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Aliens

Totally agree with what you said about not having a yardstick to measure. We could very well be an extremely advanced and intelligent race. We could also be very dumb. Hard to tell at this point.

By the same token though, there are so many people on this earth, that it would be only mildly surprising to me if one of the has been contacted by extra terrestrials. It also would not surprise me if alien life is not found in the next 500 years. At this point, any assumptions about his kind of stuff are no more than guesses.

Well, I just find the idea of extra terrestrials covertly contacting select members of our species to be pretty amusing. How much time and effort did they put into being sneaky only to completely expose themselves to either individuals or government officials?

So let's look at this from the alien's perspective. How do they know that we'll assume people who have had close encounters are just crazy? How do they know that until they've actually contacted us and studied us? How do they know that governments can keep their existence a secret? How do they know that governments will even be inclined to keep their existence a secret? How do they know that wikileaks and Snowden won't blow their shenanigans sky high?

I'm just extremely skeptical of conspiracies and cover-ups. They are tenuous ventures at best.
 
100 years ago, what do you think people were saying about the future? How many could have ever imagined intercontinental airplanes, jet engines, the hydrogen bomb, the internet, email, or smart phones? The problem of traveling faster than the speed of light -- whether that is thru actual speed, by somehow modifying space time, or probably by some yet undiscovered process -- is not far away from being solved. Seriously, if the last 100 years (heck, even the last 20) are any indication of the incredible ingenuity and brain power of Humans, then I think it's hard to argue against it.

In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre was the first (I think) to theorize a mathematical model of a warp drive that would be able to bend space and time. In 2014 not only do scientists have very solid theories about how to do it, they even have a prototype ship planned out.

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Warp drives and speed of light aren't the only unfathomable science fiction theories about to be understood. By 2007, scientists were able to teleport, or beam, objects on the quantum level. In 2014, scientists were able to teleport an atom almost ten feet with perfect accuracy. When you grew up watching Star Trek, did you ever really think we would really ever be talking about real teleportation?

I really wish Colton would chime in on this thread, simply for his expertise in physics.

Well, I just find the idea of extra terrestrials covertly contacting select members of our species to be pretty amusing.

I have no problem with this point of view, because it is sort of silly. That being said, my pitiful intellect is likely not even on the radar compared to an ET that could contact Earth, and I would make sure that I didn't just pop down and announce my visit to a potentially hostile world. I'd say the chances are good, under the assumption that ET's have actually made contact, that they monitored, spied, and gathered intelligence long before they ever showed their "faces" -- just like we would do if the situation was reversed. It makes sense to me that if they are/were here, they would show themselves to the leaders of the planet. I tend to think any commander or general in the US Military would do the same thing.

How much time and effort did they put into being sneaky only to completely expose themselves to either individuals or government officials?

So let's look at this from the alien's perspective. How do they know that we'll assume people who have had close encounters are just crazy? How do they know that until they've actually contacted us and studied us? How do they know that governments can keep their existence a secret? How do they know that governments will even be inclined to keep their existence a secret? How do they know that wikileaks and Snowden won't blow their shenanigans sky high?

I'm just extremely skeptical of conspiracies and cover-ups. They are tenuous ventures at best.

How do we know that it is not the governments that want to keep it secret? For all we know, we have them locked up in a cell somewhere and have been torturing technology out of them since they first showed up. Yes, that's silly, but really, in this wild scenario of alien visitation, would you put that past our governments? I would think that any ET coming to Earth would be here in the spirit of discovery and wouldn't be keen on hiding, abducting, etc.
 
100 years ago, what do you think people were saying about the future? How many could have ever imagined intercontinental airplanes, jet engines, the hydrogen bomb, the internet, email, or smart phones? The problem of traveling faster than the speed of light -- whether that is thru actual speed, by somehow modifying space time, or probably by some yet undiscovered process -- is not far away from being solved. Seriously, if the last 100 years (heck, even the last 20) are any indication of the incredible ingenuity and brain power of Humans, then I think it's hard to argue against it.

