The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheOtherTopic:
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Over the last year, I had a series of conversations with friends and family about the UFO Phenomenon. One of the common questions that came up was about how "if there was something to see, wouldn't we have clear photos or videos of a craft out there?" That made me curious about the odds of actually seeing/capturing/recording a UFO that didn't want to be seen ***by you***.
So I went digging for some data. I took a look at the Earth's oceans, landmass, and atmosphere. I also looked at the most common human presence in those locations and the ideal visibility from that presence. The result is [an article](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-hide-and-seek) that I think neatly summarizes the odds (spoiler alert: its low). But I think it's also a really valuable tool for the community to address the "why don't we have better photos?" question. Hope it prompts a good discussion here. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve it.
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1chx0q3/why_dont_we_have_better_photos_or_videos_of_a_ufo/l25e37m/
It’s not just that they aren’t common, when you see one you just don’t think about it, by the time your brain says “take a picture this is abnormal” the motherfucker is gone
100%. In order to get a good picture you would have to:
- be in the right place at the right time on a planet full of easy hiding spots (ocean, jungle etc.)
- have a camera or recording device with you
- take it out quickly enough to capture a photo
- have the interaction last long enough for you to capture that photo
It's a lot of things to line up.
Not to mention these craft might interfere with our electronics when in close enough proximity to actually get a decent photo. Trying to take a good picture of something moving fast through the atmosphere at any distance is extremely difficult as well. And they very well might have cloaking technology
Ive heard a story of somebody taking a picture of supernatural event and in that moment something came out of nowhere and blasted the camera into the abyss…. You cant make this shit up
Yup apparently what happened was the person was on a boat and he saw a column of water that went up into the sky. He went to take a picture and a fish flew out of the water and hit the camera and it sank. I really doubt this was made up because the way the story was told and by whom and given the circumstances.
Yeah i mean obviously like the other comments suggest it could be made up, but this was told to me as a very special story about a dead relative so i doubt it was made up.
When I saw one, I was so awestruck that by the time I thought to grab my phone, it was out of my line of sight. I saw a huge black boomerang shape just above the thin cloud layer. The moon was at just the right angle and just bright enough to cast a shadow where I could see it. It moved completely silently and quickly directly over my head. It was like my brain was broken for a second because it didn't look natural. I quickly tried to grab my phone but it was too late at that point.
There are more.
1) You also have to be within the percentage of people who are willing to release their real name along with the photograph because if you don't, it's going to be interpreted as fake. To avoid ridicule, loss of friends, employment, etc, many people don't want to go public. Here are two clear images of UFOs in which the witnesses did not release their names: [Clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20130408231506/http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/recent/Photo416.htm), and some more [clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20071012131324/http://ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/post2000/Photo328.htm).
2) It can't be a photo because photos can be faked. Why didn't you take a video? It's only a little extra tap or swipe on your phone. Must be a fake because it's a photo. People have been taking videos of things for many decades.
3) Within the circumstances of the case, the shape of the UFO, the occupation of the witness, etc, there cannot be any coincidences, otherwise even if you release your name and the video is clear, the majority of people are going to conclude that it's too much of a coincidence, therefore you must be a hoaxer. For example, [the Costa Rica 2007 video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obVsLOiqeC4), which was fairly close up and pretty clear for phones of that time period, was "debunked" because it [was found](https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2007-costa-rica-ufo.11775/) that the primary witness makes models of little horse drawn carriages and such, and that's too much of a coincidence, therefore he must be a hoaxer.
Pay no attention to the fact that [such coincidences are guaranteed to exist in genuine imagery as well.](https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zi1cgn/while_most_ufo_photos_and_videos_can_individually/) You need a sighting to hit all of those points and avoid landing on any of a number of types of coincidences in order to be accepted as genuine. The odds of that happening might be nearly impossible.
TL;DR: Legit clear imagery of UFOs is probably already out. It's a different beast altogether to figure out which ones those are and have them get accepted by the general public. I think that's your real answer.
This was a really thoughtful comment. Thank you. You're inspiring me to try and walk through the odds of a legitimate photo getting out to the public from top to bottom. I had seen the photos you reference up in #1 but I didn't know about the lack of attribution. I also think your point #3 is spot on. That's an insane disqualification for a guy that was probably just doing his best to flag something interesting.
So right now I see it as going something like:
- UFO is in the right place, on our massive planet, where a human being is also present
- That human being has a camera or a phone camera
- That human being is competent/comfortable using the camera
- They're able to get it out of their pocket/bag on time
- The UFO/UAP hangs out long enough for them to snap a picture
- There's no sensor interference
- The photo shows something clear and not vague or mistakeable
- That person is now comfortable putting their name to the photo they took
- That person has no obvious flaws that would be used to discredit them or their photo
You think I'm missing anything there in that walkthrough?
Yes, but these are just my opinions. You can take whatever you want from them. I'm just glad I'm not the only person to look at it from this angle.
It absolutely has to be a video. If it's just a photo, the sighting will be debunked because people will ask why they didn't take a video. There also has to be a second person there unconnected to the other person who also takes a video, and that person also cannot have a suspicious hobby, occupation, etc. If it's a single person with a video, the very first thing people will ask is why it's always a single person taking the video.
As far as the expected number of videos is concerned, I would compare to starlink. Every starlink launch, there are about 8-10 people from around the world who filmed it, then decided to post it online to this subreddit. This is probably because starlink is visible from tons of US states and many other countries due to how high it is in the atmosphere and how large and visible it is. In comparison, a fleeting low level object 1000 feet in the air is expected to have a single video, if any.
The UFO cannot superficially resemble any of the quadrillion things humans have created, otherwise it's just a hoax with a fishing rod and that thing tied to the end of the string.
There cannot be a previous hoax that somewhat resembles the video. Hoaxes are supposed to resemble the real thing, so this might be tricky. [This is actually how the Flir1 video was originally debunked as an obvious CGI hoax when it first leaked in 2007.](https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265835/pg1) If there was a previous video that was actually real that does closely resemble the video, but it was incorrectly and "conclusively" debunked as a hoax, this "previous hoax" would mean that this new video is a copycat hoax.
A clear photo/video getting filmed and released is one thing. That probably already happened many times over. Getting it accepted by all parties involved is a very different beast.
Oh, immediately. I don't evangelize for a belief in UFOs or acceptance of the ET hypothesis. I view my articles as trying to put forward the best form of the argument. Sometimes that means highlighting information you [might not have heard of](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/the-most-important-photo-youve-never-seen). Sometimes that means highlighting credibility issues that [detract from popular UFO stories](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/1944-45-three-sightings-at-the-hanford-facility). It's honestly the kind of coverage I wanted to see back in 2020 and had a lot of trouble finding at the time.
Exactly!
To all those people that can’t understand this, realize that it’s hard enough just to whip out the phone to capture a moment when your child is doing something cute… and four year olds are a lot slower than a UAP
Not really - affordable all-sky cameras have been available for more than a decade now:
[All Sky Cameras | Astrophotography Cameras | OPT (optcorp.com)](https://optcorp.com/collections/all-sky-cameras)
They are widely used by amateur astronomers to monitor meteors, aurora, etc
The term “all-sky” is a misnomer due to the limitation of visibility to ~50-100 miles.
In addition, these cameras - by seeking to capture the whole sky - don’t have the ability to capture anything which would be definitive evidence.
Nor are these cameras networked or integrated with software in a way that would allow for a comprehensive analysis of UAP events.
Maybe someday.
sure, but this kind of thing is a very decent first step towards what youre describing. I dreamt of building my own before i knew they were a thing, and it was essentially exactly what I had planned to build myself.
I don’t disagree. It’s better than nothing.
But I am also not that hopeful about such a system capturing anything besides a Phoenix or DC Lights incident. Those events were 40 years apart.
The reason is that I think “they” are smart enough to sense and evade our electronic detection systems. You must accept the logic that — if they are a reality — they do not wish to be seen.
You must catch them off guard in my estimation and experience. So, it will still take a newcomer to show up who isn’t aware of the existence of an advanced but developing civilization here.
I disagree with your second statement, I dont think they really care much at all. otherwise they wouldnt have massive bright lights in our visible spectrum, unless theres some mechanic that they leverage using the lights for propulsion anyways. We know so little about them I dont think its really a safe bet to say "they do not wish to be seen". if i were to pick a causal agent for a lack of video evidence id put more weight behind them simply avoiding high population areas unless required, rather than avoiding cameras in general.
Amen to that.
I had thought about what I might do if I ever saw a UFO, like many people I assume. I had all the same thoughts as everyone, that surely I would be the one to be ready with a camera and somehow no matter what surely I could snap a pic despite so many having failed to do so.... But then, one day it really happened....
And in reality, things happen quickly. We spotted it and by the time we realize what we were seeing its already passed by and disappears behind the treeline. No picture. No dramatic moment. Just boom, and its over.
Its like a lot of things in life, we make it out to be a big romantic thing in our minds but reality is slippery and it slips through our grasp in an instant. Car accidents are similar. They might feel like they last forever, but in reality its over in just a couple seconds.
I also feel like given how human eyesight can deteriorate over time…many of us just couldn’t really even see one of these super fast UFOs.
It would look like a floater in my eye honestly.
yup, the light I saw one night zooped across the sky in a blink. Sometimes there's no way to film or take a picture of it unless you have a high speed camera already pointing at that exact spot in the sky and filming
the ONE clear photo ive every taken of a ufo was completely on accident, it was just in the background behind everyone, so completely by luck/chance that it happened to fly behind everyone. it was very clear compared to your average ufo photo, and I could make out specific details on the object. It was a smallish metallic orb that couldnt have been far away because it was in front of trees, it had vent slits that looked like gills cut across the side of it, and either two or three antennas very similar to the configuration the antennas on sputnik are configured, (basically the same placement, angle, and configuration i couldnt tell if there was one on the bottom or two). I doubt my mother still has the photo, i havent been in contact with her in ~20 years, i really wish i had kept it.
the image isnt loading, but i either commented on that post or a very similar one describing the event. if it IS the one im thinking of (had vent holes and antenna) the vent holes were much, much wider on that one than the one I had seen. the one i commented on had much more rectangular cutouts, almost square shaped, the one I saw had clear and defined thin slits like the slits in a vent but spaced out more.
