Brane Space: Astrophysicist Adam Frank Gets It All Wrong On UAP- UFOs

UFO captured by Navy pilots in 2004, released 2017

Adam Frank, author of the book, The Little Book Of Aliens, fancies he has it all figured out regarding the sightings by Navy pilots of unusual craft in 2004 - but not reported until 2017 (by the NY Times) - and that there's no basis to believe they're actually of extraterrestrial origin.

Opinion | The U.F.O. Sightings Don't Impress This Physicist - The New York Times

Predictably, Prof. Frank begins with the sighting and audio reports of U.S. Navy pilots, e.g. top graphic image and the released video from recent UAP hearings:

Watch USS Nimitz ‘Tic Tac’ UFO: Declassified Video Clip | HISTORY Channel

Also:

Navy pilots describe encounters with UFOs - YouTube

Frank writes (in respect of the preceding):

"Let’s start with the Navy cases. Some of the pilots have told of seeing flying objects shaped like Tic Tacs or other unusual forms. The recordings from the planes’ cameras show amorphous shapes moving in surprising ways, including appearing to skim the ocean’s surface and then disappear beneath it. This might appear to be evidence of extraterrestrial technology that can defy the laws of physics as we understand them — but in reality it doesn’t amount to much."

Actually, it does. And bear in mind these are trained military pilots not some drunks out for a lark in their Cessnas. Former Navy Commander David Fravor delivered a detailed account of the objects in his House testimony,

Video Navy commander David Fravor gives detailed description of his encounter with a UAP - ABC News

Noting how the object shifted its longitudinal axis and paced his fighter - which was at 15,000 ft. altitude, while the object was at 12,000 ft. It then "rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared". Adding:

"We started to turn back and then the controller interrupted and said 'Sir, you're not going to believe this but that thing turned around is at your cap point, roughly 60 miles in less than a minute.'

You can calculate the speed, as Cmdr. Fravor notes, and it works out to: (60 miles/ min) x (60 min/hr) = 3600 miles per hour, or over MACH 4. We then learn his group returned to the Nimitz, where he then spoke to one of his crews ready to take off, and "they went out and got that roughly ninety second video."

Adding:

"What you don't see is the radar tape which was never released and we don't know where it is right now. But there was active jamming the object put on our AG373 radar. I can get into modes later if you want. What was shocking to us is the incident was never investigated, tapes were never taken, leaving it just a great story with friends. It wasn't until 2009 Jay Stratton contacted me to investigate, he was part of the AATIP program with Lou Alizondo."

He then noted that this latter contact finally led to the release of the controversial video in 2017 by the New York Times, and the removal of the stigma.

The last remains dubious because there is still tons of stigma. Also, why was the radar tape never released? Queasy critics in the media cringe if a conspiracy route is mentioned, but one must consider all alternatives. And someone (maybe in Defense Intelligence Agency) snatching a powerful piece of evidence has to make one think twice. Then there were the recent UAP hearings ('Inside Capitol Hill's Latest UFO Hearings', TIME, Dec. 9, p. 16) wherein we learn of another blatant coverup. This based on the testimony of Ret. Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet who

"was on deployment in January, 2015 when one of the cockpit videos that were declassified in 2020 was first captured. According to his testimony, he and a handful of other Navy officers received an email with the video attached. However, the email vanished from their inboxes 'without explanation'. "

Incidents like these support my now deceased Air Force brother Jerry's contention that there has been a 75+ year deliberate effort to conceal alien artifacts and existence. This a result of governmental and military paternalism, convinced Americans simply aren't ready to accept the truth of extraterrestrials roaming our skies with impunity - and a U.S. military unable to do a damned thing about it.

Gallaudet, indeed, went on to warn these sort of dodges are "not only a disservice to public knowledge but a risk to public safety as well." Adding:

"There is a national security need for more UAP transparency. In 2025, the U.S. will spend over $900 billion on national defense, yet we still have an incomplete understanding of what is in our airspace,"

As another witness, Michael Shellenberger (a journalist who submitted 214 pages into evidence) noted:

"The intelligence community is treating us like children. It's time for us to know the truth about this. I think we can handle it."

Yet despite the evidence and firsthand testimony of military pilots - charged with our defense no less (i.e. against Russian or Chinese incursions)- it's all treated with a giggle factor.

Incredibly, there's less blowback and criticism over techie billionaires using resveratrol (WSJ, Dec. 7-8, p. A1) to try to live to 150 years than actually documented UAP which bear all the attributes of alien craft allowed to zoom through our skies and disrupt military radar at will.

