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I guess it's conceivable, given we're talking about tech potentially beyond current understanding, that something could reduce the atmosphere in advance of the craft, a bit like they bubble the water in diving pools to reduce the chance of injury?

Air doesn't have surface tension to break though.

Sonic booms are caused because the air can't get out of the way fast enough, it trips over itself being pushed away. Like a fire in a crowded theatre.

So breaking up the air wouldn't help, unless you had some way to teleport the air elsewhere.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

Sonic booms are the product of displacement of air when an object with mass passes through them. Dramatically reducing the mass would be a way of reducing this affect within the atmosphere. If someone wanted to use a 2D material to produce something rugged, capable of travelling at high speeds, and operating with almost zero drag, it's probably just a math problem.

It isn't about mass of the aeroplane, it is about volume and shape. The aeroplane is having to displace the air as it moves through. This creates pressure waves which, when the plane breaks the sound barrier, creates the sonic boom.

Reducing the mass of the plane without a corresponding change in its volume and aerodynamic profile wouldn't change anything about the sonic boom it creates as it has to displace the same amount of air.

True, assuming the volume is a solid, the shape is coherent and the surface displaces air uniformly.

You offered a perfect description of how a sonic boom occurs with known materials. Now explain what's different about the TicTocs.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of sound through the atmosphere without creating a sonic boom. Even small objects like bullets and the tips of a whip obey these laws. It doesn't matter what the material is, if it takes up physical space then air must be displaced and a sonic boom will occur.

If people are claiming to see an object move faster than sound without a corresponding sonic boom then they are just wrong. If your observations do not agree with fundamental physical laws then your observations are wrong.

The best you can do is use very carefully designed angles to reduce the boom.

Eh.

'Wrong' is a poor way to refute an argument. There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the UFO claims, just dismissing them based on the physics isn't a good one.

Sure, there should be a sonic boom if these things actually exist and the measurements of their speed is right. The fact no sonic boom happens introduces a lot of questions, one possible answer is they don't exist. Another possible answer is we haven't put together the scientific explanation for their existence.

There are other things we can observe that move through the air faster than the speed of sound. Photons are one of them, they have a quantum state yet do not displace other particles. Light doesn't cause sonic booms.

My thoughts are that the science that could explain these things isn't that far beyond what we're already doing with material sciences and photonics. But sure, it's possible everyone involved is just making this up, maybe it's a distraction to keep us from thinking about other things.

But I doubt that. The reality is probably more interesting.

 kirotheavenger wrote:


Tictocs don't exist as flight capable craft.

They start as a barely perceived object at the edge of perception that the brain fills in with detail - which generally means the brain assumes the most dangerous outcome.

Like when you see a leaf blowing across the floor out of the corner of your eye, and your brain screams "spider!".

When FLIR/Radar/ and the eyeball mk 1 are all in agreement, something is clearly flying. And, supposedly, some of the encounters that supposedly have been reported have been as close to the cockpit as 50 feet. That's not 'edge of perception', that's 'change of shorts'

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

Sonic booms are the product of displacement of air when an object with mass passes through them. Dramatically reducing the mass would be a way of reducing this affect within the atmosphere. If someone wanted to use a 2D material to produce something rugged, capable of travelling at high speeds, and operating with almost zero drag, it's probably just a math problem.

It isn't about mass of the aeroplane, it is about volume and shape. The aeroplane is having to displace the air as it moves through. This creates pressure waves which, when the plane breaks the sound barrier, creates the sonic boom.

Reducing the mass of the plane without a corresponding change in its volume and aerodynamic profile wouldn't change anything about the sonic boom it creates as it has to displace the same amount of air.

True, assuming the volume is a solid, the shape is coherent and the surface displaces air uniformly.

You offered a perfect description of how a sonic boom occurs with known materials. Now explain what's different about the TicTocs.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of sound through the atmosphere without creating a sonic boom. Even small objects like bullets and the tips of a whip obey these laws. It doesn't matter what the material is, if it takes up physical space then air must be displaced and a sonic boom will occur.

If people are claiming to see an object move faster than sound without a corresponding sonic boom then they are just wrong. If your observations do not agree with fundamental physical laws then your observations are wrong.

The best you can do is use very carefully designed angles to reduce the boom.

