Reverse Engineering - The Litmus Test

I've read many threads pertaining to fantastic claims of government conspiracies, downed UFO's reverse-engineered and super black project craft produced from the wreckage of crashes. Although fascinating, I must constantly ground myself when I feel my toes lift off the ground in awe.

I propose a simple litmus test of logic. Think for a minute that you are a caveman - 20,000 some odd years ago and by the grace of luck you find a pocket watch left by a human time traveller while out foraging for roots. What would you do with it? You can't eat it, you can't use it for hunting, even if the battery worked you wouldn't be able to determine what it meant considering language and writing much less mathmatics would not be invented/discovered for thousands more years... It would be a worthless hunk of plastic/metal with a dead powersource. How would you make it work? Or even know what it does?

Fast forward 20,000 years. You are a well educated scientist working in a top secret laboratory and the military has just hawled in a downed UFO saucer. The race whom this belongs to has been exploring the Galaxy for 20,000 years and possesses technology we haven't even dreamed about yet. How would you make it work? Or even know what it does?

I think we may be giving ourselves a little too much credit. Theory is one thing, but practical application is another. I'd love to believe it's possible... that there are triangles out there with technologies that will eventually change the course of human existence as we know it... but I'm just having a hard time convincing my brain.

well if theyre as advanced as you say i dont think its likely they would even be able to crash one of their ships.

Any piece of advanced technology would be put on a pedistal. Even if we could not work it human nature would make us share it's existance. Some might even worship it. There is no object like that on earth. If there is, I want to see it.

True that we would not know how it works, but...

We are no longer cavemen, and "if" we did come across a spacecraft that was crashed you would find it's guts spewed out. The inners so to speak, that would show us how it was made and by what. We may not know what it does or how it works but by trying to tackle what it is, we would go in new directions of technology.

It would be a mystery and humans love a good who done it. or in this case how it's done.

reply to post by blackbox

The race whom this belongs to has been exploring the Galaxy for 20,000 years and possesses technology we haven't even dreamed about yet. How would you make it work? Or even know what it does?

I like your logic blackbox. Gave you a star.

It always amazes me how people seem to believe our government is in possession or that mankind is on the brink of technology like time travel, FTL travel, or even sub-luminal galactic exploration! I don't think people realize just how hard even sending a crew to Mars is.

reply to post by SLAYER69


I agree with you slayer, an example to go along with what you suggest would be how military technology is copied by rival countries if enemy technology is obtained I.E. a downed plane which is then reversed engineered into something similar to that of the original.

Originally posted by Scramjet76
reply to post by blackbox

 

I like your logic blackbox. Gave you a star.

Much appreciated.

Originally posted by prionace glauca
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

I agree with you slayer, an example to go along with what you suggest would be how military technology is copied by rival countries if enemy technology is obtained I.E. a downed plane which is then reversed engineered into something similar to that of the original.

But those technologies are based off the same laws of physics, same basic alloys and materials, same avionics etc. We're talking about technology from an entirely different planet that's 20,000 years our superior, not 15-20 years. Big difference I think...

I agree that we as a race would have problems reverse engineering something so advanced. But by the same token, we are just supposed to accept that some guy came up with the idea to send data accross a strand of glass. (fiber optic cable) We have some pretty smart people here but cna you imagine the board room when this guy bust in and claims "we are going to just turn a light on and off a bunch of times and it will work!!" Iam sure there was a bit of laughter in that room. The thing is that respectable people are seeng some pretty amazing things in the sky. The giant rectangle UFO reported at the Phoenix lights and Stephensville is one that sticks in my mind. It is either Other than Earth origin, or ours and secret. So if it's ours, we have developed a way to fly a giant brick at 45Mph silently. We must have used fiber optic cable for that.

Also keep in mind that we are smarter than you might realize. (Nicola Tesla comes to mind.) Plus, we've had about 50 years to study this so called downed UFO.

www.informantnews.com...

Here's the problem with your scenario. A caveman does not recognize purpose. He would see a shiny object that may or may not tick. Smash it on a bulls skull to stun the bull? Heck yes!

Modern humans, at least for weaponry and propulsion, understand purpose. Maybe not everything there could be in a downed UFO (I'm actually a skeptic), but some things.

Even if mathematics was not a science developed by these space-farers (Stephen Wolfram has proposed the concept of describing physics by less abstract methods- simple circuitry. This could be more intuitive to a radically different intelligent species.), these travelers' machines could be described by mathematics, at least in part. We most definitely could reverse engineer things. We have simple diagnostic tools nowadays that cavemen didn't have; the electrical multimeter and diffusion/concentration/density/etc. NON-DESTRUCTIVE imaging used by biomedical engineers (me!) are extremely powerful tools for all sorts of systems. Cavemen had eyes and ears to investigate with. We have gadgets that test for all sorts of matter, energy, and change.

I say that man could reverse-engineer most objects in a UFO. Not all of them, though... especially those that may pertain to spiritual power or alien biology (unless we had a dead one... or on the darker side... a living one).

reply to post by blackbox

But those technologies are based off the same laws of physics, same basic alloys and materials, same avionics etc. We're talking about technology from an entirely different planet that's 20,000 years our superior, not 15-20 years. Big difference I think...

