The 'Phoenix Lights' March 1997

[chasteh 0]

Lets see the exact same results, and the creation of those results by the military.

As far as I am concerned, "as good as it gets" isn't achieved until you have done this.

[downwardspiral 0]

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I don't have to imagine. I grew up in SoCal in the 60s. We regularly saw missile launches, heard sonic booms, Civil Defense sirens . . . anybody that has lived in SoCal for any appreciable time should be familiar with these launches.

There is just no end to your superiority.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[quade 4]

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I don't have to imagine. I grew up in SoCal in the 60s. We regularly saw missile launches, heard sonic booms, Civil Defense sirens . . . anybody that has lived in SoCal for any appreciable time should be familiar with these launches.

There is just no end to your superiority.

Hey, I can't help where and when I was born. Deal with it.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[downwardspiral 0]

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I don't have to imagine. I grew up in SoCal in the 60s. We regularly saw missile launches, heard sonic booms, Civil Defense sirens . . . anybody that has lived in SoCal for any appreciable time should be familiar with these launches.

There is just no end to your superiority.

Hey, I can't help where and when I was born. Deal with it.

thank you for proving my point.

www.FourWheelerHB.com

[pirana 0]

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But you are correct, any feasible means of inter-solar travel (much less intergalactic) would have to make use of some form of faster than light travel (wormholes, spacebending, etc) which, so far, exist only in theory.

Could change, but most likely the energy requirements of bending space or creating wormholes big enough to accomodate a spaceship simply aren't worth the trouble. Based on current knowledge, I think it is estimated it would take more energy than exists in our entire solar system to create a wormhole large enough to handle even a modest sized vessel. And aiming it to a specific destination is pie in the sky.

Much more likely that we will build colony ships that travel for multiple generations to get to destinations. Travel beyond the local neighborhood will be one way, and for most it will be the trip of a lifetime - literally.

" . . . the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

[billvon 2,990]

>Any civilization that could possibly create interstellar travel would have a
>radio footprint hundreds if not thousands of years before such invention.

Lot of assumptions there!

We couldn't detect most of our own modern transmissions back in the 1950's. To a 1950's era receiver, a CDMA signal looks exactly like noise. Heck, we may be receiving those signals right now but calling them "background microwave radiation" or something.

Or they may be using something other than radio. The EM spectrum has a lot of limitations; if we found a way to modulate (say) the Higgs field, we wouldn't need all those antennas and power amplifiers.

>But you are correct, any feasible means of inter-solar travel (much less
>intergalactic) would have to make use of some form of faster than light travel
>(wormholes, spacebending, etc) which, so far, exist only in theory.

Why would you need faster than light travel?

[quade 4]

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Why would you need faster than light travel?

A point missed by most folks (but clearly not by bill) is that once you can go the speed of light, to the traveler, virtually every point in the universe appears to take the same amount of time to get to due to time dilation.

Of course, anyone you left at home would be long dead by the time you got back from any trip of appreciable distance.

Not that the speed of light can be reached in the first place though. Hence all these folks looking for "tricks" around it.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[chasteh 0]

>Based on current knowledge, I think it is estimated it would take more energy than exists in our entire solar system to create a wormhole large enough to handle even a modest sized vessel. And aiming it to a specific destination is pie in the sky.

If we knew an advanced species were out there, and that they could develop weapons far superior to our own, and some businessman here knew about it - he would find a way to make it happen. Kind of like how Lockheed Martin and GE have lobbied to mass-produce the F-35 (and failed),

[billvon 2,990]

>Of course, anyone you left at home would be long dead by the time you got
>back from any trip of appreciable distance.

Well, that's assuming a) normal human lifespans and b) no time-altering stuff going on back home. Both of which are pretty big assumptions.

[chasteh 0]

>Not that the speed of light can be reached in the first place though

The speed of light! Please, we can't even travel the speed of sound without spontaneously combusting!

Oh wait... physicists were once wrong about that, too. Gotta love Einstein... but I think he is mistaken there. (Although his theory concerning absolute zero is quite interesting)

[quade 4]

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>Of course, anyone you left at home would be long dead by the time you got
>back from any trip of appreciable distance.

Well, that's assuming a) normal human lifespans and b) no time-altering stuff going on back home. Both of which are pretty big assumptions.