This isn't entirely correct. There is active research right now into several methods of producing supersonic flight while minimizing or virtually eliminating the sonic boom, largely linked to the effort to resuscitate supersonic commercial air travel without the restrictions which were imposed on the Concorde. At least a few of these methods have already been proven and others are very promising. There are various other methods being tested and evaluated as well. While the supersonic shockwave is not eliminated, the noise basically is - which is the part that most people care about and are concerned about within the context of this discussion.

chaos0xomega wrote:
While the supersonic shockwave is not eliminated, the noise basically is - which is the part that most people care about and are concerned about within the context of this discussion.

That's highly debatable. The best of the two reduced it to 75db, which is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner or the average stereo. Neither of which is enough to get the ban on supersonic flight over land lifted. They do work, but not well enough to eliminate the sound.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
While the supersonic shockwave is not eliminated, the noise basically is - which is the part that most people care about and are concerned about within the context of this discussion.

That's highly debatable. The best of the two reduced it to 75db, which is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner or the average stereo. Neither of which is enough to get the ban on supersonic flight over land lifted. They do work, but not well enough to eliminate the sound.

QueSST is promising 60dB, which is a good bit quieter than that - and thats not even the quietest option out there. The recently defunct Aerion was working on a mach cutoff speed technique to eliminate the boom entirely at ground level. I also stumbled across a more esoteric method the other day which used a membrane of hydraulic liquid (or something equally esoteric) on leading edges to disperse shockwaves in order to mitigate the boom.

 techsoldaten wrote:
There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the UFO claims, just dismissing them based on the physics isn't a good one.

That's a very good reason to dismiss them.

My thoughts are that the science that could explain these things isn't that far beyond what we're already doing with material sciences and photonics. But sure, it's possible everyone involved is just making this up, maybe it's a distraction to keep us from thinking about other things.

But I doubt that. The reality is probably more interesting.

It isn't really about eliminating every possible option, because once the explanation becomes less likely than 'error in human perception' there's not much of a point.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
That's a very good reason to dismiss them.

Not really. Challenging the validity of 'what we know' is sort of one of the corner stones of science. There's a always the possibility that there's a way around it that we simply haven't found yet. It *is* reason to treat them with skepticism, however. Once you sift through all the explainable incidents, there are still some left in the 'unexplained' bin, where the usual explanations fall short themselves. Ignoring them hasn't made them go away, or stop happening, so one really an only come to the conclusion that something is happening. What exactly is happening, however, needs serious study by qualified experts, which is, to a degree, what *hasn't* been happening.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
It isn't really about eliminating every possible option, because once the explanation becomes less likely than 'error in human perception' there's not much of a point.

'Less likely' than that also doesn't necessarily equate that human error is the 'correct' answer, either. Jefferson, IIRC, held that 'stones falling from heaven' was less likely than that. Yet, geologists and astronomers at Chicxulub and Barringer Crater will tell you all about what happens when they do. Our current understanding of physics isn't the be all and end all of science.

Well I suppose one has to compare how often established laws of physics are overturned verses how often human perception proves fallible.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Well I suppose one has to compare how often established laws of physics are overturned verses how often human perception proves fallible.

What are the laws of physics except empirically tested human perception?

 Ketara wrote:

What are the laws of physics except empirically tested human perception?

The key point there is empirically tested. Also independently verified.

None of which applies to UFO sightings.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

What are the laws of physics except empirically tested human perception?

The key point there is empirically tested. Also independently verified.

None of which applies to UFO sightings.

Well, yeah. Obviously.

An Unidentified Flying Object is, by definition, unverified/tested. Otherwise it would't be unidentified. It would just be an FO.

 Ketara wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

What are the laws of physics except empirically tested human perception?

The key point there is empirically tested. Also independently verified.

None of which applies to UFO sightings.

Well, yeah. Obviously.

An Unidentified Flying Object is, by definition, unverified/tested. Otherwise it would't be unidentified. It would just be an FO.

Which makes your response to Ninth meaningless, doesn't it? Considering that science operates in a way which removes the weakness of any individuals observation.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

The key point there is empirically tested. Also independently verified.

None of which applies to UFO sightings.

Point of fact, a UFO sighting would qualify as the first stage of the empirical cycle, since it's an observation is being made. The issue is the fact that it's hard to predict when the next will occur, so that various hypotheses could be tested.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

Which makes your response to Ninth meaningless, doesn't it? Considering that science operates in a way which removes the weakness of any individuals observation.

Hardly? I'll break it down.

Baron stated 'Challenging the validity of 'what we know' is sort of one of the corner stones of science. There's a always the possibility that there's a way around it that we simply haven't found yet.' This is a basic summary of how the entire point of scientific method is that it must be constantly challenged on the assumption that existing theory is flawed. Why? Because our empirical perception of the results leads to an human (or personal) interpretation of the results which can be flawed. Any scientific theory can be flawed due to poor logical grasp of the results, because we don't understand what we saw, or because the experiment itself was flawed and had an angle that was not accounted for or understood.