You have to be more open to the idea of technology being reversed and not necessarily the material. If certain material is unattainable at the current time like exotic metals and such, there will be a time when they will become available. But the propulsion tech, guidance tech, and other usable tech that maybe applied to materials at hand to produce the same affect is still possible. Scientists have also been able to produce a type of metal that is able to retain its shape even after being twisted and bent in different direction, but the metal returns to its original shape after an electrical charge.

Time is the only variable that limits humans from advancing as our minds build on previous experiments and knowledge to open up to new horizons in the field of science and technology. If alien tech is presented to us, through the use of current materials some of its technology can be applied.

The analogy is flawed, because the caveman had not seen a watch function before, and is unfamiliar with the concept of keeping time. Whereas modern man is aware of flying saucers, knows that they fly, so what they're supposed to do, and has knowledge of the concept of flight.

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Now, if you were to say, the caveman saw a time traveller fire a rifle at his buddy, clubbed the traveller over the head, and broke the gun...would he be able to fix it, and make a working gun?

This would be more akin to our dilemmna... He's seen it function, knows what it should do, and has the broken pieces. He's familiar with it being kind of like a bow, so he's familiar with the concept of a projectile weapon. Could he fix it? What do you think? How long would it take?

Chances are, he wouldn't have a clue how to make the metal, or the composition of gunpowder, so he'd really have an uphill battle. This is likely why we haven't done much even if we did have a recovery in 1947. Even knowing the concepts isn't as helpful as one might think.....

But, he may learn things from it that he adapts, such as making a crossbow, etc.

i think the alien crafts and artifacts are too advanced to be reverse-engineered. i've read this comparison somewhere that made sense to me.. we can see a bird and reverse engineer it into a 747. but we can't come close to making a living bird. the aliens make living birds / ETV's.. via advanced dna manipulation (i think) some of our technologies probably came from the ETV's, like fiber optics, LEDs, and cpu's. yes you can see the evolution of these technologies if you trace them back, but i think the roots of the ideas came from ETVs, just like we have flight from watching birds. i think the data for us to make our own ETV's is all around us.. in the form of insects and plants. we just haven't yet learned how to arrange the data. or we have but it's a secret.

imagine having an ant or a fly vehicle that you can enter and it takes you anywhere you want to go just by thinking of where you want to go? it would read your mind and learn, similar to how your dog knows what your thinking and obeys commands and reacts to you.. but we would control the level of intelligents the vehicles have. i read that the lighting system that firefly's use is 90% towards generating light and 10% goes into heat.. where our light bulbs are 10% light and 90% heat. it would be interesting to make a living light bulb by utilizing the firefly's technology. basically, all our technology is dead.. and we want living technology such as that the ET's have. no living technology can be reversed engineered, it's all grown, even the motherships. just my speculation, i've never seen a ETV up close.

Originally posted by Gazrok
The analogy is flawed, because the caveman had not seen a watch function before, and is unfamiliar with the concept of keeping time. Whereas modern man is aware of flying saucers, knows that they fly, so what they're supposed to do, and has knowledge of the concept of flight.

You're comparing apples and oranges.

Now, if you were to say, the caveman saw a time traveller fire a rifle at his buddy, clubbed the traveller over the head, and broke the gun...would he be able to fix it, and make a working gun?

This would be more akin to our dilemmna... He's seen it function, knows what it should do, and has the broken pieces. He's familiar with it being kind of like a bow, so he's familiar with the concept of a projectile weapon. Could he fix it? What do you think? How long would it take?

Chances are, he wouldn't have a clue how to make the metal, or the composition of gunpowder, so he'd really have an uphill battle. This is likely why we haven't done much even if we did have a recovery in 1947. Even knowing the concepts isn't as helpful as one might think.....

But, he may learn things from it that he adapts, such as making a crossbow, etc.

You have some interesting points, no doubt, but with all due respect - your analogy (by your own logic) is flawed as well. Cavemen had no knowledge of the complexities of the bow and arrow. My point, for this discussion, was simply to introduce a foreign object into a timeframe which had no basis of comparison.

Certainly Cavemen were aware of the rising and setting of the sun - so on some level they were aware of the concept of time. A watch is an instument used to measure time, yet they would have no idea how to recreate it or use it. The same comparison could be made for a modern airplane versus an advanced space vessel. It's still apples to oranges and that serves to strengthen my point. There is nothing we have to base a comparison on when it comes to downed UFO's. Hence logic tells me, we could not reverse engineer it.

Unless (and I'm just throwing this one out there) the technology found inside of a UFO was similar or comparable to our own.

Cavemen had no knowledge of the complexities of the bow and arrow.

???

Are you kidding me? Use of the bow has gone on for about 40,000 years!

inventors.about.com...

Originally posted by Gazrok

Cavemen had no knowledge of the complexities of the bow and arrow.

???

Are you kidding me? Use of the bow has gone on for about 40,000 years!

inventors.about.com...

No, I'm not kidding. Seems we both found different sources.

www.cyberdarts.com...