Vatican says aliens could exist

What do we make of that?
Seems like the Catholic Church at least is "trying" to adapt (change?) to the times.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7399661.stm

Well , I do have to admit the theory of aliens making contact with humans thousasnds of years ago , bringing in religion as well as understanding to your human race is one of the theories that makes the most sense. Because when you look back , our real evolution as a species took place not long ago , we are talking about , 5 or 6 tousand years, more or less. Though new dating techniques are actually actually pointing to the pyramids of Giza as well as the Sphinx to being around 10,000 years old , so let's say around 10,000 years. Thats NOTHING. There are some fossils that date back to around 195,000 years , i thought the oldest we had was 100,000 but double checked on google and it's aparantly almost 200,000 years , so that means , that in all that time , somehow , only at most 10,000 years ago , we formed civilizations , what caused this rapid advancement in humans ? And not only that , but we had religions , believed in gods from the heavens , had technology , astrology/astronomy , there is a big lack of understanding of how we started becoming an intelligent civilization , and the Alien theory does answer a lot of unanswered questions.

Oh yeah , and there are white people in the world , which completely contradict evolution , since if we come from monkeys, white people shouldnt exist.

I too think that the church tries to find it's way in modern times. If they deny everything, they will lose followers for sure. It's not a bad thing, finding excuses to grab the chance to stick with modern times, it's a habit of humans. We don't like to admin we're wrong. Don't know about the church, but I thought they firmely discarded 'aliens' in the past?

That is a faulty assumption and doesn't belong here.

Well yes they discared aliens in the past , but now that we have airplanes , and technology , now when you read the events of moses and the like , we can see that he could have been experiencing another technologically advanced civilization , take the passage where the 10 commandments are "handed" to him. Of course , before we had technology , all of this was interpreted divinely , we had no electricity , we didnt have lightbulbs , no cars , airplanes , so aliens would have been out of the question. Today's advancement allows us to interpret the scripture differently , but it still doesnt discard it or it's authenticity , it merely restates the fact that something very strange happened during the time our civilizations came to being.

"That is a faulty assumption and doesn't belong here."
No faulty assumption , look at the genome project , it is estimated the dna mutated around 3000 years bce , affecting the pigment , thus brining white people , but why would this mutation stay prevalent ? well i'm in a rush , i'll write more on this later.

Stick to aliens please.
Don't you have a separate (and incomplete I might add) thread to discuss evolution instead of doing it here?



This is contradictory to what you state next.
After all, by your own words,:



If moses could have been experiencing a "technological advanced civilization", then he wasn't experiencing "god". If he wasn't experiencing god, then his teachings aren't divine. If his teachings weren't divine, then everything that follows after his as suspect since it could also have been a "tech. ad. civ." experience and not god.


--Arthur C. Clarke, 1961

Thus if we interpret the scriptures, according to you, to take into account modern advance by, for example, suggesting that Moses saw had a "tech. adv. civ." experience, then that undeniably "discard it or it's authenticity " or those writings as coming from god, as divine.



Doesn't this statement naturally lead to the belief that in fact, all of religion could be possibly based on technology we didn't understand and not divine? It doesn't state that it is "THE" one and only possibility, but isn't it a possibility none the less?

I assume you are talking about fossils of the 'current' human species, because there are very very close human ancestor fossils found as old as 600.000 years if I'm not mistaken.



Actually more often it's a case of underestimating the evolutionary success of the human race when it comes to organization, intelligence and adaptation/design/construction/cooperation through trade etc.

Successful civilizations usually leave impressive monuments and other 'marks' of their technology and knowledge behind and that can be even more impressive if such knowledge got lost for a long time afterwards or seems too advanced for a certain time in the past.

It all started somewhere though and many many many things probably got shared all over the world. Take for example certain kinds of stories in religion that tends to be universal. It either has to do with the way these ideas come into existence (for example; a God for rain, please the Gods and it will rain enough for a harvest to be successful; many civilizations had such a God), or it has to do with contact these people must have had.

Having a good understanding of astrology/astronomy is no prove for any alien interference, there's no knowledge they couldn't have figured out themselves so to say.



Advancement in technology and so on isn't inevitable, that's what it proves. You need great minds, great inventors and people with the guts and time to try and figure out things. When survival demands all your attention, it's no wonder not many new things are being discovered along the way. At least not when it comes to technology. So why did it change only this recently? It has to do with social inventions, figuring out that larger groups can be supported with different methods of providing food, dividing tasks among people most fit to do them and so on. After that, it soon became the case that people had 'free time', time that some of them spend on figuring out things.

Also, and this is quite important, figuring out how to make tools isn't as accidental as you might think. It's pretty inevitable in some cases. For example to crack nuts, you'll probably need a stone. They undoubtedly have thrown with stones too, probably have seen it break and later someone stupid picked the broken stone up, cut his hands with it and a clever person figured they could use it to cut meat or leaves or whatever.

What I'm saying is that sóme technological advancements can be slightly inevitable in a way. So it probably has been a combination of intelligence and social change and situation if you'd ask me.



Apparently you are unaware of the fact that there are both white skin monkeys and black skin monkeys on this planet. Mostly it's hidden under their hair, but to say we shouldn't be 'white' makes not much sense. In fact, there are very good reasons why some of us became white and so on.



Just about anything goes when it comes to the possibility of theories, so it's questionable whether or not it's really all that valuable as such, but yes it's definitely still a possibility. One of many I might add and when it comes to probability, there's a huge chance it's as wrong as the infinite amount of other possibilities I guess.

In some cases you could say a lack of understanding of how physics and chemistry work does make it easy to believe in "magic", even though it's basically an illusion or neat trick.

The question of value is undoubtedly up to the individual. I for instance place no value in either possibility: divine or alien it affects my world-view none. Others however get offended at the mere suggestion of one or the other. In this case however, the question is not value or even if it is right or wrong.

Rather, I am curious how someone can admit that if Moses's teaching are not being divine but alien this would NOT affect their belief system. After all, it would seem to make a HUGE different for me whether god tells me to not covet my neighbors wife or if it was a bunch of puritanical aliens.In effect, trying to understand the seeming contradiction of this line of thought:





Isn't that exactly what modern day stage magicians do?

Well what I was refering to fastlane was the theory of aliens coming to earth and genetically altering the current inhabitants of earth , thus creating a more intelligent superior being , us , which took over earth. So , if then that was the case , then the Aliens would be God. The Bible clearly states the new Jerusalem will decend from the heavens , and it also states all of the nations of the world will unite to to fight to all mighty God . What in the world could cause the nations to want to fight God ?

It also matches with the fact that there is also a missing link between the neanderthal humans and the cromagnum humans , they appear to have even coexisted together for time in parts of the world. There is however , no link inbetween them , and , from what archelogists have found , Cromagnum just appeared out of nowhere , were much smarter than neanderthals , and eventually overtook the inferior race. There is a believe that this cromagnums were genetically altered neanderthals , and that the forbidden fruit from the Bible was this more beastlike humans, which eve mated with. This are just theories though , but they seem to patch up a lot of the current unanswered questions wwe have with all of our findings and theories amd religions. It also answeres why all this old humans had such great and complex religious books , which all talk about Gods from the heavens.

Here is a good movie on the subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKBGBHTwURw

There is definately a lot we dont know , and something strange definately happened around 6 thousand years ago , which ushered the age of civilization and intelligence , and to this day , no one has been able to figure out what it was , however , we do have all those books of Gods from the sky , I think this should be taken more seriously. Unless , you believe all of our ancestors were all basically , liars , and just invented things and teached them to their people (like modern scientists) . But why would all of our foundation as civilization , moral values , and structure , be based on lies ? The stories the sacred books retell are very very complex and detailed , much more so than the stories our writers write today , why would they devote so much time on pure lies ? There are a lot of puzzle pieces we are missing , or is it , pieces that we refuse to see and ignore ?

As I've learned with you, I won't try to talk reason but merely point you in the direction of the research that people have done in the past decades and let you come to your own conclusion on it's validity.

You should read up on Eric Von Daniken. He was the first one to give serious thought to this matter back in the 70's. He presents the same arguements you do: the sudden rise of civilization, religion, etc. I was actually a really big fan of his back then as well. However, in over 30 years since he proposed his theory, and under all manner of scientific (and not so scientific) studies, this theory is still considered "fringe" by both science AND religion due to it's exclusive reliance on interpretation... Hence the famous tomb carvings as a "space suited mexican" or desert designs as "the nazca spaceport".




Noooooo, they would still be aliens. But I'm not going to argue semantics; hopefully when my "disambiguation list" comes online, we can nail down what god is and thus see if a powerful alien race qualifies..

The resurgence of questioning alien existence seems to be rather popular these days... It's really just one of those things that we cannot truly know, but I would heavily doubt it. Of course there are many who seen aliens, so I guess if they believe it, then good for them.

Well , how about this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpfvhdmhQy4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np45b2Xt-Ww&feature=related

Thats Aldrin , himself , saying he saw something following them on the Apollo mission. Also , there is the STRANGE interview Armstrong and his team gave after coming from the moon , people credit this odd behavior to 2 weeks in isolation getting cleaned up , but if you see the footage on when they arrived on earth (extremely happy and cheery) , and then when they give the internew (looked like they had just been sexually molested) , you have to question why the sudden change in attitude , and isolation for cleanup over 2 weeks isnt enough to cause that. Here is some video.

Here is after the "isoloation" and "testing" , which people claim caused the strange behaviour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RcKLAo62Ro&NR=1

Well I couldnt find a short clip of the part where they are happy returning , so , here is a clip that shows it , dont pay attention to what the letters say , this guy is defending the fact that they went to the moon , which i'm not arguing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMxb896-9b0

why would 3 weeks isolation cause their behavior to change so drastically ? Where they anally assaulted on a daily bases for this three weeks ? 3 Weeks away from your family is NOTHING , they would not be like that, just study their behaviour , versus their previous behaviour , I very highly doubt some 3 weeks isolation can do that. People go to jail for years , and when they come out they're happy as shit. So if anything , they should have been happy since their "mind destroying isolation" was over. But , what if instead , they were either chemically abused , or just being forced to supress many facts from the mission ? What if there is more on the moon that they let people know , since they told people there is nothing , and only till recently has aldrin even mentioned what he saw on the mission.

Then you have armstrongs speech he gave , which has to make you question , what he is refering to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUx1SURbb3g&feature=related


So , definately a lot of strange stuff surrounding Nasa and the space missions , but , I would imagine the only way to know , would be to become an astronaut and go to space, but thats too big a hastle if you ask me.




Here is another interesting video I ran into some time ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTw2ZE4cljc

Hey fastlane , what do you think about this guy ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJWF_JpIyA

Armstrong always has been a bit cryptic in his speeches, take a look at this one;

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PUx1SURbb3g&NR=1

But yeah, it does or might seem like he's hiding something or was brainwashed or whatever. Interesting stuff, even though it could be just a case of not being very good at explaining without mentioning specifics? Perhaps they were ordered not to reveal any specific events, as there are rumors that the mission wasn't exactly easy (many problems along the way)..

I don't know, compare it to someone coming home from a military tour, they will undoubtedly be glad to be home and happy, but once they realize what they did or experienced they might not be all that happy. I'm not saying they fought or anything, only that they may have been struggling to survive at some point or something along that way.

The closest star system, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years far away from earth.
If their star ships travel at the same speed as ours they would take about 250.000 years to reach us
Even the chance to get in touch with aliens via radio signals is negligible
Assuming that they are at the same level of civilization as we are , we could expect to receive messages from star sytems in the range of, let say, 50 light years.
There are not so many star system so close to us
Evolutions entails a huge number of planets , thus it is pratically impossible that one of them ( the number is estimated in some thousand, no more ) can have intelliget beings( or even bacteria )
The only remote possibility is that these civilizations are much more advanced than us but moreover the physical laws should not be the same all over the universe
In practice the probabilities to have contacts with aliens are , despite the SETI program, null.

What's any of this have to do with the Vatican??

"If their star ships travel at the same speed as ours they would take about 250.000 years to reach us"

Who says their ships travel at the same speed as ours ? We are very PRIMITIVE in technology and knowledge , dont you see the mega rockets we need to go to outerspace vs the ufo's people report. There is much we (the general public) still doesnt know , specially technological wise , so it would be absurd to think we are on a same technological level as an alien race that has visited earth.

"What's any of this have to do with the Vatican??"

Post topic

"Vatican says aliens could exist"

So we're talking about aliens right ?

Here are some nice Nasa videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwSmb1LCruI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9AFs67Xjes&watch_response

Yes, but you seem to forget that you are assuming aliens have already visited us. There's little to no evidence for that.

Also, according to NASA we might not need a mega rocket to go at the speed of light, but instead an umbrella-shaped surface that reacts to sunlight might push a space craft faster and faster until it goes at (near) the speed of light.

we can make a lot of assumptions.
The more fantastic ,the more unlikely

Is it possible for you not to answer a question with a question?

Hehehe... NVM. Don't answer, or rather question, that.

If noticed that your mind works like this, why_do, undisciplined, unfocused, and unable to keep a train of thought longer than a few posts and asking question after question so you don't have to provide any answers of your own.

So rather than trying to achieve the impossible and steer you back OT, I accept it, I accept you as you are, and thus you go on talking about whatever comes to mind regardless of thread or topic. I can always catch up later when you go back OT.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that logic.

The believe in Alien life today is much more mature then it was 50 years ago and most people deny even the possibility, but you have to look at the evidence before trying to debunk. Because most of the debunker's follow the rule of "if you cannot attack the evidence, attack the people" which is silly, they are mostly close minded and not interested in the truth about alien life. If you say there is no evidence you are actually dismiss most of the thousands of reports of trace cases, radar visuals , pilot sightings , witness testimony .

Just a small Story about how debunker's work:

--------------------------------------------------------------
John K. and his friends saw a flying disk in the sky and they report it. A skeptic named Charles C. comes forward and says that the witnesses are not credible. One year later the skeptic Charles C. was attacked by a unknown person but to his luck John K. was on the other side of the street and could identify the unknown man in his witness testimony. The unknown man was put in jail and Charles C. was very happy about the absolute credible testimony of John K.
--------------------------------------------------------------

The problem with humans today is the close minded run for physical evidence, but you have to remember that even in our oceans are creatures we didn't even know of. There are so many very educated people coming forward and look into this kind of subject for example. John Mack (Harvard psychiatrist) who was looking in the abduction phenomenon. As a normal person just look at animals and how we treat them, we must be alien to them with all of our technology which makes no sense to them. Thats for the most part the problem half of the earth population doesn't want to believe but that isn't scientific either because the evidence is overwhelming .

The question is why is it so extraordinary that there is more life in the universe than we think of. It is a wonderful message that there a beings not come to destroy us, but caring about us and our attempt to destroy the planet.

The most important case is still the Roswell incident , the newspaper that the RAAF captures a flying disk is a fact, that was first released by the army airforce before they began to get away from the flying disk to the balloon. The people who identify the saucer were also responsible for the nuclear weapons, they were no stupid retards making up stories to maybe even get fired for such reports.



I am currently setting up a website about the whole issue , with no commercial stuff just free information ( articles, documents aso. ). I don't need the Vatican to make me one of the believer's I just look at the evidence and that what scientist do. I want all the skeptics to be skeptical but that is not the same as close minded to such an important subject. And if you doens't know alot about the evidence do not look into this kind of subject or even try to debunk it.

Look at youtube.com for the names John Callaghan , John Mack , Stanton Friedman, disclosure project aso. Maybe you don't believe all of what they are saying but then prove them wrong. They set their careers on the line to get to the truth would anyone of those skeptics do that or even think of it , I guess not.

Fine, fine... you guys want to talk aliens, let's talk aliens...



Let me see if I understand this quote:

2 people see an event (the disk) and a 3rd person, not present, doesn't believe them.
2 people see an event (the beatdown) and both people believe it.

I'm surely not seeing what your point is here.



You are right and here is an example:
We didn't need physical evidence of WMDs to make a decision about Iraq... merely some people told us it was true and we believe them and that's the way it should be: you say it, I believe it. Perhaps thats the way it should be in all our human dealings... after all, things worked out pretty well there when we didn't have physical evidence, surely this tactic will work well in other aspects of life.



To all scientists, this is not extraordinary at all, merely unproven. Huge distinction: we allow for the possibility of alien life but don't count on it till we see it. Same with UFOs: no scientist alive can claim that there are NO UFOs without evidence... but no scientist alive will claim that there ARE UFOs without evidence.



This is why physical evidence is needed, so that subjective statements like these can be tested or dismissed.

How do you know they care about us? You don't. IF they exist, it is equally likely that they are here to harvest, destroy, or enslave as it is that they are here to save and advance us. Both opinions are just that, opinions, and thus not facts and thus not acceptable in a court of science.



The only fact is that it is a newspaper article. One which was retracted later. So I ask you, why do you believe the first article and not the second one? Same paper, same author, same subject.

So perhaps The Roswell Incident is real, perhaps not. But the only evidence you have provided merely proves that newspapers exist, not extraterrestrial UFOs.



I know of Friedman, the other two I had to research.


