Stunning New Video - Alien Reverse Engineered Vehicles (the Fluxliner!) and ZPE

Bedlam

mbkennel
(1945 was not quite randomly making diodes, maybe late 1800's).

The Rad Lab history is pretty specific - they made a lot of them but only a few would work and you had to hand pick to get the one or two per batch that were useful for radar work, then they wouldn't necessarily STAY useful. It was a problem with materials engineering. To me that's random.

I think we're discussing different things. You're thinking "reliable assembly-line commercial product" and I'm thinking "general physical principles suspected to be important in certain systems". In the sense of 1944 finding a future chip and recognizing semiconductor junctions, yes, they would be at the stage of being able to think of the concept unlike 1744.

That's because the last 350 years has had an extraordinary rate of change, and this is slowing significantly now that fundamental understanding of chemistry & physics on ordinary space and energy scales has been successfully accomplished.

But who says our little space buddies use a technology we'd even understand? You could easily be in the same boat as Newton trying to discover what's going on in a microprocessor.


Because one assumes space buddies still use the same laws of physics. Newton was the boot-loader of those 350 years. That change from near total ignorance to now will never happen again.

If you gave someone a current technology IC in 1945, perhaps a handful of Intel Atom devices, even if they understood point contact diodes, I am sure you would not know what it was for out of context. Even in context, I'm pretty certain they didn't have instrumentation that could give you a picture of what was going on in the circuit outside the chip, much less inside. It might give you a hint that certain things could be done, but how it was doing so is not something that would be immediately obvious.

Yes. A national level effort would reveal semiconductor traces and hints of computational circuits, and then people would be highly motivated to make the same, which they would at a much much cruder line width after 10 years. They wouldn't be able to program the CPU of course. But they would invent a semiconductor-based digital circuit.

I think the most accurate scene in recent sci-fi was that one from Independence Day where Brent Spiner is asked what they learned in the last 40 years about the flying saucer and he replies something like "Not much - we learned how to turn some systems on and off but we don't understand the basic operating principles".

edit on 7-3-2014 by Bedlam because: (no reason given)

I don't think it would be like that for something physics based. They might not understand the manufacturing techniques.

I do have a caveat however. If there is something that is very heavily biologically based, that could be a serious mystery for a long time.

mbkennel

I think we're discussing different things. You're thinking "reliable assembly-line commercial product" and I'm thinking "general physical principles suspected to be important in certain systems". In the sense of 1944 finding a future chip and recognizing semiconductor junctions, yes, they would be at the stage of being able to think of the concept unlike 1744.

But knowing "how to make one" is indelibly intertwined with "what does one look like" IMHO. If you're in the "hit or miss" stage of how to fabricate one, where you don't know how to get the materials or put them together in some way that's functional, how will simply knowing that one can exist help you to spot that that's what you've got in your hand? Especially when what you've currently got looks nothing like the way you're doing it.

And worse, if you look at what I can go pick up at Best Buy, an Intel CPU has transistors that can't be seen with a light microscope by a factor of about 5, and the interconnections can't be seen by a factor of about 10. By "seen" I mean it's at the limits of resolution at all, not that you can get a really good view of it. So the semiconductor junctions are smaller than could have been seen, much less analyzed in some way. And in about 5 years, it's going to be a lot worse - the standard high performance feature size is dropping to 5nm from 22. We're talking features one or two atoms wide. Could a 1945 lab say "Wow, that's a transistor!" when the gate is maybe 30nm long? And the channel length maybe twice that? How's that going to work when the channel's 10 atoms wide and 30 long, and you've got 10 dopant atoms? I don't think you would be able to identify individual components much less know what principle was being used, using 1945 tech. Since it's 3D and not that thin, a transmission electron microscope sample would be nearly impossible (maybe all the way impossible, I'd have to do a lot of envelope scratching I'm too lazy to do at this time of the morning) to prepare without obliterating the bits you want to see.