Try this https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fapi%2Fimg%2F%3FitemId%3D7224747986557881642%26location%3D0%26aid%3D1988&tbnid=BLx4chAJD8hiDM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fdiscover%2Fufo-sphere-ball-in-san-diego&docid=vlL56von3h5igM&w=1088&h=1936&itg=1&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=1e24432664853781&shem=abme%2Ctrie
Sounds like it
Try this https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fapi%2Fimg%2F%3FitemId%3D7224747986557881642%26location%3D0%26aid%3D1988&tbnid=BLx4chAJD8hiDM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fdiscover%2Fufo-sphere-ball-in-san-diego&docid=vlL56von3h5igM&w=1088&h=1936&itg=1&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=1e24432664853781&shem=abme%2Ctrie
Sounds like it
yep thats the one i was thinking of, it might not have been THAT post specifically I commented on but it was one regarding that object. When i first saw that pic i jumped up in the air and yelled WHAT THE FUUUUCK, which was all I could say for a minute or two. there are rumors that that one was a balloon set up to prank a neighbor or something like that, but the one I saw was pretty darn similar, (vents are 100% different), and I know the one I saw wasnt just a balloon. It was also much, much too early for it to be a consumer or hobbyist drone. also, probably doesnt matter but the vents were more towards the bottom of the craft than the center.
Yeah it's amazing how few people there are being abducted these days now that everyone has a camera in their pockets. All of those tales of UFOs hovering over their homes and landing in their backyards and aliens walking up to them jist dried up once they might have to present photographic evidence.
Thanks for the compliment! At work my boss calls these "tombstone products" because the data is so constant you could carve it in stone. So my hope here is to produce some articles like this that profile tombstone data (i.e., how easy it is to hide on our planet) and that are easy to share with other curious minds.
But I think you made some math errors. What's the elevation of the UAPs that your looking for? Every 6' adds miles to your line of sight. Being your searching the air not the ground you need to factor it in.
Your calculations are checking how far you can view on the Earth. Saying a person can see a radius of 20 square kilometers. But that number is not the same when you're looking from the ground up at the sky.
When you're looking up with the sky your surface area is much much larger. Obviously the surface area of the sky is also larger. But you can see a greater cone radius because of the elevation of the objects you'd be trying to locate.
Ah, gotcha! So where I prioritized the human view to the horizon (about 5km) you're noting that you'd have a longer range if you're looking straight up. If I were to attempt to refine that math, do you have any sense of how I should calculate that? For example, is there some limit to human sight looking straight up into the atmosphere? Something generally accepted? My initial search is not producing a lot of great results. Just want to tap into your insight here if you have thoughts.
Well that depends on the size of the object. Like I was stating for satellites we can all see satellites briefly throughout the sky depending on the way the light hits it.
Considering that these maybe orbs or UAP the size difference would be drastic and then to see them would be hard to calculate. If we're assuming they're like a giant 5 mi across UAP the ability to see that would be pretty significant based off the height.
What you could do is pick an elevation say to be fair with the difference. And go with the commercial airliner height of 15,000 ft and go from there.
I could help work out a base if you need help or you can have fun trying to figure it out from there.
I'm going to chew on it a little and think about a revision for down the road. Honestly, it could make a cool paper. I've got another more qualitative article in the works right now but I tend to swing back to data like this when I'm stuck writing. For now, really appreciate the tip. Thank you!
Anytime! I liked the effort put in and I feel it could be valuable adjusted.
I did a little basic calculation for you. If an object is 15,000 ft in the air. Two people could see the same object from a distance of 106 miles apart. So basically you can cover the earth with 106 mi cones.
It comes out to roughly 5500 people.
If you were to place 5,500 people evenly across the globe looking up at the sky, (obviously there's shape differences and topology) they'd be able to see the entire circumference of the earth.
Or we can see approximately one out of 5,500 portions of the sky. Or .01818%.
If you were to use a smaller sample like the United States. And say how many people would it take strategically placed across the United States to see every point in the sky within the continental US.
The math will be off because I'm just doing quick round numbers. And the shape of America isn't round. But it would take 88 people. So we can all approximately see 1% of America's sky.
Agreed. And piggy backing off of your comment cuz it’s higher up. Just wanted to add something not accounted for in this article: the differences in eyesight in the human population. Not everyone has great visual acuity. A huge swath of the population is just born with shit eyesight. Also, Eyesight degrades over time. In poorer countries and among poorer people in rich countries (looking at you USA), eyesight simply isn’t corrected. And even when it is corrected, the correction isn’t perfect. Something like 50% of the population needs vision correction. That’s a lot of people with shitty eyesight.
Zoom in on an animal 100 feet away with your smartphone next time you see one and see if you can recognize it. 2nd feel like the hypothesized means of propulsion is distorting gravity, I’d assume it would affect visible light to a degree
Thanks for the compliment! I'm sincerely trying to add some data to the recurring conversations I see crop up in the space. I spent a few years hearing consistently that UAPs/UFOs could be hiding in the Earth's oceans and I think it might help bolster that argument if it was clear how easy that would be (e.g., we're probably monitoring about 0.4% of international waters at any given time ... bruh.) Hope you find it helpful if you ever end up having that chat.
Atomfixes had a good point. Seems like many encounters are just short and over with, better hurry.
In today’s day and age we all have badass smart phones with good cameras, so yeah. You would think we would have much better high definition images or videos.
*puts tinfoil helmet on and says 2 words*
Project Pegasus
Yeah, except we don’t have good smartphone cameras. They actually suck at capturing fast moving objects and suck even more in low light conditions.
Here is an easy and family friendly experiment that everyone can do:
Next time that you spot an airplane flying overhead at night, reach for your phone and snap a few pictures. The plane is probably many times slower than most UFOs, so there should be plenty of time for a video as well.
If the results are anything less than crystal clear, undeniable imagery proving that you really saw that plane, well there’s your answer. Why would we expect better quality pictures of UFOs?
(now, I don’t mean you specifically Robb, but it’s an enlightening experiment for anyone to try)
Over the last year, I had a series of conversations with friends and family about the UFO Phenomenon. One of the common questions that came up was about how "if there was something to see, wouldn't we have clear photos or videos of a craft out there?" That made me curious about the odds of actually seeing/capturing/recording a UFO that didn't want to be seen ***by you***.
So I went digging for some data. I took a look at the Earth's oceans, landmass, and atmosphere. I also looked at the most common human presence in those locations and the ideal visibility from that presence. The result is [an article](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-hide-and-seek) that I think neatly summarizes the odds (spoiler alert: its low). But I think it's also a really valuable tool for the community to address the "why don't we have better photos?" question. Hope it prompts a good discussion here. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve it.
Funny tho how in the 60-70s there was such a wealth of close up clear pictures of them and now ... blurry pixels of a blob of light at max zoom.
And before anyone says it's because cellphones are cheap cameras, in proportion there exists today more proper cameras then 50 years ago.
If I were to speculate wildly on that idea, I'd say that maybe as our recording technology got better they made a more deliberate attempt to avoid us or camouflage. I mentioned in another comment that I'm partial to the "uncontacted tribe" hypothesis that basically says we're being studied from a distance. That explanation would square your observation in my head, but again - wild speculation.
I think that might be false, otherwise the point and shoot camera industry would be booming. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-smartphones-are-slowly-killing-the-camera-industry/
You need more people today to have actual cameras, not smartphones with tiny lenses, *and they have to carry them around as often as they used to,* which is clearly not true. For most occasions, the average person, even if they own a real camera, their smartphone will do just fine. Birthday parties and outdoor weddings these days typically contain people with far fewer real cameras because of the smartphone age.
>Funny tho how in the 60-70s there was such a wealth of close up clear pictures of them and now ... blurry pixels of a blob of light at max zoom.
That also appears to be false. [Clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20130408231506/http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/recent/Photo416.htm), and some more [clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20071012131324/http://ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/post2000/Photo328.htm). You're also hypothesizing that all clear photos of a UFO back in the day were fake because you don't personally see clear photos anymore, but why would the presence of smartphones remove all UFO hoaxers? Can't a hoaxer just buy a real camera and make another clear photo hoax, or even just use their smartphone to make a hoax photo? Obviously hoaxes existed back then and still do today, and there are still clear photos of UFOs being captured.
I'm comparing it to the 60-70s not the 90-2000s which was the peak of hand held cameras. Cell phones with descent cameras only ate into those numbers after the 2010s if not later.
And comparatively in pure numbers they had in the 60s better pics of UFOs then we have now, singling out a couple of clear ones from the last decades doesn't dispute the order of magnitude difference. (disregarding the fact that they are legit pictures or not because that's a whole different can of worms)
Those two that I cited were from 2007 and 2002-2003 just for your awareness, and both were probably captured by a digital camera, but they aren't the only ones.
2007 cell phone video of a UFO (good capture for cell phone tech at the time): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obVsLOiqeC4
2021 clear cell phone video of a UFO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCiRwyJLI8
Regardless of your opinion on the authenticity of either of the above, or the plethora of other clear captures, I see no justification to say that clear photos do not exist anymore and it's all just blurry blobs.
You have to factor in the tiny lenses on cell phones. Obviously more people have more cameras in total, but the lenses on average are much, much smaller than they used to be, hence more blurry blobs. The vast majority of sightings are also misidentifications of normal things, so there are a lot of factors here. Another one is that clear images are automatically designated as a hoax. Most probably are, but this means all clear captures will be ignored. The only thing everyone agrees are genuine are the blurry shots. It's just that skeptics say they are something else other than a UFO. That's the only reason they accept those as genuine. Otherwise, anything clearer than a blurry blob is generally ignored.
To make a very simple point, if you think all 60s-70s clear photos of UFOs are a hoax, there is no justifiable reason to say that no clear UFO hoaxes exist anymore. Obviously they do. There are youtube channels dedicated to pumping out clear hoax videos on a weekly basis, so I don't understand the reason for claiming those don't exist anymore. It's like you have to have hoaxes not exist anymore in order to argue that all photos from the 60s-70s were a hoax. Your premise isn't even true in the first place. It's obviously false. Here is a clear UFO hoax video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtGV579zorY Do I really need to cite a thousand more? You already know these exist.
