And that message has to be one that people believe and are comfortable with.

I had a chat with a NASA astronaut who has had 5 missions. He was convinced that there must be alien life because the galaxy is so huge we cannot comprehend it's size. That in that infinite space there must be other planets capable of supporting life.

But the distances involved are so equally huge that our current understanding of physics makes us ever encountering them an impossibility.

When you extrapolate that to the estimated 2 trllion galaxies in the entire universe, it becomes almost impossible to imagine that there wouldn't be life on other planets.

I also don't think we're at any risk of being invaded, though. The distances are just too huge.

No way! They have been hiding UFOs sightings forever!
Mind you, a UFO does not equal alliens. Most of the time is secret aircraft, weather balloons or other things spotted by pilots! Imagine if they knew there is actual alliens around. Top secret.
I think Trump is an allien. So is his shadow, Farage LOL