In 1994, physicist Miguel Alcubierre was the first (I think) to theorize a mathematical model of a warp drive that would be able to bend space and time. In 2014 not only do scientists have very solid theories about how to do it, they even have a prototype ship planned out.

imagejpg1_zps7e32273c.jpg


imagejpg2_zps9e8cb217.jpg


Warp drives and speed of light aren't the only unfathomable science fiction theories about to be understood. By 2007, scientists were able to teleport, or beam, objects on the quantum level. In 2014, scientists were able to teleport an atom almost ten feet with perfect accuracy. When you grew up watching Star Trek, did you ever really think we would really ever be talking about real teleportation?

I really wish Colton would chime in on this thread, simply for his expertise in physics.



I have no problem with this point of view, because it is sort of silly. That being said, my pitiful intellect is likely not even on the radar compared to an ET that could contact Earth, and I would make sure that I didn't just pop down and announce my visit to a potentially hostile world. I'd say the chances are good, under the assumption that ET's have actually made contact, that they monitored, spied, and gathered intelligence long before they ever showed their "faces" -- just like we would do if the situation was reversed. It makes sense to me that if they are/were here, they would show themselves to the leaders of the planet. I tend to think any commander or general in the US Military would do the same thing.



How do we know that it is not the governments that want to keep it secret? For all we know, we have them locked up in a cell somewhere and have been torturing technology out of them since they first showed up. Yes, that's silly, but really, in this wild scenario of alien visitation, would you put that past our governments? I would think that any ET coming to Earth would be here in the spirit of discovery and wouldn't be keen on hiding, abducting, etc.

WTF? I just rep'd you. Can't you write good posts more sporadic?
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to E.J. Wells again.

And, yes I'd like to hear Colton's take about all this as well.

Btw, in my first post, I have mentioned about the incomprehensible distances between the objects in space and possible intelligent civilizations throughout the universe but there is one thing we should consider as well that could compensate that difficulty.

The Time. The massive history of the universe.

Yes, the universe is just so incredibly big and deep but so is the history of it. So there has been PLENTY of time for highly advanced civilizations to scan the universe for other living things. Only the earth has its history of 4.54 billion years and almost all of that time it had some kind of life on its surface. Most studies suggest that the life on earth began in the first billion years and there are quite of studies that claim it might have started almost straight away, within the first several hundred million years. Obviously, such an alive planet could have attracted the attention of any intelligent civilization that has scanned the universe for other life forms.

So in fact, thinking the timeline of human-like or ape-like livings goes only a few millions years back, we are once again very very self centered when we wonder about if any of ET's has discovered us yet. Yes, they might have, but most probably not for or because of us humans, but because of our lively planet Earth. After all, our a few thousand years old mighty civilization seems pretty insignificant on a planet that has been living for more than 4 billion years.
 
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The idea of alien visitation seems to center around the notion of a single highly (to put it mildly) advanced species using stealth to visit Earth. But if intelligent life is possible in two places in the Universe then it is possible in a million places throughout the Universe. If traversing those great distances is easy for one species then you'd assume it'd be easy for dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of other species. Are they all having secret meetings with today's leaders? When governments fall I guess aliens is the one secret they hold onto? I guess there is top secret and then there is top alien secret level?

Sorry, the spider web gets too big and too convoluted. If we've been contacted once by one species then I'd have to assume we'd be getting visited on the regular by a wide assortment of other alien species.

I sort of see it the way I see time travel. If time travel were possible we'd have been visited by people from the future already.
 
The idea of alien visitation seems to center around the notion of a single highly (to put it mildly) advanced species using stealth to visit Earth. But if intelligent life is possible in two places in the Universe then it is possible in a million places throughout the Universe. If traversing those great distances is easy for one species then you'd assume it'd be easy for dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of other species. Are they all having secret meetings with today's leaders? When governments fall I guess aliens is the one secret they hold onto? I guess there is top secret and then there is top alien secret level?

Sorry, the spider web gets too big and too convoluted. If we've been contacted once by one species then I'd have to assume we'd be getting visited on the regular by a wide assortment of other alien species.

I sort of see it the way I see time travel. If time travel were possible we'd have been visited by people from the future already.