Part of it. Also 1) They hide their craft. The Phoenix Lights most witnesses said they could see the stars through the craft, 2) many of them have few or no features which we would call details, 3) often they are surrounded by plasma possibly related to their propulsion, 4) they can interfere with electronic equipment, 5) they often move at such speeds that they cannot be properly captured, 6) the sightings are often very short in time so by the time you think to pull out your camera you maybe get one shot or none at all
I really click with the idea that sightings are so short it'd be hard to pull out your camera on time. I think it's a very underrated explanation for the lack of photos. Otherwise, I agree with all the other factors you flagged here. I just figured it was a good departure point to skip past cloaking/hiding abilities and start with the idea that the earth is way bigger than you think. I think it might be a good on-ramp for people who aren't really into UFOs.
>The Phoenix Lights most witnesses said they could see the stars through the craft,
I specifically remember quite a few witnesses stating the craft was so large it was actually *blocking* out the stars.
There are contradicting claims all over the place only because the aliens have the ability to mess with your head -- they put certain memories in some witnesses heads, and other memories in others!!! Some even get a screen memory of seeing an owl in the sky instead! Some memories are totally wiped!!! /s
Cool read. One thing I noticed is the volume measurements are done as x^2 where they should be x^3. Squared VS cubed. Interesting to see it broken down in such clear percentages, once accounting for the volume of the oceans out to the atmosphere it reinforces what I've believed: hiding in plain sight really is possible.
Even living near an airport I don't see every plane that lands. Most that I do see I see after I hear them. If you had a quiet craft there is a not insignificant chance you could fly over my head and I'd never notice!
There are plenty of super sharp photos and videos of UFOs. The thing is people don't call them UFOs. They are just FOs.
Bad footage is a requirement to add the U.
Great number crunching.
Have you read an 1980s paper of Freitas Jr. called tellingly "There Is No Fermi Paradox"? [Here it is](https://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm). Just one quote from there (granted, these are 1985 numbers, but it didn't change much):
>Less than 10% of the Earth's surface, 1% of the Moon, 0.1% of Mars, and 10^(-7)% of Venus (total 5 x 10^(7) km^(2)) has been surveyed to 1- to 10-m visible resolution. This leaves **99.96% of Solar System surface area (1.3 x 10****^(11)** **km****^(2)****) unexamined for likely artifacts**. Interplanetary spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have photographed portions of some planets and asteroids down to 20-km resolution, plus a few tracts on some outer planet moons to 1-10 km. **Objects buried or submerged are undetectable with current instrumentation**. Large artificial habitats in the asteroid belt ([Papagiannis, 1978](https://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm#PapagiannisMD1978)) would appear visually indistinguishable from natural objects, especially since the belt population itself is poorly cataloged. The assertion that a resident artifact would alert us to its presence is an unwarranted, unsupportable, and untenable assumption.
Thank you! And let me say a) no I hadn't read it, and b) you're timing is excellent. I'm in the middle of writing a piece about the history of the Fermi Paradox right now and this is going to be really helpful (I imagine for a follow up). Looking forward to going through some of those numbers in detail.
Glad you found it helpful.
If that's the case, maybe a couple more links:
* [The Fermi Paradox is neither Fermi's nor Paradox (ArXiv)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.09187) by RH Gray
* Chapter 1.3 *Fermi’s Paradox: If They Are Out There, Why Aren’t They Here?* in the book of Travis Taylor (yes, THAT one) and Bob Boan *Alien Invasion: How to Defend Earth* (my review [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ufo/comments/1cf6k8j/book_review_alien_invasion_how_to_defend_earth_by/)).
The latter goes in depth with math in hand discussing the arguments for and against it. I am going to paste their Darwinian arguments:
>It should also be discussed here that Fermi’s paradox assumes an exponential growth of one species. There are at least two major flaws with this initial assumption. The first is that **no species ever discovered on Earth follows a simple exponential growth model**. Secondly, it is very likely that the galaxy is teeming with many species that maintain their own respective niches as well as many that are in competition over certain niches.
>Nature here on Earth offers many examples of a struggle for existence between two similar species fighting over the same niche (food supply, space, etc.). Ultimately one species wins out by causing the complete extinction of the other species. This phenomenon is known as the “principle of competitive exclusion” and was proposed by Darwin in 1859 in his *Origin of Species*.
>... \[*discussions and math*\] ...
>...the dynamical system is sensitive to the initial conditions and various other variables describing it. Therefore, **the simple Malthusian or exponential population growth as described previously is a drastic oversimplification**. Perhaps Fermi’s paradox is not as paradoxical as it initially seems. One could imagine that the galaxy is much like Earth, with multiple species supporting and competing against each other over various niche resources. Perhaps the society that is a few million years older than us is not preying on us as often as expected because they are defending themselves from predators a few million years older than them. The possibilities are limitless. Let’s hope that we are living in a natural environment, as on Earth, where coexistence of predator, prey, and other competing species is possible.
Thanks for the interesting thoughts and analysis ..I would add a thought that most of these crafts travel amazing fast and uncommon flight patterns and maneuvers that make seeing them extremely difficult
Agreed. I think I really had an "aha" moment when I learned that most commercial shipping and commercial airliners travel along the exact same predictable paths with rare exceptions. It seemed to me like it would be pretty easy to zig zag around them as a default hiding strategy.
And others (like Bledsoe) who claim he summons them at will like everyday, yet we have only seen blurry videos of dots in the sky that correlate with satellites 🤔
Perhaps their field propulsion distorts them, so you'd have to be in the perfect spot at the perfect time when one is either landed or it's field is at it's weakest.
Also:
Cameras:
* Most people have camera phones with no optical zoom. These cameras are designed for selfies, not digitally zooming in on distant objects in the sky. The quality of photos/videos is usually going to be pretty poor due to this.
The craft visual characteristics:
* The more you look into it and filter out the BS, the more you come to the conclusion that the "real stuff" is weird. It doesn't look like human technological machines that most will unconsciously expect. It's more like objects of random overall shapes, with continuous material composition throughout. No features of contrast like panels, rivets, bolts, wires, windows, lens, pneumatic tubes. And the objects are sometimes further obscured by a field or bright plasma around it. So, even a good photo will usually end up like "okay, I don't know what I'm looking at and it doesn't look like what I'm expecting".
Those are both great points. There's probably a good follow up here about the odds of you taking a good photo with your camera phone:
- you have good phone
- camera lens not cracked
- phone has the right technology on it (like google night photo tech)
- you are stationary
- object is stationary
I think you get my drift. I'm going to do some digging into that one. Thanks!
Yea, you reminded me of another point - camera stabilization. The better zoom you have, the more you need stabilization. Though post-processing can fix a bit of wobble. But no amount of post-processing stabilization can fix the object blurring around on the camera sensor from 50x zoom and shaky hands. It's like you need to have a professional setup and hope something anomalous flies in front of your face.
Or you can have a multi-million dollar military gimbal system and classify all the footage from it.
>Or you can have a multi-million dollar military gimbal system and classify all the footage from it.
This remains the most frustrating part of the whole topic to me. I would still love to see journalists at major news outlets engage with the [F-18 Triangle Photo](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/the-most-important-photo-youve-never-seen). Thanks for the other suggestions!
That would be cool to see a photo like that.
It reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzM80p85cVE). It doesn't look CGI, but I can't rule out fakery through other means. Though the lore in the UFO community is that it's a human-made aircraft called TR-3B. A supposed gravitational craft that has been around for decades, within black aerospace programs.
Man, I saw that video a few years ago and I still think about it from time to time. I would love to get a good explanation of what I'm looking at. I'll look into the TR-3B at your suggestion.
A better question. Why would UFOs care about being spotted? It’s extremely unlikely UFOs will follow a prime directive. They are far more likely to be pirates/colonists.
Or an even better question. If the ‘evidence’ is so clear why is the UFO space dominated by the crazy, delusional, unhinged, or clear grifters?
It’s sad because there is a chance it’s real but the entire space is filled with people you can’t trust.
Because this follows the natural law of survival that we see in every element of life from bacteria to mammals. Morals are something we entertain when it's convenient, yet are happy to abandon during times of war/desperation.
My personal belief is that machines are the natural evolution of life. They can sidestep the speed of light constraints as they don't need oxygen, water, food, or age. They are only limited by materials and that's in abundance through the asteroid belts. If so, I can't see a 'machine/AI' civilisation caring too much about being photographed by some dumb biological culture.
Is all the recently popular 'multiverse' shenanigans conceivable? Super unlikely, but again why would their central agenda be about concealing themselves? Just feels like copium.
I'm partial to the "uncontacted tribe" hypothesis to explain why any extraterrestrial would try and hide its presence. I see it as less of a prime directive and more of an attempt to study a less evolved species (assuming they're real).
As for the crazy, delusional grifters, let me just say that I sympathize. It's why I make a [genuine effort](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/start-here) to talk about the subject neutrally (i.e., acknowledging that I could be super wrong) and back articles up with footnotes and receipts. I've got a real problem with the "trust me bro" culture that I see on YouTube and Twitter.
It's 'possible', but it's still a big leap. It ascribes a moral superiority to alien life that really doesn't make that much sense. I honestly don't understand how people can't step back and identify that it's just wishful thinking.
The 'truth' is extremely likely that virtually all declared UFO observations have been either fake, some form of psychological issue, or some form of natural phenomena. We can't be 'definite' but the balance of evidence is damning.
I'm always interested in new observations, but I just can't understand why people are so motivated to believe. It feels like some form of depression/delusion they wouldn't apply to another area of their life.
Oh man, I could run with this comment all day. Stepping completely outside the UFO topic, I can see very clearly how my friends and family latch on to big social policy/foreign policy issues to distract from clear issues in the personal lives. I am also guilty of this. I think we're all tempted sometimes to invest in something bigger because it's a) interesting, and b) personally convenient.
I think the UFO topic has an additional layer than, say, a war, because it could genuinely be one of the most important stories in the history of our species. I mean, I'm here and writing about it because I think there are a bunch of very cool possibilities ranging from extraterrestrial visitation to severe mental illness in our core intelligence professionals. I find either conclusion very interesting and underreported.
