I find this Above the Law article to be a rational take on the parts of this that actually seem compelling.
Pretty much, in so far as any of this has legs, it’s the boring, normal legal proceedings that are the most interesting thing here. Yes there have been “whistleblowers” in the past, but only in the prosaic sense. This is the first time someone is using the actual whistleblower protections and procedures to come forward with stuff through entirely official channels.
The leap from 1950′s transistors and semi conductors to what...early 90′s?
I’m not familiar enough with material science or any of that to make an intelligent call but does it seem like a logical progression or on inspection does it actually raise questions about recovered UFO technology?
At the very least I feel like experts in those fields either have or could point out that something seems fishy or they could convincgly dismiss the assertion.
Semiconductor chips don’t carry the secrets of their manufacture. Let’s say a modern chip fell into 1958. They had electron microscopes, so they could see there were tiny structures there. And they had analytical chemistry for macroscopic samples, so they’d be able to tell the chip was almost pure silicon, with small admixtures of the sort of impurities that form transistors. But they didn’t have ion milling and scanning microprobes, so they wouldn’t be able to tell how the impurities were arranged into devices. And they certainly wouldn’t know how to reproduce the highly developed engineering that manufactures these chips nowadays.
So the best they could do would be to start the development of ever-smaller semiconductors, knowing that someday they would be very impressive. And until then, they would do good stuff along the way. Which is pretty much what happened in real life.
Epistemic status: I designed chips from 1982 to 1994. I never saw an alien spaceship.
I’m not familiar enough with material science or any of that to make an intelligent call but does it seem like a logical progression or on inspection does it actually raise questions about recovered UFO technology?
I’ve studied this history moderately closely; I would describe it as a logical progression, and not like a jump from acquiring alien technology.
I find this Above the Law article to be a rational take on the parts of this that actually seem compelling.
Pretty much, in so far as any of this has legs, it’s the boring, normal legal proceedings that are the most interesting thing here. Yes there have been “whistleblowers” in the past, but only in the prosaic sense. This is the first time someone is using the actual whistleblower protections and procedures to come forward with stuff through entirely official channels.
To broaden things a bit discussionwise.
The leap from 1950′s transistors and semi conductors to what...early 90′s?
I’m not familiar enough with material science or any of that to make an intelligent call but does it seem like a logical progression or on inspection does it actually raise questions about recovered UFO technology?
At the very least I feel like experts in those fields either have or could point out that something seems fishy or they could convincgly dismiss the assertion.
Semiconductor chips don’t carry the secrets of their manufacture. Let’s say a modern chip fell into 1958. They had electron microscopes, so they could see there were tiny structures there. And they had analytical chemistry for macroscopic samples, so they’d be able to tell the chip was almost pure silicon, with small admixtures of the sort of impurities that form transistors. But they didn’t have ion milling and scanning microprobes, so they wouldn’t be able to tell how the impurities were arranged into devices. And they certainly wouldn’t know how to reproduce the highly developed engineering that manufactures these chips nowadays.
So the best they could do would be to start the development of ever-smaller semiconductors, knowing that someday they would be very impressive. And until then, they would do good stuff along the way. Which is pretty much what happened in real life.
Epistemic status: I designed chips from 1982 to 1994. I never saw an alien spaceship.
I’ve studied this history moderately closely; I would describe it as a logical progression, and not like a jump from acquiring alien technology.