If you wait around until 1965 or so, you would have a SEM you could buy that would show you the details, I guess if you were the CIA you might have gotten Cambridge to knock you a prototype together in 1947 or so, but would you have guessed that the detail-less mishmash you were seeing in the light microscope would resolve to a wonderland of little fins and layers of material invisible still to the SEM? The oxide layers aren't visible to even 1960's SEMs, and the channel depth isn't much better. But at least you could see that there were still more structures down there, I suppose, even if you couldn't really tell WHAT in 1960, looking at 2013 parts.

Once we get to 5nm logic in the next few years, it's going to make that a worse scenario...you couldn't see a 5nm feature size transistor in a 1960's SEM at all.

Because one assumes space buddies still use the same laws of physics. Newton was the boot-loader of those 350 years. That change from near total ignorance to now will never happen again.

As Robert Duvall once said, "That's bold talk for a one-eyed fat man". What if the LSBs use something unexpected - maybe switching nodes that depend on some creepy quantum interference crap? Quantum dot logic is de rigueur in the secret squirrel labs right now, but what if you could take that a step farther and use, I dunno, state collapse switching in some QDL analog? Not trying to be rigorous here. Just that LSB tech could look like a mysterious dog's breakfast of something you couldn't properly instrument that wasn't obvious to the glance.

Yes. A national level effort would reveal semiconductor traces and hints of computational circuits, and then people would be highly motivated to make the same, which they would at a much much cruder line width after 10 years. They wouldn't be able to program the CPU of course. But they would invent a semiconductor-based digital circuit.

You might be able to dissolve the thing and spot that there was arsenic, boron and the like in there, maybe you'd infer it was a semiconductor and those were dopants, but I'm not sure you could directly *know* that it was, seeing that at the time, you couldn't really see down to the size of the junctions used.

If this happened the only thing that could be done would be done by inches. Understand one part at at time. The biggest question is how they acquired the original equipment? Imagine recovering a crashed object. Not only do you not have an operational device you don't know what went wrong.
Some portions could be very easy to understand. Just because you understand how to drive a car it doesn't mean you can design the steering. The exploration of the craft could lead to destroying part of it. Operational details that a "trained user" would never do aren't known so accidents can happen. Eventually you get to the unobtainium parts. That where the true magic happens. Well from our standpoint much of this would be magic.
This could be last ace in hole backup. If this is military there would have to be some type of weapon installed. Making it work is great but without a weapon it's just a toy.

Here's another way to visualize how impossible it is to reverse-engineer a 'crashed' alien device.

Imagine trying to reverse engineer a bagel.

You have milk, eggs and flour. But to an alien, how do you recreate it if you don't know where to get milk, where to get eggs? First you have to 'engineer' a cow, and a chicken, then you can make the bagel.

Imagine trying to 'reverse engineer' a housefly. You need to make something that small which can find food, and also lay eggs to reproduce. You can't reverse-engineer biology.

Not saying it's utterly impossible but in general, without extensive help from alien engineers, even with a blueprint, no way.

Bedlam
Everything cranky invokes Tesla at some point. It's sort of a conspiracy theory Godwin's Law.

I Love it...... we will call it Bedlam's Law. Even sounds cool.

One of the reasons they weren't initially that worried about a stealth aircraft crashing and being recovered is that the method of applying the materials and the coating was kept secret and they thought would not be readily reproducible.

At any rate, any non-terrestrial craft that comes here will be nano-tech not full-scale.

The funny thing is, while everyone is looking at it as a gravity problem or what is possibly an electro-gravitic problem what if the solution to a currently unknown propulsion is simply electro-magnetic. (Besides magnetism is stronger than gravity anyways.) Say somebody comes up with a method that acts like a "force diode". The "force diode" would be something like an arrangement of field effecting materials that allows an electromagnet to pull on something, but without the opposing reaction force where the magnet itself is also pulling towards that something. Do that where the net force of the interaction is uni-directional, and you'll have a novel form of propellantless propulsor. Might not be "anti-gravity", but if it gets you from ground to space with a consistently strong thrust and only an electrical input, it would be just as useful.