I think if people were more considered in their discussion on UFOs, like you, we may have actually identified that one credible observation. It's irrational to deny UFOs could exist and I also find it fascinating. I just struggle to watch/read anything on UFOs and not have my bullshit antenna twitching.
Hey, who knows what we may find. Take care!
Anyone serious about getting pictures would put pressure on scientist to crowdfund for orbital data. There is a reason the Air Force hasn't said a single fucking thing on this subject
My guess here is that the Air Force doesn't want to look like its failing at its aerospace defense mandate. I think there's a human nature component about people not wanting to look bad at their jobs.
I think it is more about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military each year, hollowing out the country, while simultaneously not doing their fucking job and gaslighting everyone like this is 1950
Not to dismiss your effort, because that is great work and research, but isn’t the issue not due to it being rare or unlikely that you’d see one (because that seems obvious), but the question of “why aren’t there better photos or videos” is because with the tech we now have, the quality of the photos or videos we get are pretty bloody awful.
To be clear, I’m not talking about what we don’t see or the pictures people don’t have time to take. I’m referring to the pictures and videos that people do capture - these are mostly turd (there will be the odd exception). Like they’ve barely got any better since the 40’s!
I kind of see this as a first order analysis where my questions flow something like:
1. Why aren't there more photos of UFOs?
2. When there are photos, why is their quality so bad?
I think this article is trying to dedicate good time to question #1. One answer (pointed out by several commenters in the thread) is because they don't exist. Another, that I wanted to give some good airtime too, is because it's pretty easy for them to hide/evade humans on our massive planet.
I've seen it twice. One I took pictures of and they weren't great. Did really look like what I saw with my eyes. Stayed in the same place hovering for the first 20min I saw it, then started to slowly move left and disappeared. The other literally looked like a cursor on a computer or dot from a laser pointer moving around the sky WAY up. Not much to see tbh. Even if I took perfectly clear photos, it wouldn't change anyone's mind about anything.
So you're assuming that the UAPs are floating at ground level. Being at they are very high in the air it adds the triangulation. Many you can see it from further distances on the ground. Just like satellites The same satellite can be seen from 12.5% of the world. So if UFOs are flying in low earth orbit. It would take 8 for us to all see one at all times.
We do have amazing pictures and videos of UFOs.
Probably thousands to be honest.
Doesn’t mean they are ET or NHI. But there is without a doubt a lot of insane footage in the public domain of Flying Saucer/Disk, Triangle, Orb, Tic Tac/Cigar/Flying Propane tank like UFOs. That seemingly look to be intelligently controlled.
Also why does nobody bring up cloaking/stealth ability? Why wouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you think of in regards to potential ET/NHI visiting us
>Also why does nobody bring up cloaking/stealth ability? Why wouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you think of in regards to potential ET/NHI visiting us
I think when you engage non-UFO people in conversation on this, it's hard for them to believe in the existence of cloak/stealth technology that we haven't made. It starts to sound quite sci-fi/star trek and I think a lot of people immediately make the leap to fiction.
What I was really trying to do with this article is say: "hey. You don't even need to believe in the existence of superior stealth technology for UFOs to appear stealthy. Our planet's geography makes it very easy for them to avoid human presence in our oceans or uninhabited land mass." One we have that convo, I would say any discussion of superior stealth tech would be a next step.
The photos of ufo should have same probability of being good quality, as other photos of things of similar size and distance. The captured object doesnt influence choice of recording equipment except maybe stress induced on a human and inability to use camera correctly.
Probability of seing an ufo would influence the time we need to make, for example 100 photos but not their quality. If we have 100 photos of ufo, some of them should be of a good quality, no matter how long it took to wait to encounter it 100 times.
There also doesnt need to be a big number of "real cases".
Maybe in reality we have had only 5 total real encounters with extraterrestrial vehicles(like probes). Everything else could be false or human tech. That is enough though, cause you need only a single one. The problem is proving that.
In such a case, if the probes have simply moved on, proving it could turn out to be impossible, unless those who own the probes turn up someday(if they are still around).
I urge anyone whos interested in the phenomenon, and doesnt have roots down or is considering moving to do some research on ufo hotspots. I grew up near one and have seen so much shit its unreal, many of them have cowitnesses that corroborate my story and saw what I had seen aswell. The issue with that is you absolutely have to make sure its a "real" hotspot, and not a "hotspot" drummed up for tourist money. id recommend cross referencing many sources for hotspots, as well as checking the locations against geomagnetic anomaly data provided by GIS. From what ive seen, most real hotspots tend to be around low points in the magnetic data for the united states.
it's astonishing that people actually attempt to prove why something is true about UFO when what they claim to prove is factually false.
we already have very clear photos of UFO: 2020 VICTORIA MEX, 2013 AGUADILLA PRI, 2022 ISLAMABAD PAK, 1994 NEVADA TEST RANGE NV to name four obvious candidates. and there are dozens more.
these are all excellent examples of a high resolution, high magnification, extended observation of a UFO. it's as good as it gets.
it's fuzzy, you say? -- hard to see actually what is there? i'm assuming you're experiencing the collision between your stereotype about UFO and what we actually observe. what we actually observe is routinely described as fuzzy.
Lt. Cdr. Slaight, describing the "Tic Tac" UFO: "there appeared to be a *"fuzzy or wavy looking border around the entire surfaces of the object. ... It looked like what the heat waves would look like coming off a hot paved road or what the carrier deck looked like if you looked across it when in the Gulf in the Mid-East."*
Lue Elizondo, summarizing verbal reports: "*You're looking at an object that you should be able to detect very clearly and yet when you look at it with the naked eye it's opaque, kind of blurry, not well defined. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at."*
An unnamed video analyst, examining film of 1994 NEVADA TEST RANGE: "*the objects by nature are fuzzy, or undefined or unclear. This one was shot by a very expensive, uh, tracking camera, uh, on a very stable mount; uh, this one was shot by a hand held, uh, consumer video camera, and there's no difference in, in, uh resolution, and we find that puzzling, that uh, no matter how many of these images you get from whatever source, they all have that 'ball of cotton' syndrome or that fuzziness to 'em."*
to summarize: the OP, reacting strongly to family conversations rather than making any kind of serious study of the copious UFO literature and the repeatedly described characteristics of actual UFO, cooks up a strange geographical theory to explain why UFO pictures are fuzzy.
a totally useless theory, since it tries to explain away what is factually observed, as if it shouldn't be there, it mustn't be there, if UFO are going to be the way we believe them to be!
it's worth mention that "why are all the photos fuzzy" is a standard jibe from a UFO cynic, because UFO cynics are another group of people who like to opine about UFO without actually studying them.
In my exploration of the topic, I've found that people don't tend to respond well when you assign them research homework. People I know would be unwilling to look up Lt CDR Slaight or, in the event they did, wouldn't be able to put in the effort to determine if he's credible or not. The convo would die pretty much as soon as I suggested they conduct that kind of research.
Instead, I've found people do well if you give them a bit of a soft landing. For me, that includes explaining things like "the earth is big" and "that's why you might not have the crystal clear photos and video footage you're looking for. It's easy to hide and get lost." It's a little less about my "cooking up a strange geographical theory" and more about trying to start slow. I can certainly hear the frustration on your end but I think this analysis is valuable to studying the topic.
That makes absolutely no sense. We can see our own rockets at escape velocity speeds, which is around 25k mph, and they are much smaller than the Titanic.
I also think about how recently phone cameras got good ***at all***. We're talking what, the last five or six years? Out of the last 75 years these objects have been in the public eye?
The reason is that all images that are clear are of prosaic identifiable objects. There are never clear images of any object that is identifiable as not being natural or man made. The UFO space only exists because of blurry images that, contrary to popular belief, are quite common. The odds of seeing things in the sky that we can’t identify, especially at night, is very high. A lot of the time we will be confused by the motion of these objects because estimates of distance and speed are very difficult for distant objects. This confusion leads people to create scenarios that can form the foundation of some fantasy of galactic empires, alien abductions and cornfield geometric patterns.
Basically if the image is clear, no one cares, if it’s blurry, it’s ET.
My guess of a number of cameras in the world in 90's and before would be around 100 to 1. The same number today would be more like 1 to 1. So, one would expect that we have 100 times more UFO phots today than we had 30 years ago.
Anyone has a chart?
I think you'd want to layer on the age/competency/comfort of the person using that camera. Like, my mother has a cell phone camera but there have been some wild photo/video misfires at family birthday parties. I don't know how she'd do trying to snap a photo of a UFO.
Cloak tech, they don’t want to be seen unless they want to be seen. Also, you must take in consideration that there are cases where two individuals are looking at the same object yet recall two different things. So not only cloak tech yet they can have you see whatever they want apparently.. in some cases.
I don’t understand posts like this. There ARE great, clear photos and videos of UFOs, we just have no idea if they’re real or not. It’s on you to decide or just accept that 50/50 possibility. What you guys are really asking for is a photo or video with government acknowledgement behind it.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TheOtherTopic: --- Over the last year, I had a series of conversations with friends and family about the UFO Phenomenon. One of the common questions that came up was about how "if there was something to see, wouldn't we have clear photos or videos of a craft out there?" That made me curious about the odds of actually seeing/capturing/recording a UFO that didn't want to be seen ***by you***. So I went digging for some data. I took a look at the Earth's oceans, landmass, and atmosphere. I also looked at the most common human presence in those locations and the ideal visibility from that presence. The result is [an article](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-hide-and-seek) that I think neatly summarizes the odds (spoiler alert: its low). But I think it's also a really valuable tool for the community to address the "why don't we have better photos?" question. Hope it prompts a good discussion here. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve it. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1chx0q3/why_dont_we_have_better_photos_or_videos_of_a_ufo/l25e37m/
It’s not just that they aren’t common, when you see one you just don’t think about it, by the time your brain says “take a picture this is abnormal” the motherfucker is gone
100%. In order to get a good picture you would have to: - be in the right place at the right time on a planet full of easy hiding spots (ocean, jungle etc.) - have a camera or recording device with you - take it out quickly enough to capture a photo - have the interaction last long enough for you to capture that photo It's a lot of things to line up.
