Something has been bugging me about the spate of UFO threads here

[WilliamPitt]

A few threads came and went last week about whether UFOs exist. This leads to the larger question about life on other planets, of course. More than a few people were disdainful of the idea that UFOs could exist, and cited some bedrock physics to prove that no such interstellar-travel technology could exist.

Maybe.

I've never seen a UFO, don't expect to, and think that most if not all the reports of abductions and sightings are lies or delusions. As Spielberg noted, the new preponderance of video cameras has correlated with a massive decrease in 'sightings,' which doesn't seem to make sense if there are in fact craft up there.

But there's also this:



That is the Deep Field, taken by the Hubble telescope. They aimed that camera at a spot of empty black space the size of a grain of sand held at arm's length. All those dots you see are not stars, but galaxies. Galaxies, each one filled with millions of suns and millions of worlds, and all in a spot of sky as big as the dot on this i.

Multiply that dot a billionfold and you have the universe, filled with light and stars and worlds. Could there be out there an intelligence greater than ours, an intelligence that laughs at our physics, an intelligence that looks at the three dimensions we exist in and giggles at our immaturity?

There is more in heaven and earth, Horatio, than in your philosophy.

[dave29]

1. Amen

and amen

[evilqueen]

2. I think...

we would be very arrogant to think we are the only sentient beings in the vastness of space. Odds are, we aren't alone.

*waves hi to WRP*

[niallmac]

12. Yes, arrogant not to menion depressing.

[Jazzgirl]

28. What evilqueen said...

n/t

[Blitzburgh]

110. Absolutely agree

There is positively no question in my mind that there are 1000's of other planets inhabited. Would be fascinating to see them. And I agree, short of creating a ship where a 100 million lifetimes of humans exist onboard traveling to a prospective planet, there is no way we will ever meet them.

[Amonester]

141. I saw 2 very "unusual" UFOs in 1974, and due to their very

strange shapes (and "behavior"), I had no idea if "they" were from another solar system (in our galaxy or another galaxy?) or not. OTOH, my Mother also told me she saw a colorful "flashing tube" hanging in mid-air over the mountain once (it was around 10 PM), and that "little" oval shaped "saucers" were flying out of (and then, back in...) both its ends!

Voila. That's all I know. I don't believe in all the abduction cases, but maybe into just a very small few (re: Fire in the Sky DVD) and even that, I'm not 100% sure.

[wtmusic]

3. Likely that there is life elsewhere

also likely that it is so far away that life on earth will be gone long before we could ever make contact

[Occulus]

107. likelier still that we don't know everything there is to know about the

laws of physics.

I would call otherwise 'hubris'. Maybe 'arrogance' is a better term...

[wtmusic]

126. What we do know about the laws of physics

still makes it highly unlikely.

[niallmac]

4. Nicely done.

From all the Whos in Whoville.

[AuntPatsy]

5. It's pretty conceivable that there is life out there besides our own,

it's a vast universe ya know, not that I feel like we have little green men constantly landing in the dark of night in order to take captives to umm probe them, but to believe we must be the only lifeforms in this vast universe is pretty stupid for want of a better word...

But I don't believe that they have the means to come here any more than we have the means to go where they might be.

[WilliamPitt]

11. An infinite universe

is by definition filled with infinite possibilities.

[AuntPatsy]

17. A look into a writers soul can be found in his own words...

[SidDithers]

21. But the universe isn't infinite...

Estimates are that it might be a sphere of 10-15 billion light years radius.

It's damn big, but we're not sure about infinite.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/971124x.html

Sid

[VelmaD]

31. Well, how about so close to infinite...

that you could see infinity on a clear day. :)

[SidDithers]

33. Works for me :)

:toast:

Sid

[KerryOn]

93. How can it not be infinite?

If there is this big sphere of 10-15 billion light years in radius, then whats beyond the sphere?

Does the universe just come to a stop at the edge of this giant sphere? Whats on the other side of the sphere? Is there a solid mass of metal at the edge of the sphere, that know one can penetrate?

If there is a solid mass beyond he sphere, how large is it?

If he universe is infinite, as I believe, then we are just a spec of dust in time. There could be planets out there so large that billions upon billions of plants the size of our earth could fit into it.

Perhaps we are nothing more than a microscopic organism within some giant creature that lives on a planet beyond our comprehension.

[zigster]

97. Could I buy...

"Perhaps we are nothing more than a microscopic organism within some giant creature that lives on a planet beyond our comprehension"

Teaching pays the rent till l finish my novel.

How long have you been working on it?

Four and a half years.

Must be very good.

It's a piece of shit.

(Soft instrumental music)

Would anybody like to smoke some pot?

Yeah.

You ever smoked before?

Sure.

When did you ever smoke pot?

I've done a lot of things you don't know about.

I won't go schizo, will l?

There's a distinct possibility.

Is this right?

Try not to drool quite so much on the end of it.

(Coughing)

(Singing) Hey, Paula.

I wanna marry you

Hey, Paula.

Nobody else could ever do

I've waited so long

For school to be through

I can't wait no more for you

Okay.

