The TRUTH is Out There . . . Maybe

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home

After the recent release of the ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), the scientific community now needs the determination to systematically, scientifically and transparently look for potential evidence of extraterrestrial technological equipment. The impact of any discovery of extraterrestrial technology on science and on our entire world view would be enormous.

Given the recently discovered abundance of Earth-Sun systems, the Galileo Project is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs), and that science should not dogmatically reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences, factors which are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry. We now must ‘dare to look through new telescopes’, both literally and figuratively.

How it will work: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/news/statement-ground-rules

It's Harvard. They seem to be very serious. Maybe they'll find an ET. Or a Grey.

 

[Apathia]

They'll find no debris.
The series was cancelled.

 

[Venom]

I don't believe in aliens.

 

[gnome]

It seems to me that, if ever, we're far more likely to find evidence of E.T. sapient life too far away to practically investigate in person. Imagining we'd find it on our doorstep seems so astronomically unlikely that it would take overwhelming evidence to convince me.

 

[Axxman300]

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home



How it will work: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/news/statement-ground-rules

It's Harvard. They seem to be very serious. Maybe they'll find an ET. Or a Grey.

The cool thing about researching the unknown is that by definition you never know what you'll discover. I doubt they'll find ET, but they might advance knowledge of the atmosphere as it changes in micro climates. Maybe some exotic geophysics thrown in too.

 

[sackett]

Oh!

I don't believe in aliens.

But they believe in you!

You heartless thing!

 

[JayUtah]

Applause to people who want to study controversial topics more rigorously. But it starts at home. "We're going to be scientifically thorough about everything," stands in noticeable contrast to, "Oh, look, we can't immediately explain everything about ‘Oumuamua, therefore aliens."

 

[Explorer]

It seems to me that, if ever, we're far more likely to find evidence of E.T. sapient life too far away to practically investigate in person. Imagining we'd find it on our doorstep seems so astronomically unlikely that it would take overwhelming evidence to convince me.

The traditional evidence requires the landing of a flying saucer in Hyde Park, London, with an alien emerging asking to be taken to our leader, in this case Boris Johnson. I am sure that would go well. Nothing else would suffice.

 

[Puppycow]

I don't believe in aliens.

I don't believe aliens have ever visited our planet.

The universe is so huge that there's probably other life out there somewhere.

Unfortunately it is likely to be so far away that we may never be able to meaningfully communicate with it.

 

[theprestige]

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/activities

In a nutshell:

1. They want to build a comprehensive, multi-spectrum sky surveillance network of ultra high resolution imagers, far beyond what any of the world's militaries have yet seen fit to attempt. They want to link it to state-of-the-art pattern-recognition software ("AI") that will proactively filter out all the common false positives in UFO stories, leaving behind just the stuff that really merits a closer look.

This seems to be aimed at solving the "blurry images without corroboration from independent sources" problem in UFO sightings.

2. Contrary to their claim elsewhere to only use data from their own telescopes under their control, they will use data from other telescopes to try to identify and/or rule out artificial origins for other objects in or passing through our solar system. They also hope to build and launch an interceptor that could get a closer look at one or more such objects.

3. They want some really powerful new telescopes to look for tiny, stealthy satellites in high-altitude polar orbits. They also plan to write a bunch of advanced AI software to help with processing what will undoubtedly be very faint signals in front of a wall of noise.

Basically this is a highly aspirational proposal for millions of dollars in grant money to develop software and build telescopes and take high-res pictures of every asteroid in the solar system. Just in case one of them turns out to be an alien artifact. And to take comprehensive high-res pictures of very flying object in the Earth's atmosphere, corroborated by radar tracking, with all the commonplace flying objects filtered out by AI.

I think it's very clever of them to hang this all on the hook of not being able to trust existing data from existing equipment. Their research requires them, a priori, to spend a ton of money on new equipment and new data.

I'd be a lot more impressed if their "history" page detailed the history of the undergrad projects that did the best they could with existing data from existing equipment, and made a strong scientific case for needing to take this next step. Instead, it's just some boilerplate about Galileo developing better telescopes and then contradicting the conventional wisdom of the age. The appeal to Galileo should be familiar to anyone who follows astrophysics woo.

 

[Axxman300]

What? Scientists jumped onto a pop-culture subject to secure funding for a pet project?

I'm shocked, shocked I say!

 

[theprestige]

I'll call them scientists when I see them doing some science.

 

[Thor 2]

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home



How it will work: https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/news/statement-ground-rules

It's Harvard. They seem to be very serious. Maybe they'll find an ET. Or a Grey.

I listened to an interesting discussion between Sam Harris, and Neil deGrasse Tyson, on this topic a few months ago. Tyson seems convinced, that the chance of other life out there is overwhelming, although the chance that the other life was of a similar stage of development, dubious. They might regard us as we would regard a worm.

 

[Venom]

I don't believe aliens have ever visited our planet.

The universe is so huge that there's probably other life out there somewhere.