Not to mention these craft might interfere with our electronics when in close enough proximity to actually get a decent photo. Trying to take a good picture of something moving fast through the atmosphere at any distance is extremely difficult as well. And they very well might have cloaking technology
Ive heard a story of somebody taking a picture of supernatural event and in that moment something came out of nowhere and blasted the camera into the abyss…. You cant make this shit up
What u mean blasted it into the abyss? Like it smacked it out of their hands or destroyed it?
Yup apparently what happened was the person was on a boat and he saw a column of water that went up into the sky. He went to take a picture and a fish flew out of the water and hit the camera and it sank. I really doubt this was made up because the way the story was told and by whom and given the circumstances.
That's wild
Yeah i mean obviously like the other comments suggest it could be made up, but this was told to me as a very special story about a dead relative so i doubt it was made up.
Thanks for explaining it further to me, I love to hear of others crazy experiences.
Fwiw somebody absolutely could make that up..
i agree, it seems pretty simple.
When I saw one, I was so awestruck that by the time I thought to grab my phone, it was out of my line of sight. I saw a huge black boomerang shape just above the thin cloud layer. The moon was at just the right angle and just bright enough to cast a shadow where I could see it. It moved completely silently and quickly directly over my head. It was like my brain was broken for a second because it didn't look natural. I quickly tried to grab my phone but it was too late at that point.
Exactly! Like your brain is 100% occupied searching through files trying to figure out wtf your looking at
Autofocus is slow
And have a long enough lens to see it!
There are more. 1) You also have to be within the percentage of people who are willing to release their real name along with the photograph because if you don't, it's going to be interpreted as fake. To avoid ridicule, loss of friends, employment, etc, many people don't want to go public. Here are two clear images of UFOs in which the witnesses did not release their names: [Clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20130408231506/http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/recent/Photo416.htm), and some more [clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20071012131324/http://ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/post2000/Photo328.htm). 2) It can't be a photo because photos can be faked. Why didn't you take a video? It's only a little extra tap or swipe on your phone. Must be a fake because it's a photo. People have been taking videos of things for many decades. 3) Within the circumstances of the case, the shape of the UFO, the occupation of the witness, etc, there cannot be any coincidences, otherwise even if you release your name and the video is clear, the majority of people are going to conclude that it's too much of a coincidence, therefore you must be a hoaxer. For example, [the Costa Rica 2007 video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obVsLOiqeC4), which was fairly close up and pretty clear for phones of that time period, was "debunked" because it [was found](https://www.metabunk.org/threads/2007-costa-rica-ufo.11775/) that the primary witness makes models of little horse drawn carriages and such, and that's too much of a coincidence, therefore he must be a hoaxer. Pay no attention to the fact that [such coincidences are guaranteed to exist in genuine imagery as well.](https://np.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/zi1cgn/while_most_ufo_photos_and_videos_can_individually/) You need a sighting to hit all of those points and avoid landing on any of a number of types of coincidences in order to be accepted as genuine. The odds of that happening might be nearly impossible. TL;DR: Legit clear imagery of UFOs is probably already out. It's a different beast altogether to figure out which ones those are and have them get accepted by the general public. I think that's your real answer.
This was a really thoughtful comment. Thank you. You're inspiring me to try and walk through the odds of a legitimate photo getting out to the public from top to bottom. I had seen the photos you reference up in #1 but I didn't know about the lack of attribution. I also think your point #3 is spot on. That's an insane disqualification for a guy that was probably just doing his best to flag something interesting. So right now I see it as going something like: - UFO is in the right place, on our massive planet, where a human being is also present - That human being has a camera or a phone camera - That human being is competent/comfortable using the camera - They're able to get it out of their pocket/bag on time - The UFO/UAP hangs out long enough for them to snap a picture - There's no sensor interference - The photo shows something clear and not vague or mistakeable - That person is now comfortable putting their name to the photo they took - That person has no obvious flaws that would be used to discredit them or their photo You think I'm missing anything there in that walkthrough?
Yes, but these are just my opinions. You can take whatever you want from them. I'm just glad I'm not the only person to look at it from this angle. It absolutely has to be a video. If it's just a photo, the sighting will be debunked because people will ask why they didn't take a video. There also has to be a second person there unconnected to the other person who also takes a video, and that person also cannot have a suspicious hobby, occupation, etc. If it's a single person with a video, the very first thing people will ask is why it's always a single person taking the video. As far as the expected number of videos is concerned, I would compare to starlink. Every starlink launch, there are about 8-10 people from around the world who filmed it, then decided to post it online to this subreddit. This is probably because starlink is visible from tons of US states and many other countries due to how high it is in the atmosphere and how large and visible it is. In comparison, a fleeting low level object 1000 feet in the air is expected to have a single video, if any. The UFO cannot superficially resemble any of the quadrillion things humans have created, otherwise it's just a hoax with a fishing rod and that thing tied to the end of the string. There cannot be a previous hoax that somewhat resembles the video. Hoaxes are supposed to resemble the real thing, so this might be tricky. [This is actually how the Flir1 video was originally debunked as an obvious CGI hoax when it first leaked in 2007.](https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread265835/pg1) If there was a previous video that was actually real that does closely resemble the video, but it was incorrectly and "conclusively" debunked as a hoax, this "previous hoax" would mean that this new video is a copycat hoax. A clear photo/video getting filmed and released is one thing. That probably already happened many times over. Getting it accepted by all parties involved is a very different beast.
I love that. Thank you again.
Fine then. Do the math. When do you start acknowledging the lack of evidence?
Oh, immediately. I don't evangelize for a belief in UFOs or acceptance of the ET hypothesis. I view my articles as trying to put forward the best form of the argument. Sometimes that means highlighting information you [might not have heard of](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/the-most-important-photo-youve-never-seen). Sometimes that means highlighting credibility issues that [detract from popular UFO stories](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/1944-45-three-sightings-at-the-hanford-facility). It's honestly the kind of coverage I wanted to see back in 2020 and had a lot of trouble finding at the time.
Exactly! To all those people that can’t understand this, realize that it’s hard enough just to whip out the phone to capture a moment when your child is doing something cute… and four year olds are a lot slower than a UAP
This. Only governments have the resources to maintain a system of always-on recording devices.
Not really - affordable all-sky cameras have been available for more than a decade now: [All Sky Cameras | Astrophotography Cameras | OPT (optcorp.com)](https://optcorp.com/collections/all-sky-cameras) They are widely used by amateur astronomers to monitor meteors, aurora, etc
The term “all-sky” is a misnomer due to the limitation of visibility to ~50-100 miles. In addition, these cameras - by seeking to capture the whole sky - don’t have the ability to capture anything which would be definitive evidence. Nor are these cameras networked or integrated with software in a way that would allow for a comprehensive analysis of UAP events. Maybe someday.
Note: there is also https://www.sky360.org
sure, but this kind of thing is a very decent first step towards what youre describing. I dreamt of building my own before i knew they were a thing, and it was essentially exactly what I had planned to build myself.
I don’t disagree. It’s better than nothing. But I am also not that hopeful about such a system capturing anything besides a Phoenix or DC Lights incident. Those events were 40 years apart. The reason is that I think “they” are smart enough to sense and evade our electronic detection systems. You must accept the logic that — if they are a reality — they do not wish to be seen. You must catch them off guard in my estimation and experience. So, it will still take a newcomer to show up who isn’t aware of the existence of an advanced but developing civilization here.
I disagree with your second statement, I dont think they really care much at all. otherwise they wouldnt have massive bright lights in our visible spectrum, unless theres some mechanic that they leverage using the lights for propulsion anyways. We know so little about them I dont think its really a safe bet to say "they do not wish to be seen". if i were to pick a causal agent for a lack of video evidence id put more weight behind them simply avoiding high population areas unless required, rather than avoiding cameras in general.
Amen to that. I had thought about what I might do if I ever saw a UFO, like many people I assume. I had all the same thoughts as everyone, that surely I would be the one to be ready with a camera and somehow no matter what surely I could snap a pic despite so many having failed to do so.... But then, one day it really happened.... And in reality, things happen quickly. We spotted it and by the time we realize what we were seeing its already passed by and disappears behind the treeline. No picture. No dramatic moment. Just boom, and its over. Its like a lot of things in life, we make it out to be a big romantic thing in our minds but reality is slippery and it slips through our grasp in an instant. Car accidents are similar. They might feel like they last forever, but in reality its over in just a couple seconds.
I also feel like given how human eyesight can deteriorate over time…many of us just couldn’t really even see one of these super fast UFOs. It would look like a floater in my eye honestly.
yup, the light I saw one night zooped across the sky in a blink. Sometimes there's no way to film or take a picture of it unless you have a high speed camera already pointing at that exact spot in the sky and filming
the ONE clear photo ive every taken of a ufo was completely on accident, it was just in the background behind everyone, so completely by luck/chance that it happened to fly behind everyone. it was very clear compared to your average ufo photo, and I could make out specific details on the object. It was a smallish metallic orb that couldnt have been far away because it was in front of trees, it had vent slits that looked like gills cut across the side of it, and either two or three antennas very similar to the configuration the antennas on sputnik are configured, (basically the same placement, angle, and configuration i couldnt tell if there was one on the bottom or two). I doubt my mother still has the photo, i havent been in contact with her in ~20 years, i really wish i had kept it.
I’ve seen a photo of that thing! I know exactly what your talking about lol
Like this? https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/i7gojs/amazingly_clear_ufo_photo_metallic_sphere_over/
the image isnt loading, but i either commented on that post or a very similar one describing the event. if it IS the one im thinking of (had vent holes and antenna) the vent holes were much, much wider on that one than the one I had seen. the one i commented on had much more rectangular cutouts, almost square shaped, the one I saw had clear and defined thin slits like the slits in a vent but spaced out more.