Ninth's response was 'Well I suppose one has to compare how often established laws of physics are overturned verses how often human perception proves fallible.'

Hence my point was that the two are effectively the one and same thing. The 'laws of physics' are nothing more than empirical human perception in their purest form. It isn't an 'either-or' scenario. Both of them have identical fallibility rates. The minute that human perception proves fallible IS the moment that the laws of physics are overturned and vice versa.

There's a whole branch of abtruse philosophy about this sort of thing, though I find it tedious myself. Apologies if I'm not explaining it very well. It tends to lead into solipsism, which is hardly a useful area of enquiry.

But it isn't being challenged. In order for it to be challenged an actual testable hypothesis must be put forward.

Just saying "These UFOs cannot fly like this if our understanding of physics is correct, therefore our understanding of physics must be wrong" is not an actual challenge to the current model as there is no way to falsify the claim.

There isn't even any evidence that the multiple sightings are real, or of the same object if they are real.

EDIT:- I just realised that I'm leading this entire discussion down a philosophical rabbit-hole that even I detest. So I'll withdraw my comments there so as to spare both myself and everybody else meaningless intellectual labour.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Air doesn't have surface tension to break though.

Sonic booms are caused because the air can't get out of the way fast enough, it trips over itself being pushed away. Like a fire in a crowded theatre.

So breaking up the air wouldn't help, unless you had some way to teleport the air elsewhere.

That's not exclusively what the bubbles do. They reduce the density of the water, and as a consequence change the way it interacts with objects passing through it. You can sink a boat by releasing gas in a column underneath it.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1350-bubbling-seas-can-sink-ships/

If a UFO could project a corridor of reduced atmosphere in front of itself, then the speed threshold for a sonic boom would increase or go away entirely.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
But it isn't being challenged. In order for it to be challenged an actual testable hypothesis must be put forward.

Just saying "These UFOs cannot fly like this if our understanding of physics is correct, therefore our understanding of physics must be wrong" is not an actual challenge to the current model as there is no way to falsify the claim.

There isn't even any evidence that the multiple sightings are real, or of the same object if they are real.

Ok, well, let's put forward this hypothesis, which would seem straight forward. Something is clearly happening. Evidence: video, eye witnesses, radar readings, photographs, other detected readings, etc.

Let me ask, what are the odds that the radar screws up, on two separate ships AND an air recon platform,in exactly the same way, creating exactly the same false return, that pilots go out and see an unusual phenomena with their own eyes and record it on camera, but somehow it's all false? This isn't something the military jumped up and down and officially released to the press, they buried it and it leaked.

Clearly, something *is* happening. The offered explanation does not match observations. Therefore the explanation is incorrect. That's also science. You want religion if you want to deny the Observation with the assumption that you're right and the universe is the one that's wrong.

The proper course is to examine the evidence and see if we can determine what's happening. The previous hypothesis, that it's just 'human error', isn't holding water as well as it used to at this point, so it's time to stop and examine what's taking place in detail and come up with a hypothesis.

So far, almost every explanation that's been put forward has problems. Aliens included. So, when the report actually hits the web, we should examine it to see if we can figure it out.

If it is the same technology the same factor could cause all of it to screw up the same way. To go back to the rifle brigade example someone used earlier; it is quite unlikely that every rifle suddenly misfires at the same time. But if they all fired at a target and all the shots missed by skewing right one would assume there was a common factor causing it.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
If it is the same technology the same factor could cause all of it to screw up the same way.

FLIR and radar are not the same technology. Ships and aircraft also do not use the same tech, and operate on different frequencies, generally, though it's all radar. The eyeball mk 1 is not tech at all (though I suspect the mk2 will be, and eagerly await it's arrival.)

 Azreal13 wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Air doesn't have surface tension to break though.

Sonic booms are caused because the air can't get out of the way fast enough, it trips over itself being pushed away. Like a fire in a crowded theatre.

So breaking up the air wouldn't help, unless you had some way to teleport the air elsewhere.

That's not exclusively what the bubbles do. They reduce the density of the water, and as a consequence change the way it interacts with objects passing through it. You can sink a boat by releasing gas in a column underneath it.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1350-bubbling-seas-can-sink-ships/

If a UFO could project a corridor of reduced atmosphere in front of itself, then the speed threshold for a sonic boom would increase or go away entirely.