Uh, yeah . . . big assumptions . . . then again, there's nothing to suggest either of those are possible to get around.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[billvon 2,990]

>then again, there's nothing to suggest either of those are possible to get around.

Well, once you have near-speed-of-light travel you have the same ability to "slow time" at home as you do in interstellar space. You could fly around in circles for decades while experiencing only a few months subjective time.

[rivetgeek 0]

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Why would you need faster than light travel?

A point missed by most folks (but clearly not by bill) is that once you can go the speed of light, to the traveler, virtually every point in the universe appears to take the same amount of time to get to due to time dilation.

Of course, anyone you left at home would be long dead by the time you got back from any trip of appreciable distance.

Not that the speed of light can be reached in the first place though. Hence all these folks looking for "tricks" around it.

Im not a physicist, but I dont think that's how time dilation works. Traveling two light years at the speed of light would take two years from the passengers point of view. Just because relative time speeds up, doesn't mean the subjective time does. Otherwise your body would instantly age, no?

~Bones Knit, blood clots, glory is forever, and chicks dig scars.~

[chasteh 0]

>doesn't mean the subjective time does. Otherwise your body would instantly age, no?

Well... to get yourself to age more quickly, you would actually have to be able to increase the rate at which you travel toward yourself... which is only possible for a brief period of time for a rather short distance. What the science buffs here forget to mention is that "time" is only changing as a result of the perceptual change that occurs with traveling to or from something... Not that you have actually travelled in time. This reasoning also puts those who think they "lost a day in time" to physics when they take a plane ride over several time zones. You haven't actualyl "lost a day," you just re-set your clock so that it is in sync with someone elses clock, such that you lost a day in that transition. If you were to travel back to where you came from, you would simply re-set your watch so that you were observing a day previous to what you were observing in the second instance. No one "gains or loses" time from travelling somewhere, no matter how far or fast. Your clock just changes, and you observe another clock differently.

In other words, if you set two clocks at the same time (roughly... for you assholes who will say "you can't because the time won't be precisely the same because you will have set the time for the other watch while it will have been a split second faster than what yo thought it was set for) and then carried one clock with you at the speed of light away from the other... the other one would appear to have stopped while the one you were carrying would still tick for the time you spend travelling.

[FallingOsh 0]

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Why did they "burn" for ten minutes?

Where did you get ten minutes? I read they were seen for close to two hours. Oddly enough, that's about how long an aircraft would be on the ranges. The video clearly shows a varying number of flares with new ones being lit at a higher altitude than the other flares. The jets were dropping new ones as the old ones burned out. The varying altitudes of flares creates what appears to be a circle shaped "craft."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6Y5RjhOThM&feature=related

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Why did they stay situated for so long?

That's what they're designed to do. They wouldn't do much good for the pilot if they floated away.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[chasteh 0]

I just thought of another fun one...

If light can only travel at approximately c speed, how is it that we could ever use a propulsive mechanism (that relies on energy transfer and conversion- thus dependent on speed c) to make an object travel faster than the speed of sound? Would we use gravitational pulls? Are gravitational pulls dependent on the speed of light/energy?

[chasteh 0]

>Where did you get ten minutes? I read they were seen for close to two hours

From the wikipedia page Quade supplied. And if they were seen for two hours, were they seen constantly being shot out the backside of the supposed A-10? If so, where is the footage of them being re-deployed every 5 minutes? (The time frame the flares yo mentioned can burn for)

>That's what they're designed to do. They wouldn't do much good for the pilot if they floated away

They were designed to float under parachutes to illuminate a particular area on the ground. (to illuminate an area in order to protect something/somewhere from enemy night combat patrols)

So really, they weren't meant for the pilot at all. Those are very different flares from the type pilots use to evade hostile missile attacks.

[vortexring 0]

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Yes, but you're assuming quite a bit there. It's a huge assumption to even begin to think they would have, for instance, the financial interest to do so. Look at our own space program. Interstellar space travel is just not justifiable in terms of cost/benefit under any circumstance.

Disagree. What if we were to discover a planet very similiar to earth? What if we then were able to send off an unmanned mission to investigate? And then, what if we sent a successful manned mission? Sure, at the very least you'd expect a great deal of time to now have passed, but what if we then sent people to colonize the planet? If that was to be successful you'd then expect their capabilities to become similiar to ourselves over another period of time, assuming we're able to continue developing in a similiar sense to now. And then we could undoubtedly find ourselves in a situation with a rich potential for war. Interplanetery wars. Cool.