Friedman's site if full of "They are wrong", "UFOs are real", and "Conspiracy of science"...

... but I find no evidence presented on his site. There is some allusion in his wikipedia entry that he has tons of evidence in his book, but it is presented as "eyewitness" accounts which again are highly subjective. Perhaps I'm not finding it among all the noise so please point me to it Sebcrea if you can. However, as he is critical of SETI for reasons unknown to me, it is already hard to believe the objectivity of his thesis.



Couldn't find much on him. Some FAA accident guy?



Found a little more on Mack. I'd like to present some of his points as representative of the UFO movement if I may:

From a NOVA Online interview

"And in case after case after case, I've been impressed with the consistency of the story, the sincerity with which people tell their stories, the power of feelings connected with this, the self-doubt -- all the appropriate responses that these people have to their experiences."

These are the same thing to be said about religious experiences and mescaline trips. Thus to me this is not evidence that UFOs exist, but rather that humans WANT UFOs to exist.

"They return from their experiences with cuts, ulcers on their bodies, triangular lesions, which follow the distribution of the experiences that they recover, of what was done to them in the craft by the surgical-like activity of these beings. "

It strikes me as odd that in this day of Google Image and YouTube, when everyone has a cellphone, cellcamera, and video, when there are tons of news people that want to make news and tons of non-news people that want to be news, that this was the best that I could find under "UFO abduction Marks" and "UFO abduction lesions"... nothing under either in YouTube. If we have generated any amount of evidence in 50 years from 1945 to 1995, then shouldn't there be MUCH more evidence everywhere from 1995 to 2005, with the increase in our communication abilities (internet), hardware (cameras), and accesibility (cell phones)?

UFO abduction physical evidence

In each case, we have a "after" picture but only the subjects word that a "before" picture would be different. In each case, not knowing the individual (do they drink and blackout regularly? Do they do hallucinogenic drugs? Do they have a history of psychosis? Are they attention getters? Is there some financial gain to be had?), it is hard to merely take their word for it. If a stranger on the street is shouting "The end is near! The end is near! Repent!", you think him loony... but if this same stranger is on the streets shouting "I've been Abducted! I've been abducted! Believe!", then you have no problem believing him? This attitude that the hardcore "UFO Exist" have is why it is so hard to believe in what they say since they will believe just about anyone who says they had a UFO experience.

"And that the alien dimension is a part of ourselves, our souls, if you will even, from which we were or have been cut off over the centuries of human beings living on this earth in this densely embodied form. "

Notice that the alien reproduction program is on our soul. I suspect that is because it would be easy to dismiss a hybrid on genetic terms today, hence let's put it on the soul that can't be measured and thus can't be dismissed. I commented above how similar these viewpoints were to religion; I'll state that again now.

Conclusion: all the evidence that asserts that UFOs exist is subjective and individual, based on hearsay and testimony. To date, there is not a scrap of physical evidence anywhere to validate this assertion. To date, and in this ridiculously over YouTubed word, we still see nothing but lights and never structure, we still see lights but never beings on tape. Thus lacking physical evidence, you can thus choose to believe what you want, just like the US "chose" to believe in WMDs for their own reasons.

But it remains a personal choice and not a public reality.

I don't have an alien craft or a body or a black hole and your way of debunking is exactly how debunker's work ,” if they can't not attack the evidence attack the people” .

First of all what do you know about the evidence that there is ?
Come on how much have we discovered of the galaxy to assume we are alone ?
What happens in Area 51 which the US government still denies that it even exists ?

If you really think that there is freedom of every information you must be a fool, sorry but I find no other word for that.

In one case 65 children in Zimbabwe saw aliens that gave him messages about we doing harm to our planet, why would they make up such stories with a lot of important detail. They have no access to television , and even children under the age of 3 see those things. These die hard debunker's of everything don't what to know the truth about such subjects, they mostly doesn't care about it but every time someone reports such things they are there as the absolute debunker's of the phenomenon.

The little story was about credible witnesses and when we think they are credible, if it doesn't effect us in some way we can easily say that person is nuts. But if there is something that helps us we say okay lets roll thanks for your credible testimony.

The Army Air force has got 4 Versions (Flying Disk, Weather Balloon, Project Mogul, new kind of aircraft with dummies) of the Truth about Roswell, so you are believing someone who lied at least 3 times thats okay but don't attack people who want to know what really happened back then.

So please study the evidence before writing something there is proof that implants (Dr. Leir) that were found in abduction patients were not of earth origin, so how did you explain that. Also a lot of abducties know details that are not in the media about their abduction, these people have no connection to each other so how do they know about that and then describing events very similar in detail.

Look up
http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=yWSGTxyFUXQ
http://www.alienscalpel.com/book2.htm

Look also up Project Bluebook where 20 % of the sightings were unexplained ( not all UFO 's are ET but some.) also look up everything about J. Allen Hynek and the trace cases thats physical evidence. People get laughed at because they are coming forward to tell their story, you didn't even wrote about that, they put their careers on the line to tell their story. And that in a world where we think twice about every story we want to tell because don't want to get the laughter they are getting.


Also search for Astronaut Gordon Cooper, he was ones a hero in the US for orbiting the earth over 20 times but if he is talking about seeing one of those crafts landing the people laugh. Thats how people always react thats what we call mature , those are not interested in the Truth they want to get lied in the news, on the street and in everyday life.

You talked about John Mack like a typical debunker he is a Harvard psychiatrist and who are you to prove him wrong ? What you do is proclamation not investigation ,ones you haven't started to investigate you should not come the any conclusion because you believe it doesn't exists. So start your study you can even do some research on the Internet.
http://www.ufoevidence.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendlesham_Forest_Incident

So for me the debunker's always searching for excuses and what really bugs me is that they don't look into the evidence thats not scientific dude.

I really show you evidence and all you have to say it is not true whats makes you so sure ? For me I believe those people who doesn't want to get famous who just report their stories and also the designer of the look of the aliens must be the richest person on the planet, but in reality there is no copyright securing that look, seems very strange in a world where nearly everything has a copyright on it. But you can tell that the 3 year old child that saw those things and draw it that it didn't saw what it saw.

You should know the Phoenix case in 1997 thousands of people reported seeing a massive craft fly over their house and even the former governor of Arizona investigated this. Look at the Europeans they are opening their files UK, France aso about flying saucers thats what I call open minded. The people should know the Truth about this subject because it is a wonderful message that we are not alone.

And for SETI this is really the stupids research ever done in searching for alien life they are searching on one frequency across 100 Ly, its like finding a got Chinese restaurant in the galaxy.

In the end half of the earth population are believer's , the evidence is overwhelming that we are dealing with something extraordinary and whether you believe it or not those things will keep showing up.

So by debunking you mean "applying The Scientific Method".
Gotcha...



Trust me (or Ran Man or Dan Silverman or Doug or JCL), I have MORE than my share of experience with the whole "attack the person" technique.

I challenge you to show how my statements are therefore personal attacks against the personal and not a questioning of their conclusions? Go for it. The beauty of knee-jerk reactions is they are very easily proven wrong.



Unlike certain parties, I don't make gross generalization. Instead, I observe and report on patterns. And here is one: two people that do not follow the Scientific Method (Sebcrea and Why_do_I_die), engage in the same style of debate: answering questions with questions and staying as far away from an answer as possible. I propose a hypothesis and that is that lacking the Scientific Method, the only method of debate is one that generates more questions than it answers... that uses questions to side-track trains of thoughts and lead a discussion down a unprovable path... that to actually provide evidence is discouraged for then that evidence can be put to scrutiny, possible disproven, and both are bad when you are trying to make a case non-scientifically.

We'll see how this hypothesis holds up in the ensuing discussions.



Nothing except for what I have read, researched, and seen with my own eyes in over 25 years of being aware of "UFOs". So instead of asking me what I don't know, why don't you present what you know instead. Educate me since I'm here to profess ignorance on the current state of the subject. So spare me no MegaBytess: I eat up information so I can handle AS MUCH as you can throw at me.



I thought I had already stated that there wasn't any debate about this from any camp. Is there a point to restating this?



A government secret does not imply an extraterrestrial secret.
And as anyone familiar with the very public Lockheed Skunkworks and DARPA projects, there are some CEEERAZZZYYY things out there built from perfectly normal materials and components: robots, exoskeletons, Unmanned airplanes, electronic battlefield. So with all the wonder that is public and non-alien, how has any technology leap been so "quantum" as to defy rational explanation and give credence to the idea that we have access to alien tech at any level?



You resisted the temptation to insult me for quite I while. I commend you in taking this long to call me a fool. Most the other non-scientific method followers broke down much quicker than you. Congrats!

But to address your point, I would not be so -- what's the word, ah yes -- "foolish" as to believe that. The difference is that I don't believe in boogeymen and thus when I hear "US Secret!" my first assumption is not (nor my tenth) "Aliens!".

Do you deny the possibility that all your evidence can be taken to be of purely terrestrial origin? The 51 and Roswell are in fact government cover-ups, but of purely terrestrial issues?



Like Lourdes or Fatima, yes?



Yes, I thought as much. But that is where my comment kicks in:
In the disk scenario, everyone involved DID NOT experience the same situation: 2 people saw the disk and 1 person didn't. In the crime scenario, everyone DID experience the same situation. So naturally if the two people who experience a situation will agree on the testimony, will be credible. I'm sure the two people that saw the disk are ENTIRELY credible to each other. But for belief to cross from one person who experienced a situation to another that didn't (as in the disk scenario), we would expect some proof. I would expect some proof. I dare say most people would expect some proof. Otherwise, how can you stop yourself from believing everything without proof, from tooth fairy to UFOs to quarks!



Huh, what? (1) I have no context for this sentence... it just appeared.



Why attempt to explain that which you have not shown.
Let me see (in the broadest sense of the word) this implant and then we can talk further about it.



So people who are abducted know more about their own abductions than what they tell the media? Huh, what (2)????



Again, I ask you: is it not possible that these 20% can be purely natural phenomena?

After all elves and sprites were not explained until the late 80's eventhough people have been seeing them since we started flying. And if you know your photographic evidence of UFOs as well as I do (I'm not completely ignorant on the subject you see), then a lot of UFOs start looking like elves or sprites or some other of these "ball lighning"-esque phenomena.



Hello Mr Pot... my name is Mr Kettle and I call you black!
"if they can't not attack the evidence attack the people” .

I daresay that like religion, no one is able to prove him wrong. The sad part is... he can't prove he's right. ouch.



That's correct and why: "ones you haven't started to investigate you should not come the any conclusion because you believe it DOES exists." That is why eyewitness account are fallable: to some people it's UFOs, to other weather phenomena, and no way to tell the difference.




As it so happens, I've been researching this when all we had were books. I know, crazy. But all the same, I'll indulge and stick to the net.



Very well, let's I shall examine the evidence you provide me so as to not be accused of bias in my selecting the evidence. Furthermore, I will first classify the TYPES of evidence provided so we are in total agreement on the evidence set for your discussion.



11 articles under "physical evidence" in topics and articles.
All other evidence is photographic and eyewitness.
Correct/Incorrect?




Ahh yes, the British Roswell. Here we have a combination of eyewitness and a few memos and a tape. However, this article sites extraterrestrials as only one of many other explanations.
Correct/Incorrect?



I can see where you would have liked for me to say this, you may even have heard this in your minds-ear, but the evidence clearly shows that I have not said anything of the sort.

I have not denied your explanations, merely provided what are to me (and a many others) more likely explanations. Remember, I have never said "UFOs don't exist"... I have repeatedly said "UFOs can not be proven to exist". That is a huge difference which I trust you'll appreciate from now on.



If you knew how copyrights worked, this would not be strange at all. The Greys have been in the public domain for so long, they cannot be copyrighted.



Huh, What? (2)



Huh, what? (3)




And I also know that the pattern observed time after time is consistent with the dropping of flares from military training videos that admit to being there at the time.

"That's what they were, insists Lt. Col. Ed Jones, who piloted one of the four A-10s in the squadron that he says launched the flares."

He says its so, thus you must believe him. After all, you take abductees at their word, why not a Lt. Col.?



Here is another one of those patterns I observed between people who eschew the scientific method: they always want YOU to do the legwork and get the evidence instead of providing it. So instead of saying "here is my evidence, all nice and tidy", they say "have you heard of?" or "look into this person or that" or more often "Who are you to not believe a Harvard Professor" So in this case, it's "Europeans are opening files"... a flat fact with no context or reason why it should support UFOs or negate one of my points.. oh and of course with no references to this fact. I believe this is tied to my earlier observation where in both cases, both people answered questions with questions and don't present evidence but rather question your knowledge of the evidence. There is something here, something connecting the way non-scientific method people go about their arguments, be it with relgion or UFOs... I just can't put it into words right now. I shall certainly be studying this pattern more.

Great they are opening their files. Surely the conspiracy theories will die out. Who am I kidding? The government is releasing misleading information in order to hide truth. These reports either never existed or have been modified to hide any tangible proof. Wiley government!



It's a wonderful message that we are ignorant and don't fully understand everything. To date, all evidence presented to support UFOs has been subjective, unmeasurable, and unrepeatable. In other words, unscientific. Thus there is no physical evidence of UFOs and no scientific evidence. This means UFOs are a religion: a personal belief that assumes a more advanced power watches over us with zero scientific evidence to support it.

So I'm fine if you want to call UFOs your personal belief, but please don't try to present it as public belief, as science, for it's not.



Didn't you say "So please study the evidence before writing something"? It's worse if you can't even get the facts straight.

Only one frequency; Someone told you this?
Only 100 ly swath; You read that somewhere?
That's all SETI does?; You're positive about that?



Interesting fact. Where is it?



Just not scientific. And as elves and sprites showed us in the 80's, there are still PLENTY of explanations that have to be discovered and discarded before Aliens become the more prevalent one. For now, the evidence is exactly like religion and carries exactly the same weight in science.

Thus all I'm saying is that UFOs remain a matter of personal choice based on anecdotal evidence and not a scientific fact based on measurable results.

I really look for scientific evidence but the problem is we as humans are still very limited, without modern technology we wouldn't even prove Einsteins Theory of relativity right. Now we can, but physicist today are looking into a more advanced theory (M-Theory) just technology will prove if this theory works. So these crafts maybe even interdimensional travelers if the M-Theory assume 11 dimensions. Of course the ET explanation is just a possibility, there maybe other explanations but if a witness reports a flying disk and those skeptics say it was swamp gas that has nothing to do with science either. I am not a part of some religious group I just want to get to the bottom of it because that is what scientist do.

I was ones a skeptic but I looked into the evidence and if we have no other explanation maybe we should have a look into the impossible.

SETI is searching just of the frequency of hydrogen and the search is limited to 100 Ly distance because if you are watching (listening) for ET you have to limit your search, but that means you can even set the wrong limits and don't find anything, so we could be in a interstellar conversation and we wouldn't even know.

(Area51)
I know of these two companies (Lockheed Skunkworks and DARPA projects) of course they are developing new weapon systems out there but why does the government denies, that this test side even exists ?

About Phoenix yes they drooped flares that night , but before that happened thousands of people including governor Fife Symington saw a physical craft no sound 1 mile across, why should they all lie? Of course they dropped the flares but what happened before thats what interesting.

The Rendlesham Forest case is one of the best documented we have audio records, a craft that landed in the forest with symbols on it that were drawn in the notebook (one the day it happened) of Jim Penniston one of the Airforce personal. The British MOD also said it was proven that the radiation level was higher than normal, which is reported in a lot of cases around the globe. Why should all these Airforce officers make up a hoax ?

Did you know that the Airforce regulations for handling UFO's was last updated in 2004 and not like they said they haven't touch the topic since Bluebook.

What is a military radar sighting of such objects for you ? Is it scientific or not ? Or is science also sorting out what they except and what don't ? I mean a lot of scientist use pseudonyms to work in that field not the get ridiculed and dropped out of the scientific community. So in the end you have to ask yourself who you choose to believe but just waiting for the breakthrough scientific clue is a wastes of time.

The question is if someone says he or she has captured a flying disk or alien body would you believe it?
And one more question are you a religious person ?

Define modern. Einstein was technologically proven about a decade after he publshed his theories; about 80 years ago. Is that what you consider "modern"?



Given how Radar works, this merely tells me that my EM waves bounced off of something. As I've tried to show with my Elves and Sprite example, here on Earth there are still many mysteries that could explain most (if not all) of UFO phenomena. Until we're pretty sure we've exhausted all "natural" phenomena then we can give "supernatural" phenomena a serious look.



Just to be clear:
If they only say it? So someone comes up to me, a stranger, and says they have captured an alien body, would I believe them? I'm not dismissing your point, just trying to clarify it.



Then you must abide by the tenets of the science, which include measurement and repeatability. So if you can do that, you are a scientist. But if you can't, then you aren't a scientist and (unfortunately) the model you most closely resemble is that of religion.



So if I told you that they were searching many other frequencies, over a larger swath of sky, and using more methods to prove or disprove ETsthan EM scan, would you call me a liar? And if true, how would that change your opinion of SETI?



