movie night! -- latest ufo sim

[kymho...@gmail.com]

For years now the AI programs have been telling me there is no easy
answer for "where do they come from". Like organised UFO sightings
databases themselves -- which are obviously a mix of all sorts of
things including fraud, everyday objects seen under unusual
conditions, planets, satellites, rockets, known atmospheric phenomena,
unknown atmospheric phenomena, experimental hi-tech aircraft, other
aircraft, un-classifiable something -- the possible sources for what
are reported are varied. The weather and similar data from various
well-known locations highly correlate with components of UFO reports,
the positions of the moon and planets highly correlate with them as
well, as so the positions of asteroids, light curves from remote
stars, and radiation astronomers receive from very deep space.

But for a couple weeks the programs have latched on to making very
simple models that try to "explain" a large chunk of all UFO reports
with a simple model that applies to every UFO "object". And for the
past many days they have settled on a simple model that is similar to
the kinds of strategies that drive non-player characters in many
computer games.

After looking at this closely for the past week I think it's about
ready to see the light of day. There were several arguments to be had
about the way the model worked, but after many side-bars and lots of
head-scratching it seems it really does match up solidly against about
1/3 of the sightings in e.g. the NUFORC database between 2006 and 2023.

The model posits every UFO is a simple probabilistic "automaton". It
divides its time between flying from its previous location to a new
location. Locations can be any planet or asteroid in the JPL/Horizons
database (there are mn of them). When it gets close to its
destination it "lands" and stay for a certain period. Every day during
that period -- if the destination turned out to be Earth -- it might
be "seen" by one of the inhabitants. Every day the UFO captain tosses
a multi-sided coin and with a certain probability, if it turns up "go"
then the captain selects a new location to visit and takes
of. Otherwise he sits pat for another day. While in flight the UFO
travels at constant speed of the order ~1 AU/d toward the
destination. It's assumed the engine is good enough this destination
can be any object at any inclination to the orbit of the prev
location. Currently objects between the sun and 100 AU out are
possible destinations.

There are 4 chief parameters that govern the operation of the
strategy. The "p_earth" parameter determines how "targeted" Earth is
by UFO captains. When they are deciding on their next destination
(given they have decided to leave wherever) they first toss a coin
and decide with probability p_earth whether it will be Earth. If not
then the closest other object to their current location is chosen.

The probability "p_leave" governs whether on a particular day a UFO
captain decides to take off and leave their current location and go to
a new one.

The "speed" parameter is the constant speed AU/d the UFO transits
between locations.

And the parameter "p_seen" is the daily probability that a UFO
currently on earth is reported to the NUFORC.

We actually allow various simple transformations -- logs, sqrts,
powers -- to convert the number of UFO's presently determined to be on
Earth plus the "p_seen" parameter -- to take the count to the number
of reports made. It turns out the sqrt of the number of objects on
Earth is a popular choice to convert object count to report count and
possibly argues that the number of UFO's presently touring Earth for a
number of days are very much larger than the number of daily reports
might suggest.

We can run a series of these models between the limits 2006 and 2023
where good data on sightings reports are available and see whether any
set of parameters matches up beyond-chance against the known sightings
reports. It turns out a wide variety of parameter sets easily
"explains" about 1/4 of known reports and a less wide but still
generously large number of parameters sets explain around 1/3 of
known reports.

But the proof is in the viewing. As old stats professors used to say
you can't just go by a bunch of R2's or other "match" statistics. You
have to get your eyes on the data. (They used to do things like put up
a bunch of stats on an overhead slide to let the students get a feel
for some supposed dataset, then put up a slide of what the dataset
looked like -- to everyone's surprise. A line drawing of an elephant).

So I've made a little movie of what the "best" model I found to date
looks like. It's at <kym.massbus.org/UFO/MODEL10dec2023>.

The action shows the inner solar system (out to 5AU -- roughly
Jupiter) with a sample of known objects between 2006 and 2023. You can
see some of them are comets, a couple are retrograde. The plot anyway
is the projection onto the ecliptic and many objects are
high-inclination so have a funny-looking orbit.

Many objects are marked with "+"'s. These objects currently have
visiting UFO's. Fat green "+"'s mark objects "many" UFOs. I didn't
bother to put in the location of the sun (0,0) or mark Earth or any of
the major planets. You can figure that out by watching.

There is no "settling in" period before the first frame so the system
stars off with UFO's scattered all around the system (out to 100AU)
and it performs whatever transient before settling in to its routine
patterns. So maybe take the first 1/2 of the movie as "a-typical" and
the 2nd 1/2 more as what is "typically" part of the simulation.