I think that's not a good analogy. They are totally different cases to me. And you can't test that thinking way with the time travel topic too( which I honestly don't believe it's possible either) because some might say, "Well, they have visited, but they just hide it". Just like the claims about the Aliens.

As for your point, I think the enormousness of the universe and the the possible numbers of advanced species cancel each other in a way. Yep there might be many advanced civilizations that are able to travel afar but I think there are just too many places for them to discover. Only in the Milky Way galaxy there are 200 to 400 billion stars(more than 500 billions to some) and there are more than 200 billions of them galaxies only in the observable universe.

Btw, I do think that traveling in space, especially the intergalactic traveling is almost impossibly hard but, to me, there might and should be many encounters between many species within the galaxies and it's not much of a ridiculous thing to think there might even be regular relationships between different solar systems and species or whatevers within the same galaxies.
 
I believe the healthiest assumption for us (humanity) to make is that there is most likely other intelligent life in the Universe but that we stand just as good a chance as any other life to be the smartest and the furthest ahead. I've never assumed that other intelligent life would easily be way beyond our level of intelligence. We have no yardstick by which to even take a guess at such a thing.


But I think Hack really nailed it. I think people are completely forgetting how far apart stuff in our Universe is. It is very possible that the closest intelligent neighbor is thousands and thousands of light years away. It is also very possible that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. If that's the case then it really doesn't matter that intelligent life is out there, we're never going to bump into one another. They can be as hostile as they want to be, as superior as they can be, it doesn't matter. In such a scenario it would make no sense at all to try to annihilate one another. We'll all have plenty of room in our own neighborhoods to do whatever we like.

The idea that we have been visited and our governments are keeping it a secret is beyond laughable to me.

I mean like well if you have to think humans are smartest in the world I dont think this is possible you know? Think about this. How fast can we grow since technological revolution? Maybe some aliens find the black gold 4000 years before us. This is not a thing in billions of years evolution you know? What if they start the revolution 1,000,000 years back? This is very much possible thing if we are talking billions in years. In fact it is more likely than not in statistical speak that aliens have travelled the world to make maps.

Am I making for sense?
 
[size/HUGE] boobs [/size];892172 said:
I mean like well if you have to think humans are smartest in the world I dont think this is possible you know? Think about this. How fast can we grow since technological revolution? Maybe some aliens find the black gold 4000 years before us. This is not a thing in billions of years evolution you know? What if they start the revolution 1,000,000 years back? This is very much possible thing if we are talking billions in years. In fact it is more likely than not in statistical speak that aliens have travelled the world to make maps.

Am I making for sense?
You can quote me and try to engage me in debate but I have zero interest in you or your questions.
 
You can quote me and try to engage me in debate but I have zero interest in you or your questions.

It waz good question my friend. You cannot doubt my math I know this thing will make you think.
Maybe I should let someone else you have respect of propose same question for you will engage it.

Prediction=E.J. Wells=Huge Boobs


Lies. I am Black Swored Man alt here to haunt you my friend. :)
 
I really wish Colton would chime in on this thread, simply for his expertise in physics.

Sure. Here are some quick responses to some things that have been brought up in the thread.

First question: are aliens visiting the Earth? No chance in heck. There's no serious evidence, and there's no conspiracy to cover up the evidence.

Next question: are there UFOs? Absolutely. There are lots of flying objects that are not easily identified. But that doesn't make them alien transport vehicles.

Are aliens out there in the galaxy? Maybe, maybe not. I've heard at least one serious scientific talk on the Drake equation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation, and the upshot is that as the Wikipedia article points out, depending on how you estimate things there could be anywhere from 1 intelligent life civilization in the galaxy (i.e., us) to tens of millions of civilizations. My own opinion is that there's an excellent chance that we're alone in the galaxy. But that's just an opinion, undoubtedly influenced by my religious beliefs (discussion for another time), and I could well be wrong.