If we happened upon an alien tech that worked like that, it might be possible to find the mechanism even if not having the same means to reproduce it. (Or it might be reproducable, but not very effectively.) Such a tech would be something to keep on the shelf and look at later when new processes and materials are available which could do the job. Say something requires a 3D nano-film matrix where the materials have to repeat in a consistent pattern over a large surface. Might not have been able to make that two decades ago, but with things like mass produced OLED screens and whatnot these days, a current process might be able to create a meta-material with the right characteristics found in the original alien doo-dad.

Lol. Some of you people.

Making crude analogies about speculated alien crafts and the implicated reverse engineering and bagels.

Oh, humans. We really an egotistical bunch, aren't we?

Can you prove that this concept is possible/impossible with empirical evidence? If so please step up. While you're at it, enlighten us with the truth about the theory of everything.

If not, get off your high-horse and stop insulting people that disagree with you? Also to the ATS mods, why are you deleting comments of a poster defending themself yet allowing comments regarding personal attacks? I'm sure you'll delete this so PM me, I'm curious because it always happens in these threads.

To think that any one human being can fully fathom the possibility of whether or not it's possible to reverse engineer an alien craft (assuming aliens are real, assuming they've came here) in two-three paragraphs which mostly are full of refutations of other posters two paragraphs with grandiloquent gestures and position of authority logical fallacies.

I think it's time to take a break from ATS for a bit.

Bedlam

If you wait around until 1965 or so, you would have a SEM you could buy that would show you the details, I guess if you were the CIA you might have gotten Cambridge to knock you a prototype together in 1947 or so, but would you have guessed that the detail-less mishmash you were seeing in the light microscope would resolve to a wonderland of little fins and layers of material invisible still to the SEM? The oxide layers aren't visible to even 1960's SEMs, and the channel depth isn't much better. But at least you could see that there were still more structures down there, I suppose, even if you couldn't really tell WHAT in 1960, looking at 2013 parts.

Yes, that's right. They couldn't actually figure out how that actual chip worked in detail. But they would think "hey we should develop digital circuitry on silicon".

Because one assumes space buddies still use the same laws of physics. Newton was the boot-loader of those 350 years. That change from near total ignorance to now will never happen again.

As Robert Duvall once said, "That's bold talk for a one-eyed fat man". What if the LSBs use something unexpected - maybe switching nodes that depend on some creepy quantum interference crap?

The point is that quantum mechanics is known to extreme precision, and nobody's seen a hint of anything 'underneath' it.

Quantum dot logic is de rigueur in the secret squirrel labs right now, but what if you could take that a step farther and use, I dunno, state collapse switching in some QDL analog? Not trying to be rigorous here. Just that LSB tech could look like a mysterious dog's breakfast of something you couldn't properly instrument that wasn't obvious to the glance.

A reverse-engineering of ET or future technology would go well beyond "obvious at first glance". It would include tremendous indigenous experimentation on what might be possibly suggested by what they saw, and useful on its own right.

And yes, any super advanced artifact it would be assumed that quantum mechanics could matter to its operation.

Yes. A national level effort would reveal semiconductor traces and hints of computational circuits, and then people would be highly motivated to make the same, which they would at a much much cruder line width after 10 years. They wouldn't be able to program the CPU of course. But they would invent a semiconductor-based digital circuit.

You might be able to dissolve the thing and spot that there was arsenic, boron and the like in there, maybe you'd infer it was a semiconductor and those were dopants, but I'm not sure you could directly *know* that it was, seeing that at the time, you couldn't really see down to the size of the junctions used.

Of course they wouldn't know for sure but they would try. Remember---national level science and engineering effort. They would make hundreds of experiments out of those elements and use all the existing knowledge to see if any of them did something interesting.