I would describe that as teleporting the air elsewhere. At least in order for it to work.
If all you did was project low density bubbles ahead of you, those bubbles would also produce sonic booms when displacing the air.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of the UFO claims, just dismissing them based on the physics isn't a good one.

That's a very good reason to dismiss them.

Not really. There are a lot of questions to answer before coming to that conclusion.

Is the object in the videos something that has mass? Easy to assume it's solid, but it could be a hollow object with a perforated 2D shell. This could explain the lack of a sonic boom, the air is not being displaced but instead travelling through the object.

Why can't we observe any signs of propulsion? We're assuming propulsion is the only means of locomotion, there are other ways to precisely move an object from point to point (especially if it's extremely light.)

I would not say anything in those videos violates any laws of physics. Seems like observers are making a lot of assumptions about the design of the object, based on what they know about aircraft.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

My thoughts are that the science that could explain these things isn't that far beyond what we're already doing with material sciences and photonics. But sure, it's possible everyone involved is just making this up, maybe it's a distraction to keep us from thinking about other things.

But I doubt that. The reality is probably more interesting.

It isn't really about eliminating every possible option, because once the explanation becomes less likely than 'error in human perception' there's not much of a point.

Yeah, these things have been observed by a lot of humans and sensors. Not ready to chalk it up to observer error.

Out of curiosity, why is everyone focusing on the ufos being aliens, when in ages past it was widely accepted these strange flying things were spiritual beings? Nothing about aliens is inherently more possible than creatures existing on another plane of reality.

Cronch wrote:
Out of curiosity, why is everyone focusing on the ufos being aliens, when in ages past it was widely accepted these strange flying things were spiritual beings? Nothing about aliens is inherently more possible than creatures existing on another plane of reality.

well to be honest some people do just this, and they are generally so toxic and repugnant, not to mention revolting stupid, that few people are willing to be lumped in with them.



pat robertson said that aliens are demons, and people who confess to having encounters with them should be murdered.

https://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread168123/pg1

a few others link alien and ufos to demonic entities and have made the concept so vile few will join in with them.

It could be that these things are also not well understood plasma phenomena.
There’s a ton we don’t fully understand about the electromagnetic spectrum, and plasmas are a huge part of that. The ‘UFOs’ caught on some of the volcano cameras are likely plasmoids or some sort of plasma phenomenon, and they will often behave erratically, and appear to be under intelligent control.

Fact is, no one really knows what these UFOs are. They could be a number of things. But just because we can’t explain something within our current understanding doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. The hubris when it comes to science is pretty acute - we don’t know everything nor understand fully how our universe even works. We have a rough idea.
But to say that our science fully explains all observable phenomena is egotistical. We can barely predict the weather on earth accurately, and yet we’re 100% certain that our tiny slice of physics can explain all there is?
Take a look at the ‘Big problem with Cosmology’ and one will realize how little we do understand.

Things are interconnected and integrated far beyond our current comprehension and computing power, and that’s something that goes beyond our current understanding of how things work. Which means these UFOs could be real and actually exist.
As for aliens? Again, we can’t ever be 100% sure one way or the other and until we can down one of these and examine the contents.

I’d say it’s more akin to some sort of probe or drone. Alien or black project. And it could be some sort of dense plasma, which would explain the lack of propulsion and the ability to turn 90 degrees at speed, which would also explain the lack of a sonic boom - there is no solid surface to create one.

Cronch wrote:Out of curiosity, why is everyone focusing on the ufos being aliens, when in ages past it was widely accepted these strange flying things were spiritual beings? Nothing about aliens is inherently more possible than creatures existing on another plane of reality.

Because any time they do, fringe raving left wingers come out to bash the intelligence of the person because that theory gives credence to things they desperately need to prove wrong...

Fair, but i think it's worth considering. It could be proof that Apollo does in fact ride a sun chariot. Religions of the world are full of flying entities, it makes more sense than aliens when you think about it.

Cronch wrote:
Fair, but i think it's worth considering. It could be proof that Apollo does in fact ride a sun chariot. Religions of the world are full of flying entities, it makes more sense than aliens when you think about it.

Not really? Humans have been able to send probes and machines to other planets with technology that would confound humans of earlier eras. It's not much of a leap to posit that civilizations that could cross interstellar spaces might have technology that would stump us.

The leap to transdimensional or "spiritual" beings is so much wider as seem illogical. Not to mention that, as Matt Swain said, they also tend to come from more unsavory (and that's putting it lightly) sources.