Exploring Area 51: The Real Stories of 5 Men Who Know

[junglebeast]

But it's the path at 90 degrees to that where visibility deteriorates with increasing speeds at any given distance.

That's completely irrelevant to the discussion...which is that some people doubt the realism of this claim:

Commercial pilots cruising over Nevada at dusk would look up and see the bottom of OXCART whiz by at 2,000-plus mph. The aircraft's tita-nium body, moving as fast as a bullet, would reflect the sun's rays in a way that could make anyone think, UFO.

And the only thing necessary to prove for this claim to be realistic is that an object moving overhead starting from a great distance would be visible..which is exactly the situation in which it would be visible.

The brain samples the visual field at some limited fps, yes, so anything crossing your field of vision faster than that is invisible.

That's false.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

When an image strikes the retina the nerve impulses last approximately
1/25 sec. This is why motion pictures appear to move continuously, even
though the number of frames/sec. is not extremely fast. This is also why a
TV screen does not flicker. If you have seen some "old time movies" from the
20's and 30's they appear "jerky" because at the time the technology did not
allow for frames to appear quickly enough to "fool" the eye, and the eye was
able to resolve successive frames.

http://www.Newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/gen01/gen01025.htm

 

[zoobyshoe]

That's completely irrelevant to the discussion...

It's completely relevant to your quetion: why do I think a fast moving object would be difficult to see. That is all it was intended to address.

I already made a convincing case for the OXCART being visible.

That's false.

Well, don't just sit there. Substantiate your counter claim.

 

[junglebeast]

The brain samples the visual field at some limited fps, yes, so anything crossing your field of vision faster than that is invisible.

Unlike a digital camera that captures a fixed number of frames per second the eye is composed of millions of light receptive neurons (about 120 million rods and 7 million cones). If we estimate that each has an independent refractory period of 16-20 msec then by my calculations we might estimate the overall frequency of information sampling to be roughly 7 GHz (that is 127m / 18 msec). Now... this number isn't actually all that meaningful because refractory period probably has some spatial correlations, and because a completely new image isn't formed at that rate...still it is quite a high number.

For the purposes of simplifying the discussion, I'll just go along and pretend that the entire image is sampled at some fixed frequency "f" samples/sec. If the width of your visual field is "w" meters then your claim (written mathematically) is that an object having an apparent velocity greater than "w/f" meters/sec is invisible. It is not true that this condition means the object is invisible. It merely restricts the number of sampled images of the object to 1, assuming a fixed eye position -- in other words, no matter how fast it's moving, it can never be moving so fast that you don't get at least one image of it.

In reality, a fixed eye position is also unreasonable...because the eye is continuously making saccades toward "interesting" features such as moving objects. Even when fixating at a stationary target the eye continuously and unconsciously makes micro saccades that allow it to do super-resolution (the same kind of super-resolution that allows, for example, the resolution of a satellite image to be increased...or efficient coding for streaming video).

The truth is, fundamentally, I do agree with you...it's possible that an object be moving so fast that you don't perceive it, or what you do perceive is filtered out by your brain as being noise. But this doesn't mean that you can't get a glimpse or a bullet or a plane or whatever, which I think is what you were trying to argue...ah, maybe I don't know what your actual point was at all...

 

[zoobyshoe]

Unlike a digital camera that captures a fixed number of frames per second the eye is composed of millions of light receptive neurons (about 120 million rods and 7 million cones). If we estimate that each has an independent refractory period of 16-20 msec then by my calculations we might estimate the overall frequency of information sampling to be roughly 7 GHz (that is 127m / 18 msec). Now... this number isn't actually all that meaningful because refractory period probably has some spatial correlations, and because a completely new image isn't formed at that rate...still it is quite a high number.

For the purposes of simplifying the discussion, I'll just go along and pretend that the entire image is sampled at some fixed frequency "f" samples/sec. If the width of your visual field is "w" meters then your claim (written mathematically) is that an object having an apparent velocity greater than "w/f" meters/sec is invisible. It is not true that this condition means the object is invisible. It merely restricts the number of sampled images of the object to 1, assuming a fixed eye position -- in other words, no matter how fast it's moving, it can never be moving so fast that you don't get at least one image of it.

In reality, a fixed eye position is also unreasonable...because the eye is continuously making saccades toward "interesting" features such as moving objects. Even when fixating at a stationary target the eye continuously and unconsciously makes micro saccades that allow it to do super-resolution (the same kind of super-resolution that allows, for example, the resolution of a satellite image to be increased...or efficient coding for streaming video).

