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Notes -
Why does the bulk of the evidence of extraterrestrial life that people focus on recently seem to come from the government rather than from scientists? It seems that every time you listen to the latest news on the topic, the government is providing wild claims while mainstream scientists seem to accept or provide nearly nothing as evidence of ET life.
I usually like Ross Douthat but I recently watched his video with Diana Pasulka regarding UFOs and ETs. I am not predisposed to making accusations of government plants everywhere but the interview was so bizarre that it felt like she was just a plant to sow chaos and confusion in the space to me. I have always felt that the term "UAP" was suspicious as it is exactly the sort of SEO hashtag you would create if an entity wanted to track and analyze a certain specific narrative or conversation around a topic that already exists but within a specific context (like government-synthesized data.)
I have always had nightmares about UFOs and found aliens very scary. Have any of you ever seen a UFO or encountered an alien?
The best argument against them is that it would be pretty much impossible to hide. Small objects in orbit are easy to track, anything entering out solar system at relativistic speeds and then braking to land on Earth would be detected. The power of the radio-waves required to send signals back to the alien solar system would be detected.
Aliens being hidden from us would require multiple governments to collaborate and cover up aliens. If the information regarding aliens is under absolute lockdown the only information available is from governments.
If aliens were widespread in our solarsystem we would have detected something by now. A major civilization isn't going to be silent.
Assuming known physics is all that is out there, you are right.
There ain't no stealth in space, you can do many things in space, but not hide.
Of course, there is no guarantee that we really reached the bottom of science tree and there are no unknown unknowns out there.
This is entirely wrong btw, the US government has stealth satellites in orbit right now.
(Atomic Rockets is a great resource though).
The "stealth" satellites are not stealthy, their orbits are well known and their mass is roughly estimated. You can observe them yourself with rather modest equipment.
What is unknown is their capability and their mission.
Neither KH-11 nor Topaz are stealth satellites of the low-observable Misty line, although objects believed to be stealth satellites have been tracked by amateur astronomers.
Atomic Rockets (on the page you linked to) has a pretty good write-up by Matterbeam on stealth in space, but I recommend reading up on his treatment of a hydrogen streamer.
It's certainly true that, given sufficiently proliferated sensor technology, "there's no stealth in space." But it's also true that, given sufficiently proliferated sensor technology, there's no stealth anywhere, whether it's submarines or stealth aircraft. Keep in mind the question for stealth is not "can remain invisible at any arbitrary range," it is "can you disrupt the hostile kill chain enough to gain an advantage?"
In the real world, sensors aren't sufficiently proliferated, which is why there are submarines, stealth aircraft, and yes, stealth satellites.
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