[TheOtherHobbes]

What if there are no electrons, because there are no atoms?

The suggestion that all these alleged weird alien materials are “alloys” is just a placeholder for “looks and acts metallic, therefore made of metals.”

But if we happened to be dealing with real alien tech, that’s a naive and unscientific assumption. We already have people thinking about how to build programmable matter with variable properties, and it’s a fair bet we’ll have working examples within 50-100 years.

And there is no possibility that conventional x-ray diffraction will reveal how that kind of matter works.

[patmcc]

Assume for a second this is real alien tech. No atoms, programmable matter, literal magic, whatever.

Why would this be in a warehouse of a $22 million (i.e. super small potatoes) government project? It would be the biggest budget and highest secrecy project on the books.

[sgt101]

Also the NYTimes would not be allowed to print it, to the extent of the editor disappearing.

Also people posting on hacke

[totalZero]

So you're saying that if the number were, say, $220 billion, you would believe that it's a real alien tech, but you don't believe it at $22 million? I don't understand.

If so, you're logically entangling an arbitrary funding number reported in the article, with the idea that perhaps some new material (or alternative particle physics) could exist.

[electrograv]

If alien visitation were real (a huge IF), this wouldn’t have been the first project started to investigate it. Most likely there would be deeply secret and entrenched organizations around this in the government, which would also explain why this program was shut down without explanation despite “much progress”.