# Government can't keep UFOs a secret **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 15, 2005, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462 "2005-04-15T09:36:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2005, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/41 "2005-04-21T20:06:39Z")
> [@](#): > > John Campbell had a great editorial in the early '60s called No Copying Allowed which examined what would happen if a then-current fighter showed up no 2,000 years ago but in WW I Europe. The same kind of problems. How would anyone back then know that a microprocessor driving the electronics was anything but a hunk of silicon. They didn’t even have the optics to see the wires, let alone understand how silicon probably chemically identical to their level of testing would do anything. They might be able to figure out that the plane was unstable - but they couldn’t figure out how a computer could keep it up. > > The only thing finding a UFO would tell us is that interstellar travel is practical. If it showed that FTL travel was possible, it would revolutionize physics as people tried to figure out how. But getting any hints from the hardware is unlikely. Harry Turtledove actually takes this idea for his “Worldwar” series, where aliens show up with what is essentially circa 2000 AD technology (they’re \*very[./i] conservative, so even though they have interstellar ships, their weapons technology isn’t more advanced than it needs to be) in a WWII world. Human scientists _know_ that these bits of silicon are doing the same things as their vacuum tubes, but they can’t figure out _how_. But the mere existence of such things gives them enough information to keep plugging. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/42 "2005-04-21T20:41:22Z")
There is a lot of difference between keeping the goal of the Manhattan Project secret for a few years and keeping secret since 1945, or whenever it was, the existance of alien beings flying around or the secret of super-duper US flying machines. In the former case the likelyhood of the beans not being spilled is vanishingly small and in the second case such machines would have been under develpment for 60 years with no operational machines as output. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2005, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/43 "2005-04-21T21:38:06Z")
Keeping a secret is inversely proportional to the amount of people keeping that secret. Do I think the government can keep a secret? Depends on what you define as “the government”. Do I think 4 government officials can keep a secret among themselves? Sure. Do I think dozens and dozens of military officials, armed guards, and politicians can keep a secret for over 45 years just because they are sworn to secrecy and threatened with their lives? Hell no. It’s just way too easy for someone to leak anonamously or leave some info for others to find when they pass. People seem to forget the “the govenment” is made up of actual U.S. citizens. Not a bunch of mystery men who are out to get the public and hide secret stuff from them. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2005, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/44 "2005-04-22T13:25:09Z")
> [@Astroboy14](#): > > Not meaning to impugn your skills in any way, but I have to disagree. > > I think it likely that any alien artifacts we managed to get our grubby little hands on would be far more than a hundred years or so ahead of our technology. More likely, they’d be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ahead of us… give a TV to the best Neanderthal engineer ever, and I doubt he’d be able to reverse engineer _anything_ out of it. > > Assuming we have a crashed alien saucer, I think it’s more likely that the scientists are looking at it and saying, “Is THAT thing there the FTL drive? I dunno. Maybe it’s that roundish glowing thingy there…” You’re forgetting something. _All_ technology is rapidly developing it’s own version of Moore’s Law. The rate of change varies between technologies, and the amount of resources being devoted to the improvements, but we’re rapidly doubling our knowledge on _everything_, so FTL may not be a million years out, it may only be a thousand or less. Since we’ve got no idea of what form an FTL drive might take, it’s difficult to make an accurate guess as to how long it would take for us to puzzle it out. _However_, just knowing that it _can_ be done would be a big boost for us. Additionally, the laws of physics, as far as we know, work the same everywhere. So we’d be able to puzzle out a great deal about the technology, even with our limited knowledge. Once we’ve got that mastered, will be able to sort out the rest of it eventually. The first thing we’d do, I’d wager, is puzzle out their computer technology. Because their systems would no doubt be faster and more powerful than anything we’ve got. Once we had that cracked, and were able to program it with a language we understand, then we could work out the rest of their technology in no time. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2005, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/45 "2005-04-22T14:59:04Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Here’s what I don’t get. > > Exactly what BENEFIT does the Military-Industrial complex gain by keeping the existance of alien space craft secret? > > If they could reverse-engineer the technology, then it might make sense, so we could use our saucer-tech to kick the Russkis in the shorts without their knowledge. But if we could do that, then why haven’t we, or why didn’t we, do that? Where’s the saucer-tech? What makes you think the military-industrial complex is concerned with **winning** wars? ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2005, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462/46 "2005-04-22T15:25:51Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > What makes you think the military-industrial complex is concerned with **winning** wars? The more nations you have under your thumb, the greater the number of slaves you have. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/government-cant-keep-ufos-a-secret/299462.md?page=2)