Why?
This whole thing reminds me a bit of the "Havana Syndrome", in that:
- It's an extraordinary claim, presented with limited evidence.
- It defies obvious logical explanation (i.e., a motive).
- The phenomenon lacks a clear definition, leaving the door open for multiple disparate phenomena with different causes to be lumped together.
I believe the third aspect is really underemphasized as a causal factor in "hard to explain" phenomena: because this may in fact be multiple different phenomena, with different causes, it's likely that any single mundane explanation does not explain all observations, and thus appears to be a weaker explanation than it is.
This is sort of a "defender's dilemma" of strange phenomena: if you can't explain all of them, you appear to be unable to explain them. But because of the aforementioned definitional problem, that's not necessarily a surprising or meaningful thing.
To your specific point: the idea of a co-terrestrial civilization is extraordinary. I struggle to imagine the only evidence would be a few spurious radar signatures and odd videos.
- Multiple expert witnesses, usually pilots or radar operators, getting visual and sensor confirmation from multiple vantage points
- Air and ground tracking
- High cohesion and consistency (in terms of object size, cardinality, dynamics, and timing) between the witness reports
Taken together, these reports form a closure over the set of plausible explanations that should approximately explain all or none of them. My 2c is that any plausible explanations are by and large "big" and non-trivial ones like shared delusions.
But of course alien civilizations—or (non-human?) co-terrestrial civilizations—are such an extraordinary hypothesis that I do not see why they should be treated as more plausible than (as you note) something like shared delusions.
Let me expand upon that a bit. My (tongue in cheek) explanation is this:
Humans have an undiscovered facility for shared perceptual delusions and (seemingly deliberate) confabulation. That is to say, individuals with shared cultural contexts may respond to the same environmental triggers (weird reflections, social stressors, I don't know!) by hallucinating the same things. Moreover, upon experiencing such a hallucination, some subjects will confabulate corroboratory evidence, perhaps even (unconsciously) going so far as to tamper with radar recordings or (unconsciously) colluding with other "witnesses"—and individuals who engage in this confabulation have no memory or recollection of it later.
This is a totally wild explanation, and I don't actually believe it. But is it as plausible as alien civilizations? I sorta think so!
Given the amount of evidence released so far, which seems more likely?
- Alien civilization
- Some other form of hyper-advanced technology
- The U.S. Military and/or various U.S. intelligence agencies are perpetrating a hoax in order to further some kind of strategic goal
I know which one I'm picking, barring much more widely acknowledged and damning evidence.
To be clear, I'm fairly conspiracy-friendly. I am just very skeptical of this new tech angle.
More reports from states that have obviously opposed the US would definitely make me think more about the veracity of the leaked "evidence".
(No pain no gain)
The possibility of these things being extraterrestrial in origin does not seem that farfetched, honestly. If you assume something like a Von Neumann probe [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...] to be possible (and I totally think one day we would make those), then the idea that someone else has already made one an that they are sitting around watching us, is not something that should be so easily dismissed.
No telling what these are, but I think the people assuming that some how human visual confirmation, video confirmation, multiple radar confirmation (on ship and in air), as well as Infrared confirmation of the same should shut up the "it's a camera artifact" or "sailor spinning tales" folks. Anyone care to do the math on how such a byzantine fault tolerant system could fail in so many different distinct cases over the last decade?
can't speak to a), but as for b), it is possible that what they are and what they appear to be are very different things. Imagine, say, a drone swarm with a very flat profile that could turn their surfaces towards a target and tighten up to present a radar cross section and become highly visible, but could flip to an edge-on position and disperse to disappear to both eyes and instruments. Two such swarms could easily mimic an instantaneous movement over a large distance, among other effects.
In other words, they might be moderately more advanced technology masquerading as ludicrously more advanced technology, presenting the appearance of a threat far greater than their inventors can actually produce.
Could also be a novel stealth mechanism screwing with our sensors.
Is there? Everyone is overlooking the possibility that these 'crafts' are the aliens. They need not even be intelligent. If something evolved to overcome gravitation it would make sense that it did so in an environment where this was necessary for survival. What we think of as advanced technology might, in the context of living near a black hole, simply be the equivalent of evolving a first primitive method of propulsion, like a fin.
The ocean would be most likely (subterranean would be much more visible for any access points, by satellite and land-mapping LIDAR, or seismographs detecting underground industrial activity). But we get detritus washing up all the time on shores; for example, Japanese debris from the earthquake landed on western North American shores.
How does an aquatic super-civilization exist for hundreds (presumably thousands) of years with absolutely zero debris arriving on shores, or any evidence of mining or other industrial activity that would be required?
Interstellar seems more likely but of course we have the challenges of time and distance to explain.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/are-we-e...
Strong words for what’s essentially a blurry black dot on a grainy black and white video.
It’s 2021, until we see a clear video of an actual vehicle that looks like something other than a blurry smudge I’m not believing anything.
Maybe they're happy with the status quo. Or maybe it's a benevolant group (not anyone's adversary).
Or maybe it's ours (the U.S.) and it's being released this way as to pretend it's not ours.
There's no evidence they were made by aliens, leprechauns, or ghosts. But there's evidence they were made. Not that they are swamp gas or funny clouds. So lets get past that, and realize there's something seriously insane going on, and it implies there is, or was, a capacity for non-natural creation + engineering by non-humans.
My 2c is extra-terrestrial civ is less likely than co-terrestrial civ (subterrainean/ocean) - but lets stop talking about this like they are hallucinations or possible atmospheric phenomenon.