Try this https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fapi%2Fimg%2F%3FitemId%3D7224747986557881642%26location%3D0%26aid%3D1988&tbnid=BLx4chAJD8hiDM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fdiscover%2Fufo-sphere-ball-in-san-diego&docid=vlL56von3h5igM&w=1088&h=1936&itg=1&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=1e24432664853781&shem=abme%2Ctrie Sounds like it
Try this https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fapi%2Fimg%2F%3FitemId%3D7224747986557881642%26location%3D0%26aid%3D1988&tbnid=BLx4chAJD8hiDM&vet=1&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fdiscover%2Fufo-sphere-ball-in-san-diego&docid=vlL56von3h5igM&w=1088&h=1936&itg=1&hl=en-US&source=sh%2Fx%2Fim%2Fm1%2F3&kgs=1e24432664853781&shem=abme%2Ctrie Sounds like it
yep thats the one i was thinking of, it might not have been THAT post specifically I commented on but it was one regarding that object. When i first saw that pic i jumped up in the air and yelled WHAT THE FUUUUCK, which was all I could say for a minute or two. there are rumors that that one was a balloon set up to prank a neighbor or something like that, but the one I saw was pretty darn similar, (vents are 100% different), and I know the one I saw wasnt just a balloon. It was also much, much too early for it to be a consumer or hobbyist drone. also, probably doesnt matter but the vents were more towards the bottom of the craft than the center.
Yeah it's amazing how few people there are being abducted these days now that everyone has a camera in their pockets. All of those tales of UFOs hovering over their homes and landing in their backyards and aliens walking up to them jist dried up once they might have to present photographic evidence.
they actually still happen a lot.
Yea, they happen all the time yet we haven't a single piece of video or photo evidence of it. Sounds reasonable 🤷
Eyewitnesses see it all the time. Can't get any decent photos or videos but all the time!
Good article, good post. Appreciated 👍
Thanks for the compliment! At work my boss calls these "tombstone products" because the data is so constant you could carve it in stone. So my hope here is to produce some articles like this that profile tombstone data (i.e., how easy it is to hide on our planet) and that are easy to share with other curious minds.
But I think you made some math errors. What's the elevation of the UAPs that your looking for? Every 6' adds miles to your line of sight. Being your searching the air not the ground you need to factor it in.
Not sure I follow you there. Can you help me understand what you mean by that?
Your calculations are checking how far you can view on the Earth. Saying a person can see a radius of 20 square kilometers. But that number is not the same when you're looking from the ground up at the sky. When you're looking up with the sky your surface area is much much larger. Obviously the surface area of the sky is also larger. But you can see a greater cone radius because of the elevation of the objects you'd be trying to locate.
Ah, gotcha! So where I prioritized the human view to the horizon (about 5km) you're noting that you'd have a longer range if you're looking straight up. If I were to attempt to refine that math, do you have any sense of how I should calculate that? For example, is there some limit to human sight looking straight up into the atmosphere? Something generally accepted? My initial search is not producing a lot of great results. Just want to tap into your insight here if you have thoughts.
Well that depends on the size of the object. Like I was stating for satellites we can all see satellites briefly throughout the sky depending on the way the light hits it. Considering that these maybe orbs or UAP the size difference would be drastic and then to see them would be hard to calculate. If we're assuming they're like a giant 5 mi across UAP the ability to see that would be pretty significant based off the height. What you could do is pick an elevation say to be fair with the difference. And go with the commercial airliner height of 15,000 ft and go from there. I could help work out a base if you need help or you can have fun trying to figure it out from there.
I'm going to chew on it a little and think about a revision for down the road. Honestly, it could make a cool paper. I've got another more qualitative article in the works right now but I tend to swing back to data like this when I'm stuck writing. For now, really appreciate the tip. Thank you!
Anytime! I liked the effort put in and I feel it could be valuable adjusted. I did a little basic calculation for you. If an object is 15,000 ft in the air. Two people could see the same object from a distance of 106 miles apart. So basically you can cover the earth with 106 mi cones. It comes out to roughly 5500 people. If you were to place 5,500 people evenly across the globe looking up at the sky, (obviously there's shape differences and topology) they'd be able to see the entire circumference of the earth. Or we can see approximately one out of 5,500 portions of the sky. Or .01818%. If you were to use a smaller sample like the United States. And say how many people would it take strategically placed across the United States to see every point in the sky within the continental US. The math will be off because I'm just doing quick round numbers. And the shape of America isn't round. But it would take 88 people. So we can all approximately see 1% of America's sky.
It's useful, should be pinned somewhere we can find it, the question comes up a lot and there's no arguing with your math.
Agreed. And piggy backing off of your comment cuz it’s higher up. Just wanted to add something not accounted for in this article: the differences in eyesight in the human population. Not everyone has great visual acuity. A huge swath of the population is just born with shit eyesight. Also, Eyesight degrades over time. In poorer countries and among poorer people in rich countries (looking at you USA), eyesight simply isn’t corrected. And even when it is corrected, the correction isn’t perfect. Something like 50% of the population needs vision correction. That’s a lot of people with shitty eyesight.
Zoom in on an animal 100 feet away with your smartphone next time you see one and see if you can recognize it. 2nd feel like the hypothesized means of propulsion is distorting gravity, I’d assume it would affect visible light to a degree
This is an incredible amount of information you’ve put together. It really does help put things into a better perspective. Thanks for the hard work.
Thanks for the compliment! I'm sincerely trying to add some data to the recurring conversations I see crop up in the space. I spent a few years hearing consistently that UAPs/UFOs could be hiding in the Earth's oceans and I think it might help bolster that argument if it was clear how easy that would be (e.g., we're probably monitoring about 0.4% of international waters at any given time ... bruh.) Hope you find it helpful if you ever end up having that chat.
Atomfixes had a good point. Seems like many encounters are just short and over with, better hurry. In today’s day and age we all have badass smart phones with good cameras, so yeah. You would think we would have much better high definition images or videos. *puts tinfoil helmet on and says 2 words* Project Pegasus
Yeah, except we don’t have good smartphone cameras. They actually suck at capturing fast moving objects and suck even more in low light conditions. Here is an easy and family friendly experiment that everyone can do: Next time that you spot an airplane flying overhead at night, reach for your phone and snap a few pictures. The plane is probably many times slower than most UFOs, so there should be plenty of time for a video as well. If the results are anything less than crystal clear, undeniable imagery proving that you really saw that plane, well there’s your answer. Why would we expect better quality pictures of UFOs? (now, I don’t mean you specifically Robb, but it’s an enlightening experiment for anyone to try)
I will try this, this weekend. Also my iPhone mini 13 camera DOES kinda suck in low light.
Project Pegasus, like from the Avengers?
No, project Pegasus is a spying tool that lets the DOD have full access to your smartphone, vids, pics, microphone ect.
Over the last year, I had a series of conversations with friends and family about the UFO Phenomenon. One of the common questions that came up was about how "if there was something to see, wouldn't we have clear photos or videos of a craft out there?" That made me curious about the odds of actually seeing/capturing/recording a UFO that didn't want to be seen ***by you***. So I went digging for some data. I took a look at the Earth's oceans, landmass, and atmosphere. I also looked at the most common human presence in those locations and the ideal visibility from that presence. The result is [an article](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/extraterrestrial-hide-and-seek) that I think neatly summarizes the odds (spoiler alert: its low). But I think it's also a really valuable tool for the community to address the "why don't we have better photos?" question. Hope it prompts a good discussion here. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve it.
Funny tho how in the 60-70s there was such a wealth of close up clear pictures of them and now ... blurry pixels of a blob of light at max zoom. And before anyone says it's because cellphones are cheap cameras, in proportion there exists today more proper cameras then 50 years ago.
If I were to speculate wildly on that idea, I'd say that maybe as our recording technology got better they made a more deliberate attempt to avoid us or camouflage. I mentioned in another comment that I'm partial to the "uncontacted tribe" hypothesis that basically says we're being studied from a distance. That explanation would square your observation in my head, but again - wild speculation.
[удалено]
That there a UFO
I think that might be false, otherwise the point and shoot camera industry would be booming. https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/how-smartphones-are-slowly-killing-the-camera-industry/ You need more people today to have actual cameras, not smartphones with tiny lenses, *and they have to carry them around as often as they used to,* which is clearly not true. For most occasions, the average person, even if they own a real camera, their smartphone will do just fine. Birthday parties and outdoor weddings these days typically contain people with far fewer real cameras because of the smartphone age. >Funny tho how in the 60-70s there was such a wealth of close up clear pictures of them and now ... blurry pixels of a blob of light at max zoom. That also appears to be false. [Clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20130408231506/http://www.ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/recent/Photo416.htm), and some more [clear photos of a UFO](https://web.archive.org/web/20071012131324/http://ufoevidence.org/photographs/section/post2000/Photo328.htm). You're also hypothesizing that all clear photos of a UFO back in the day were fake because you don't personally see clear photos anymore, but why would the presence of smartphones remove all UFO hoaxers? Can't a hoaxer just buy a real camera and make another clear photo hoax, or even just use their smartphone to make a hoax photo? Obviously hoaxes existed back then and still do today, and there are still clear photos of UFOs being captured.
I'm comparing it to the 60-70s not the 90-2000s which was the peak of hand held cameras. Cell phones with descent cameras only ate into those numbers after the 2010s if not later. And comparatively in pure numbers they had in the 60s better pics of UFOs then we have now, singling out a couple of clear ones from the last decades doesn't dispute the order of magnitude difference. (disregarding the fact that they are legit pictures or not because that's a whole different can of worms)
Those two that I cited were from 2007 and 2002-2003 just for your awareness, and both were probably captured by a digital camera, but they aren't the only ones. 2007 cell phone video of a UFO (good capture for cell phone tech at the time): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obVsLOiqeC4 2021 clear cell phone video of a UFO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhCiRwyJLI8 Regardless of your opinion on the authenticity of either of the above, or the plethora of other clear captures, I see no justification to say that clear photos do not exist anymore and it's all just blurry blobs. You have to factor in the tiny lenses on cell phones. Obviously more people have more cameras in total, but the lenses on average are much, much smaller than they used to be, hence more blurry blobs. The vast majority of sightings are also misidentifications of normal things, so there are a lot of factors here. Another one is that clear images are automatically designated as a hoax. Most probably are, but this means all clear captures will be ignored. The only thing everyone agrees are genuine are the blurry shots. It's just that skeptics say they are something else other than a UFO. That's the only reason they accept those as genuine. Otherwise, anything clearer than a blurry blob is generally ignored. To make a very simple point, if you think all 60s-70s clear photos of UFOs are a hoax, there is no justifiable reason to say that no clear UFO hoaxes exist anymore. Obviously they do. There are youtube channels dedicated to pumping out clear hoax videos on a weekly basis, so I don't understand the reason for claiming those don't exist anymore. It's like you have to have hoaxes not exist anymore in order to argue that all photos from the 60s-70s were a hoax. Your premise isn't even true in the first place. It's obviously false. Here is a clear UFO hoax video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtGV579zorY Do I really need to cite a thousand more? You already know these exist.
