blatman posted:

I get sleep paralysis fairly regularly (maybe twice a month) and eventually you just sort of get used to it, like "oh I guess hands are gonna come out of the ceiling and hold me down while the room fills with eyes again tonight, that's not great" but with some practice you can snap out of it, the trick is to get really really angry

if you're in bed with someone you might also consider tapping SOS on them if you can get your fingers to move, i've had that work before too

Missionary Positron posted:

I usually hallucinated a gray alien standing in the corner of the room back when I had sleep paralysis episodes. It didn't do anything, just stood there and watched.

What a weirdo.

quote:

Ravi Kopparapu is a planetary scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Jacob Haqq-Misra is a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.

With a government report due in June on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and a recent “60 Minutes” story on U.S. Navy pilots’ sightings and videos of mysterious images, prominent people in politics, the military and national intelligence are finally asking: What are we looking at?

It’s the wrong question — or, at least, it’s premature.

Before we get to what these mysterious phenomena are, we need to be asking how we can figure out what they are. This is where scientists, notably absent from the current UAP conversation, come in.

For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena — UFOs and UAPs, in the shorthand — has been taboo. A big driver of that taboo is the vacuum of knowledge that is being filled by unscientific claims thanks to a lack of scientific investigation.

In recent decades, science has focused on aspects of extraterrestrial inquiry, including the search for signs of life on other planets — think the Mars rover— and techno-signatures — radio signals that appear to emanate from outside Earth.

The research has been complex, evidence-based and demanding, pulling in scientists from across disciplines and all around the globe. The same should be true for the exploration of UAP sightings. If we want to understand what UAP are, then we need to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort to study them.

Decades ago, the notion of serious research on UFOs wasn’t out of the question.

In the late 1960s, a U.S. Air Force-led effort called Project Blue Book examined thousands of UFO reports from the 1950s and 1960s. In 1968, however, another report, commissioned by the Air Force and conducted at the University of Colorado to examine UFO research to that point, stated that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs … that has added to scientific knowledge.” Soon after, the Air Force shuttered Project Blue Book. About 700 of the more than 12,000 cases remained “unidentified” at the close of the project.

Despite this, distinguished scientists including astronomer Carl Sagan, physicist James E. McDonald and astronomer J. Allen Hynek thought UAP should be investigated scientifically. McDonald, a professor of meteorology and member of the National Academy of Sciences, conducted a rigorous analysis of a few UAP cases that Project Blue Book highlighted as unexplainable.

McDonald documented his methods — extensive interviews with witnesses, detailed accounting of their observations, examination of radar and other technology possibly implicated in the sightings — in “Science in Default,” which he presented in a 1969 American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium. He relied on evidence-based investigation and consideration of all the available data (rather than cherry-picking one instance of an event). He argued that much of the 1968 report was biased and shallow.

“Doesn’t a UFO case … warrant more than a mere shrug of the shoulders from science?” he wrote.

We need to frame the current UAP/UFO question with the same level of active inquiry, one involving experts from academia in disciplines including astronomy, meteorology and physics, as well as industry and government professionals with knowledge of military aircraft, remote sensing from the ground and satellite observations. Participants would need to be agnostic toward any specific explanations with a primary goal of collecting enough data — including visual, infrared, radar and other possible observations — to eventually allow us to deduce the identity of such UAP. Following this agnostic approach, and relying upon sound scientific and peer-reviewed methods, would go a long way toward lifting the taboo in mainstream science.

Without robust, credible data mined by mainstream scientists, UAP studies will always be viewed as fringe science. With a systematic collection of new data, and access to all existing data, we can apply scientific rigor to what has been observed and documented.

Ultimately, understanding UAP is a science problem. We should treat it that way.

The views expressed are the authors’ own.

Bilirubin posted:

Time to science all the UFOs!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/26/we-need-put-science-center-ufo-question/

BeefThief posted:

I think 95% of abduction stories are probably just sleep paralysis experienced by somebody who doesn't know what it is and can't explain it. Just like 95% of UFO sightings are just the planet Venus.