And even without seeing down to the junctions, they would see obvious tremendous engineered segmentation of computational and memory elements and if they saw more and more detail down to the level of their best microscope, they would assume that there was even more detail below there and would put a national level effort to invent better metrology and technology. Sure it would take a decade.

Not your kind of productized timescales of course.

I dont think we have reversed engineered anything that can fly yet, but I think we picked up some tech. from them. Look at the rapid increase in tech we have. Its probably just a matter of time before we create something that turns out to be the key which will leed to "blue prints". IMHO.

reply to post by mbkennel


Most of the "high technology" that began to appear in the 20th century was the result of immense national efforts. These efforts were not directed at disassembling crashed flying saucers, but at creating ever more efficient "weapons of mass destruction." It's sad but it's true.

reply to post by signalfire



Now all we need.is.some enterprising entreprenaur who is rich to actually try and build it, I know if I had disposable income then I would definately give it a go...

Double post, sorry..

Completely offtopic, just watching the space week on channel 4 in the uk, they are doing a live space week.on the iss and then culminating with a live revolution of the earth filmed.from the iss on Sunday, it is f***ing amazing! Makes you ffeel.so insignificant and small seeing the images on there, tonight they are spending tome getting to know the curent astronaughts up there. If you have acces to channel four.plus one switch it on now.

You gotta love Bedlam's posts...

Such wit and banter.... of course it's like trying to catch falling swords attempting to grok his hints and nudges, but if it was easy how much fun would it be?

Why does it always have to be reverse engineering? Humans are pretty stinking inventive on their own, especially when we're trying to find better ways to kill other humans! Some choose to see this as a negative or a positive, to me this just IS. It's like asking why ants follow their queen... does it actually matter? It's how things work in their world, and in our world millions of years of evolution have programmed us to do our best work in the pursuit of killing other people and taking their sh**! Love it or hate it that's how it is, and how it'll stay for as long as we're what I'd consider human.

Now one gripe I have is the poster that keeps insisting we couldn't reverse engineer this or that because we don't know HOW they manufactured the various ingredients... I take it you've never heard the saying there's more than one way to skin a cat? Or eaten vegan thanksgiving? The reality is reverse engineering is hard, but you're so off base it's ridiculous on your assertion of that being why it's hard. As far as reverse engineering a "bagel" .... earth bound food companies do you one better every damn day!

Ever had a generic cola? Do ya think coke or pepsi gave them a peep at their recipe?

Yeah I don't think so either.

reply to post by roguetechie


Oh sure, another way to skin a cat will certainly help with sonething like say an antigravity field, or inertial damping field. There's no need to know the nuts and bolts.

Maverick7
It's utter nonsense.

You can't reverse engineer alien vehicles. You must have the methods they used to produce the equipment and technology. Without it you have nothing.

Right, cuz when any new technology comes out, other people don't reverse engineer them?

Would you need to see an Axe more than once to build one of your own?

You can derive the methods they used to produce their equipment by examining the equipment. Same can be said for the technology. If you brought a 42" LCD LED TV back to 1940's, they'd have their own versions of them in just a matter of years, even though the technology would be "Alien" in nature. Don't underestimate the human capacity for learning and invention, especially from example.

Does this mean the vehicle they reverse engineered functions in the same manner, with the same efficiency as the real vehicle? No, absolutely not... It certainly doesn't mean we couldn't have learned how in theory something works, or even obtained new knowledge from the study of such an object that we applied in our own way to achieve the same end goal....

How do you think technology is invented? We observe something similar in the universe, derive theories from the observations and use those theories to create new applications.

ALL invention is REVERSE engineered, you think someone created the wheel without seeing something similar, like a coconut, in nature first?

reply to post by Laykilla


But it's still a television. They will know what they are if you take one back. If you saw an antigravity field and had no idea how it works you wouldn't be able to recreate it.

Zaphod58
reply to post by Laykilla

 

But it's still a television. They will know what they are if you take one back. If you saw an antigravity field and had no idea how it works you wouldn't be able to recreate it.