I don't know for sure. I'm going to assume you don't know for sure either. So why Aliens? Why don't the other myriad of human and political behaviors suffice to explain the secrecy? Occam's razor,baby.. Occam's razor.

I assume you first look up the Seti programm (website for information) and Michio Kaku on that to find out what they really do, Iam not making claims here these are facts. But unfortunately you are not looking for facts you do confabulation.

My SETI references and your's don't coincide then. Could you be more specific on your reference please?

AFAIK Michio Kaku wrote a cool book about hyper-dimensions, but I don't know what that has to do with anything UFO-ish, Vatican-ish, or anything-else-ish. Could you expand on his relation to this thread?

All that really is, is simple talk to make something look more credible than it really is. As it's nothing more than circumstantial maturity, as in people coming together in more public places to discuss 'sightings' and theories and so on in a 'more serious' way.
Still, you can't deny that the 'evidence' they present consists of the same old blurry incredibly vague and dark pictures and movies together with a huge amount of conspiracy talk based on mostly hear-say and questionable references. So really, what exactly matured?

I'm not out to ridicule anything, but the UFO discussion hasn't outgrown the Bigfoot-like beliefs and stories.

Especially when it comes to evidence. I haven't seen one movies with a good resolution, even though 5 and 8 megapixel cameras are becoming more and more the standard nowadays.



It's the most discussed case, but it's certainly not the most important one when it comes down to actual evidence. If you ask me it's simply a mixture of two unrelated events. One being something that crashed and got recovered by the military (which happened pretty regularly in that area anyways) and the other being a man and women who reported having seen a flying saucer.

Now I don't know what exactly crashed down there, but if UFO-fans don't accept witness testimonials of people that were actually involved in recovering the crashed 'something' that they say was a weather balloon, then that's were conspiracy meets reality and facts just won't get accepted by definition.

It's very interesting to see how witness testimonials changed over time and how details were later added to give the whole thing more flavor, but if there's one story that leans heavily on hear-say, huge miscommunication and some pretty unreliable witness testimonials (just search for their later claims) it's the Roswell crash.



Didn't they write in papers that WMDs were in Iraq with photographs and all? Heck they even had a special on people that claimed to have seen and photographed Tupac on the Bahamas... if something is written in a newspaper it doesn't mean anything at all. It definitely doesn't mean it has to be true. In fact, if you read the actual article the person who wrote the story knows practically nothing as details about what exactly crashed weren't revealed yet.



I'd like to see how you've come to this conclusion, because there's really only one official story. Blame the 4 stories on the media and probably there are more versions.



Not really as all they've really changed is that certain classified information would stay locked away for yet another 50 years or so if I recall correctly.



It has to do with politics and plausible deniability. There's a good reason why they work on a need to know basis there as some of the technology and weapons can be a real danger if they would fall in the wrong hands. It has a lot to do with public opinion and they really wouldn't want people to interfere with the tests and so on. Apparently they think it's best if the general public simply doesn't know (for sure) and the government continues to deny.

For Roswell the farmer Mac Brazel reported something crashed down on his land, he hasn't got a phone at that time. When he was back in the city of Roswell he saw that there is a reward for a flying saucer thats why he reported his findings to the airforce.


For Kaku there is a video
Kaku on Aliens

Without context, it is quite hard to decipher what these two sentences are about.



It is quite clear that your "one frequency" scan and "100 ly swath" statements are derived from this video.

How do we reconcile this video, given by a person who is by all accounts a respected physicist, with the history of SETI as given in wikipedia? Are there other sources that confirm that SETI only scans in on frequency and only in our 100 ly radius? In my eye, the video and the evidence differ significantly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI

Next time the look up the SETI Website!

Seti searches on Hydrogen frequency

The 100 ly are just a logical thing to do as I said earlier you have to set a range for searching otherwise it makes no sense because our galaxy is 100000 ly across.

Yeaaaahhhh....ummmmm... This link that you provided, http://seticlassic.ssl.berkeley.edu/newsletters/newsletter10.html, is to a newsletter; it is not "the SETI website".

Nor does your provided link state or comment on any of the following "logical things" you state as true:

1) that all of the SETI program revolves around a single frequency scan of the sky and
2) that SETI is only surveying a 100 ly swath in the sky.

Want to take another stab at finding the "REAL" SETI website? It's not that hard I assure you?

The link I provided is SETI as well , it is SETI@home for me you seem to be pretty lazy about finding information yourself. If you don't believe the official stuff than start your own SETI dude.

http://www.seti.org/ata/fact.php here her also find information in frequencies so start researching yourself

Ahhhh... so to be clear, does SETI@HOME represent all of SETI? Is that all they do?



Perhaps I am "pretty lazy about finding information yourself" because I'm not finding any support for your points on this link either! Furthermore, this link is not about SETI but about the Allen Telescope Array.

So one more time, because a URL alone is not evidence of anything, could you provide where WITHIN the newly provided URL it states either:

1) that the SETI program consists exclusively of a single frequency scan of the sky and
2) that the SETI program consists of scanning only a 100 LY swath of sky.

Key Science Goals
Determine the neutral hydrogen (HI) content of galaxies over three-quarters of the sky, to measure how much intergalactic gas external galaxies are accreting; to search for dark, starless galaxies; to lay the foundation for SKA dark energy detection

Iam not your teacher you have to read yourself, they are searching for hydrogen and just frequencies near the frequency of hydrogen. If you have no idea about those stuff stopp missleading other people on the base of your ignorance.

He did not report anything until literally days later. In fact, it is said by official sources that he never came close to the crashed object and therefore how could he know if it was a flying saucer?

I read this, just like I read your last two pieces, so you can't say I'm ignoring what you present.

For starters, this is not the SETI mission statement, it is the ATA. This is SETI:
"Our mission is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe."

Furthermore, you seem to think that the ATA "IS" SETI. Well sorry to have to spread my ignorance around, I know how that chafes you,... but it's not. The past two times you have presented points to attempt to validate your assertions, they have been restricted to the ATA. That's like arguing that the US as a country is evil but only focusing on a single state.


And for the third time, I have read what you have presented and have found no references to your initial assertions, to whit:



In fact now, you have already tried to sneak in a change to your your story from "one frequency" to "frequencies near the frequency of hydrogen." Nice try.


And finally, this picture pretty much says it all much better than I can:






As I have proven three times already that I do in fact have an idea, then is it ok by you for me to start misleading? Pretty please????

Listen, I know it hurts to try to stay civil, I know you must be biting your tongue from calling me a fool, ignorant, and a misleader, and more... but I beg you to hold on just a bit longer. I mean seriously, if you want to turn this into a pissing contest over whose brain is bigger, quien es mas macho, and that BS instead of presenting facts and debating conclusions, then I'd like to know up front so we are both playing the same game!

The Farmer never knew if it was a saucer or not he just saw that there was a reward for the one who captures on of theses mysterious saucers he thought he could make some money.

But it is like I said half of the world believes and the other half will never believe and thats okay.I am open to the possibility that there is another explanation, but for me who started out as a skeptic the alien intervention is my explanation. I really looking for other explanations and not just a simple there is not evidence thats why I think we all have to be open to the possibility of aliens (interdimensional travelers.

I wanna end this with a quote by Arthur C.Clarke "Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

Really?

Oct 2007 poll shows 30% of people believe in UFOs

Last time I checked my math books, "1/2" did not equal "34%".



So you want explanations without evidence? Good luck...



Don't mistake "possible" with "probable".

Are Aliens possible? Absolutely.
Are Aliens probable? With no evidence, your guess is as good as Drakes!

Is Alien visitation possible? Absolutely.
Is Alien visitation probable? With no evidence to guide us, your guess is as good as Macks!

Yes, but later he claimed to have seen the object from up close and so on. He literally changed his whole witness report.



I am open to the possibility as well, but I don't think it's likely.In fact, there's really not enough evidence to be able to claim that aliens or UFOs (as in alien spacecraft) exist.



I totally agree. But on the other hand it's also too easy to say that the lack of evidence doesn't mean it proves that aliens do not exist. For a lot of theories, like the belief in Gods and so on, people tend to lean on this idea of how things unproven can be valid or something. Following that line of thought is a bit crazy in my opinion.



I don't quite get why it should be terrifying in either case. For mankind it's probably better to be alone, considering how many wars we fight, but alien civilizations might be a huge source of new knowledge.

Let's consider the following scenario
A super advanced civilization decided, some time ago, to send a fleet to explore the galaxie

Some figures

Alien fleet : 10.000 stars ships
Cruise speed : 10 % of the speed of light
crew : 100 members
average life span : 1.000 years

Mission : To explore 1 % of our galaxi
Expected time to complete the mission : 40.000.000 years
Human resources : 4.000.000.000 people, living 100 % of their life on board

You can make more sophisticated simulations, including for example the foundation of colonies but you will alwayes obtain non realistic scenarios

No seriuos scientits beleive that aliens visited our earth because of the size of our galaxie and the speed limit of light
The average distance between a star system and the next one , in our galaxi, is about 10 light years
A star ship would take 100 years to jump from one star to an other one
The number of stars is supposed to be about 400.000.000.000

An other matter is the existence of aliens

There are 400 bilion galaxies in the universe
Very likely aliens do exist

Either way it's based upon assumptions for which there's no evidence at all. One scientists thinks it's an educated guess to think the galaxy must be crawling with life, another thinks we probably are the only planet on which there's life.

I tend to agree with the first group of scientists, but until we've found some actual proof, it's as good as either guess.

Also, don't forget those chance figures are incredibly arbitrary and no scientist thinks of exactly the same figure... there's no simple rule to determine the real chance of life, especially since we don't really know much about the earliest phase or at least what or how it started.



That's an assumption on your side as there are definitely also serious scientists that believe it's very possible that other civilizations have already overcome such obstacles. Problem with such theories is that we don't really know how they have managed to overcome those problems... But just because we don't understand how doesn't mean it's not possible at all or even unlikely for that matter.

It's the big issue when there's a lack of evidence... we can fantasize all day long, but it would still get us nowhere unless we actually solve those problems ourselves or capture and reverse-engineer one of their space craft.



Assuming there's at least more than just one planet on which life started / or spread to, it's still incredibly questionable whether there's advanced and intelligent life comparable or better than here. (Mind you a lot of this talk is based on our rules of statistics that could be far off anyways.)

Obviously a few cells on a distant planet won't be able to visit us and we won't be able to visit them either as they are likely way too far away.

Perhaps there are or have been conditions elsewhere in our universe good enough to support life, but until we find such a place it's still a huge step to assume there might be life comparable to us.

It is not an assumption, it is a matter of fact and more important it is not of my side,
these kind of simulations have been made by many scientists, including Enrico Fermi, and the conclusion was alwayes the same, impossible...

The number of star systems of our galaxi is huge but the density is estremely low
Some serious scientists believe that some other civilizations has already overcome such obstacles ?
Really ? which ones ?

I took into account a speed 10 % of the speed of light
From earth to moon in 12 seconds
I suppose a life span 1000 years
I was happy to explore just 1 star out of 100 of our galaxi , assuming that our earth was one of them
Nevertheless I got 40 milions year to accomplish the mission

Facts about stellar populations do not translate to facts about alien life. And as there are no facts about alien life, any conclusion on this topic is assumptive and not factual.



I am unaware of Fermi doing any simulation on this topic.

And the poster child for exobiology, Drake's Equation, shows far from "impossible" results.

I did not make any strange assumption about the aliens
I said :

Suppose that they exist and their level of technology is very high ( of course it must be) , even so it is unlikely that they reached us because of the size of the galaxi , the distances and the speed limit
The only assumptions I made is that the physical laws are valid also for them , thus it make no sense to claim " the may have already overcome such obstacles "


Are you not unaware of Fermi's simulation ?

He took into consideration the foundations of colonies and he came to the conclusion that our galaxies should be crowded with alien colonies and the ether full of radio frequencies
Even nowadays SETI radio telescopes have not yet detected even one signal

Obviuosly it was not his main area of interest

The result of the Drake's equation depend on the value assigned to the parameters which are mere speculations
I have never taken this equation that seriously
However evolutionism is a deterministic theory

if the enviromental conditions are suitable life must evolve

There are 400 bilion galaxies with 400 bilions stars with , may be, 10 planets each
The number of planets can be estimated in :

n = 160.000.000.000.000.000.000.000

It is hard to think that none of them is suitable for life except the earth
Obviously nobody really knows

Deterministic or not there's nothing really inevitable about the evolution of life. The natural selection is inevitable, the coming into existence of life might not at all be as inevitable.

Besides, God or no God, you can't rule out the possibility of life being a unique event caused by unique conditions, regardless of whether there are millions or billions of planets elsewhere that might have been suitable too.



It may look like a huge number but considering the countless amount of stars it might not really be a huge number, besides what if the chance for life is only 0.000000000000000000000016??

So the their existence and level of technology is not an assumption?



I am aware of a back of the envelope "sound bite" about Fermi's Paradox. I'm unaware that he quantified his thoughts as an equation (like Drake) or that people work at proving the assumptions (again, like Drake).



Right. An Opinion based on an Assumption with no quantifiable evidence and no resultant equation to examine.... not a simulation, not much more than one scientist's opinion at that.



Correct. But unlike other models or Fermi's opinion, this one has an equation with variables that can be tested. On the objective side, as we learn more about the number of "earth class" planets, Drake's will be modified.

So there are a number of facts (number of objects in the heavens), a number of educated guesses in there (number of habitable planets), and a number of pure guesses (number of civilizations per galaxy).... but each one is put in a way that they can be tested somehow, sometime. That is why Drake's equation is not science, but it can be and is setup so it can become science.



And if we apply the Vogt-Russel theorem of Steller evolution, the same conditions must lead to the same life. Again, purely subjective arguements, but that is the way science looks into the unknown: by looking to the past for answers to the future; taking what we do know and applying it to the unknown; letting the data guide us and not our preconceptions.

We can put it this way: If there is no other life out there, it's a damn huge waste of space.

Now, what always bothered me, is that scientists try to look for planets with similar conditions like earth. But it's very subjective to estimate that for life to be possible, life conditions have to be exact or similar to earth.

Maybe im just totally wrong, but: Why does noone take into account that maybe life could evolve on a different type of planet? Maybe a planet that makes life impossible for US, but maybe enables other lifeforms to life and evolve.

Well just my two amateur cents.

Well I think scientists look for a certain amount of similarity simply because of the universality of the laws of physics.

The greatest example of this would of course be gravity, the concept of "up" and "down" in creature (or alien) designs must be taken into consideration.

An animal like a dog, lizard, or human has appendages on the bottom of his body for movement of the body against gravity. But they have no such appendages on the tops of their bodies because of the gravity it would be ridiculous and useless to have appendages on top of the body. Also birds have landing/take off gear on the bottoms of their bodies.

Of course, because their is no distinction between right and left on a planet with gravity then you would also see symmetry in most aliens probably, just like us they would have two eyes, two ears, two arms, or maybe not two arms but the same amount on each side.

Another universal sort of science that would limit alien conditions would be the amount of elements available for chemical compounds. There are more only around 115 elements and they all have very strict parameters in terms of whether they are metals or non-metals or what they can form bonds with, and their various properties.

But I think your question is an interesting one, and there are many ways alien life and conditions could be completely different then us. For example many scientists wonder why our dna is composed of 4 base pairs, what would life have been different if they were anything other than c,g,a,t?

Basically without writing a thousand page response I would also have to add the fact about the chemical composition of water and its relationship to life and the environment. My mind starts to tilt when I try to think of how much h2o has of an effect on everything. I simply have a very difficult time figuring out how life could exist as we know it without H2O.

Anyway I have given my amatuer two cents now, and I doubt it was very insightful, but those are my intial thoughts to your question, Im sure someone else knows more.


One more thing....A lot of scientists feel that ET would probably be microscopic in nature, like a bacterium, and I would agree that it would be more likely, but I have difficulty in thinking that any intelligent life forms would be that small simply because of the chemical reactions needed for a synapse and the space that is needed. But since we dont really understand how the brain works at its cognitive level it would be difficult to say much more.

How about this one ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJo2SeNZRC0&feature=related

I was pondering this idea about life existing without water. it lead me to this conclusion. Humans only know what is needed to sustain human life, not alien life. it is quite possible, that on other planets in nearby galaxies, there is intellegent life that is sustained by other things. it is possible that we havent seen these life forms here because our atmosphere could be deadly to them, and they havent found ways to "breathe" on class-m planets. the scientific ego still has this belief that we are the "only" intellegent life in our solar system. the truth of the matter is, we are probably too primitive to other worlds, they might not want to interfere and break their "prime directive" of not dealing with primitive life forms, for fear they might overwhelm us. my next statement may offend someone, so i apologize in advance, but look at the history of ancient cultures, and look at different events in the bible, as well as the accounts of the sumerians, the first civilization. it was clear that there was alien life her on earth, some even theorize that we were put here on earth by an alien for a purpose( read the history of the sumerians, akkadians, and mesopotaimians), so the idea that the vatican acknowledging aliens could exist is not a big surpise. if you ask me, they knew all along.

thats exactly my point!

Maybe some other alien races sustain by helium and not by water.

