How witnesses perceive, interpret, and remember UFO sightings is surely a question of major interest.
Hmmm, very interesting. It's pity that these current memories can not be determinedly reversed back to real memories. I don't think hypnosis can do that.
Have any of those ufologists with a background in the hard sciences really made any significant progress in understanding the phenomenon?
ABSOLUTELY!!! I've gave you a link few posts back. But I am sure you didn't read it because it is boring
. Most of truth is really boring. What can be more "significant progress" than actually having a tool to control UFO crafts? No other branch of UFO research can come even close.
Human psychology is a big problem
. People don't want to learn physics (except myself), they want exciting killer flight-or-fight narrative that is going to keep them awake at night. Problem is, lets admit it, is that most people are lazy or don't have time, they want to explain everything quickly and within content already present inside their comfort zone.
Second human downfall is adulation of authority. Nobody wants to dig and check facts, they want authority with a strong branding to give them one simple and final cut.
Explained bellow.
Because classic physics (not including QM) is so deterministic, these papers on that link, show clear cut and sequential physical phenomena. Thing A happens, than thing B happens, than C and so on, just as it would be predicted by a seasoned physicist. That's the hidden beauty of thousands of UFO witness testimonials. Testimonials are in a perfect harmony with classic physics, or Maxwell's electrodynamics to be precise. And these A-B-C steps from electromagnetism make actionable predictions and practical deterrence tools.
For example, to cut the boring stuff
a bit short, UFOs produce a range of sequential EM phenomena with confirmed high statistical significance. A good haunch, like a policeman's or journalist's, would be that UFO propulsion has, at least in a part, to do something with electricity. So, (as UFO lore goes, from Col. Corso and few other sources) military had started pointing a strong, already available, radar pencil-like beams at UFOs in a hope to either bring them down or at least disrupt them. Idea is that radar's EM waves would produce electrical effect on UFOs. And according to at least Col. Corso they were successful. Essentially, it worked first time (because chain of electro-magnetic causalities is deterministic) and gave governments a practical and powerful tool to menage or threaten UFOs. This practical tool (strong pencil beam radar) immediately translates into a government's political tool, where UFOs can be controlled, crashed or denied access to any given areas and even maybe used for some kind of negotiated settlement between government and aliens. Obviously, this would be unknown to general public.
Weather we use physics or psychology and discounting for character assassinations, we here always have to work from a basis of UFO lore and have to accept these sources at a face value. We count on some scientific tools, like statistics and big data analysis, to weed out delusions and hoaxes. In the above case, UFO lore is back-to-back supported by scientific determinism of classical Maxwell's Electrodynamics. 99% of people don't see that, because unfamiliarity with electricity, but anybody schooled in EM fields would suss it out on the spot.
And this is not just information that came out of a single testimonial, so somebody can say: "ohhh, this crooked engineer cooked it all up, to make money ... " or whatever. This is all pieced together from many different, but scientifically consistent stories, which increases it's credibility.
Essentially, you give an electrical engineer or familiar scientist that link to read it and I guarantee he'll come out dumbfounded. Like: "Nobody ever told me this???", implying that that info is too real to bear. Engineers and scientists depend on shared verified knowledge so they don't need "authority" or "brands" to do thinking for them. Very unlike people in humanities who are unashamed suckers for "authority" and "brands".
And I hope, we all implicitly agree, that "authority" or "brands" are deep down just head-fakes. But that's a whole new topic for another day.
As a p.s. and going back to your comments about UFOs, I looked at Wikipedia and found that Vallee holds the following qualifications: B.SC Maths, M.S. Astrophysics, and Ph.D. Computer Science. He began his career as astronomer at the Paris Observatory, after going to the US he became a Research Assistant in Astronomy under Gerard de Vancouleurs at U. Texas, where they compiled NASA's first comprehensive map of Mars. Following this he worked as Systems Analyst and helped to develop a computer network that predated the Internet. I think most people would regard him as a scientist on this basis.
Well, than it's all Vallee's fault, because in that interview he made it all sound as if he was college dropout. Maybe he wanted to be modest etc.
That’s wrong. Once a gravitational field exists, it takes no energy to operate. A negative gravitational field on the front side of a craft would divert matter out of its way without any expenditure of energy. Just as the Earth doesn’t expend any energy to attract meteors, but in this case the effect is reversed.
Don't agree with that all, because that's only descriptive thinking.
Yes, to accelerate spaceship one can do with relatively small gravitational field. But to deflect oncoming particle beam moving at c or even FTL, one would need very strong gravitational field. So it's very unlikely that gravitational field be at all used for oncoming particles deflection. Which, in turn means, that GR warp-drive still has oncoming particle beam problem. Not a show stopper, just something to think about.
That's why I am saying, very speculatively, that these 8D Quantum Gravity theories might be onto something, because they would completely avoid oncoming particle beam problem. Possibly-maybe they might enable worm hole type of jumps through interstellar voids, because 8D theories thrive on non-locality. Non-lociality being this non-physical timeless and spaceless spooky action at distance property of QM systems, that is, in laymen's terms, explained as "one is all, all is one" etc.
And that's why I am now gona listen to that podcast with Cohl Furey.