Thread by @Astro_Wright

I know a lot of people want to identify parallels between SETI and UFOlogy. There are a few big differences, though:

1) SETI is based on the premise that alien tech follows the laws of physics as we know them. UFOlogy identifies alien tech from *violations* of those laws.

1 (cont) Asking me to consider UFOs as alien is asking me to believe *two* very unlikely things: that they are visiting and imperfectly hiding, *and* that it's possible to violate conservation of momentum! This is not a parsimonious explanation for these things.

2) SETI is all about the hunt for good candidates, ones that can definitively survive intense scrutiny. Right now, we have virtually none (I'd say the Wow! signal is the best).

UFOlogy is awash in candidates. It's starting from the opposite side of the problem.

3) SETI is based in astronomy and related fields. We astronomers have very few skills that translate into the fields needed to study UFO sightings.

It's fine to scientifically study UFO sightings and understand our airspace, but why drag astronomers into it?

4) SETI works in a domain we don't have a very good handle on: outer space. It could be *filled* with alien civilizations and signals, but it's such a big haystack, it's not hard to understand why we haven't seen anything yet. (cont'd)

4 (cont) UFOlogy's domain is the atmosphere, which we know *very well* because we've studied it for millennia. There's not a lot of space for alien spacecraft to mostly hide from meteorologists, air traffic controllers, etc. and still be sort of barely detected the way they are.

Finally, lots of people get excited about UFOs as aliens because they infer from news stories that the government is interested in them, or is hiding what they know about them, or that military pilots or senators are very sure aliens are visiting.

This kind of tea-leaves-reading is not very persuasive to me. I already know a lot of people think UFOs are alien, and it makes sense the military would study weird aircraft and be secretive about that. Yet another article confirming that isn't new evidence aliens exist.

Finally finally, I appreciate that studying UFOs as non-alien craft is a thing. That's fine! I'm sure plenty of these things are real aircraft.

My thread above is just about connecting them to aliens, and distinguishing UFOlogy from SETI.

Wow this blew up. Some book recommendations on the topic by @ScolesSarah:

amazon.com/Books-Sarah-Sc…

Also @AstroKatie:
blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a…

unroll @threadreaderapp

This article argues that even my reading above is too generous. If this narrative is accurate then all the "new" revelations coming out are just an echo chamber generated by some True Believers (in weirder stuff than just aliens!).

newrepublic.com/article/162457…