The truth is, fundamentally, I do agree with you...it's possible that an object be moving so fast that you don't perceive it, or what you do perceive is filtered out by your brain as being noise. But this doesn't mean that you can't get a glimpse or a bullet or a plane or whatever, which I think is what you were trying to argue...ah, maybe I don't know what your actual point was at all...

The eyes may be sending virtually continuous info to the brain but the whole cerebral cortex is activated by the thalamus, all of whose cells electrically oscillate at a frequency of 40 times a second, in synchrony. Interruptions of the thalamo-cortical complex result in unconsciousness, which is the cause of unconsciousness when someone is "knocked out", or during an "absence' seizure. The oscillation of the thalamus, therefore, represents some form of oscillation of consciousness itself at that frequency.

My point was simply that there is nothing impossible about the concept of something moving too fast to see. I think the OXCART is probably visible, in any case.

 

[junglebeast]

The eyes may be sending virtually continuous info to the brain but the whole cerebral cortex is activated by the thalamus, all of whose cells electrically oscillate at a frequency of 40 times a second, in synchrony. Interruptions of the thalamo-cortical complex result in unconsciousness, which is the cause of unconsciousness when someone is "knocked out", or during an "absence' seizure. The oscillation of the thalamus, therefore, represents some form of oscillation of consciousness itself at that frequency

That's an interesting point which I was not aware of. However, one might argue that the brain could still compute visual processing and store the results during the unconscious phase, which could then be presented to the consciousness at the next "tick", so to speak ;)

 

[zoobyshoe]

That's an interesting point which I was not aware of. However, one might argue that the brain could still compute visual processing and store the results during the unconscious phase, which could then be presented to the consciousness at the next "tick", so to speak ;)

Possibly, but my guess is that the brain wants discontinuity between samples in order to perform a differential analysis somehow. That's my own speculation on how this relates to the binding problem.

This interview is pretty interesting and talks about the binding problem, one of the big current neurological mysteries:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/mind/electric2.html

It also describes how changes and disruptions in thalamo-cortical rhythms have very large effects on perception and consciousness.

 

[junglebeast]

NOVA: Is the binding, this rhythm, where consciousness comes from?

Llinás: Yes. Binding allows the different parts to be transformed into one cognitive experience.

There's a big difference between combining different pathways together and endowing an organism with a consciousness. I don't see this so called "binding problem" as a very fundamental question

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Let's not get into more mind/brain analysis than is appropriate for the thread.

 

[turbo]

Let's not get into more mind/brain analysis than is appropriate for the thread.

Really. Unexpected things can be mistakenly "ID'd" if for no other reason that the observer is trying to reconcile some odd observation with his/her experience and expectations. Before stealth technology was finally acknowledged publicly, would it have been odd to see a very fast flying object clearly, and not have a radar-signature? Yes, but we know now that there is a reason why that could be so.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Really. Unexpected things can be mistakenly "ID'd" if for no other reason that the observer is trying to reconcile some odd observation with his/her experience and expectations. Before stealth technology was finally acknowledged publicly, would it have been odd to see a very fast flying object clearly, and not have a radar-signature? Yes, but we know now that there is a reason why that could be so.

One thing that often makes me chuckle is when the debunkers claim that report X is bogus because nothing was seen on RADAR. These guys really need to get a grip.

I wonder how many people have been accused of being crackpots because they saw, and reported a stealth aircraft as a UFO.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Let's not get into more mind/brain analysis than is appropriate for the thread.

Let me just redirect him to the appropriate material and I'll get back on topic.

There's a big difference between combining different pathways together and endowing an organism with a consciousness. I don't see this so called "binding problem" as a very fundamental question

Llinas has answered the interviewer's question, unfortunately, at a different level than that on which it was asked. Binding doesn't actually explain the phenomenon of consciousness. It explains why qualia are what they are. The importance of binding can't be appreciated until you find out what happens when it breaks down: agnosia.

A really good introduction to the phenomenon of agnosia is the title story in Oliver Sack's book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. (It's an extremely popular book, likely to be found at any used bookstore, library, or on Amazon.)
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Back to the topic of visibility and speed: signals from the eye are first sent to the thalamus which encodes them in some way shape or form before they are sent to the visual cortex. This actually happens to nearly all sensory input: the thalamus is a sort of Grand Central Station: you can't get onto Manhattan by train without first stopping and reconnecting with a different train at Grand Central. If you're interested you can google how thalamic cells respond to sensory input by either tonic, or burst fire, signals to the appropriate area of cortex. It's not a one-to-one correspondence: they collect a certain amount of stimulation before they fire, either tonically, or in bursts, sending that signal to the cortex. A bullet passing in front of you from one side to the other probably doesn't send enough information to a thalamic cell to get it over the threshold to fire. It may not even send enough information to tip a rod or cone over the threshold.