Antifa Turkeesian posted:

It seems like watching military airplanes out over an ocean is the most boring poo poo you could do on another planet, unless you like freaking them out by flying around in front of them, but even then there have to be better pranks you could do.

Think Less posted:

Quite a few of the times I've experienced sleep paralysis involved floating out of my bed, unable to move. No matter what time I went to bed, it always seemed like the sun was setting outside when I had those dreams. It's weird as poo poo and I'm glad they stopped. I don't know what causes it, but I was extremely stressed out when they were happening

blatman posted:

I remember hearing somewhere that sleep paralysis is caused by most of your "time for sleep" systems engaging but not all of them - so partial paralysis to prevent sleepwalking, brain starts squeezing brain juice through your brain bits to purge the waste proteins you produced through the day - except you haven't actually lost consciousness so now you're stuck in bed unable to move except now you've got a ton of synapses randomly firing because your brain is rinsing out all the gunk while your still-conscious mind tries desperately to make sense out of the random information + growing anxiety because you can't get away from the lizards melting out of the walls or whatever

Spergin Morlock posted:

sleep paralysis is just a situation where your muscles are deactivated as if you're dreaming, but you're semi-conscious. there's nothing otherworldy or UFOish about it, it just sucks when it happens especially if youve never experienced it before

Think Less posted:

It feels otherworldly though, and I could easily see sleep paralysis+too much TV causing someone to believe they were experiencing an abduction

Bullfrog posted:

I used to get this thing where I'd suddenly wake up convinced there was a spider in my bed and i would jump out of bed in a panic. ever since starting ssris a couple years back though that hasnt happened lmao

endocriminologist posted:

im glad you managed to chase away the depression spider bullfrog

Bilirubin posted:

mods please change my username to depression spider bullfrog

Spergin Morlock posted:

the last time I had sleep paralysis was when I fell asleep with the TV on and suddenly became aware that I Love Lucy was playing and I couldn't move. I knew exactly where I was and what was happening. a similar thing I experience sometimes is right at the moment I'm about to fall asleep I feel like I'm actually falling and jolt back awake

endocriminologist posted:

i wonder if theres a spider that makes you happy

endocriminologist posted:

look out for that guy tonight bullfrog

WEH posted:

Just heard of this sighting by way of the same meteorologist doing an interview with Podcast UFO and it's pretty fuckin spooky. The article kinda glosses over it but the craft formed a triangle that specifically pointed back at the radar station, which spooked the poo poo out of the guy because he wondered initially if they were military and if they were about to shoot a radar seeking missile at him. An officer on the ground saw them do this maneuver at the same time he did. Also they retreated to the only unfrozen area of lake michigan lmao

Theres a youtube vid that compiles a couple(?) 911 calls, including him reacting to what he's seeing on the radar screen. His call (well, they called him) starts at 6:06.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYawV4ui53A&t=366s

Zisky posted:

WEH posted:

Just heard of this sighting by way of the same meteorologist doing an interview with Podcast UFO and it's pretty fuckin spooky. The article kinda glosses over it but the craft formed a triangle that specifically pointed back at the radar station, which spooked the poo poo out of the guy because he wondered initially if they were military and if they were about to shoot a radar seeking missile at him. An officer on the ground saw them do this maneuver at the same time he did. Also they retreated to the only unfrozen area of lake michigan lmao

Theres a youtube vid that compiles a couple(?) 911 calls, including him reacting to what he's seeing on the radar screen. His call (well, they called him) starts at 6:06.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYawV4ui53A&t=366s

Bideo James posted:

is there an easy way to listen in to air traffic locally

and what about radar poo poo? i want to watch the skies around me more.

Bullfrog posted:

this one is spooky as poo poo. "cylindrical objects". Definitely sounds similar to the tic tacs to me

Bideo James posted:

lmao when he says "oh there it is, lets see uhhhh, ok it disappeared" and then he finds it again

lmao they can detect and either displace or straight up move fast laughing at our radar

Bideo James posted:

is there an easy way to listen in to air traffic locally

and what about radar poo poo? i want to watch the skies around me more.

Bullfrog posted:

soon all our rooms are gonna end up lookin like a 90s alien contact movie main character's bedroom and im loving here for it



like this but comfier