We see long streams of objects seem to hurtle toward earth, sometimes
from many directions at once. Other times nothing much is going on.
Sometimes we see close (asteroids) exchanging objects. Or one of them
is market with a blue "+" (<10 UFO's present) and flips to a green "+"
(>10 UFO's present) or blank (0 UFO's present).

We see some ping-ponging where objects fly back and forth between
close asteroids but when another obj approaches they "divert" from
their former favourite destination to the new objects.

Surprisingly, the simulation only allows for 1000 UFO's total.
Initially an average of 10 UFO's are distrubuted between 100
asteroids (and Earth). Even this low number and their simulated
movements turns out to explain 1/3 of known UFO sightings. So maybe
there are not that many objects out there anyway. Or we are missing a lot.

The simulation seems to match up with what is seen via space telescope
as well as the sightings reports. With the TESS telescope full frame
images you can often see a line of stars that over a period of several
hours each dim slightly one after another. Sometimes these lines of
dimming cover a big chunk of the viewing area of the TESS image
(normally about 4x4 degrees of sky -- the telescope sees around 5x25
deg but that image is composed of 2x4 smaller images capture by
individual CCD's). They occur in all directions and are seen in all
TESS "sectors" (positions where TESS sets up from time to time for
extended viewing locked in one direction). The speed of these
"dimmings" is much faster than orbital speed at 5AU and suggests the
objects are mostly "close". But exactly how close is hard to
determine. But the take-away overall is from the density we see in
TESS images maybe ~1000 objects are moving around at however far at
any 1 time.

--
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
is not necessarily science.
-- Henri Poincare

Welcome to the very first official UFO hearing in American history
It's a historic day for everybody who has always wondered if we are alone in
the universe. Although there have already been multiple hearings on UFOs or
UAPs, this is the first hearing in which credible witnesses will testify
under oath in front of Congress. All representatives already offered their
initial remarks and gave all 3 witnesses the chance to make their oath
before the hearing starts. These witnesses are former Commander David Fravor,
former fighter jet operator Ryan Graves, and former Intelligence Official
David Grusch.
-- Marca.com, Wed Jul 26 10:48:24 EDT 2023

There is something there -- measurable light, multiple instruments -- and
yet it seems to move in directions inconsistent with what we know of physics
or science more broadly. And that, to me, poses questions of tremendous
interest, as well as potential national security significance.
-- Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., 2022 House Intelligence Committee hearing
on UAPs.

Schumer Warns UFO Disclosure Legislation Is About To Get Rejected
State Of The Union on MSN, 07 Dec 2023 01:40Z
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is facing opposition to the
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Disclosure Act of ...
[Suggestions it's at the behest of defense contractors].

UFOs: how astronomers are searching the sky for alien probes near Earth
Big News Network.com, 06 Dec 2023 20:25Z
There has been increased interest in unidentified flying objects UFOs ever
since the Pentagons 2021 report revealed what ...

Australia developing 'top secret' intelligence cloud computing system
ABC News, 06 Dec 2023 19:24Z
The program is expected to work with US and UK spy networks to help
national security agencies better detect threats.
[As part of the co-operation Australia will host at least one base set
up to look for "space junk". We regularly see light aircraft in SE Aus
chase "space junk" around the sky at night, weather permitting. Some
of these interactions have been spectacular].

Lawmakers face pushback on UFO disclosure effort
NewsNation, 30 Nov 2023 20:59Z
Interest in UFOs surged after whistleblower David Grusch said the
Pentagon is operating a secret UFO retrieval program that even
Congress doesn' ...
[A growing list of mainstream media is pointing out a small group of
Republicans are trying to block efforts to disclose what the US knows
about UFO's. While Hanks at The Debrief admits it isn't clear why one
group of Rep's are pushing FOR disclosure and another growing group is
trying to block the relevant Bill(s), they point out key members of
the "block" group have received large amounts of campaign funding from
aerospace companies that might be in possession of "materials". They
are also based closed to suspected USAF bases that have historically
been linked with reverse-engineering recovered machinery and
"guesting" their purported crews].

UFO transparency bill is poorly drafted : Rep. Turner
YouTube, 30 Nov 2023 14:05Z
says no one from the "pro-alien caucus" has talked to him about the pushback
... UFO disclosure amendment facing pushback | Vargas Reports.

'We're done with the cover-up': UFO claims to get their day in Congress
The Guardian, 21 July 2023
Tim Burchett, the Republican congressman from Tennessee who is co-leading
the UFO investigation, declared in early July that alien craft possess ...