Its a little bothering that we seek for planets capable of HUMAN life while we didnt think that maybe on some far away planet with different conditions, a totally different lifeform evolved that needs totally different conditions than earth has.

That is a chemistry thing. Hydrogen and carbon can form very very long molecular chains which have very special functions. At some point we call this things life. With helium you simply can't do this.
I allways hated chemistry so maybe someone has a better knowledge about this.
I don't know if it is possible to make large moleculs with somethings different, but i think it is not possible, otherwise we would have found some other type of lifeforms.
Living without water-> i think this is impossible
Living without oxygen-> probably yes, there are some germs which life near volcanos underwater which don't need oxygen or sunlight.

Impossible. Thats like saying that maybe some species survive without gravity.

Hydrogen only has 1 proton in its outer shell, helium has 2 protons thus making it a noble gas. It simply doesn't bond like hydrogen does. Its a noble gas and would not want to bond with anything.

No matter which end of the universe we traverse to, there will only be a fixed amount of elements and they will only have fixed amounts of particles.

Speculation is fine, but it is only a wild guess unless you can answer the question: how is it possible?

Until then I am afraid you are just a faith-believer (but there is nothing wrong with that-I am also a faith believer)




Its the same with carbon-based life forms,we are carbon-based becuase of carbon's atomic structure and bonding characteristics. We have extremely, EXTREMELY complex macromolecules within us, so complex that some of them and their physical interactions almost escape our comprehension. They simply wouldnt be possible if it were not carbon-based. There is only one carbon atom.

If you could change the very fabric of matter and the way atoms interact then perhaps you would be on to something but changing the fabric of matter is only for the holy men.

but which different conditions? You have to be specific, otherwise as spock would say...."captain, its illogical." Anyway I'll stop arguing with you now, you have great questions though.

edit:ChrisB was posting at the same time as me so sorry for the repetition.

Simple science. We know what we look like, we know what kind of planet lead to that life, and thus we search for that.

Since we don't know of any other life-form (silicon, gaseous, energy, etc), we would be piling assumption (that they exist) on top of assumption (how they exist) and that WOULD be a waste of time as we guess blindly at what other life looks like.

again, we are talking about conditions for humans to survive, not alien species. without proof there can be no certainty that it isnt possible, just as there is no certainty that it is. think outside the box a bit. there were scientists not too long ago that said anti-matter didnt exist, but here we are. black holes were thought of as non-existant, now wormholes may be real. entertainment(movie)companies the media, and the government, and the scientific community has perpetuated these "false truths" about aliens, ufo's and such for years, and we still hold on to them until something happens, they are proved wrong, and a different way of thinks is produced, and now someone has an explination for the new phenomenom. why not read the writing on the wall(or cave, whatever the case may be) and realize that the possibility is there. if the writers of the bible (i will point to scriptures if needed to prove my point)and other ancient civilizations talk about ufo's and alien's who are we to say they are wrong? maybe we arent as receptive to them as they were, too arrogant to accept them, maybe we live among them, who knows for sure? i have read some books and can point to some websites that would shower you with facts and references to alien presence on earth(including the NASA website to make the connection between plantet x aka nibiru from the cuniform tablets of ancient sumer, and the planet on the approach coming back into our solar system) and i bet there will still be a doubt in someones mind that it is impossible. let's look outside the box a bit. it is possible.

Regardless what people think of chance... if something is unproven or unknown it still does mean it's likely to have happened that way. So in a way labeling something as 'A possibility' might not have any real value.



Yeah, but once you're following that line of thought, there's no way back in terms of assumptions based upon assumptions as Fastlane said.

Just because something was thought of to may have happened or exist, doesn't mean it's a real possibility so much as just a theoretical one. In abstract thinking, sure it can be possible, in reality most of the craziest ideas never really are a real possibility.

Now the real question here is; how crazy is the idea of life elsewhere and that's where we/they should concentrate on. And as far as I can tell, that's also why UFOs and aliens so easily get ridiculed as well. I don't think the idea of alien life visiting us mixed with no credible evidence whatsoever mixes very well when it comes to credibility and possibility.



True, but there you are assuming that these alien species may have entirely different ways of 'living'. I think it's unlikely for various reasons (for example; same rules in the universe would suggest a higher chance of 'similar' kinds of life evolved under the same conditions, wouldn't you agree? Obviously it's guesswork nonetheless, but it makes (more) sense imho than something totally different under the same conditions). Needless to say until we actually find alien species we won't know for sure.

Still, if you look at life here on our planet, sure life has found many ways to evolve, yet the core systems all tend to use the same successful formula.

the helium thing was just a wild example, i didnt write it as a real example. just to show what i meant by "something different than water".... geez

edit:


because earth has given the restrictions for evolution here, anothr planet may set other "restrictions" how life may evolve there.

True, I had forgot about how the restrictions here on earth might not need to be the same for alien life to be able to exist.

I'm not arguing against you though. When you look at the universe as far as we know though, there are places that might support life like here on our planet... and we know this because we find the same or similar conditions like we have here.

That's the way we currently search, find the conditions and there might be a possibility that the planet supports life.

Yet, even finding nearly the exact same conditions isn't a guarantee for life elsewhere, we've figured out that much already.

my point exactly, the reason why we havent seen other lifeforms from other planets in our solar system is because the "rules" may be different in their solar system. i know this is going to sound crazy, but take superman....he lived on a planet whos red sun made him as normal as we are, but when exposed to our yellow sun, he became superhuman. i know that being fantasy, may not be what would happen, but maybe the other species could not survive. in the case of the "Gods" that were on the earth during the time of the Sumerians. It was said that they came from Planet X/ Niberu. This planet is the only planet in our solar system that revolves around the earth in an elliptical pattern, opposite from the the other planets, and exists in two solar systems. this planet, disrupted the earth thrice, which cause the first and second ice age and the flood of noah. travelling on a course in our solar system every 3,600 years. The way the story goes, our 3,600 years is equivalent to its 1 year, so to us the inhabitants of its planet seem "Godlike" because of their longer life span compared to ours. we must seem "Godlike" to dragonflies and other insects and animals, because of our lifespan compared to theirs, so the idea that a planet coming back into our solar system after 3,600 years with humanoid life forms is a bit un-nerving, but the ancient civilizations say its true. i am not sure i want to call them liars. they were here to see it first hand. Look in the old testament, of all the accounts, do some research.

And if that is the case and we are barely starting to understand OUR rules, what chances do we have to just stumble upon the right rules for some alien species?

Use your superman example. Suppose, early in his career, there were no photographs of him but plenty of "crazy" stories of rescue and daring. Let's now say that the government correctly assumes this is the work of an alien and decides to search the heaven for him. Now then, how would the government have stumbled upon the circumstances for Superman's civilization if it was so different from ours? How would we have known that it's the Red Dwarfs that theses aliens, these "supermen", exist? How could we have known of their crystal technology and how to communicate with it? The answer is we wouldn't. We'd be guessing.

Likewise, nothing about any of the UFO evidence points to ANY biological clues. There is no consistent gas emissions recorded (which would point to an atmosphere differential), there is no specific waveform recorded (which would point to a sun different than ours), nor has there been direct contact with the public (which would point to a different societal outlook towards aliens and first contact).

None of this exists as repeatable facts. Thus none of the current UFO evidence gives us any clue as to where our real "supermen" exist and thus we stick to what we know. This is why until we see a definite example of a different set of rules from somewhere else, we will concentrate on defining and predicting from the rules we have right here.

Actually that's a myth as there's no evidence for 'noah's flood' here on earth. The first ice age was caused because of a changing atmospheric composition (particularly the fraction of CO2 and methane). The planet Niberu or whatever it's called wasn't in the vicinity of earth some 800 to 600 million years ago, so it can't have caused the ice age either. I don't know about the second ice age you are referring to, but it's probably the same story for that one...



There were no Gods on earth during the time of the Sumerians, instead they believed there were Gods on earth far before them in times of what the Sumer thought to have been the time of (their and earth's) creation.

There are no accounts where Sumer people talk about literally direct contact with their "Gods".

Well , one thing is , if there is water on earth , then there is possibility of water on a planet of any star, so , even searching for life similar to ours , it's still a HUGE MASSIVE MEGA chance of it existing everywhere in the universe. The biggest problem is , we cant see it , because stars are too far from us. So , lets say there is a big thriving civilization similar to ours in one of our close stars , we cant see it , they could be having a parade and we would be 100% unaware of it. The only reason we see stars is because they are so immensely bright, planets dont create light , we merely absorb and reflect it , so , if we cant even see the planets on the other stars (and if planet formation occurs as scientists believe it does , then there are planets on EVERY star) , then there is no way of knowing if there is life in any of them , that of course , doesnt mean there isnt , I'm very sure there is life on most stars , it only makes sense.

Just look at the big Mars mystery , it appears to have once been full of water having rivers and lakes everywhere , yet now we dont see any water , but it is assumed at one time it was full of water , which means , it might have been very similar to earth , and might have even sustained life , maybe even vast amounts of life , but if it did it's all gone now. So if Mars had water , and earth does , and one or 2 of saturn or jupiter's (I forget which) moons does , then water is not that rare a phenomena , it looks like it is a much more common thing than we once thought. So , I would say , we definately have a lot of neighbors , it only makes sense , wether you look at it from a religious or a scientific way , the chance of abundant life existing in the universe is vast. Just look at all the life that exists in ONE little planet , can you imagine the amount of life that exists in this whole universe ?

Why_do: Your first paragraph is a bit ridicolous, because we can infact see a lot of stars from earth, and those whose we don't see - because they are covered by nebula or whatsoever - we can see weith mirowave telescopes, or radiotelescopes, or x-ray telescopes. So theres plenty of things we can see. We even know where the center of our galaxy(not universe) is. So far, you are right about the planets, we can only assume where they might be by watching for a long long period of time.

But your second statement there is quite intresting. If water would actually really be a not so rare, but actually common - as there are hints of water on mars - and we would find some other traces on other planets/moons, then there would be a way higher chance of human or similar-to-human life existing in the universe.

Still, I belive that life does not exclusively has to evolve like here on earth.

I know, but you happened to use as an wild example the very element which would be least likely to be used for a water 'replacement'LOL

The polar molecules like water will tend to be lopsided in regards to electric charge, therefore they can lend themselves more readily to bonding via dipole-dipole bonding. Its going to be much more difficult to bond noble gases and otherwise 'symmetrical' molecules like o2 and atoms like helium unless we apply extremly high pressures and extremely low temperatures to create London dispersion forces which will cause them to bond only temporarily and instantaneously, but otherwise we can consider it impractical for them to bond.

The thing about water is that it has a unique bond which no other molecule possesses called hydrogen bonding which keeps the freezing point at 0 degrees celcius, if we take a noble gas like helium we would have to decrease the temperature to -268.785 C. Helium has the lowest melting point of all the elements. Maybe someone can tell us how far you would need to be from a heat source like our sun in order to reach such a temperature, I guess it would depend upon how much heat the particular star produces, and the following properties of any theoretical planet would need to be the same as earth.

1)The size and shape of the planet(any amount of sun would be hotter at the equator of the sphere, it would be colder and colder as it approaches the poles, depending upon how big the planet is that can be a fairly large temperature differential
2)The axis tilt of the planet. Like earth, if there is a particular tilt of the planet in respect to the sun then there would be differeing areas of concentration during different stages of the planets orbit.
3)rotation around axis, obvious 'day' temperature differentials
4)revolution around its star, obvious year temp differentials

As you can see there are a lot of factors to consider, I have just scratched a scratch on the surface.

Anyway, Im not arguing with you, just posting a knowledge dump in case anyone is interested in discussing what and or how life could exist without the conditions which we have.

They finally managed to get an 'image' of an exo-planet: http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltall/0,1518,525474,00.html (sorry its german)
and it seems that the planet (HD 189733b) even has water.
The laws of physic and chemistry are the same on every planet in the whole universe. So its likely that life on differents planets looks similiar to the life found on earth. Though, temperature, gravity and so on may differ.

Here's my AFAIK personal scientific insight:

There are a few things that water's unique properties contributed to life on Earth.

1) Triple Point: Water's Triple Point is within the temperature ranges of the Earth. Had the Earth's orbit and tilt been different and bumped us into a colder or warmer regime, we would not have the benefit of vapor, water, and liguid which undermines all macro-life on Earth.

2) 4 degree anomoly: due to the molecular structure of water and a "quirk" in the van-der-waal forces, water's density is greatest at 4 degrees and thus ice floats... which is critical for aquatic life.

3) Molecular Structure: as noted before, water is quite unique in being a universal solvent as well as it's bonding characteristics. This is another reason why a helium doesn't seem like a good replacement for water as it lacks the complex molecular behaiviour that leads to 1 and 2 above.

4) Material Abundence: all of the above doesn't matter if there isn't enough of this base material to go around. The high percentage of water to land surface area, leading to oceans, leading to atmosphere, is also critical in water's role in life. Once again, a single gas like Helium would be a bad candidate for water substitution since it is only abundent on gas giants (which makes all our rules of evolution suspect) and not on rocky planets (since it would evaporate away quickly).


So, if I were to look for "other" life on "other" planets, I would start this way:

1) What is the planets temperature range and are there any Triple Point molecules that we know of in that range?
2) If yes to 1, is that molecule found in abundence in the planet?
3) If yes to 2, what are the dynamics of this molecule precence in the planet (ie: what is it's "weather" system)?
4) If yes to 3, what are the molecular properties that would be relevant in this weather system?

And from Question 4 on out, we can start speculating on what our "other" lifeform would be like based upon the world-building exercise above.

"Why_do: Your first paragraph is a bit ridicolous, because we can infact see a lot of stars from earth, and those whose we don't see - because they are covered by nebula or whatsoever - we can see weith mirowave telescopes, or radiotelescopes, or x-ray telescopes. So theres plenty of things we can see. We even know where the center of our galaxy(not universe) is. So far, you are right about the planets, we can only assume where they might be by watching for a long long period of time."

I think you missed the point , i meant we cant see the life on other stars , because we cant see the planets that orbit the stars. I am aware we can see the stars , you just have to look up at night , and with hubble we have even seen the amount of galaxies out there.
I do agree with you on your last point , if there is life here , then there must be life there , it's simple logic, there are too many stars and too many galaxies , there is chance of life in a planet in every star, and we have BILLIONS and BILLIONS of stars.

"So, if I were to look for "other" life on "other" planets, I would start this way:

1) What is the planets temperature range and are there any Triple Point molecules that we know of in that range?
2) If yes to 1, is that molecule found in abundence in the planet?
3) If yes to 2, what are the dynamics of this molecule precence in the planet (ie: what is it's "weather" system)?
4) If yes to 3, what are the molecular properties that would be relevant in this weather system?"

Things dont have to be the same as earth for life , thats a rediculous assumption. We have life in our radioactive waste , in volcanoes , and the earths poles , so life here seems to adapt pretty well to almost any environment. Life could be similar yet different depending on the properties of the planet. Look at mars , Mars is very doesnt have earth's tilt , and is different in many ways , but still fairly similar , and it appears to have once had a ton of water , the new probe just landed on sunday (or was suppossed to , didnt check if it made it right) , whihc is going to test the mars areas where they believe there is frozen water , they are going to test if the ice is water , and if i recall correctly for traces of life. I would assume there was once life on mars , and if you look at the Mars pyramids , it might have even been intelligent life. Now before you all start ridiculing , you should check this out , http://www.history.com/minisites/life_after_people
It is estimated , that if humans died off , in just a couple of million years there would be ZERO trace of us , anyone who would come to earth would not realize there was once a thriving civilization here, so , I there's a good possibility Mar's might have once flourished with life , and I think scientists at Nasa are having the same hunch , hence all the interest in the red planet. But we'll see what the tests reveal , it's a pretty exiting experiment they are doing.

Did anyone see the previous movie link I posted ? What did you all think ? I think it's 100% conclusive evidence that UFO's in fact do exists , and the government is fully aware of them , but just dont really know what to make of them , so they just choose to ignore them.

True, I can't really argue with the logic implied here, but finding water elsewhere might still not be a guarantee for life. Again, how inevitable is the development of life when for example water exists on a planet?

We do know that water must have been very important for life (on earth) to develop, so yeah finding water gives a planet a higher score on the likeliness-scale of finding life for sure.

Then again Mars has polar icecaps and frozen ice layers under it's surface, yet micro-organisms or fossils haven't been found yet. I'm not saying they won't find them there, but it would have quite some implications on how we will think about these questions.

Obviously it takes a huge amount of time and effort to research an entire planet like Mars, but it wouldn't surprise me either way. As in, yes the conditions seem to be good (although needless to say (at the moment) Mars is a much more hostile planet towards life than our earth), yet possibility doesn't imply an inevitability.

Why_do:I didnt disagree with you, in fact - I even agreed! Like I said: If there is no other life out there, the Unvierse is a MASSIVE waste of space.

Look at it from the brighter side; the less life out there, the less competition and more space for us to explore and colonize (aka pollute) eventually.