'for it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "chuck 'im out, the brute!" But it's "saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.'

[quade 4]

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Im not a physicist, but I dont think that's how time dilation works.

Actually, that's exactly how it works.

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Traveling two light years at the speed of light would take two years from the passengers point of view. Just because relative time speeds up, doesn't mean the subjective.

If a person could travel at the speed of light, a two light year trip would appear to them to be instantaneous, as would any other length of trip.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[shropshire 0]

Also, how much more advanced' could we be technologically if we all worked togerther and didn't have nutter Technophobes, Baffoon cults that surpressed technology in the Dark Ages etc.... etc.... etc..

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[rivetgeek 0]

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Im not a physicist, but I dont think that's how time dilation works.

Actually, that's exactly how it works.

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Traveling two light years at the speed of light would take two years from the passengers point of view. Just because relative time speeds up, doesn't mean the subjective.

If a person could travel at the speed of light, a two light year trip would appear to them to be instantaneous, as would any other length of trip.

While time does "stand still" at the speed of light, I dont think that is intended to mean objective time, more like relative time.

~Bones Knit, blood clots, glory is forever, and chicks dig scars.~

[FallingOsh 0]

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From the wikipedia page Quade supplied. And if they were seen for two hours, were they seen constantly being shot out the backside of the supposed A-10? If so, where is the footage of them being re-deployed every 5 minutes? (The time frame the flares yo mentioned can burn for)

If you watched the video I posted then you can see new flares lighting at a higher altitude than flares already burning.

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>That's what they're designed to do. They wouldn't do much good for the pilot if they floated away

They were designed to float under parachutes to illuminate a particular area on the ground. (to illuminate an area in order to protect something/somewhere from enemy night combat patrols)

Um, no. They're designed to illuminate the ground so the pilots can see what they're attacking. They're not protection flares. They're "you're about to get shot up" flares.

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So really, they weren't meant for the pilot at all.

Yes they were. I'm not going to Google everything for you. Do a little research on your own.

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Those are very different flares from the type pilots use to evade hostile missile attacks.

You finally got something right. They are not self-protection flares. They are illumination flares. Illumination flares designed to float under canopy to provide light. Light on a range that can be seen from Phoenix.

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Stay positive and love your life.

[chasteh 0]

>If you watched the video I posted then you can see new flares lighting at a higher altitude than flares already burning

You have to assume that they are "flares" to call them "flares" still. All you see is one light source illuminating, then another, then another. Where is the A-10? Oops!

>Um, no. They're designed to illuminate the ground so the pilots can see what they're attacking. They're not protection flares. They're "you're about to get shot up" flares.

Someone help them! Those pilots only have air-to-ground radar, night vision, and a HUD to use to display those ground targets! Oh no! Let's show the enemy where a fighter jet is going to be lurking.

>Yes they were. I'm not going to Google everything for you. Do a little research on your own.

I live in the southwest. Guess where! Now guess where I was when the lights showed up. Uh oh.
Maricopa county motha fucka! Holla!

>You finally got something right. They are not self-protection flares. They are illumination flares. Illumination flares designed to float under canopy to provide light. Light on a range that can be seen from Phoenix

In case ya didn't know, cutie pie, those flares were over a place called "South mountain." I am looking at the aviation chart for phoenix right now. Where is the military airspace at over south mountain? Where is Luke AFB? Where would those flares be shot? (In restricted areas) R-2310A,B, and C are at least 30 miles east of the South Mountain, and the Alert area over Luke AFB is at least the same distance to the north-west of South mountain.

Care you answer for that? Wanna "do more research for me?"

edit: Oh yea.. and we first saw them between 9 and 10 pm (dark) and saw them past midnight. Oops!

[redlegphi 0]

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You have to assume that they are "flares" to call them "flares" still. All you see is one light source illuminating, then another, then another. Where is the A-10? Oops!

One would think a skydiver would know a bit about the difficulty of spotting an aircraft at a great distance.

[chasteh 0]

>One would think a skydiver would know a bit about the difficulty of spotting an aircraft at a great distance

And given that difficulty is is that much more absurd to say that you can know that A-10's dropped the flares, that they were flares, and that even a man-made military vehicle dropped them off.

But wait... there were people underneath the lights as well... where is that footage of the a-10 flying overhead?