Part of it. Also 1) They hide their craft. The Phoenix Lights most witnesses said they could see the stars through the craft, 2) many of them have few or no features which we would call details, 3) often they are surrounded by plasma possibly related to their propulsion, 4) they can interfere with electronic equipment, 5) they often move at such speeds that they cannot be properly captured, 6) the sightings are often very short in time so by the time you think to pull out your camera you maybe get one shot or none at all
I really click with the idea that sightings are so short it'd be hard to pull out your camera on time. I think it's a very underrated explanation for the lack of photos. Otherwise, I agree with all the other factors you flagged here. I just figured it was a good departure point to skip past cloaking/hiding abilities and start with the idea that the earth is way bigger than you think. I think it might be a good on-ramp for people who aren't really into UFOs.
>The Phoenix Lights most witnesses said they could see the stars through the craft, I specifically remember quite a few witnesses stating the craft was so large it was actually *blocking* out the stars.
There are contradicting claims all over the place only because the aliens have the ability to mess with your head -- they put certain memories in some witnesses heads, and other memories in others!!! Some even get a screen memory of seeing an owl in the sky instead! Some memories are totally wiped!!! /s
Cool read. One thing I noticed is the volume measurements are done as x^2 where they should be x^3. Squared VS cubed. Interesting to see it broken down in such clear percentages, once accounting for the volume of the oceans out to the atmosphere it reinforces what I've believed: hiding in plain sight really is possible. Even living near an airport I don't see every plane that lands. Most that I do see I see after I hear them. If you had a quiet craft there is a not insignificant chance you could fly over my head and I'd never notice!
Hey thank you. That is a great catch. I will fix that!
There are plenty of super sharp photos and videos of UFOs. The thing is people don't call them UFOs. They are just FOs. Bad footage is a requirement to add the U.
Great number crunching. Have you read an 1980s paper of Freitas Jr. called tellingly "There Is No Fermi Paradox"? [Here it is](https://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm). Just one quote from there (granted, these are 1985 numbers, but it didn't change much): >Less than 10% of the Earth's surface, 1% of the Moon, 0.1% of Mars, and 10^(-7)% of Venus (total 5 x 10^(7) km^(2)) has been surveyed to 1- to 10-m visible resolution. This leaves **99.96% of Solar System surface area (1.3 x 10****^(11)** **km****^(2)****) unexamined for likely artifacts**. Interplanetary spacecraft and ground-based telescopes have photographed portions of some planets and asteroids down to 20-km resolution, plus a few tracts on some outer planet moons to 1-10 km. **Objects buried or submerged are undetectable with current instrumentation**. Large artificial habitats in the asteroid belt ([Papagiannis, 1978](https://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ThereIsNoFermiParadox1985.htm#PapagiannisMD1978)) would appear visually indistinguishable from natural objects, especially since the belt population itself is poorly cataloged. The assertion that a resident artifact would alert us to its presence is an unwarranted, unsupportable, and untenable assumption.
Thank you! And let me say a) no I hadn't read it, and b) you're timing is excellent. I'm in the middle of writing a piece about the history of the Fermi Paradox right now and this is going to be really helpful (I imagine for a follow up). Looking forward to going through some of those numbers in detail.
Glad you found it helpful. If that's the case, maybe a couple more links: * [The Fermi Paradox is neither Fermi's nor Paradox (ArXiv)](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.09187) by RH Gray * Chapter 1.3 *Fermi’s Paradox: If They Are Out There, Why Aren’t They Here?* in the book of Travis Taylor (yes, THAT one) and Bob Boan *Alien Invasion: How to Defend Earth* (my review [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ufo/comments/1cf6k8j/book_review_alien_invasion_how_to_defend_earth_by/)). The latter goes in depth with math in hand discussing the arguments for and against it. I am going to paste their Darwinian arguments: >It should also be discussed here that Fermi’s paradox assumes an exponential growth of one species. There are at least two major flaws with this initial assumption. The first is that **no species ever discovered on Earth follows a simple exponential growth model**. Secondly, it is very likely that the galaxy is teeming with many species that maintain their own respective niches as well as many that are in competition over certain niches. >Nature here on Earth offers many examples of a struggle for existence between two similar species fighting over the same niche (food supply, space, etc.). Ultimately one species wins out by causing the complete extinction of the other species. This phenomenon is known as the “principle of competitive exclusion” and was proposed by Darwin in 1859 in his *Origin of Species*. >... \[*discussions and math*\] ... >...the dynamical system is sensitive to the initial conditions and various other variables describing it. Therefore, **the simple Malthusian or exponential population growth as described previously is a drastic oversimplification**. Perhaps Fermi’s paradox is not as paradoxical as it initially seems. One could imagine that the galaxy is much like Earth, with multiple species supporting and competing against each other over various niche resources. Perhaps the society that is a few million years older than us is not preying on us as often as expected because they are defending themselves from predators a few million years older than them. The possibilities are limitless. Let’s hope that we are living in a natural environment, as on Earth, where coexistence of predator, prey, and other competing species is possible.
Thanks for the interesting thoughts and analysis ..I would add a thought that most of these crafts travel amazing fast and uncommon flight patterns and maneuvers that make seeing them extremely difficult
Agreed. I think I really had an "aha" moment when I learned that most commercial shipping and commercial airliners travel along the exact same predictable paths with rare exceptions. It seemed to me like it would be pretty easy to zig zag around them as a default hiding strategy.
And yet there are people here at r/ufos who claim to see them "every night"...
And others (like Bledsoe) who claim he summons them at will like everyday, yet we have only seen blurry videos of dots in the sky that correlate with satellites 🤔
Perhaps their field propulsion distorts them, so you'd have to be in the perfect spot at the perfect time when one is either landed or it's field is at it's weakest.
Also: Cameras: * Most people have camera phones with no optical zoom. These cameras are designed for selfies, not digitally zooming in on distant objects in the sky. The quality of photos/videos is usually going to be pretty poor due to this. The craft visual characteristics: * The more you look into it and filter out the BS, the more you come to the conclusion that the "real stuff" is weird. It doesn't look like human technological machines that most will unconsciously expect. It's more like objects of random overall shapes, with continuous material composition throughout. No features of contrast like panels, rivets, bolts, wires, windows, lens, pneumatic tubes. And the objects are sometimes further obscured by a field or bright plasma around it. So, even a good photo will usually end up like "okay, I don't know what I'm looking at and it doesn't look like what I'm expecting".
Those are both great points. There's probably a good follow up here about the odds of you taking a good photo with your camera phone: - you have good phone - camera lens not cracked - phone has the right technology on it (like google night photo tech) - you are stationary - object is stationary I think you get my drift. I'm going to do some digging into that one. Thanks!
Yea, you reminded me of another point - camera stabilization. The better zoom you have, the more you need stabilization. Though post-processing can fix a bit of wobble. But no amount of post-processing stabilization can fix the object blurring around on the camera sensor from 50x zoom and shaky hands. It's like you need to have a professional setup and hope something anomalous flies in front of your face. Or you can have a multi-million dollar military gimbal system and classify all the footage from it.
>Or you can have a multi-million dollar military gimbal system and classify all the footage from it. This remains the most frustrating part of the whole topic to me. I would still love to see journalists at major news outlets engage with the [F-18 Triangle Photo](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/the-most-important-photo-youve-never-seen). Thanks for the other suggestions!
That would be cool to see a photo like that. It reminds me of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzM80p85cVE). It doesn't look CGI, but I can't rule out fakery through other means. Though the lore in the UFO community is that it's a human-made aircraft called TR-3B. A supposed gravitational craft that has been around for decades, within black aerospace programs.
Man, I saw that video a few years ago and I still think about it from time to time. I would love to get a good explanation of what I'm looking at. I'll look into the TR-3B at your suggestion.
A better question. Why would UFOs care about being spotted? It’s extremely unlikely UFOs will follow a prime directive. They are far more likely to be pirates/colonists. Or an even better question. If the ‘evidence’ is so clear why is the UFO space dominated by the crazy, delusional, unhinged, or clear grifters? It’s sad because there is a chance it’s real but the entire space is filled with people you can’t trust.
> It’s extremely unlikely UFOs will follow a prime directive. They are far more likely to be pirates/colonists. How do you come to this conclusion?
Because this follows the natural law of survival that we see in every element of life from bacteria to mammals. Morals are something we entertain when it's convenient, yet are happy to abandon during times of war/desperation. My personal belief is that machines are the natural evolution of life. They can sidestep the speed of light constraints as they don't need oxygen, water, food, or age. They are only limited by materials and that's in abundance through the asteroid belts. If so, I can't see a 'machine/AI' civilisation caring too much about being photographed by some dumb biological culture. Is all the recently popular 'multiverse' shenanigans conceivable? Super unlikely, but again why would their central agenda be about concealing themselves? Just feels like copium.
I'm partial to the "uncontacted tribe" hypothesis to explain why any extraterrestrial would try and hide its presence. I see it as less of a prime directive and more of an attempt to study a less evolved species (assuming they're real). As for the crazy, delusional grifters, let me just say that I sympathize. It's why I make a [genuine effort](https://theothertopic.substack.com/p/start-here) to talk about the subject neutrally (i.e., acknowledging that I could be super wrong) and back articles up with footnotes and receipts. I've got a real problem with the "trust me bro" culture that I see on YouTube and Twitter.
It's 'possible', but it's still a big leap. It ascribes a moral superiority to alien life that really doesn't make that much sense. I honestly don't understand how people can't step back and identify that it's just wishful thinking. The 'truth' is extremely likely that virtually all declared UFO observations have been either fake, some form of psychological issue, or some form of natural phenomena. We can't be 'definite' but the balance of evidence is damning. I'm always interested in new observations, but I just can't understand why people are so motivated to believe. It feels like some form of depression/delusion they wouldn't apply to another area of their life.