If there really turns out to be no life apart from our planet, (something that's not falsifiable considering the vast amount of planets on which life might exist... but still), then we could also decide to spread life ourselves.

throw a bunch of microbes into a puddle of water on a life sustainable planet and watch what happens, huh?

your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great²³²-grandchildren could tell you xD

It's just more of the same: eyewitnesses and interpretation. After all, just because a recording says "I see an object", heck even if a recording has someone saying "I see a UFO", is not evidence, it's hearsay.



That's correct. But equally ridiculous is the idea that we can successfully "guess" what that "other" life could be. That's my point to that post: that since we only know of ONE sentiant lifeform, we should search on the parameters we KNOW lead to life, not parameters that we ASSUME could lead to some type of life. My thought experiment was just a quick "back of the envelope" examination of how one would go about, scientifically, trying to find these "other" lifes. As you can see, it's a lot more involved than looking for life like us.

"heck even if a recording has someone saying "I see a UFO", is not evidence, it's hearsay."

This are all Military officials that take care of the nations air space , these are not just random people , they are trained officers who can distinguish a ufo from say a fighter plane or the like. So , it's incredible that you would refute the arguments of government officials , the same people who'se opinions you seem to always hold in very high reguard , and only because their testimony disagrees with your believes.

"that since we only know of ONE sentiant lifeform, we should search on the parameters we KNOW lead to life"

Well we need to find a way to get to the other planets first , then we will see if there is life or there isnt.

LOL

Not so incredible when you consider I have never stated that I hold them in high opinion; that's your fantasy, not mine!

LOL

And anyway, there is nothing about being military or government that turns "hearsay" into "evidence". Just because President Jimmy Carter saw something he can't explain doesn't mean that this is "proof" of alien existance.



Really? What do you think that commercial pilots made of the f-117 stealth before it was public, hmm? Do you think that they reported it as "an airplane" even though they had no knowledge that such an airplane existed... or do you suppose that they reported it as a UFO? Exactly.

So all even the most vetern airman can say is "I saw something that I can't explain"... but the lack of an explanation is not the proof of aliens.




I don't think I've stated whether I believe that aliens exist or not, so how can you say this?

I thought it was evident that I made a "reduction to the absurd" to refute the claim that aliens have visited our earth


" one assumes a claim for the sake of argument and derives an absurd or ridiculous outcome, and then concludes that the original claim must have been wrong as it led to an absurd result "

I got started from scientific evidences ( the size of our galaxi)
I made some assumptions in favour of the claim but within the bounds of the physical laws ( the level of technology )
I got an absurd scenario

Honestly I thought it was so obvious

This is the point

a) spetroscopic analysis of even the most remote star systems demostrate that they are like our sun
No unknown elements has never been found in the thousands meteorits falling every year on our earth and coming from the deep space
ammino acids have been found in meteorits

b) As ChrisB said life can be based only on carbon
A complex organism must be made of different kind of tissues
These tissues must be reasonably stable but not that stable to allow the complex bio chemical process
Only carbon has this property

If you put a and b togheter it reasonable to assume that the aliens , if they exist, are like us , at least as far as their chemistry is concerned

Of course their shape, color ,dimensions , might be quite different

Beside also their planet must be like our earth for evident reasons

The key to "Reductio Ad Absurdum" is that it relies on your final statement to be "absurd" built up from "non-absurd" statements. And of course, with "absurd" being a subjective statement, it relies on that final statement being SO ridiculous, so laughable, that anyone would instantly recognize it as absurd.

Your final statement was not "absurd", merely "improbable". You made several assumptions and then derived a number. However, a number is NOT clearly absurd. It could be imporobable, likely impossible, but not absurd.

A proper "reductio" applied to this issue would have us do the same assumptions you did but we end up with the result that all planets have life (absurd) or that no planets have life (absurd). Anything in-between is not absurd and that is all that you have shown, the in-between.

So no, it isn't obvious at all that "reductio ad absurdum" is what you were trying to do.

Considering that most items that fall to earth is from the same "source" that made earth, from the same primeval oven that made our solar system, this is not too surprising.

More important in my eyes is the fact that EM radiation from the edge of the visible universe seems to behavive exactly as here. This gives credence to the idea that our Local Laws of Physics are actually Global laws.

Of course there is the catch 22 that maybe EM radiation follows the same rules because we INTERPRET the results following those rules and maybe it's an illusion. But I see no way short of GOING to these stars physically to clear this up.



Here's my problem with this statement and what a random NASA response is:

I see no evidence that they are taking our physical environment into account. I would say that the more accurate statement would be:
GIVEN a planet with our gravity and atmosphere and
GIVEN a planet with our temperature ranges and
GIVEN a planet that is still "alive" with tectonics then
CARBON is quite possible the only molecule that life can exist on.

BUT
CHANGE the gravity and atmosphere and
CHANGE the temperature range and
CHANGE the tectonic activity then
CARBON MAY NOT be the moledule that reacts mostly in this environment.

That is to say, I don't know that any studies have been made (or can be made) at trying to replicate Carbons molecular uniquenesses with other elements in other conditions. I have a gut feeling that you can set up a fake non-earth like planet, we will find that life still exists but built around a different element that has Carbon's life giving properties but only within that range of parameters.

Comandant Dick the 1st left his native planet on board of his star ship
Comandant Dick the 40.000 th discovered the earth
Comandant Dick the 40.050 th received the congratulations message from his native planet
It was found buried under a pyramid , but CIA as usual refuse to disclose it
The message said :

" Compliment comandant Dick the 40.050th and honour to the 4.000.000.000 heroes who sacrificed their life for our great country
I must remind you however that 99 % of the galaxi is still unexplored
Aliens expect that you complete your mission "

This is the conclusion that you would come , just making some simple calculations

Do you call it just "improbable " ?

come on

Yes, studies have been made
The most likely candidate to replace carbon was silicon, being like carbon
That's why in many video games aliens are made of silicon
But finally scientists had to give it up

by the way
Meteorits come also from deep space not only from our solar systems

"LOL

Not so incredible when you consider I have never stated that I hold them in high opinion; that's your fantasy, not mine! smile

LOL

And anyway, there is nothing about being military or government that turns "hearsay" into "evidence". Just because President Jimmy Carter saw something he can't explain doesn't mean that this is "proof" of alien existance."

So you just cant be wrong fastlane ? You will contradict yourself constantly and claim to be right ?
So if scientific community decided the poof of ufos is too much and accept the theory , would you accept it ? Or , would you have to see a UFO yourself ? And if you do , would that be enough ? Or would you need to inevitably be taken aboard a ship and probed , and even then , would u chuck it up to losing your sanity ? See , thats the problem with a person who fully refuses to even minutely accept any type of evidence for something they are 100% against, maybe if you saw an actual alien , you might kill yourself because your brain just cant cope with that reality.

The people on the video , were all military trained professionals , who have kept this to themselves for over 20 years , now , they are older , and no longer part of the government , so they obviously have less pressure , and have decided to come forward. A lot of the classified files had been declassified , and we clearly hear the account of what happened , and it's exactly the same as the man describes , so this man is obviously not an insane incoherent bastard , everything he said is proven with the audio recordings. Now , the government just put it was a weather balloon they had seen when the incident was over , but if you saw the whole video , you see they clearly state they contacted the weather people about any possible weather balloons in that area , and their response was they had nothing over there , they hadn't sent out anything , so it COULDN'T have been a weather balloon, yet they still put thats what it was , just how they say all ufos people see are weather balloons , what a coincidence.
The another trained expert in reading radars comes and examines the radar imagees from the incident , and clearly states that it does not look like a weather anomaly , it looks like there are some things there.

Then the plane they sent to chase this lights , went as far up as it could , but could never get to them ,the pilot said it looked like the lights just kept going up , right out of the planet , and dissapeared .

Are you actually saying this was a military plane fastlane ? To this day , they dont have planes that can fly out of the planet , only big huge rockets for that, so this IS NOT hear say. This is a well documented incident , involving government officials , where we have the audio transmitions of what happened , the radar images , and the testimony of the people who were there , and they chased the lights , lights that just floated up untill they were out of the planet , then dissapeared.

All of the people who were present at the incident , believe it was UFOs , they have explored other possibilities , but none match what happened , everything points to UFOs. Now , you are disguarding all of this people's testimonies , men who are now retired who have served the country all their life , you just disreguard their testimony to what happened like they were some fools and you are some super genius who knows everything , and even know what happened that day better than they do , who were actually there. So , let me ask you this , what was it they saw ? Look at the video , analize the audio , description , radar images they show , and description of everything that happened, what was it ? Maybe the brightest mind in the planet who solves all of our mysteries by saying it's nonsense until he sees them with his own eyes , maybe he can solve what those people saw ?

So, tell us what it was , so we can contact the retired officers and let them know it's ok , it wasnt a UFO , we'll tell them what they saw 30 years ago , so the incident doesnt trouble them anymore.

Here is a quote from the bible , as incredible as it sounds , people like you fastlane have existed from the begining of time, here it is when the disciples saw Jesus had come back , but Thomas wasn't there when it happened , so you have all the disciples telling him Jesus came back , adn this is what he answered

"But Thomas , one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." "

So , it is clear that NO AMOUNT of evidence could ever convince you , you just stated if the president said he saw UFOs you would still consider it hear and say and nonsense , so , it is pointless to keep showing you proof , you will refute anything , even an encounter, I am sure you would dismiss it as losing your mind rather than accepting that this things do exist .

Here is the funny part in all this , being a science believer , I would assume this is easier for you to deal with than for say , the religious groups , as you believe in the universe and chance and physics , which all predict life being possible everywhere , which would mean that there could be other much more adgvanced planets in our universe , and we have some stars that are pretty close , we have a couple that are 4 and 5 light years away , that means that if an intelligent species lives in one of those stars , and they are advanced to the point of traveling at the speed of light , it would take them just 4 years to get here , now , if their clocks are different than outs , and to them it's just half a year (not all planets orbit a 360 day year) , then it's incredibly possible that this beings could come visit , and see whats happening here .

Now you can argue intelligent life , but , if you believe in the theory of evolution , then you believe life just somehow can spawn with the right conditions (which if all the universe is the same like you state then this conditions are standard) , and this life begins to evolve , into much more intelligent creatures (even a shitty bug is super intelligent and magnificent considering the first theorized cell), untill you have something like us . So if you believe in science and evolution , you have to accept that any planet supporting life would have life , and you have to believe that life had to evolve , which means there must be people like us there , or more intelligent , or in the process of evolving to people like us , so it's all dependant on the timmeframe this organism started evolving. All the universe is the same right ? And it all follows the same laws right ? So , if all this is true , and the main reason earth has it's conditions is the distance form the sun , then there you have to assume there are tons of planets with the same distance , since the distance is part of the equation of the creation of the solar system which is a direct result of the creation of a star. The tilt , is not nessesary , we definately benefit from it , but it is not a necessecity for life on earth. And the magnetic field is caused by the core , so that shouldnt be a problem either , all pllanets have cores.

So , if you believe in science , believing in Aliens and Ufos really shouldnt be that big of a problem , since you already believe in a scientific world, and we see the ufo's , there are TONS AND TONS of testimonies , and now even government officials , but you refuse to believe any testimonies.

So accodring to fastlane , all of our ancestors were liars , all of the religions are fake and false stories written by our lying and deceiving forefathers , and all of the UFO testimonies are lies as well , by our lying and deceiving citizens of the world , and all of the astronauts testimonies are lies from are lying stronauts , and all of the testimonies from government and military officials are lies as well , from our lying and deceiving government officers. So they are all lying bastards then ? All of our people are lying deceiving snakes , who want us to believe nonsense ? Exept you and your tiny group of evolutionists , they dont lie , you speak 100% verified truth about every single thing in the world and universe ? Oh, and have the answers to all questions as well right ?

I wonder what you will say to refute my arquments , you seem to just dismiss anything you dont agree with anyway , I'm starting to think posting here is pointless , but in any case , the truth will eventually be revealed.

Because your definition of evidence and mine are different, you are correct.

To prove my point...



...you will find not a single piece of evidence to validate this assertion. Not in all my Hillbert or Forum wide posts.

Thus this paragraph, your paragraph, shows how an un-scientific mind will turn undisputed facts (my collected forum postings) into a subjective -- and in this case plainly wrong -- interpretation ("all of our ancestors were liars , all of the religions are fake [...]" )

This is exactly the same as people turning an undisputed fact (moving lights in the air) into a subjective interpretation (extraterrestrial vehicle).

Thanks for making my point for me.

Could you reference these experiement and/or why scientists gave up?



I have NO idea what this is all about or what it's meant to show.
Is this another "absurd" attempt?



I beleive that most of the debris that hits our Earth will in fact be from our local neighborhood (say a 1 lightyear radius from us). During the solar systems creation, the systems gravity would have "sweeped" up outlying debris and left it relatively clear. I'm sure objects from further away can and I'm sure do hit us, but based on my hypothesis, these "extra-solar" objects would be few and far between and thus we are safe in taking as a starting assumption that a meterite is from our local neighborhood.

Science is more about proving that something can not work in the physical world and not about finding the final prove which all of those skeptics are asking for. And the physics of so called “UFO's” are not violating science in any way and so it seems truly just about believe and non-believe.

We are so far away of knowing everything to say”Oh no we don't look into such subjects just because we believe it is not true”.Some scientist work on such subjects but if they would come out and say we look into the subject of so called “UFO's” all they would earn is ridicule and laughter. Not because the are wrong just because people believe what they see in everyday life is all what there is. But the fact remains the military which mostly uses actual technology and spends a lot of money to get scientist to develop new weapon and propulsion systems, believe they are real. Ones the subject of UFOs was officially more highly classified than the H-Bomb. You even find very compelling information on UFO's on the CIA website but you proved before that you are to lazy to search for information fastlane69 .

Those things don't have to come from space but just an other dimension , most of the people here on earth live in 4 dimensions and by now we know that every dimension is open to deformation. The M-Theory even assumes up to 11 dimensions (some physicist even 21) so what is in the rest of them. So maybe like many physicists assume now, we are not tuned to see worlds that are beyond what we can see today. The universe is mostly made out of dark matter something we can't see ,by now it cannot describe in anyway. I think science today is more mature and open to possibilities most of us still deny and they are heading in new directions to go and solve a lot of paradoxes and flaws from the past theories. So it is possible that everywhere around us are other worlds which sometimes interfere with our world and these beings could come from these places.

The question is also how would we discover the universe or galaxy, we have no chance to travel to all the stars and there planets, we could send out tiny robots to the stars and there moons. That what a galactic civilization would do, and maybe in a 100 years from now when we have a moon base we will find one of these nano- robots.

It sounds like most of the debunker's condemn anyone who commits the crime to be or think different and more so even tries to collect evidence on a subject that 50 % of the people think is not real. The word believe is actually not the right word, I would say a lot of the testimony is credible these people are not a part of a believe system , most didn't even believe in the existence of UFO's in the first place ,thats just what people saw and reported. I also saw some stuff in the sky and also searched for down to earth explanations airplanes, planets, ISS reflections, light balls (f.e.flares), balloons aso, so sometimes I have done a lot of research just to find out that these where Chinese balloons but there was some stuff that doesn't fit into any of the explanations.

A question to all those die hard “debunker's”:

Lets just image you see in bright daylight clearly a flying disk hovering completely silent in the sky for a few minutes and then take off into what we call “space”, you would say to yourself no a haven't seen this because 50 % of the people think this is not real? It doesn't have to be alien but it could also be one of ours but if we have such technology why are we still use rockets to get into space ? But maybe you doesn't see such thing either because you don't want to or just look to ground all the time.

So in the end if someday this phenomenon is revealed to be other beings maybe not from space but from an other dimension who will be more prepared to accept this reality? the believers or the non-believers.

50% correct. It is true that no scientist has any delusion of finding any "final" anything. Answers lead to questions lead to answers lead to questions ad nausium. We in science know, respect, and abide by that belief. The 50% that I believe you are incorrect in is your description of how science operates. I'm not quite sure exactly "what" you mean but the general idea seems skewed and awaits further clarification on your part.



You mean here:?

CIA.GOV; search query = ufo; second query return item

"[...]What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena. [...]Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence."

I should write a book on this syndrome. Call it "the religion of the internet", this nouveau idea that if its on the net, it's true and it's factual and it's evidence. Suppose the CIA posted Alien Photos and said, factually and clearly: "these are real alien photos". And nothing else. That's it. No new tech. No new announcement, nothing. Just a single photo for 1, 5, 10, 20 years or more. Would you believe them? Is a non-repeatable event enough evidence to solidify or change your beliefs? I dare say not. But let me kick the scenario up a notch based on the religious bent of our audience.

Same situation as above but one minor change. The CIA posts on their website "this is a real alien and he says that all gods are false". Hmmm. Now then, if it's on the CIA website it MUST be true. But I love god. What do you do? I dare say in this case you would consider the new "evidence" not evidence at all, right?



Interesting assertion. Let's see if it's true however:

Consider that there is mountain of evidence in this post and others that I in fact do more "search for information" than most people here. I put links to my research, references to the people and events, and overall always have some source to back up my opinions with facts. Even if my opinion is ultimately proven wrong, by stating that I am "too lazy to search for information", you, like why_do have taken a fact (information content of my posts) and come up with a wrong subjective interpretation (too lazy to search for information).