Next question: if there are aliens out there, will we be able to visit them? Not anytime soon. As someone pointed out, we're limited to travel at speeds slower than the speed of light. And the galaxy is made up of HUGE distances. Right now we can't even send a manned vehicle to Mars (0.000006 light years away) even though NASA has been working on that very, very seriously for the past 10 years. Among other things, there is a serious health threat from radiation. I'm certain that will be solved, but I'm nearly certain we still won't have the technology to mount a manned mission to even the closest habitable planet* within my lifetime (I'm 43). And just because the planet could be habitable doesn't mean that it has intelligent life. An unmanned mission to a possible habitable planet might well be in the cards before too long, but a manned mission to a planet that contains intelligent life? Not for hundreds and hundreds of years in my opinion... and that's assuming we even find such alien intelligent life in the galaxy (which is by no means certain, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

Next question: what about faster-than-light travel like wormholes or teleportation? No chance in heck of having anything like that remotely usable as a transportation mechanism, within my lifetime. And maybe not ever. The elephant in the room that is nearly always glossed over when science fiction writers utilize FTL travel, is that if FTL can ever be achieved, causality ceases to exist. That is, if something can be sent faster than the speed of light, then in some reference frames, the object arrives before it leaves. And that can be used to make effects precede causes, with real paradoxes therefore becoming possible. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(physics). Since I believe in causality, or at least I think it's VERY VERY likely that causality is a fundamental law of the universe, I personally don't think that FTL travel will ever exist. But even if it does, there's no chance it'll be usable in my lifetime.


* looks like the closest possibilities are 4-12 light years away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_terrestrial_exoplanet_candidates
 
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Sure. Here are some quick responses to some things that have been brought up in the thread.

First question: are aliens visiting the Earth? No chance in heck. There's no serious evidence, and there's no conspiracy to cover up the evidence.

Next question: are there UFOs? Absolutely. There are lots of flying objects that are not easily identified. But that doesn't make them alien transport vehicles.

Are aliens out there in the galaxy? Maybe, maybe not. I've heard at least one serious scientific talk on the Drake equation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation, and the upshot is that as the Wikipedia article points out, depending on how you estimate things there could be anywhere from 1 intelligent life civilization in the galaxy (i.e., us) to tens of millions of civilizations. My own opinion is that there's an excellent chance that we're alone in the galaxy. But that's just an opinion, undoubtedly influenced by my religious beliefs (discussion for another time), and I could well be wrong.

Next question: if there are aliens out there, will we be able to visit them? Not anytime soon. As someone pointed out, we're limited to travel at speeds slower than the speed of light. And the galaxy is made up of HUGE distances. Right now we can't even send a manned vehicle to Mars (0.000006 light years away) even though NASA has been working on that very, very seriously for the past 10 years. Among other things, there is a serious health threat from radiation. I'm certain that will be solved, but I'm nearly certain we still won't have the technology to mount a manned mission to even the closest habitable planet* within my lifetime (I'm 43). And just because the planet could be habitable doesn't mean that it has intelligent life. An unmanned mission to a possible habitable planet might well be in the cards before too long, but a manned mission to a planet that contains intelligent life? Not for hundreds and hundreds of years in my opinion... and that's assuming we even find such alien intelligent life in the galaxy (which is by no means certain, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

Next question: what about faster-than-light travel like wormholes or teleportation? No chance in heck of having anything like that remotely usable as a transportation mechanism, within my lifetime. And maybe not ever. The elephant in the room that is nearly always glossed over when science fiction writers utilize FTL travel, is that if FTL can ever be achieved, causality ceases to exist. That is, if something can be sent faster than the speed of light, then in some reference frames, the object arrives before it leaves. And that can be used to make effects precede causes, with real paradoxes therefore becoming possible. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(physics). Since I believe in causality, or at least I think it's VERY VERY likely that causality is a fundamental law of the universe, I personally don't think that FTL travel will ever exist. But even if it does, there's no chance it'll be usable in my lifetime.


* looks like the closest possibilities are 4-12 light years away: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_terrestrial_exoplanet_candidates

So like you all think we can solve radiation and stuff in a few years time but it is unpossible for alie s to have made this advancements 4,000 years ago when they came to build pyramids? I do not get it.
 
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