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Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by chubbyrabbit on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:28PM (#21012333)
> This is laughably stupid. QM and nuclear science?

I see nothing stupid with using quantum mechanics and nuclear science in this context.

> Can we call out politicians for just throwing in words that they don't know what they mean?

I'm sure they know what those words mean on a surface level. They don't really need to understand them beyond that point, it's not their job.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by cdumler on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:14PM (#21012587)
I do. When you say this is an "unidentified aerial phenomena" or an "unidentified flying objects," that means it's unidentified. As in: we do not know what we are looking at. You don't get to say, "well, we don't know what this is; therefore, it must be aliens." You say, "We don't know what this is. Until we have more information, there is no conclusion to make." Nothing more. Full stop. The end. And, certainly not technobabble.
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by zorronimous on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:38PM (#21013064)
It's hard for many to acept not knowing something. Or to make a joke from it: It uses propulsion we know to be impossible.
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by typeformer on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:30PM (#21012692)
Yeah sure, but the fact remains that the government does know, has known, and continues to keep secret that these really are alien craft according to dozens of respected military whistleblowers who courageously came forward to break their NDA's and tell the truth on the subject.
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by duozerk on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:06PM (#21012877)
If the government tried to keep this secret, they did a really piss poor job of it. Anyone spending any reasonable amount of time researching on the UFO phenomenon - admittedly a painful task as it tends to attract the worse kooks, I'm talking about somewhat legitimate authors and reports here - knows that there is something real happening there.

I doubt any explanation is as simple as "aliens from somewhere else" though, and I definitely don't think the "government" knows any more about what exactly it is that we do, but I also doubt it tries to keep it a secret deliberately.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by Jarwain on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:05PM (#21012871)
Have any of them been prosecuted for breaking NDA? Is it possible that they were told to "break NDA" and "come clean" to obfuscate the truth?
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by gameswithgo on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:01PM (#21012845)
Consider seeking mental health care, think about your life and if there are other signs that you need help.
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by serf on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @09:42PM (#21012424)
>I see nothing stupid with using quantum mechanics and nuclear science in this context.

why don't you?

Nothing in any of the examples show anything remotely related to either fields.

It's a brash leap to judgement to presume that something unexplained is using phenomena that we're well aware of -- and it's a brash leap to presume that given a video of flight dynamics that one can understand the technological progression of history required to do so.

Example : If it was an alien, how do we know they didn't purchase the technology? How do we know that another race didn't gift them something beyond their comprehension?

If we're making big leaping judgements given small amounts of evidence, why not write an entire history and lore for these aliens that must exist, given that we saw an unidentified aircraft?

It's ridiculous to jump to such lengths when a much more reliable and proven answer to the question of unidentified aircraft is : 'Military experiment'.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by godelski on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:10PM (#21012557)
> I see nothing stupid with using quantum mechanics and nuclear science in this context.

Why? Where would we even need QM or Nuke tech for these?

Metamaterials for tricking FLIR? That's the closest I can think and I'd call anyone out for calling that QM. We don't call carbon nanotubes quantum tech, because they're in the nano realm, which is FAR from the quantum regime. I'm not sure where else we could come even close. Quantum is sub atomic, we're really just at the birth of atomic tech right now too (It'd be fine to call some metameterials atomic tech). When we're talking quantum we're talking about things that require quantum effects; like teleportation. There's nothing here that is really demonstrating quantum effects.

Nukes? Where do we need them for this? Hot material is very heavy, and well... hot (radioactive). This isn't really good for stealth tech, since you have to provide a lot of extra shielding just so you don't fry the electronics, let alone hide the emissions in the radio, IR, X-ray, and gamma spectra. Then there's the fact that there's no current tech indicating that such a power source could be useful in this space. Unless you're thinking something other than a power source... which I can't think of any. For power sources there are a lot of other possible explanations that don't require generations of work (specifically in size, weight, and efficiency) to have been done in complete secret (because that's how advanced we're talking about if we want to use something nuclear here. Secret tech isn't ever even a generation ahead, though it is ahead). And I mean _generations_ of work. We're not even close.