This is another clear example of how the facts can be undisputed and there for all to see and yet, if left to subjective interpretation, can be completely misinterpreted and just plain wrong!

Thanks for making my point about how subjective all of these talks are, Subcrea!



That's exactly my stance as well... it is possible...

BUT,

As you point out, they could be inter dimensional travelers, they could be a yet unknown intra-systems species, they could be from this galaxy, the next, or the very end of time. So... how do we tell which is which? How do you use the evidence so far (photos and hearsay) to eliminate one or more of these possibilities? Ask ANY questions about these aliens and apply the same logic: how can I use the evidence at hand to answer that question? If what you CLAIM is evidence truly is, it should help answer more questions than "do they exist?"... a lot more questions! Yet you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to answer even the most basic of questions about these aliens given what you and others consider "evidence".



As I've made clear before, I don't dispute the facts (people seeing something), I merely dispute their subjective interpretation (that there is no doubt, they are 100% sure, that they are alien craft).



I will not dispute the fact (that I saw a hovering disk) and I will not forward any subjective interpretation (it was an alien, inter dimensional, government top secret, angelic chariot, etc...).

I will do research and see if I can find an answer -- others that saw it, newspapers, local airports, etc -- but if I can't find an answer, I'm free to believe whatever I want, aren't I?

Fastlane , you are a JOKE man. Plain and simple , I would tell you the proper words that describe you but sadly this forum is full of homosexuals and I would undoubtely get banned for it. But , a UFO is an UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT.


"This is exactly the same as people turning an undisputed fact (moving lights in the air) into a subjective interpretation (extraterrestrial vehicle)."

So you are saying you do believe they saw lights in the sky , but it was not an extraterrestial vehicle , however , it WAS a UFO right ? (look at the description of what a ufo is I put ontop).

But if you cannot prove it wasnt an alien ship , then it could very well be , and since this military officials believe it was , and they are trained officers , and they were there , then , I believe their testimony is much more credible and respectable than yours , someone who was not there , is not a trained air craft specialist , and has no idea of what they saw.

Where are your credentials ? What kind of training do you have that would qualify you to over rule their conclusions on the sucject considering their training and position . Further illuminate why we here should even mildly consider what you have to say versus what they have to say.

"As I've made clear before, I don't dispute the facts (people seeing something), I merely dispute their subjective interpretation (that there is no doubt, they are 100% sure, that they are alien craft)."

We arent even 100% sure we actually exist , how can you be so damnding of them ?
Scientists arent 100% sure what we are or where we are.
Scientists aren't 100% sure about evolution or the big bang.
Yet you seem to not have any problems with this , you only seem to require 100% when it comes to a subject you are in discordance with , which shows you are indeed of a true scientist nature, to only acknowledge what you agree with , and overlook and ignore the rest.

Ahhh... so we've come to this again. As you yourself once stated, "those that cannot attack a person's point attack the person".

Took you a few days for you to lose you composure again. I'm proud of you, again, for making it this far!



???? On top of your computer, on top of the fridge, on top of what? I don't see a description.



Exactly. And neither were you. So we are faced with the situation of first believing that these people saw a UFO -- we both agree to this, as you say these are reputable people, so we both choose the same first belief. We may be wrong... they may have been on drugs or hit their head or any other number of reasons, but for the sake of arguement, this is an easy one to just since "fine, I accept you saw these lights".

But then we are faced with a further choice of believing them AGAIN in that the UFO is of extraterrestrial origin, that they in fact know somehow that it was not military or inter-dimensional or spiritual or anything else.

Here we disagree in that I believe it was still a UFO, still unidentified, since they have no outside evidence otherwise. After all, Unidentified does not mean it was Alien, not by a long shot.

While you believe them a second time in their conclusion that it was not a UFO but an IFO, Identified Flying Object, since you concur with their identification of the UFO as an Alien Craft.





Deja Vu is such a tiresome thing...

I don't need to flash my credentials to make a point; I only need present facts and cohesive conclusions to make a point. That is the ONLY reason people on this forum listen to me... that's really the only people I listen to. And what they think of me or my ideas is of no concern tome... because they are listening... and continue to listen... as you have time and time again.



Why? LOL




I'm not being demanding of them; you are You are the person that is espousing the viewpoint that these are aliens, that they must be alien because AFAYK, there is no other reason, that they must be aliens because the people that saw the lights SAY it was aliens.

I on the other hand am the one espousing the viewpoint that they might be aliens or that they might be some other phenomena yet neither viewpoint can be proven conclusively at this time. I can however point once again to the Elves and Sprites as an example of weather phenomena that looks like 80% to 90% of all UFO sightings and thus underlies our complete ignorances as to the "U" in "UFO".

Thus that 100% comes from you and all the other eyewitnesses who are 100% convinced it was an Alien Craft and not just a UFO... remember, absolutism is your policy, not mine.

Your are making only issues, no reason for me to answer

"Took you a few days for you to lose you composure again. I'm proud of you, again, for making it this far!"

Thank you thank you , it ain't easy , i'm a hot blooded person.

"???? On top of your computer, on top of the fridge, on top of what? I don't see a description. "

In the previous sentences

"Exactly. And neither were you. So we are faced with the situation of first believing that these people saw a UFO -- we both agree to this, as you say these are reputable people, so we both choose the same first belief. We may be wrong... they may have been on drugs or hit their head or any other number of reasons, but for the sake of arguement, this is an easy one to just since "fine, I accept you saw these lights"."

Correct

"But then we are faced with a further choice of believing them AGAIN in that the UFO is of extraterrestrial origin, that they in fact know somehow that it was not military or inter-dimensional or spiritual or anything else."

Well if it's not from earth , it's extra-TERRESTRIAL. So , even if they were inter-dimensional or sipiritual , they are still extra-terrestrial. See , the big thing is , we don't really know what aliens and UFO's are , nobody knows what they are , people just witness the event , and usually it gets ignored and it's said it's a weather balloon or something. Here , we have proof that this in fact was not a weather balloon , or radar anomaly , we have proof that this "UFOs" are in fact a reality. Of course , since this people didn't actually see what was inside/behind this lights (space craft or the like), we cannot say they were alien beings piloting alien space craft , but we cannot say they were not UFOs and that they do not exist.

Now we are left with the question , what the hell were those lights , now because of the radar, we can see the size , and these were the size of air craft , and the hovered around , and when the human piloted plane was sent to see what those lights were , they elevated themselves until they were out of the planet , and disappeared . So from their size , and behavior , the most logical interpretation would be that this were some type of unknown air craft. The fact that they were just hovering around a military zone for hours also points to this lights as being something more than just a strange lighting artifact of phenomena . So in a scientific way , you would have to conclude that the most logical explanation for this craft , considering their size , behavior , and the fact they they were flying , would be that they were some sort of extra-terrestrial(not from earth) or extra-dimensional(not from our dimension) air craft/ship.

"I don't need to flash my credentials to make a point;"

Well thats a new one , you seem to only regard arguments made by scientists and science published articles , that lets me know credentials are incredibly important to you , before you consider what the people are saying. So , you require credentials to take someone seriously , but dont need any to discredit government officials and their testimonies. Fantastic , I like the way you work.

"I only need present facts and cohesive conclusions to make a point."

Your points are ALWAYS incoherent and biased.

"That is the ONLY reason people on this forum listen to me"

Nobody here listens to you , but I see you have delusions of being of higher intelligence and intellect , a very common sign of scientist syndrome.

"that's really the only people I listen to."

LOL , you only listen to scientists with credentials , you don't believe that one yourself.

"And what they think of me or my ideas is of no concern tome... because they are listening... and continue to listen... as you have time and time again"

An even bigger delusional problem than I anticipated. Btw , and how do I listen to you ? I have contradicted every statement you've made , and wiped my [censored] with your arguments for evolution , and proved beyond a doubt that evolution is a matter of faith rather than science , and proved that UFO's do exist (by your own admittance). So , how is that listening ? I find your arguments laughable , incoherent , and those that a def and blind sheep might follow. Yet you believe them by heart , which shows your low level of mentality and spirituality.

"remember, absolutism is your policy, not mine."

Exactly , your policy is ignoring anything you don't understand , but that is a policy that rids you of any responsibility or any coherence , since you don't have to try to explain what you or scientists don't understand , you just say you don't know what it was , and move on . But on evolution and the big bang , well that we have no proof of , but still blindly belief , LOL . This is truly a marvelous example of how brainwashing children is as powerful a tool as they can wield , and how the undoing of this is EXTREMELY difficult.



Let me tell you something fastlane , I was , before doing research into everything , a follower of science , Evolution and the Big Bang made perfect sense (the theories are well thought out after all) . I thought Einstein was a genius , and he is , but his theory is ultimately flawed. After much research , in science , big bang , evolution , religion , creationism , archeology , all of our history as humans , then , you come to the conclusion that there is much more unknown than known , and EVERYONE , from religious to scientists to creationists piece theories together from the fact fragments we have. So , you realize how nobody really knowns 100% for sure ANYTHING. You should consider pulling your nose away from the science books and look at all the other wealth of ideas theories and evidence out there , you might reconsider what you believe you know.

There is no description of UFO's in any previous sentences. But if you think that spelling out UFO is a description, then, well, ummm....



Which again proves that you are biased towards a UFO not being from Earth. As I show below, there are many other equally valid explanations that are solely and firmly from Earth



Nobody denies that UFOs are real. By definition, an F-117 was a UFO for many decades during it's trials. By definition, Elves and Sprites were UFOs until 1989. Both UFOs; both Terrestrial.



Another example of taking an undisputed fact (objects on radar; pilots sent to investigate) and making wild subjective interpretations of the events ("until they were out of the planet"). I'm seeing a pattern here...




...OR a Terrestrial Aircraft with flight characteristics the public doesn't know about.

...OR a Natural Phenomena such as Elves, Sprite, Ball Lightning, or a yet undiscovered effect.

...OR a Underwater Race of superbeings whose crafts are not from outer space, but from right here on Earth.

...OR an Invisible Race of humans who live among us and whose technology occasionally fails, hence the sightings.

Is there any way to dismiss any of these terrestrial possibilities away in lieu of extra-terrestrials?




Orrrrr, it could be that if I'm studying a subject, I'll naturally go to the experts in that subject first? Pretty crazy I know but if the topic is "science", I would naturally post reference from "scientists" whom have credentials (PhD) as representing most knowledgeable from that area.

When the topic is "religion", I would naturally post references from the "religious" whom have credentials (like Father) in that area as representing the most knowledgeable.

And when the topic is "cooking", I would naturally post references from the "cooks" whom have credentials (like chef).

But the original question was that I myself did not need to flash my credentials to make a point. All you are making a statement on is on how I gather my information. But this doesn't mean these are the only people I listen too as you so erroneously assume (get used to that Why_do: erroneously assumed... you'll see it a lot now that I've identified it) I have agreed with you and phemox and nitro and others with no regard to your degrees. I will often disagree with PhD's, MBAs, whatever other credential so even they are not above scrutiny. So credentials just prove that you "might" know something about a subject but it in no way shape or form automatically makes me believe what they say.

So once again you are making a wrong assumption that just because I turn to experts in a field of study for my research means that I dismiss anyones who does not have credentials.




I know that in your mind this is true. And I'm thankful that maybe only one or two other minds believe that above is true.



That pretty much sums it up. Yeaup. If I don't understand, I have no right to explain.



You have such a fuzzy concept of "proof" that it is no surprise that you would say in the same thread that there is no proof for the Big Bang or Evolution... but there is proof for Alien UFOs!!!! ROLMAO

Sows what happens when we start to exclusively believing what our minds imagine for us (Extra-dimensional Alien Air Craft) instead of what the world really shows us (unexplained lights).




LOL Classic Comment! I'm going to refer you back to the Crackpot Index and leave it at that.



Again, because you can't make your point, you start attacking the person. And again you make wild accusations (that all I read is science books) but have zero evidence to show for it. I see the pattern now... heck I saw it in our first discussions... and you are very clear to me Why_Do... transperant even!

Why haven't you answered my last question who would be more prepared . What if evolution is not just evolving in 4 dimensions but in 11, the reason I see most people are struggling with the existence of other beings is simply the fact that it would make us less special.

The word alien is full of mistakes, when you say alien people think creatures from space coming here but to get to a unified theory about our universe, we currently have no other solution than the M-Theory with 11 and up 21 dimensions and it seems satellites give us a lot of new data to test that theory. My way of solving problems is based on creativity for that mean interpretation and I know scientists are good at investigating the ink of the text of a book but by doing that they totally dismiss the context of the book.

For me we are like fish in a pond living in 4 dimensions not even aware of the world outside the pond of hyperspace and the intelligent s (beings) that are living in the hidden worlds. But that doesn't mean we need to put our heads into the sand, because we have the chance to discover something that is far beyond of what we believe the world consists of.

Maybe all those people who saw crafts are totally mistaken and all the trace cases are hoaxes but this is the evidence we have. The other option is to say all are lying and making up stuff thats is for me more based on believe than the believe in testimony and trace cases. You have to remember also that these people never got big money, they mostly get laughter.

Even it is a big money blockbuster there is a wonderful line at the end of the newest “Indiana Jones” movie “Their treasure was not gold, it was knowledge” and that is the fundamental rule of everything we try to do to answer questions.

So guys watch the sky,reality is not just defined by what we can prove but also by what we experience.

Because it has no answer and is purely guesswork. I can equally argue both answers so nothing is gained.



A fascinating hypothesis. Now how do we test it?



Well this is not you. This is what Abbot's "Flatland", Kaku's "Hyperspace" and Greene's Strings Theory all say in one form or another.



My stance, which I think is fairly representative of the scientific community, is not to deny what the people see but to questions what their interpretation of the events were. The fundamental problem, as posed to Why_do above, is that there are a slew of explanations, from extra dimensions to extra terrestrial to purely terrestrial, and the "evidence" we have so far doesn't allow us to cut down the options any. That is why all the photos and hearsay are not useful as "scientific evidence" for they don't help us narrow down our imagination of possibilities to the certainty of the reality of what a UFO truly is. And that is also why when someone says it WAS a UFO, no doubt about it, we understand that there is no doubt in the persons mind but that there is plenty of doubt outside that mind. People take that as science dismissing UFO's when it's quite the opposite: we accept the possibility until such time as it's proven wrong... but that doesn't make it right, dig?

The pond example is a message it doesn't care who is the messenger the universe is not about us, typical human thinking from your side.

The light spectrum of remote stars is not like the sun spectrum , it is quite different
For these reason scientists thought that the stars at edge of universe were made of unknown elements

At the time universe was supposed to be stable but it is expanding
Some stars are moving away at a speed close to the speed of light

If you take into account the relativism of time and space than you can recalculate the frequency of their spectrum

You will get a light spectrum like our sun

This can not be a mere coincidence or due to catch 22

The whole universe, at least the visible one, is really uniform

Just to complete this topic
My simulation was of course a rather rough one, even though I suppose that anybody could easily got the point unless he want just to make issues

However more sophisticated computer simulations have been proposed to confirm or refute Fermi's paradox
All of them led to absurd results

I quote one of them :

quote


Using a computer simulation of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, Rasmus Bjork, a physicist at the Niels Bohr institute in Copenhagen, proposed that a single civilisation might build eight intergalactic probes and launch them on missions to search for life. Once on their way each probe would send out eight more mini-probes, which would head for the nearest stars and look for habitable planets.

Mr Bjork confined the probes to search only solar systems in what is called the "galactic habitable zone" of the Milky Way, where solar systems are close enough to the centre to have the right elements necessary to form rocky, life-sustaining planets, but are far enough out to avoid being struck by asteroids, seared by stars or frazzled by bursts of radiation.

He found that even if the alien ships could hurtle through space at a tenth of the speed of light, or 30,000km a second, - Nasa's current Cassini mission to Saturn is plodding along at 32km a second - it would take 10bn years, roughly half the age of the universe, to explore just 4% of the galaxy. His study is reported in New Scientist today.

Like humans, alien civilisations could shorten the time to find extra-terrestrials by picking up television and radio broadcasts that might leak from colonised planets. "Even then, unless they can develop an exotic form of transport that gets them across the galaxy in two weeks it's still going to take millions of years to find us," said Mr Bjork.

unquote

For those who are interested the article can be downloaded from the " New Scientist today " web site
6 pages complete with graphics and pictures

All this really shows is that the galaxy is immensely huge. That's nothing new and can be derived practically from just looking at the stars in my humble opinion.

It doesn't really say anything useful about whether it might be crawling with life or almost empty with our planet being literally the only one with life. It only says it might be likely that even though a civilization tries to search for life, it may not ever find it because of the huge size of the galaxy.
Studies that search for planets with similar conditions are much more valuable in my opinion, contrary to these statistics-based fantasies.

Why? Well first of all, because planet-colonizing and or discovering alien races (that might have the ability to visit earth if they knew where we are) implies a civilization that's highly intelligent AND technologically way more advanced than we are.