Unfortunately it is likely to be so far away that we may never be able to meaningfully communicate with it.

I think what we've seen so far in the alien phenomenon, particularly from the early 20th century onward, is so tainted with anthropomorphic assumptions that it comes close to being a secular cult.

The Surprising Origin of Alien Abduction Stories

Call it the genetic fallacy if you like. I think the the origins of a phenomenon are relevant to judge the likelihood of its claims being true. I think it's a good bet that any "advanced alien civilization" would need some grasp of science right? The thing that took us forever to discover. Or at least some protocol for performing work to achieve goals. They would have to be able to pass these discoveries down the generations (assuming they reproduce and don't live very long lives) with some form of communication if they're not inherited. And what kind of mind would it take to look out there and wonder whether similar beings exist?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

More about the Project in the Skeptical Inquirer here:

The Practical Skeptic - The Galileo Project - Mick West

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/10/the-galileo-project/

If we have objects flying around in the sky, then surely taking a close-up photograph of them would be the best way of figuring out what they are, right?

Consider what the goal of an investigation into UFOs should be. UFOlogy as an investigation seeks to answer two questions: Are some UFOs nonhuman-controlled craft? and What exactly are those UFOs?

Mick West had input so I have hope that the science is real.

 

[theprestige]

What? Scientists jumped onto a pop-culture subject to secure funding for a pet project?

I'm shocked, shocked I say!

The obnoxious thing about this one is that the pop-culture subject is the pet project. It's not like they're raising funding for cancer research by suggesting they might find alien DNA.

They're raising funding for alien spacecraft research by suggesting they might find alien spacecraft.

 

[theprestige]

More about the Project in the Skeptical Inquirer here:

The Practical Skeptic - The Galileo Project - Mick West

https://skepticalinquirer.org/2021/10/the-galileo-project/



Mick West had input so I have hope that the science is real. : coo l:

I have no doubt the science is real. What they're proposing make sense, except they're proposing it on an absurd scale. There's nothing scientifically dubious about pointing a megapixel camera and a radar set at the sky, and cross-referencing what gets picked up.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I have no doubt the science is real. What they're proposing make sense, except they're proposing it on an absurd scale. There's nothing scientifically dubious about pointing a megapixel camera and a radar set at the sky, and cross-referencing what gets picked up.

I think they're trying to move beyond "we saw three fuzzy lights in the sky and they form a TRIANGLE and therefore aliens!" To do this in any sort of definitive way will cost a bit of money. Something maybe of the order of making a season of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. It can't be money less well spent.

 

[theprestige]

I think they're trying to move beyond "we saw three fuzzy lights in the sky and they form a TRIANGLE and therefore aliens!" To do this in any sort of definitive way will cost a bit of money. Something maybe of the order of making a season of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. It can't be money less well spent.

As I understand it, their proposed solution needs to be preemptive. They can't do this by waiting for a UFO report, then rushing to the site to set up their cameras and radars. They way they describe it, they want an a comprehensive camera and radar network watching the sky all the time, with pattern-recognition software filtering out the false positives.

That way, whenever someone says they saw three lights, this team can dive into the video footage and radar returns from that region of the sky, and figure out what - if anything - was actually seen.

It's basically this:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/update-eye-sky

But pointed at the entire sky, rather than a specific urban center, and with the addition of radar for cross-referencing. Forget about The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. This would probably cost more than the entire air defense surveillance expenditures of the US, Russia, and China combined.

 

[JayUtah]

I have no doubt the science is real. What they're proposing make sense, except they're proposing it on an absurd scale. There's nothing scientifically dubious about pointing a megapixel camera and a radar set at the sky, and cross-referencing what gets picked up.

I don't have any problem with this being an exercise in proposing a goal that requires a lot of new and innovative data-gathering capacity. Even if the nominal goal isn't the one that ends up being most useful, the framework is there. (I have problems with such things being used for intrusive domestic surveillance of persons, but that's another thread.) But I would have framed it as, "We need all that for this prosiac purpose, but (wink, wink) we're really going to use it to look for UFOs." Maybe that's why the project references the nothingburger defense report that basically says we need more data-gathering capacity.

I agree that real science has to get out in front of the hypothesis. You can't rush to the scene of where something extraordinary happened and content yourself with the scraps of data you can collect after the fact. You want the data you need already to have been collected, like data recorders in commercial transport vehicles.

Here's the problem. The UFO movement has progressed steadily in the face of new and ubiquitous data gathering. We have reams of radar data, cameras already scanning the skies for other purposes, and practically every citizen in the civilized world carrying a reasonably high-quality camera. It doesn't matter how extensive your network is, or how good your optics are, or how clever you can make your AI. There will always remain a class of observations that is just beyond the threshold of whatever equipment and techniques you're using. And that class of observations will always be the basis of belief in UFOs. Every attempt to systematize data collection Once And For All in order to resolve the UFO question will ever only succeed in kicking the can down the road.