If you're seeing something I'm not, I'm legitimately curious.

> I'm sure they know what those words mean on a surface level. They don't really need to understand them beyond that point, it's not their job.

I'd argue that the use cases more demonstrate that they know _the words_ but don't even know surface level meaning. I'm arguing that we should call people out for using buzzwords needlessly.

Note: I am fine with the uses of electromagnetics (I'll let that pass) and thermal-dynamics, even though I don't know why we would need to have extreme advancements in thermally efficient materials here. Not unless these things were hypersonic. These connections at least I can pass off as surface level knowledge, but QM and Nuke are just laughable.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by tasty_freeze on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:10PM (#21012896)
> I see nothing stupid with using quantum mechanics and nuclear science in this context.

What if the gentleman had said, "Based on pilot accounts, encounters with these UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) often involved complex flight patterns and advanced maneuvering, which demand extreme advances in CPU architecture including instructions we've never seen before, database consistency guarantees, and whitespace significance" would you see the problem with such claims?

If he had simply said, "These appear to use technology in advance of anything known to mankind" that would have been enough. To posit specific mechanisms of physics of a phenomenon we know next to nothing about is silly.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by PhasmaFelis on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:05PM (#21012869)
> I'm sure they know what those words mean on a surface level.

I don't think he has any idea what they mean beyond "sciencey stuff."

Looking at an impossibly advanced aircraft and assuming it's based on "extreme advances in quantum mechanics and nuclear science" makes as much sense as saying it's based on "extreme advances in organic chemistry and software design." No one with any grasp of engineering would jump straight to these fields that are not, so far as we know, associated in any way with aerospace propulsion. He's just grabbing the coolest science buzzwords he knows to make himself sound serious and professional.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by buboard on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @10:12PM (#21012570)
> They don't really need to understand them beyond that point

why not?

[dead]
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by godelski on Thursday September 19, 2019 @02:07AM (#21013723)
It isn't the R word, it is the Q and N words. I got my physics degree (with a focus on exotic propulsion devices) in a red state. I had plenty of Christian and Republican professors that I highly respected. I work with people that lean right that I also respect. Stop being so sensitive. Sometimes it isn't bigotry, sometimes it is in fact the other person being wrong. Stop playing the victim card here. You're just adding to the exact attitude you're complaining about.

I'll also add that I encourage calling out the left as well. I'd name some specific examples but that would completely derail the thread. But if you ask I'll mention some.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by jazzyjackson on Wednesday September 18, 2019 @11:25PM (#21012989)
The man went to school for biblical studies. Now I don't have a grudge against anyone with a BA in biblical studies, but I'm not going to respect their opinion on whether something requires quantum or nuclear science.
Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by RandomTisk on Thursday September 19, 2019 @12:02AM (#21013170)
There are way too many layers to unpack your statement here, but I will say that if you have an open mind, you'll find most Christians are very pro-science where it's observable and repeatable using empirical methods. Nuclear physics certainly falls in that realm and I have no doubt Quantum mechanics too.

Edit: unless you mean it's beyond the scope of his degree, then I can agree with that. Although even though I don't have a math degree either, but after watching a hundred or so Numberphile videos on YT, many on the cosmos and nuclear physics, I can see myself making similar statements in the future ;)

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by godelski on Thursday September 19, 2019 @03:10PM (#21019551)
> but after watching a hundred or so Numberphile videos on YT, many on the cosmos and nuclear physics, I can see myself making similar statements in the future ;)

I read this as

> I watched a bunch of high level YouTube videos and now I'm an expert on quantum mechanics and nuclear physics.

It is okay, you don't have to be an expert in everything. It is okay to not know. It is okay to be wrong. But please don't act like you know what you're an expert when you haven't done the perquisites. We're not in high school anymore, you can't write the book report without reading the book.

Re:Tom Delonge’s UFO Research Center Is Making Politicians D... by jazzyjackson on Thursday September 19, 2019 @01:27AM (#21013540)
I’m sure he believes in QM, I just don’t think he has any educational background that would allow him to know what he was talking about (hence the grandparent encouraging we call him out on nonsense)