There's no logical reason to assume that no alien race could ever figure out how to "fly" at speeds of 30.000km per second or far higher. There are multiple (albeit extremely sci-fi compared to our own technology) solutions... worm-hole travel, achieving near-light speed and what not more.

So, distances to overcome may be huge in our galaxy, but if we assume there are aliens as intelligent or even much more intelligent than we are... why not assume that their technology might be much more advanced as well? It only makes sense that IF some of the UFOs spotted here on earth are indeed of extra-terrestrial origin, that their technology is more than capable of dealing with the problems of interstellar travel, light speed-limits and what not more.

Basically all this theoretical talk is pointless anyway as there's no way to check any of these theories (yet), but it's crazy how some people think similar kind of rules would HAVE to apply to alien civilizations as would apply to us, not realizing those aliens might have figured out things we have not.

Don't forget that our higher-level technology is only something of say the last 200 years or so, with the more important stuff going on the last 80 years or so. Now just imagine a alien civilization that has been technologically capable to invent and discover things ten or hundred times longer than we are. Suddenly our greatest inventions might not be so great compared to the knowledge those aliens may have.

Again, though.. it's all theoretical.

You may e_mail your remarks to mr Bjork,the address is on the web site, even though
I doubt that you will ever get answer
By the way you can understand that our galaxi is made of bilions stars just looking at the sky ?
I would like to have your sight

The problem is that aliens showed themselves only to "those people"
Why not to everybody ?
They should not be scared of us thanks to their technology

I think you are grossly mistaken on this point but await the evidence.

Evidence for this assertion please? A published article or nature article to this effect will do.






But that is the catch-22: is the universe truly uniform or is it uniform because that is how WE interpret it?

Not absurd, merely contrived.

Bjork's simulation stated that it took 10bn years at 10% the speed of light sending out 4 probes. Let's play with just these assumptions (since they are the ones you quoted).

Now then Alberto, how does that result change if we go at 20% the speed of light (from 10bn to 5bn years?). Is there any physics that prevents this?

Or how about if we go at 90% the speed of light (from 10bn years to 1bn year). Is there any physics that prevents this?

Now let's assume we send 8 probes each time at 90% speed of light (500 million years). Is there any physics that prevents this?

Now let's assume we send 16 probes each time at 90% speed of light (250 million years). Is there any physics that prevents this?

And if we send 160 probes each time at 90% speed of light, then it would take 2.5 million years to do the same exploration. Is there any physics that prevents this?

So it's not an absurd conclusion since the assumptions were contrived to lead to a large result and I have shown that if you modify the assumptions still within the realm of physics, you can arrive at 2.5 million years to explore what before took 10 billion years.



Which again neither proves nor disproves anything since there HAVE been millions of years past and thus there MIGHT have been enough time even by this simulation for a civilization to reach us.

Neat computer simulation of the Drake Equation but like the equation itself, it adds nothing to the discussion one way or another.

Other opinions on the simulation are similar to mine:

http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2007/01/bjorks-colonization-simulation-does-not.html



Only 72 probes in 10 billion years... not the smartest of aliens...

It was one of the most amazing evidences of the theory of relativity
I think you can find it in any text talking about this theory

of course you are aware of the red shift due to the doppler effect
The lines are shifted towards the red because of speed
Well if the speed is much higher than you must take into account also the relativity

I dont really know what you mean for interpretation

If you mean a sort of scientific prejudice the answer is , in my opinion, negative
Scientists took into consideration that unknown elements may exist but all the evidences are against this hyphotesis

If you mean that also the "observer "is an integral part of the measuring, in other words if you mean that there is not one only interpretation of the universe regardless of the observer
Well ,I dont really know
I know that this is one of the interpretation of quantum physics
In my opinion it is false but it is just a gut feeling

Read again the article
Mr Bjork choosed 10 % because this is the best compromise
It is a very high speed but the effects of the relativity are still negligible
If speed further increases than also the mass of probe increases exponentially





Again read again the article
Mr Bjork said that if the probes can find the earth in a reasonable period of time ( assuming that milions years are reasonable ), maybe using many more probes, even so the distance of the earth from their native planet would be some thousand light years

How can they reach their new colony ?
By an exotic teletransport ,of course
as simple as that
In my simulation I took into account this issue assuming that their life span, thanks to their advanced tehchnology , is 1000 years

Last
"Other opinions on the simulation are similar to mine: "

May be someone wonder who is that guy who agrees with fastline but disagrees with an article written by a scientists of the "Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark"
accepted by the "International Journal of Astrobiology " and published by "Cambridge University Press 20 Apr 2007"

Here are his credentials :

" more than 10 years' experience in media, arts and communications "

No, but it's totally easy to understand how there must be huge distances involved, even between any random pair of two stars you can see.

In fact, calculating distances between stars doesn't require seeing all stars and you don't need to have a good eyesight as long as you can see the stars you are tracking on their different locations within one (or more) year(s).

It's basically how the Egyptians, Mayans and so on calculated how celestial bodies move.



Well, maybe that's because not every person, regardless of their excellent credentials, can be right all the time... Remember all the guys with so called good credentials and credible psychological records that report having seen Ufos? Same story... they may or may not have seen what they think they have seen, but in the end it doesn't prove anything.

It is ABSURD to believe our technology could be the most advanced in the universe ,we have only had it for like 100 years. LOL . You all seem to forget that we are the new generation that has computers and dvd players , just as your father and mother if they had dvd players and computers and video games when they were kids. We barely have had cars for arounnd 100 years give or take , same with electricity. All of our technology IS NEW , it's baby technology , to think that people cannot imagine another more advanced race being able to travel through space and get here is purely insane. I imagine a couple hundred years ago when we were still riding horses , people still could not imagine a civilization advanced enough to move arounnd in giant machines (cars) to reach great distances in a relatively short amount of time , much less could they imagine humans flying in airplanes to get from one city to another , and much less us going to the moon in a rocket ship. If you would have told them that there was a race in another planet who had this technology , they would have laughed at you , and thought u were purely insane, yet , a couple of hundred years later , we ourselves have this technology , in just a couple of hundred years we have gone from riding horses to driving vehicles with comodities comparable to a house , have planes , space ships , satelites arounndu the planet , send vehicles to other planets to explore them , have cellular phones , we can now talk to anyone from anywhere anytime , tvs , computers , you name it .

Of course , we were born to this technology , so we see it normal , but a couple of hundred years ago , a person would not have been able to fit the picture of the life we live now in their head , there was no way they would accept this could be , but here we are , and it is . And of course , because we cannot travel at the speed of light , or haven't discovered faster speeds , we have people like fastlane (relative of the people who refused to believe the earth was round) , who cannot imagine any other lifeforce having enough technology to travel here , I see he is the type of person that has to be born with this already existing for him to believe in them, he just cannot grasp the possibility of things existing which he hasnt seen since he was a child.

But never the less , the possibility of Alien beings coming here is very very very very likely. If we were to develop the technology to travel faster than light , the first thing we would do is go visit our closes star to see if there is anything there. And if there would be , we would undoubtedly fly around seeing what it is , and if they were intelligent and advanced, we would be cautions , but if they were primitive , then we would tech them , doesnt that sounndu very similar the our own history as intelligent humans ?


"But that is the catch-22: is the universe truly uniform or is it uniform because that is how WE interpret it?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
This is your scientific and proper coherent reasoning you use that you speak of ? LMFAO
Get the fuck out of here with that shit.
So then the stars , they arent stars , they are only stars because we interpret them as stars ?
So if I count 10 pennies in a row , they arent really in a row , i'm only interpreting them that way ?
It is uniform because we can see it and anylize it , and can conclude it's patterns.

Well , it looks like I had lucked out and a MOD hadnt seen my post , so I'll delete my statements before I get banned , LMAO.

Yeah I agree, that basically was my point. I mean, you hear a lot of scientists make claims about alien life and they try their best to not make themselves look ridiculous within the scientific community by looking at it from the perspective of our own technology, our knowledge of physics and so on. All because they 'have to go with what they know'.

I know why they do this, but I don't see why people think such assumptions or claims can ever be accurate when you're dealing with all these unknowns.

Looking at these questions from the perspective of our own technology only makes sense if you assume that those aliens are not capable of long interstellar travel, just like us and have solved certain problems in more or less exactly the same way as we did.

But then from a practical point of view the whole thing becomes rather pointless, because a.) those alien civilizations on about the same technological level as us, are pretty unlikely to be able to visit us anytime soon and b.) it's unlikely we would find their planet and civilization without traveling around ourselves... because as was stated here quite a few times, the galaxy is huge and what are the odds of finding this planet even if we would know in which 5% of the galaxy we would have to look? Mankind could go extinct without ever finding anything, eventhough the whole galaxy might be crawling with life.



I don't see how it is extremely likely that aliens would or could visit us. I mean, it's difficult to say whether in reality it's likely or not likely if there are civilizations out there with much much much more advanced technology than we have. After all, scientists do agree that solving all our (or perhaps it's universal enough to be called 'the problems'?) technological problems isn't exactly easy.

I tend to agree with the technology part of how we would immediately look around on other planets and stars for life.



We could. It's a possibility for us to do something like that and it would even make sense, but I don't think it happened on our planet in the past (as you seem to suggest). The Von Däniken theories and the like are pretty much all based on a tad of fantasy and pretty far-fetched interpretations, even though it's somewhat of a possibility (that means I don't disagree with the idea per say, I disagree with 'his evidence' for it).

And again though and this is the same for alien species, even when traveling at light speed, what are the chances of actually finding life even when the galaxy is crawling with it? We are pretty young as a species too, compared to the estimated age of our universe, let alone our say 100 years of useful technology in this respect.

I think that when it comes to interstellar travel and so on our species can still be categorized as 'very primitive'.



That's where human psychology (philosophy, language, symbolism, definitions and all that) meets and influences science's objectivity. That's all there is to it. In fact, in a philosophical sense I could argue that those pennies are only pennies by their definition we gave to it and that we could have defined rows as columns instead making the interpretation very arbitrary and in a way 'fake'. I've said it many times before, but there's no such thing as absolute truths, especially when it comes to things we have defined ourselves.



Lol and then they say I am the psychopath. Where's the rage coming from anyway? Fear in that your own ideas might be wrong? Lol.

Ahhh... you are using elements in the "elements of a list" sense, not elements in the "hydrogen, helium, earth wind and fire sense". Gotcha. I thought maybe you meant that scientists observed different laws of nature at the edge of the univese which so far, has not been the case.

It doesn't take a science degree to find holes in an arguement... anymore than I would blindly believe someone just because they have a science degree. This person, regardless of his credentials, brings up valid points against his theory. You Alberto however chose to attack his credentials instead of his ideas.

Maybe someone wonders why you chose to attack this persons credentials instead of his points. Usually it's because you can't attack his points and thus are only left with attacking a person. Is this the case here?

Otherwise, how about you address his and my points instead of our credentials, ok?



If that is what Mr. Bjork said then there are obvious flaws to his arguements since mass doesn't grow exponentially with speed. Traveling at .5 c, the gamma factor is 1.1; at .9 c, the gamma factor is 2.2.

It grows large. Don't get me wrong, I take your meaning. But if this is the basis of his reasoning for choosing 10%, then there is no physical reason why it couldn't be 50%, 70%, or 90% c as well. Hence there is nothing physically special about 10%.

I've addressed your points, how do you address one of mine? -- > Are my choices of parameters that change a 10 B year exploration down to 2.5 M years physically reasonable and why not if not?

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov




You go out as you came in: being wrong on all counts.
There is no "if" about your ban and your message will be deleted.

In fact, in a weeks time nobody will remember "why_do" or anything he said.
It will be, for all intensive purposes, as if he never existed on these boards... and the boards are none the worse for it.

So take care of yourself and that temper, why_do.
For if this is the way you act and express yourself in real life, then things must be pretty rotten around you.
Good luck again...

why did those bjork simulations only consider one other alien life-form? what if there are millions of different alien species, and a thousand of them have enough technology to do what bjork's simulation described. wouldn't that reduce the time-frame from 10bn to only 10million?

why don't those probes plant themselves on various planets, mining/harvesting common resources, constructing more of themselves as well as probes built just to search, and churn them out until they can no longer sustain themselves? or is that too absurd?

i think it would be pretty groovy.

julz

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_probe#Von_Neumann_probes

once again: groovy.

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"

This are the statements people who FEAR violence make , because they are cowards , and fear to fight , but at the same time , want to run their mouth , and not be held responsible for what they say , so they hide with their words.

Don't think I don't see the homosexual behavior being exibited left and right by today's males , all afraid too fight , all cowards.

A man who is afraid of violence , is a man who has no say.

Hell yeah! Allowing Von Neumann Machines (VNM) would significantly skew the results towards shorter time frames. And, one could argue, the simple shapes and non-contact of purported Alien UFO's would be consistent with a machine that is only entasked with a singular mission and constructed from a simply replicated design.

Bjork v2.0 ought to be very cool if all these other variables are taken into account!

This is the Enrico Fermi's simulation or paradox , if you prefer

If our galaxi is crowded with civilized aliens colonies than the ether should be polluted of radio comunications

SETI radio telescope have been scanning the sky for many years
Not even one signal from the space has been ever received

This is the reason why mr Bjork and myself , went for a " mere scouting simulation "
rather than a more realistic " Colonization" strategy

Some scouts could be difficult to find
Colonies or outposts , relativly closed to our earth, definitly not

right, but if you quote someone to support your opinion than he must have credentials
He can not be a "who ist it ? " guy

However I would be curious to see an article or a simulation made by a qualified scientist demostrating that aliens might have visited our earth
I am speaking seriously , I am not ironic

Just to avoid misunderstanding

Tha vast majority of scientists , as far as I know , do not beleive that aliens visited our earth for the reason explained

However many scientists beleive that aliens exist, not necessary super civilizations
The reason being ;

a) Evolution is a deterministic theory
It needs a great deal of chance, of course, but it is deterministic

b) The huge number od planets in the universe

Whoa! Absolutely not!

While I admit that I will go to a person with credentials as a first order of business when studying something new, that is not the same as saying that I will dismiss someone without credentials on the same topic.

My opinions and research are based on facts and research and that is not the exclusive right, privilege, or honor or someone with "credentials".



Well, this is an interesting point. Given that we have never met aliens and that the scientific community does not acknowledge their existence, what exactly would "qualify" someone to comment on Aliens? You get my point? There is no "Exobiology" credentials... and if they are, you really have to wonder exactly what qualifies someone to comment on alien presence on earth.

My point therefore is that on the subject of Aliens (like religion), credentials mean nothing since anyone can make as convincing (and provable!) an argument as some of the best mathematicians and physicists out there.



Exactly. I would argue that ALL scientist have to accept that the evidence does not prove anything about Alien Visitation. That same person may have an opinion or belief on the subject, but the scientist in that person has to admit that the evidence simply is not there to make a solid statement on this subject.

By your own words, your statement in bold shows why you deleted your comment.

Besides, why bother when Phemox and I have your comments quoted?

LOL , I deleted it because the Mods would Ban me permanently , something they shouldn't do , but thats the feminine atmosphere that plagues this forum . And again , you twist things around to change their meaning.

In your first quote, you state that you deleted it to avoid the accountability of your words (ie: permanent ban)

In your second quote, you express disdain for those that are not held responsible for what they say (ie: calling them cowards).




I have clearly shown that I took each of your statements at face value with no subjective interpretation on intent or meaning.

And in doing so, I clearly show that by your own logic and words, you are a coward for deleting those quotes since you are afraid to face the responsibility of your words. Otherwise, you would have left those quotes alone with no "fear to fight" for what you said.

Please, fastline69 be honest
How many times here in this forum you claimed that other members must listen to you because you are a scientist
I never claimed to be a nuclear engineer even though it was evident that the guy who was arguing with me ,did not even know what he was talking about ( it is not your case , of course)

About the supposed " Alienology " never heard of multi discipline topics ?

Biology , Physics , geology,astronomy and statistics play an equal important role
This does not mean that you can not have a scientific approach to the problem
Obviously it is not that kind of problem where you can expect to have an exhaustive answer
Nevertheless you can cast a light on many aspects of the problem and you can refute , those claims which are absolutly false

Getting back to your "nobody knows who is it" supporter
Not only he has no references but he said also nonsenses

He gave for granted that by doubling the number of probes you can halve the exploration time of the galaxi
This is false
Obviusly the higher the number of probes the shorter the exploration time
but, beyond a certain number, the contribution of additional probes can be negligible

Imagine a region of space with 10 stars
The ideal fleet, if time savings is your main target, is made of 10 ships
A fleet of 20 ships would be of no use
A fleet of 5 ships might be acceptable , if cost saving is your second priority, since a ship can visit two or more stars which are on the same way
The exploration time will be longer but , maybe, not that longer

It depends on the distribution of the stars in the map

In other words you should run again the simulation , with an higher number of probes, to check if you can expect a reasonable time savings

It is very presumptuos of him and of you , to assume that mr Bjork did make so a silly mistake


If you read the article you can see that mr Bjork has implemented a sophisticated "research " algo to optimize the efficiency of the probes

Not to mention that he discuss, in his article, also the possibility of using more probes and even faster

Hmmm... Honestly, I think it's none in the last 3 years. I tried the whole "credentials" thing early in my posting days (5 years ago), but soon found it to be a useless tactic. Since then, I have let my words and reference prove my points, not the pieces of paper hanging in my office.