Television didn't exist in any tangible capacity until the late 1940's. A 1940's TV and a 2014 TV share ZERO in common other than they use electricity to operate.

It wasn't until 1972, that the first active-matrix liquid-crystal display panel was produced.

It wasn't until 1996 that they were viable and actually better than Tube televisions.

It wasn't until 2007 that LCD's surpassed Cathode Ray Tube's in world wide sales.

And in 2010, Active Matrix TFT LCD's were finally obsolete by OLED Displays.

Again, a total switch in technology. An OLED TV has very, very, very little in common with an active matrix TFT liquid crystal display.

So if we took an OLED tv back into the 40's, we would have essentially skipped the LCD era, and would have had 4k displays in the 90's instead of almost 2015.

To say an OLED TV is just a television shows your ignorance on the subject.

LCD's produce no light on their own, that's why they are all BACKLIT. OLED's every pixel is it's own light source.

Why do you think we have smart phones now and we didn't in the 90's? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought OLED was just a television. Lets not forget that the LED wasn't even invented until 1962.

If you pulled out your Iphone 5 in 1940 I'd venture to say not a single person would know what it was. Not one. Smart scientists would turn it on, figure what it did, take it apart, learn how it works, and start attempting to build their own prototypes as early as 1950.

Sure the prototypes they create wouldn't even be close to the reality of what an Iphone could produce, but if you don't think that would have sped up our technological advancement by decades, you're sorely mistaken.

Lets address the Antigravity section for a second... There are indeed WORKING theories on how antigravity works, it's not like we have no idea what antigravity is.



We can lift things off the ground without tethers, without support, just with magnetic fields. The working theory on antigravity requires the use of gravitomagnetic fields. Not something we are unfamiliar about -- we don't have a way to power it and keep it efficient and mobile, something you could very easily learn from checking out the powersource of a UFO.

Which I would imagine are cold fusion powered, something we understand in principle but have been yet to achieve. You better bet your bottom dollar that if someone brought a working cold fusion reactor to a scientist who is currently trying to work out cold fusion, that he'd figure it out in less time than it would take you to teach your kid how to cook.

Essentially what you're saying is the LED is just another light bulb, but the light bulb was invented in 1878, it took until 1962 to make an LED. If you think Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison couldn't figure out how an LED worked by looking at it, I feel sorry for you.

Mind you, the technology to create an LED didn't exist in the 1800's. Yet, had you have brought one to the inventors of the lightbulb, I bet the technology to create one would have existed way before it actually did, despite their lightbulbs not working anything like an LED.

That's like saying Ning Li [a real proper X-File in her own right] owner of AC Gravity would be clueless looking at an antigravity generator. That's her field of science... she'd figure it out, and if she didn't, she'd learn from it regardless.

Zaphod58
reply to post by roguetechie

 

Oh sure, another way to skin a cat will certainly help with sonething like say an antigravity field, or inertial damping field. There's no need to know the nuts and bolts.

The simple fact that YOU are tossing out concepts such as antigravity fields and inertial dampening fields is further proof that the professionals working on these concepts aren't as Neanderthal as you imagine they are.

This isn't like going back to 1480 A.D. and wrecking face hand held tazers and stun guns. It's not like we'd stand there scratching our heads going "What is that, I have no Idea or concept, it must be magic!!!"

These are all concepts we are well aware of, familiar with, and currently trying to produce ourselves.

It's a puzzle that we are looking for the solution for. We are aware of the puzzle, therefor, if the solution was presented, we'd understand how it worked.

It's not like we aren't even aware of the puzzle, and someone is handing us the solution, and we're staring at it like "I don't get it, what's this for?"

Another analogy,

We see the lock, we need the key, if someone gave us the key, we'd open the lock.

It's not like;

We are handed the key, and have no idea what the key is, or what it's supposed to be used for, so we just stare at it stupendously.

We are not cavemen.

reply to post by Laykilla


Hell by that logic if we get our hands on an interstellar craft it should take five years before we are all across the universe.