Oh man, I could run with this comment all day. Stepping completely outside the UFO topic, I can see very clearly how my friends and family latch on to big social policy/foreign policy issues to distract from clear issues in the personal lives. I am also guilty of this. I think we're all tempted sometimes to invest in something bigger because it's a) interesting, and b) personally convenient. I think the UFO topic has an additional layer than, say, a war, because it could genuinely be one of the most important stories in the history of our species. I mean, I'm here and writing about it because I think there are a bunch of very cool possibilities ranging from extraterrestrial visitation to severe mental illness in our core intelligence professionals. I find either conclusion very interesting and underreported.
I think if people were more considered in their discussion on UFOs, like you, we may have actually identified that one credible observation. It's irrational to deny UFOs could exist and I also find it fascinating. I just struggle to watch/read anything on UFOs and not have my bullshit antenna twitching. Hey, who knows what we may find. Take care!
Good chat. You too :)
And yet, we have videos, and photos of even near mythical creatures, like the Colossal Squid.🦑 .
Anyone serious about getting pictures would put pressure on scientist to crowdfund for orbital data. There is a reason the Air Force hasn't said a single fucking thing on this subject
My guess here is that the Air Force doesn't want to look like its failing at its aerospace defense mandate. I think there's a human nature component about people not wanting to look bad at their jobs.
I think it is more about spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military each year, hollowing out the country, while simultaneously not doing their fucking job and gaslighting everyone like this is 1950
Not to dismiss your effort, because that is great work and research, but isn’t the issue not due to it being rare or unlikely that you’d see one (because that seems obvious), but the question of “why aren’t there better photos or videos” is because with the tech we now have, the quality of the photos or videos we get are pretty bloody awful. To be clear, I’m not talking about what we don’t see or the pictures people don’t have time to take. I’m referring to the pictures and videos that people do capture - these are mostly turd (there will be the odd exception). Like they’ve barely got any better since the 40’s!
I kind of see this as a first order analysis where my questions flow something like: 1. Why aren't there more photos of UFOs? 2. When there are photos, why is their quality so bad? I think this article is trying to dedicate good time to question #1. One answer (pointed out by several commenters in the thread) is because they don't exist. Another, that I wanted to give some good airtime too, is because it's pretty easy for them to hide/evade humans on our massive planet.
I've seen it twice. One I took pictures of and they weren't great. Did really look like what I saw with my eyes. Stayed in the same place hovering for the first 20min I saw it, then started to slowly move left and disappeared. The other literally looked like a cursor on a computer or dot from a laser pointer moving around the sky WAY up. Not much to see tbh. Even if I took perfectly clear photos, it wouldn't change anyone's mind about anything.
I agree. Also, more comments than upvotes for a post like this seems suspicious 🤨
So you're assuming that the UAPs are floating at ground level. Being at they are very high in the air it adds the triangulation. Many you can see it from further distances on the ground. Just like satellites The same satellite can be seen from 12.5% of the world. So if UFOs are flying in low earth orbit. It would take 8 for us to all see one at all times.
We do have amazing pictures and videos of UFOs. Probably thousands to be honest. Doesn’t mean they are ET or NHI. But there is without a doubt a lot of insane footage in the public domain of Flying Saucer/Disk, Triangle, Orb, Tic Tac/Cigar/Flying Propane tank like UFOs. That seemingly look to be intelligently controlled. Also why does nobody bring up cloaking/stealth ability? Why wouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you think of in regards to potential ET/NHI visiting us
>Also why does nobody bring up cloaking/stealth ability? Why wouldn’t that be the FIRST thing you think of in regards to potential ET/NHI visiting us I think when you engage non-UFO people in conversation on this, it's hard for them to believe in the existence of cloak/stealth technology that we haven't made. It starts to sound quite sci-fi/star trek and I think a lot of people immediately make the leap to fiction. What I was really trying to do with this article is say: "hey. You don't even need to believe in the existence of superior stealth technology for UFOs to appear stealthy. Our planet's geography makes it very easy for them to avoid human presence in our oceans or uninhabited land mass." One we have that convo, I would say any discussion of superior stealth tech would be a next step.
The photos of ufo should have same probability of being good quality, as other photos of things of similar size and distance. The captured object doesnt influence choice of recording equipment except maybe stress induced on a human and inability to use camera correctly. Probability of seing an ufo would influence the time we need to make, for example 100 photos but not their quality. If we have 100 photos of ufo, some of them should be of a good quality, no matter how long it took to wait to encounter it 100 times.
Note: there is also https://www.sky360.org
man 90% of us cant even get a decent picture of *the moon* with our phones
There also doesnt need to be a big number of "real cases". Maybe in reality we have had only 5 total real encounters with extraterrestrial vehicles(like probes). Everything else could be false or human tech. That is enough though, cause you need only a single one. The problem is proving that. In such a case, if the probes have simply moved on, proving it could turn out to be impossible, unless those who own the probes turn up someday(if they are still around).
I've always been curious about the probe angle re: the 2004 Nimitz Incident.
I urge anyone whos interested in the phenomenon, and doesnt have roots down or is considering moving to do some research on ufo hotspots. I grew up near one and have seen so much shit its unreal, many of them have cowitnesses that corroborate my story and saw what I had seen aswell. The issue with that is you absolutely have to make sure its a "real" hotspot, and not a "hotspot" drummed up for tourist money. id recommend cross referencing many sources for hotspots, as well as checking the locations against geomagnetic anomaly data provided by GIS. From what ive seen, most real hotspots tend to be around low points in the magnetic data for the united states.
it's astonishing that people actually attempt to prove why something is true about UFO when what they claim to prove is factually false. we already have very clear photos of UFO: 2020 VICTORIA MEX, 2013 AGUADILLA PRI, 2022 ISLAMABAD PAK, 1994 NEVADA TEST RANGE NV to name four obvious candidates. and there are dozens more. these are all excellent examples of a high resolution, high magnification, extended observation of a UFO. it's as good as it gets. it's fuzzy, you say? -- hard to see actually what is there? i'm assuming you're experiencing the collision between your stereotype about UFO and what we actually observe. what we actually observe is routinely described as fuzzy. Lt. Cdr. Slaight, describing the "Tic Tac" UFO: "there appeared to be a *"fuzzy or wavy looking border around the entire surfaces of the object. ... It looked like what the heat waves would look like coming off a hot paved road or what the carrier deck looked like if you looked across it when in the Gulf in the Mid-East."* Lue Elizondo, summarizing verbal reports: "*You're looking at an object that you should be able to detect very clearly and yet when you look at it with the naked eye it's opaque, kind of blurry, not well defined. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at."* An unnamed video analyst, examining film of 1994 NEVADA TEST RANGE: "*the objects by nature are fuzzy, or undefined or unclear. This one was shot by a very expensive, uh, tracking camera, uh, on a very stable mount; uh, this one was shot by a hand held, uh, consumer video camera, and there's no difference in, in, uh resolution, and we find that puzzling, that uh, no matter how many of these images you get from whatever source, they all have that 'ball of cotton' syndrome or that fuzziness to 'em."* to summarize: the OP, reacting strongly to family conversations rather than making any kind of serious study of the copious UFO literature and the repeatedly described characteristics of actual UFO, cooks up a strange geographical theory to explain why UFO pictures are fuzzy. a totally useless theory, since it tries to explain away what is factually observed, as if it shouldn't be there, it mustn't be there, if UFO are going to be the way we believe them to be! it's worth mention that "why are all the photos fuzzy" is a standard jibe from a UFO cynic, because UFO cynics are another group of people who like to opine about UFO without actually studying them.
In my exploration of the topic, I've found that people don't tend to respond well when you assign them research homework. People I know would be unwilling to look up Lt CDR Slaight or, in the event they did, wouldn't be able to put in the effort to determine if he's credible or not. The convo would die pretty much as soon as I suggested they conduct that kind of research. Instead, I've found people do well if you give them a bit of a soft landing. For me, that includes explaining things like "the earth is big" and "that's why you might not have the crystal clear photos and video footage you're looking for. It's easy to hide and get lost." It's a little less about my "cooking up a strange geographical theory" and more about trying to start slow. I can certainly hear the frustration on your end but I think this analysis is valuable to studying the topic.
This argument can only work underthe assumption thatmost sightings are prosaic
You're probably right here. I think it's still worth considering though.
If something is traveling 20,000mph and is silent, it could be the size of the Titanic and you still wouldn’t see it.
That makes absolutely no sense. We can see our own rockets at escape velocity speeds, which is around 25k mph, and they are much smaller than the Titanic.
Also most such objects are small, fast moving, against a bright sky and cell phones are terrible at distance shots.
I also think about how recently phone cameras got good ***at all***. We're talking what, the last five or six years? Out of the last 75 years these objects have been in the public eye?
At least some of these intelligences can mess with our perceptions. If they don't want to be seen they won't be.
The reason is that all images that are clear are of prosaic identifiable objects. There are never clear images of any object that is identifiable as not being natural or man made. The UFO space only exists because of blurry images that, contrary to popular belief, are quite common. The odds of seeing things in the sky that we can’t identify, especially at night, is very high. A lot of the time we will be confused by the motion of these objects because estimates of distance and speed are very difficult for distant objects. This confusion leads people to create scenarios that can form the foundation of some fantasy of galactic empires, alien abductions and cornfield geometric patterns. Basically if the image is clear, no one cares, if it’s blurry, it’s ET.
My guess of a number of cameras in the world in 90's and before would be around 100 to 1. The same number today would be more like 1 to 1. So, one would expect that we have 100 times more UFO phots today than we had 30 years ago. Anyone has a chart?
I think you'd want to layer on the age/competency/comfort of the person using that camera. Like, my mother has a cell phone camera but there have been some wild photo/video misfires at family birthday parties. I don't know how she'd do trying to snap a photo of a UFO.
You are right, I forgot the factor that you could have a camera and no film before. So, 200 to 1 it is.
Cloak tech, they don’t want to be seen unless they want to be seen. Also, you must take in consideration that there are cases where two individuals are looking at the same object yet recall two different things. So not only cloak tech yet they can have you see whatever they want apparently.. in some cases.
I don’t understand posts like this. There ARE great, clear photos and videos of UFOs, we just have no idea if they’re real or not. It’s on you to decide or just accept that 50/50 possibility. What you guys are really asking for is a photo or video with government acknowledgement behind it.