So I'm going to go with "none". Final answer.



Nor did I imply as such. But your point was that the Artist had no right to comment because he was an Artist and not a scientist. I admit that all these fields above play equally important role in the Alien question. But then why not Art, Religion, Society, Politics? Any of these can equally affect how and when a civilization activates a signal or comes to visit us. So who are we to say that the Artist has a less valid viewpoint than the Scientist on the Alien Question?



Well then I, phemox, and the Artist will presume away...

His claim, and yours by proxy, is (from his paper):

"I seem to be able to conclude based on the results from
my simulations that exploring the Galaxy by sending out
probes to visit the other stars is horribly slow. However,
unless travel methods are invented which gives access to
faster-than-light-travel, there seems to be no alternative
way to proceed than this proposed process. This could offer
a possible explanation to the Fermi paradox."

We are saying that his model can be contrived to change that time in any direction we want -- shorten it by adding more probes, lengthen it by creating less, shorten it by speeding the probe, lengthen it by slowing down, etc. In fact, his paper does mention VNM, blind search techniques, and other variables and thus the real presumption is that this gives any answers at all!

So yes, we presume away and challenge his conclusion that FTL is the only way for Aliens to visit us as well as his assertion that this is a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox.


(PS: Upon careful reading of his paper, I came across this as his answer for the .1c choice. I was real curious as to why such a low number and here is what he has to say about it:

"For all probes a speed of 0.1c is assumed. This velocity
is low enough that effects due to general relativity can
be ignored, yet high enough that the travel time between
stars are on the order of years."

Which is funny because the only reason he wants to ignore relativity is to make the math and programming easier (there is no other reason for it) AND he CONTRIVES it so that the travel time betwen stars is on the orderyears... that's some pretty weak reasonsing for sticking to such a low velocity.)

I dont really understand how you can not grasp this concepts

Do you realize what a simulation is ?

You use a simulation just in case some " inputs " are not perfectly known otherwise you would simply put them in some equations

It is not definitly true that they are completely arbritraty

You dont know the exact value of these inputs but you know for example their upper limits

You assign different values to these uncertain inputs provided they are within the bounds of the above mentioned limiits

Then you run your simulation and you can get different scenarios corresponding to different values of these inputs

If none of these scenarios is realistic than the original claim is false

A simulation is a widly used scientific method to tackle those kind of complex problems containing many parameters with an high degree of uncertainity

Mr Bjork did not use arbitrary inputs he explains his choice

Moreover you continue missing one point

The result of the simulation is so absurd that even using more favourable inputs, within the bound of the physical laws, it would lead in any case to an absurd scenario

This is the reason why he did not repeat the simulation using more probes

Read the article , please read it

I have "some" experience...



That's not how scientists view simulations. From wikipedia:



Key elements are that a simulation is a model of reality mostly used when a closed analytic solution is not possible... no mention of "inputs that aren't known" or "variables with high uncertainty" as a requirement or part of a simulation.




The result is absurd because the inputs are arbitrary and does not cover the entire parameter space. The arbitrary top speed of .1 c alone makes any conclusions from the simulation suspect.



We had this same disagreement over how scientists choose the parameters of the standard model. He does explain them, but there is NO basis for him to have chose 4 or 8 probes or .9c over .1c... THAT is what an arbritrary input is, merely basing your analysis on a set range.

Now consider, HAD Mr. Bjork done a true simulation, he would have done a full sweep between .1 and .9c, he would have done a full sweep of 4, 8, 16, etc probes. Instead, he restricts his parameters. I'm sorry Alberto, but that is not a convincing computer simulation. It just doesn't have the breadth to address all the gaps.



By your own words, you can't claim knowledge of the simulation without running it. So how exactly did Mr. Bjork know NOT to run the "more probes" simulation? After all, he barely covered the parameter space of velocity and admits that there are many areas that weren't covered in his conclusion.

Honestly Alberto, I think you are reading too much into this simulation. We both admit that this simulation needs to be run at other speeds with other search parameters, so why do you keep insisting that this one simulation is THE answer to the paradox?

Due to repeated immature behavior, Why_do_I_die will now take an extended absence from this discussion and from the forum.

SETI received signals but just couldn't find the same signal twice, also SETI has some very interesting protocols when they make contact, if you are a User of SETI @ home and you detected something artificial and call in they will say that it was just a software test. People say they are private funded no one could tell them to keep there discoveries secret, but you have to remember that finding an other intelligent being maybe more advanced than us, would not mean finding a new species which we can put into a schoolbook. It would mean that the uniqueness of humanity as the only “intelligent beings” in the universe would be gone, and you just need to look at religious people they would even kill other people if they insult their believe in god.


So in the end we should give everybody a shot ufologists searching our skies and on the earth to find other intelligent beings, scientists that are asking to universe for answer do their thing to find other intelligent beings. So what is the problem with that, does it really matter who finds other beings first?

Whether the ufologists or the scientists find their groundbreaking evidence we will not get some super technology from other advance civilizations (we have to develop it on our own, we don't give our technology to ants so we can't expect to get any advanced technology), but both types of researchers want just the knowledge and thats what is all about.

Fastline68
you are making just phylosophical speculations, and low level ones, either
No reason for me to continue

Where you see philosophy, I see physics and math.

My core disagreement as to the choice of .1 c vs. .9 c as a probes top speed is well within the realm of physics.

As is my secondary disagreement regarding the limited number of probes, which is purely within the realm of combinatorial mathematics.

But I respect your wish to not address these points and wish you good health until the next.

I am 100% behind this statement as long as we define "find" as something that anyone, anywhere can experience. Single photographs and hearsay do not constitute "finding" in my book.

If you read the article , you will see that mr Bjork examines also other possibilities

" In order to accomodate the criticism.."

Including faster probes

"All though I have used a relativly high probe velocity of 0.1c, it is a possibility that even faster probes could be invented and thus decreasing the exploration time significantly"

but it conludes

"Returning now to the result obtained in this paper, i see, to be able to conclude based on the results from my simulation that exploring the galaxi by sending out probes to visit the other stars is horribly slow.However unless travel methods are invented which give access to faster-than_light travel,there seem to be no alternative way to proceed than this proposed process.This could offer a possible explanation to the Fermi paradox."

You must not be a genius to argue :

" wow... if you increase the speed..."
" ohhh , why dont you use more probes.."
" Hey guy, if you ..."

Mr Bjork has taken into account even exotic possibilities such as the use of self replicating probes
Nevertheless the exploration time remains ...horribly slow

Which should have led him to the conclusion that 'physically' searching by traveling through the universe is not the solution to having a good change of finding life?

Unless we figure out a fundamentally different way of space travel there's no way we will ever be able to search everywhere within an acceptable time-frame. As exotic as it might be, I think self replicating probes, as in exponentially increasing numbers of probes would still be the best way of searching when you're considering using not-so-sci-fi methods of propulsion and so on.

I thought there was no reason for you to continue, Alberto? Hehehe....

Very well then...



Well if he did, it's not in his most current paper upon which I am basing my analysis.

I find that he "mentions" the possibility of VNM and directed searches in his paper affecting his results, yet I find no evidence that the simulation he ran took these into account.

Hence, these factors are not taken into account in the Bjork simulation even if it is mentioned in the paper.

And thus our point, to once again to beat a dead horse, that Mr. Bjork has made a wildly speculative claim (Alien visitation is impossible) based on a very limited simulation (limited speed, limited probes, limited search pattern).



C remains the universal speed limit... that is still physically true. But to go from "horribly slow" to "visitation is impossible" is a wildly speculative leap with very little hard evidence or simulation evidence to back it up.



Well even if I was a genius I would still argue since the flaws are so obvious...

Nope,
you would still argue ( no doubt about it ) because you wont never admit to be wrong

Do you want to increase the speed from 0.1c up to 1.c ?
Do you think it is a smart solution ?

No it is not, for at least a couple of good reasons

a)
Did you notice that " Horribly slow " stands for " 3\4 the age of universe " ?

If some one claims
" it is impossible to go on foot, from New York to los Angeles , in one day "
and some one else replied
" On foot maybe not, but cycling it could be possible, it is ten time faster "

What would you think of him ?

b)
You give for granted that a further increase of the speed or in general of the technological level is, in any case , a benefit
Are you so sure ?

You must match the exploration time and the maximum amount of time at disposal for the exploration

this one is given by :

The age of their planet ( not of universe ) - The evolution time from the scratch up to the technological level

The higher the technological level the higher the needed time

Experience demostrate that it relativly easy to make big progress at the beginning but afterward the learning curve get steeper

In conclusion it may be not worth while waiting for a 1c technology simply becauste it would take too long time

Same consideration for self replicating probes

The only real advantage is to increase the number of probes
Mr Bjork run an other simulation with 200 probes and 8 sub probes
The result are quoted in the article

Nope,
you would still argue ( no doubt about it ) because you wont never admit to be wrong

Do you want to increase the speed from 0.1c up to 1.c ?
Do you think it is a smart idea ?
Are the flaws so obviuos ?

No it is not a smart idea and the flaws are obvious only for you, not for me
There are at least a couple of good reasons

a)
Did you notice that " Horribly slow " stands for " 3\4 the age of universe " ?

If some one claims
" it is impossible to go on foot, from New York to los Angeles , in one day "
and some one else argue
" On foot maybe not, but cycling it could be possible, it is ten time faster, why dont you give it a try ? "

What would you think of him ?

b)
You give for granted that a further increase of the speed or in general of the technological level is, in any case , a benefit
Are you so sure ?

You must match the exploration time and the maximum amount of time at disposal for the exploration

given by

The age of their planet - The evolution time from the scratch up to the technological level

The higher the technological level the higher the evolution time ,the shorter the time at disposal for organizing the exploration

Experience demostrate that it relativly easy to make progress at the beginning but afterward the learning curve get steep and steep

It may be not worth while waiting for the highest technological level


The only real advantage is to increase the number of probes
Mr Bjork run an other simulation with 200 probes and 8 sub probes
The result are quoted in the article

It would be silly to admit one is wrong until one is proven wrong... especially when you choose to work around my fundamental critique -- choosing .1c vs. .9c -- for the last three posts!




In terms of a simulation, from .1 c to .9 c, yes, I thought I made that clear.



Since it get's the probe to it's destination 9 times faster, then yes.



If you are limiting your probes to .1 c in your simulation, then yes.




All I said is that if you go faster, you reduce the search time, nothing more.



And came up with a search time of 1.5x10^7 vs. 10x10^9.

Which proves my point that the values for the parameters of the simulation are completely arbritray and there is nothing to stop us from changing those parameters to acheive whatever timescale we wish! Bjork wanted a large time scale so he cooked up his simulation for large scales; I want a small time scale so I can cook up his simulation for small scales. If the simulation were true, it would be irrelevant what we want but that is not the case here and that is my problem with drawing gradiose conclusions based on it.


Again, nothing in this paper is conclusive. It is a overly simple simulation that is based on many speculative assumptions. It does give insight however IF we go at .1 c and IF we limit ourselves to 200 probes and IF the we don't construct new probes. But we don't know that aliens (or ourselves) will limit themselves to any of these parameters.

This simulation is not the answer to Alien question. I'm sorry if you can't see that Alberto, but I've tried my best to point out the scientific flaws in Mr. Bjork's analysis. If you continue to believe him, then that is your personal perogative, but it won't hold water in any public discussion as we are having.

That's my problem with this whole theorizing of Bjork too.



Regardless of the total duration the search process would STILL take, you are aware that it's possible to cut the total duration in half just by doubling the speed? Combine this with a rather huge amount of self-replicating probes and it's suddenly not so impossible anymore, as each doubling could speed up the search process considerably.

Seems to me it's actually a pretty clever to increase the speed a lot if you want to be able to search faster.



I would think he has a better chance of winning his little bet there when he would suggest 2 hours and then take a flight with a Concorde instead....

Suggesting a method of transportation that is ten times faster is still a good suggestion in a relative sense, but it won't achieve their ultimate set goal. Does it therefore mean it's a stupid idea?? Heck no, you just need to increase the speed even more, ten times faster just isn't enough.

Everybody can tell the guy starting on foot going from New York to LA will be last, regardless of whether he walks it in under one hour (impossible, I know) or 10 months or 10 years.



Actually, considering the size of our universe all we really need is to get lucky in our search.

As numbers and math show, it's probably not entirely impossible to search the whole universe, but it would simply take too long with the methods suggested here making it 'practically impossible' I guess.

Also, Mr Bjork can't claim that it's literally impossible as he himself made the assumption starting with something like; unless we invent a much much faster method of propulsion, it's "impossible". So I don't think he meant theoretically impossible, but rather practically impossible? I don't know if he even makes this distinction though.



Also, the 200 probes seems like an incredibly small amount anyways, just imagine what would happen if you take 1 million probes to start with instead. I mean, we can mass produce billions of cellphones, so there's no reason to assume we couldn't mass produce something like those probes. I mean, assuming the technology for self-replication has been invented, it's not such a big step anymore anyways. (Off course speed will then be the bottleneck, but I figure it would still help, right?)

Here's another point on the probe issue. So far, we have discussed VNM, machines making machines. In fact, I think there has been an unstated assumption that the probes were unmanned.

However consider manned probes. Upon arriving at a new system, that probe and it's crew set about creating 10's, 100's, 1000's more probes from the raw material of the new system.

I bring this up because it allows for VNM-like expansion with current day technology and is thus could easily be modeled in Bjork v2.0




It's in his conclusion too:

"However,
unless travel methods are invented which gives access to
faster-than-light-travel, there seems to be no alternative
way to proceed than this proposed process."

Which again highlights my fundamental problem with the author making a wildly speculative claim (FTL seems the only choice for galactic exploration) based on a very limited simulation (200 .1 c probes).

It reminds me some previous threads with the creationists

Anytime the evolutionists prove how absurd their theories are, the common reply is " Ehhh but He is God..."
Of course, at this point you are in troubles, how can you reply at such comment ?

You quit and that's it

The point is that in case of religion such answer might even make some sense but applying the same techniques also to the aliens is simply ridicoulus

You need a longer time to achieve a more sophisticated technology ?
It doesnt' matter , they are Gods..pardon aliens , they can do everything in a short time

If you use 200 probes the exploration time is only : 15.000.000 years
Only my God...he said only 15 milion years?
Really he did ?
Please note 15 milion years just to explore 4 % of the galaxi
He his not talking about the whole galaxi, just a miserable 4 %
A non stop 15 milion years voyage ?
Of course narrow minded guy, they are alien probes

Why only 200 probes ?
1 milion same as the cellular telephones

I could argue that in these case the univers would be full of radiofrequencie..sorry sorry ..the aliens can comunicate without using elettromagnetic fields

An then use the self replicating probes
Why not ?
A star ship capable of building a copy of itself
A toy for the aliens

one probe has finally found our earth...hurrah...hurrahh
Well there is a small problem, it is 1000 light years far away from theit native planet
How can they reach us ?
( for your information the diameter of our galaxi is 100.000 light yeers, so as you can see they are pretty close to us)
As usual the lack of fantasy of this guy is apalling

They have invented the teletransport in a couple of weeks they reach our earth
But the max speed for teletransport is 1c they take 1000 years to go and 1000 years to get back
Of course it is an exotic teletransport
it is not the primitive teletransport that human beings will discover may be in 10.000 years from now
Even so ?
Do you think that a 1000 thousand years voyage is a problem for an alien ?
He read a good book


At this point I am really fed up

Why dont you E-mail Mr Bjork your remarks ?

I take the liberty to give you a suggestion

Phemox tell him you are an artist
fastlane69 dont tell him you are a scientist

I'm still here.




I don't know about others, but I have not used this line of arguement in any of my posts.

In fact, for the last 5 or 6 posts, I've only asked one fundamental, very physical, question:

"What effect does limiting the simulation to .1 c have on the conclusion?"

This "creationism" analogy is the latest in a long series of attempts to not answer this one, fundamental question.

So the Catholic church is trying to "Adapt to the times"? Since when is aliens from outer space a modern idea? Has any proof at all been given of alien existence? Has any scientific discovery even made their existence any more likely? What on earth are they thinking? They would be much better off sticking to their original belief: We are alone, and created. There is more proof for that than any other alien theory.

There is prove that we are alone and created ? Isn't that more the prove of arrogance than the prove there are no aliens ? You are making the claim that we are special, just like the ant in an anthill who thinks the world is us, we are the world. The Catholic church is open to the possibility so where is the problem ,the world is not about you or me there is much more we can't see or don't want to.

I mentioned it before that it doesn't matter who is revealing this reality the everyone just be open to it.

There is also a lot the gain from the creative side of things it opens a path to a lot of new crazy ideas, we are here on a forum of game creators and if the alien issue inspires you thats a good thing. So start to get new crazy alien games out there, thats a good conclusion for now.