From: kymhorsell@gmail.com   
      
   I did this calculation some time back.   
   But I noticed a reason to post it now. :)   
      
   I belatedly noticed a paper in prep by Avi Loeb and Pentagon UFO   
   hunter Sean Kirkpatrick that says it's "possible" an alien mothership is   
   lurking around in our solar system.   
      
   Well blow me down.   
      
   You can calculate where the mothership might be lurking by trying to   
   figure an orbit for it that might explain a lot of the UFO activity we   
   are seeing down here on planet Dirt.  And I've done that a little   
   while ago.  Make sure you're sitting down for this one because the answer   
   might spook you out.   
      
   We might assume that if "they" are here and are somehow interested in   
   us they may have setup shop somewhere in the ecliptic -- the plane of   
   the Earth's orbit. The biggest energy expenditure to go from A to B in   
   the solar system is shifting between orbital planes.  Getting to an   
   asteroid at a high inclination to the ecliptic is harder than one at   
   lower inclination. You generally need a bigger delta-v budget for us   
   mere mortals that still move anywhere by shoving a bunch of garbage   
   out the other direction as fast possible. And a bigger delta-v might still   
   cost a flying saucer pilot a gilder so even they might be interested in trying   
   to do the trip as cheap as possible.   
      
   So we might start by looking for say a circular orbit (another   
   assumption) in the plane of the ecliptic such that the distance or   
   some function of the distance between that orbit and the Earth's orbit   
   goes up and down very much in synch with UFO activity.   
      
   The big test would be -- how WELL does that explain the ups and downs   
   of UFO activity over say the last 30 years.   
      
   Here comes the punch-line. It turns out a simple orbit explains "most"   
   UFO sightings. It explains them better than the orbit of any planet in our   
   solar   
   system.  While some planets  seem to explain "some" of the month   
   to month changes in UFO numbers, they in no way explain as much as a   
   circular orbit that this one might be the one chosen by a visiting mothership.   
      
   So we can do the number crunching. It's actually a very simple program   
   that assumes the mothership orbits in a circular orbit at a constant   
   rate (i.e. eccentricity = 0), and the Earth does it's thing in its own   
   pretty much circular orbit. For each month calculate the average   
   distance between the mothership and the earth and see how much it goes   
   up and down in synch with the UFO activity reported e.g. to the   
   NUFORC.  And twiddle around adjusting the orbit until you get the best   
   possible match and that match is also statistically robust e.g. could   
   not occur by just chance more than 1 time in 100.   
      
   So the program I played with found this solution:   
      
   The mothership is very very close to us. It's orbit is around 1.1 AU   
   out from the Sun. At some times of the year it gets exceedingly close.   
   At other times of the year it's on the other side of the sun.  The   
   program finds in Jan 2000 it would have been around 60 degrees ahead   
   of us in its orbit. At that time the Earth would have been around   
   perihelion. 60 degrees ahead -- if you do some figuring with star   
   charts -- puts it 30 deg to the right of Procyon around that time.   
      
   And, as I say, the proof of this pudding is how well the orbit matches   
   up with UFO sightings -- almost 60% of them could be explained by how   
   close this hypothetical mothership would be to earth all the time   
   between Jan 2000 and now. It's often estimated that about 10% of UFO   
   reports represent "real" unusual stuff. But in this case a mothership   
   orbiting just outside the Earth's orbit would explain a whole lot more   
   and point to many more people being totally sober and of sound mind   
   when seeing things in the sky than previously thought.   
      
   For the stats heads the output from a regression that matches up the   
   hypothetical orbit 1.1 AU and 60 deg ahead of Earth in Jan 2000   
   against NUFORC reports up to March 2006 (when the methodology of collecting   
   reports  changed) looks like:   
      
   Time Series Regression   
   (AUTO CORR CORRECTION; estimated rho = 0.194666)   
   y = -14.6954*log(x) + 24.1855   
   beta in -14.6954 +- 2.55232  90% CI   
   alpha in 24.1855 +- 1.97068   
   T-test: P(beta<0) = 1.000000   
   Rank test: calculated Spearman corr = -0.715454   
   	Critical value = 0.432000 2-sided at 1%; reject H0:not_connected   
   r2 = 0.56109083   
      
   I.e. the stats suggests the mothership people find it very easy to   
   travel between there and here. The "cost" seems to be according to the   
   log of the distance between there and here, not the linear   
   distance or some higher power of the distance -- the LOGARITHM of the   
   distance. This then sounds like some fancy kind of drive they use. Which is   
   expected. Because they probably don't use chemical rockets if they came here   
   from somewhere else.   
      
   2 statistical tests find the formula is highly significant -- it could   
   not be expected to happen by luck alone. Each test says there is less   
   than 1% probability there is no connection between something in this orbit and   
   UFO reports. Together the 2 tests   
   suggest maybe only 1 chance in 1000 or maybe even 1 chance in 10,000   
   it could just be luck.   
      
   The  R2 number says 56% of month-to-month variation in UFO   
   sightings are predicted by the formula. I have seen better models for   
   predicting UFO activity -- some of them go to better than 90% -- but   
   this is by far the simplest formula. Essentially a simple calculation   
   and no other measurements will predict UFO activity out to years in the   
   future.  If the aliens don't find out we might know where they are. :)   
      
   --   
   "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.   
   Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."   
   - Marie Curie   
      
   But what is true and I'm actually being serious here, is there are, there's   
   footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what   
   they are, We can't explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not   
   have an easily explainable pattern.   
   -- Pres Barack Obama, "The Late Show", 2021   
      
   Pentagon UFO chief says alien mothership in our solar system possible   
   Military Times, 09 Mar 2023 16:02Z   
   The yet-published research paper discusses the possibility that visitors   
   from other galaxies may already be trekking across our solar system.   
      
   Congressman Says Alien UFO Tech Is Being 'Reverse Engineered' in Secret   
   Newsweek, 07 Mar 2023 17:07Z   
   Recovered UFO technology may be "being reverse-engineered right now,"   
   but we "don't understand" how it functions, according ...   
      
   Skinny cylindrical-shaped UFO flying near Baghdad is seen in six thermal images   
   Daily Mail, 07 Mar 2023 09:52Z   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)