BEFORE THE UFO STORY WENT PUBLIC, SOMEBODY WAS BUILDING ITS DATABASE


When the going gets weird, the weird build a database.

Buried inside the Pentagon's latest PURSUE release is something called Project Capella—a 2008 BAASS proposal for creating a centralized warehouse of unusual aerial-phenomena information.

Not just UFO reports.

The proposed system contemplated historical catalogs, pilot reports, radar, photographs, audio, video and civilian observations—organized, classified and assigned measures of reliability.

In other words, somebody wasn't merely collecting strange stories.

They wanted to teach the filing cabinet how to think about them.

And then it gets weirder.

Newly released BAASS material from 2010 includes computer simulations involving Tic-Tac-shaped objects moving at different speeds.

Stop right there.

That does not mean BAASS possessed a Tic Tac spacecraft. A computer simulation proves precisely what a computer simulation proves: somebody instructed a computer to simulate something.

But the date makes the question interesting.

The famous Nimitz/Tic Tac encounter occurred in 2004, while the story wouldn't explode into mainstream public consciousness until 2017.

Yet by 2010, people inside this obscure research ecosystem were apparently already modeling that geometry.

So forget little green men for a minute.

I want to know why that shape was on the computer.

What reports fed the model?

Who selected the variables?

What was Capella supposed to recognize?

Because once you build a database for the unexplained, you have already made a philosophical decision about the unexplained:

you've decided it has patterns.

And patterns create categories.

Categories create expectations.

Expectations influence what investigators notice next.

Suddenly we're no longer investigating only UFOs.

We're investigating the machine built to investigate UFOs.

That's where things get properly strange.

The flying saucer may be mysterious.

But somewhere around 2008, somebody apparently decided the mystery needed database architecture.

FMPU

WHEN THE GOING GETS WEIRD, THE WEIRD TURN PRO.

And apparently the professionals brought spreadsheets.

Comments

Most Popular All-Time

UPDATE Allison Michelle Ernst is the only one brave enough to fight for real justice in Holmes case

Information about Gary McKinnon's UFO findings

NASA - STEREO Spies First Major Activity of Solar Cycle 24

Peculiar Post of the Day re: James Holmes