But this is the aspect, as narrated by Cmdr. Fravor, that discloses that - as good an astrophysics prof as Adam Frank might be- he fails in his background on the Nimitz Navy pilots sightings and reports. Especially the object's ability to race ahead of Fravor's group in excess of Mach 4 and also jam their radar. These are observations, behaviors far in advance of how Frank diminishes them. Which he continues to do in his next paragraph:

"For one thing, first-person accounts, which are notoriously inaccurate to begin with, don’t provide enough information for an empirical investigation. Scientists can’t accurately gauge distances or velocity from a pilot’s testimony: “It looked close” or “It was moving really fast” is too vague."

Yes, BUT a radar controller's message that it "reached the cap point 60 miles distant in one minute"? Come on, man, enough with the disingenuous dodges and glib supercilious responses. Mr. Frank then babbles:

"What a scientist needs are precise measurements from multiple viewpoints provided by devices that register various wavelengths (visible, infrared, radar). That kind of data might tell us if an object’s motion required engines or materials that we Earthlings don’t possess."

Oh, yeah, righto! So next time, before any Navy pilots are ready to take off from their carriers, we will be sure to have multi-wavelength spectrum devices in place (on land and in the sea) and all the ancillary equipment to discern whether any suddenly encountered object's motion can be traced to terrestrial or extraterrestrial engines or whatever. Is he serious? Or operating in a parallel universe where military systems (on which we depend for or defense) and personnel are treated like cartoon characters.

But as I already noted in previous posts, if the unexplained craft seen in the videos are as advanced as I suspect then no amount of "more rigorous analysis" will reveal their nature or validate the underlying extraterrestrial technology. This is because it takes a more advanced technology to adequately analyze a given breakthrough technology.

Imagine Neanderthals trying to make sense of an F -117 Stealth aircraft that somehow time-slipped 50,000 years into the past and you get the idea.

But Frank can't leave it alone, going on to write:

"While some researchers have used the footage to make simple estimates of the accelerations and other flight characteristics of the U.F.O.s, the results have been mixed at best. Skeptics have already shown that some of the motions seen in the videos (like the ocean skimming) may be artifacts of the cameras’ optics and tracking systems."

Talk about reaching! These are multi-million-dollar fighter jets using this equipment and they've already been tested in all kinds of simulations. Also tested in real time, real world conditions, i.e. when actually having Russian jets in their sights off the Aleutians. For cripes sakes, does Adam Frank really think a glitched imaging system is going to be employed by Navy jets and the Pentagon? And again, as the Nimitz pilots interviewed pointed out, the radical dynamical behavior was observed independently - not just with the imaging and radar systems. Those merely confirmed the objects locked onto were real.

Lastly, we get the classic howler question, also burped out by SETI scientist Seth Shostak in 2022:

"There are also common-sense objections. If we are being frequently visited by aliens, why don’t they just land on the White House lawn and announce themselves? "

Golly gee! Why on Earth would they remain largely out of sight, given our most welcoming and insightful species? Thousands of infants, mothers, innocents blown to bits in Gaza, not to mention starved out by targeted food supply restrictions, the brutal ongoing Russian attacks in Ukraine, not to mention the millions of acts of lesser violence that occur every day - from rapes, mugging and murders (like the recent shooting of a CEO on a NYC street) to other assaults on black people, women, LGBTQ folks and so on. And let's not forget the 22,000 -odd nuclear-armed missiles spread among the nuclear nations, including the U.S., Russia, UK, France and soon North Korea.

Yeppers, I really wonder why these aliens don't just land on the WH lawn. Can't figure that one out, it's a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

But Mr. Frank's dependence on human modes of thinking, 'logic' and assumptions doesn't end there as he goes on to write:

"But if the mission of these aliens calls for stealth, they seem surprisingly incompetent. You would think that creatures technologically capable of traversing the mind-boggling distances between the stars would also know how to turn off their high beams at night and to elude our primitive infrared cameras."

But this assumes the UAP incursions are exceptions to an assumed 'stealth protocol'- which I dispute. More realistically, these UAP are putting us through a series of dynamic tests - both of our psychological reactions, as well as those of our weapons' systems. What they would already have concluded is that we are a species that consistently lies to each other - even to the point of our military-intelligence agencies going all out to quash any serious evidence of their existence. All this so the terrestrial deniers can use already crashed artifacts to re-purpose for their own military, offensive weapons.

The bottom line? These aliens - whatever their form- are wise to stay at 'arm's length' from us, and be content to simply play with us in games of aerospace 'tag'. What was it Spock's character said to Kirk in the first season original Star Trek episode 'Shore Leave'?

Oh yeah! "Play is the highest form of intellect".

Ironically, Adam Frank - who heaps praise on the late Carl Sagan in his book - appears to have missed the memo that Sagan did finally come around to accepting the validity of UFOs as actual alien craft. This was in a one-on-one with Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, e.g.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926

Excerpt: "The pillar of modern space science Dr. Carl Sagan revealed to Dr. J. Allen Hynek, that he knew UFOs were real but could not talk publicly about the matter and possibly risk the loss of academic funding."

See Also: