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On the subject of modern fakes of ancient artifacts (mentioned in some earlier posts) this is a recognised problem. It is generally accepted that some of the most famous pre-Columbian artifacts - the 'crystal skulls' of Mexico - including one in the British Museum, are 19th or 20th century...

Nevertheless, Britain continued with its rapid rearmament programme, especially in fighter planes.

Perhaps they should have been, but I don't think they were. Wouldn't it depend largely on who won? In 1915, and for long after that, the German government and people were confidently expecting victory. (Which in fact they achieved in the East in 1917 after the Bolshevik coup in Russia and the...

I've never heard of Nahum Goldmann before, so my first thought on seeing this thread was 'Who was he? What were his motives? And what was the context of the particular passage quoted here? Was Goldmann expressing his own views, or perhaps writing in the spirit of parody or sarcasm?'...

Surely it is common enough in science to have theories or 'laws' which are valid and useful in some circumstances but not others. E.g. Boyle's Law and Hooke's Law are only valid within a certain range of applied forces. Or in fluid mechanics, where theories or equations that work for laminar...

I'd like briefly to revert to the 'thought experiment' I mentioned in my #41 above. An observer A sends an FTL message to observer B, who sends an FTL message acknowledging receipt back to A. I suggested, what I hoped was uncontroversial, that the time at which A sent his message to B would...

I think we need a bigger dictum: relativity, causality, FTL, facts. Pick at most three. If facts - a.k.a. empirical evidence - showed beyond doubt that FTL communication was possible, then something else would have to give. Empirical evidence trumps all other considerations. There might be...

I mentioned earlier in this thread that I subscribed to a magazine aggregation service called Readly, and had a subsequent conversation with one or two of you about the service. I mentioned somewhere that Readly didn't include 'New Scientist' magazine, so I think I should now mention that New...

The UAP team is a tiny and unimportant part of the DoD. There are probably (and certainly should be) greater resources elsewhere devoted to 'spying adversaries' and 'flight safety hazards'. So the UAP team is by default left to deal with the 'whacky' cases. For comparison, in the British MoD...

On the subject of FTL and causality violation, consider a simple thought experiment, assuming that FTL exists. There are two participants, A and B, both of whom have FTL transmitters. Participant A sends an FTL signal to B, recording the time of transmission as shown on a clock in his own...

I question that. If I understand correctly, FTL velocities would lead to paradoxes in the common space-time interpretation of STR, as introduced by Minkowski (or Poincaré). In some reference frames it might appear that in some other reference frame an effect has preceded its own cause, which...

At the risk of exposing myself on the peak of Dunning-Kruger's Mount Stupid, I think the article you link to is unconvincing. Yes, I know that in the customary illustration of relativity theory by space-time diagrams, faster-than-light travel produces causal paradoxes. But that just means that...

That's a strong argument. Still, it can hardly be said that the gaps in the present scientific understanding of the world are merely matters of detail. Leaving aside the 'hard problem of consciousness', there are the problems of reconciling quantum theory with general relativity; explaining...

I don't think the UFO fans believe (or claim) that the laws of physics 'don't apply to aliens'. They just argue that we (earthlings) don't yet know all there is to be known, and aliens may have discovered methods of space travel or communication that we have not yet thought of. In particular...

Pure air is transparent to visible light (apart from a small amount of Rayleigh scattering), which is just as well, because otherwise we could not see through it! The puzzle is not why sometimes we can't see light beams, but why sometimes we can. People may have an unreasonable expectation of...

Thanks. Also noteworthy that as in the Gofast case there is an issue about how the object was first detected, and where the range (RNG) data on the screen comes from. Even if the object didn't have a purpose-built radar reflector, a balloon with a payload of instruments would likely have...

Are these soundings taken by weather balloons? Maybe with GPS location to determine speed? (I don't see the method stated in the linked documents, but I don't know how else direct measurements of speed could be made.) If so, it would confirm that weather balloons were present in the relevant...

I found a Quora discussion with some theory, and a graph claiming to show average wind speeds at different altitudes. The average at 12000 feet is about 55 mph or ~50 knots. At 13000 feet it would be a bit higher. That would be consistent with Dimebag's assumption. But NB these are averages...

According to a Reuters report (below), official Russian sources are claiming that the UAVs were old Soviet-era drones, maybe adapted from a reconnaissance role. I don't think there is anything very remarkable about the range of the attacks (a few hundred miles). Several modern drones...

I'm probably missing something obvious, but what do we know about the speed of the F-18 itself, and how do we know it? I see that the Sitrec menu has an entry for 'TAS', which I take to mean 'True Air Speed'. The Gofast video itself shows (in the lower left corner) a figure 'M 0.61', which I...