That means that...

our whole solar system...

could be, like...

one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being.

This is too much!

That means...

-one tiny atom in my fingernail could be-

-Could be one little...

tiny universe.

Could l buy some pot from you?

[Vinnie From Indy]

120. Animal House Rules!

[Throckmorton]

132. Toga! Toga! N/T

[KerryOn]

161. Some people have no imagination.

They think inside the box, and use less than 10% of their brains.

[Amonester]

144. How about: other "universes" like the one we're in?

An infinite number of "other universes" more or less similar to this one, but so "far" away no telescope can (yet) even "catch" a fleeting glimpse of them.

I say: never rule out any possibility... (in the "No Inquisition" sense...) ;)

[Telly Savalas]

103. That's just the observable universe.

Quoting from your link:
Note: The observable Universe may be only a small part of the physical Universe. In some theories, the Universe may have expanded very fast just after the 'big bang', and only a little bit may have remained within range of detection.

[Bassic]

140. Big enough to make it unlikely we're the only living world.

As for aliens coming to see us? Unlikely.

[rman]

113. not so sure it's infinite

but that still leaves A LOT of possibilities.

[SteppingRazor]

122. Not really.

An infinite universe may have within it a finite set, just as in mathematics an infinite set can contain finite sets. To put it in less mathematical, more logical, terms, just because there's infinite space, it doesn't necessarily follow that there's infinite stuff to fill it.

[tk2kewl]

129. a whole hell of a lot of possibilities

who says sentience has to be carbon-based, anyway? My feeling is it could exist right under our noses and we don't recognize it.

[Kraklen]

139. The universe is not infinite.

In fact, it's considerable less than infinite.

[rman]

153. lol

Anything finite is considerably less than infinite; it's always infinitely less then infinite.
Which implies that you can subtract infinity from infinity and end up with something. Infinite is an unspecified amount.

Anyway, indeed the universe is probably not infinite. It doesn't look like it is, for all we can see (background radiation specifically). There might be other universes out there, as far as i know contemporary physics does not exclude that. Though it's probably very tricky to travel between universes.

[Kraklen]

156. Yes, that's the joke.

As for contemporary physics, it doesn't exclude the Loch Ness monster, but I'm not about to give that any credit either.

[Amonester]

143. They could use "more advanced" energy sources or

other means of transport we (still?) have absolutely no idea about...

I hope there is a very gentle (kind spirited) species out there that would help this silly (well, I only use the "silly" qualifier in reference to small "minority" of wrongdoers we "know") human race to evolve, and make sure this little white & blue planet has a real good future (I doubt it will because of all the destruction, the pollution, greed, hate, wars, etc.).

How would I react in case "they'd make contact"? Looking at the current "hole" we're in, and the "bleak" decades ahead...

On edit: "bleak" decades ahead if we "stay the course"...

[ibegurpard]

159. It is inconceivable that there is NOT.

eom

[fishnfla]

6. Galaxies are overrated. I prefer a Pinto

althoughg a cream colored Fairlane would suit me right

[niallmac]

9. I like the Infinity

[fishnfla]

14. Infinity is a nice ride

if you can make it

[niallmac]

79. Mercury Comet runs circles around the Galaxy

[LiberalVoice]

112. Got a link to any of that info...? nt

[niallmac]

119. uh...no. I confess I ride a bicycle. My real car was abducted

Who knows whats out there? I don't. When someone or something lets me know I will be the first to post.

[EST]

101. Kinda tough when everybody looks in the other direction, eh?

[Trajan]

7. I have always loved these images ....

Hubble is SO worthy as science .... wonderful ....

I have my doubts about 'UFO's and long distance travel (which would be required for anyone to see UFO's), but I have NO doubt that this universe is an amazing world full of wonder ...

Thanks Will ....

[Rosco T.]

32. The abilty of a civilization to travel - read the works of Dr. Michio Kaku

http://www.mkaku.org/

and his catagorization of the different 'civilizations' -

"Currently, our energy output qualifies us for Type 0 status. We derive our energy not from harnessing global forces, but by burning dead plants (e.g. oil and coal). But already, we can see the seeds of a Type I civilization. We see the beginning of a planetary language (English), a planetary communication system (the Internet), a planetary economy (the forging of the European Union), and even the beginnings of a planetary culture (via mass media, TV, rock music, and Hollywood films)."

"For example, a Type I civilization is a truly planetary one, which has mastered most forms of planetary energy. Their energy output may be on the order of thousands to millions of times our current planetary output. Mark Twain once said, ”Everyone complains about the weather, but no one does anything about it.“ This may change with a Type I civilization, which has enough energy to modify the weather. They also have enough energy to alter the course of earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans"

"Eventually, after several thousand years, a Type I civilization will exhaust the power of a planet, and will derive their energy by consuming the entire output of their suns energy, or roughly a billion trillion trillion ergs per second. With their energy output comparable to that of a small star, they should be visible from space. Dyson has proposed that a Type II civilization may even build a gigantic sphere around their star to more efficiently utilize its total energy output. Even if they try to conceal their existence, they must, by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, emit waste heat. From outer space, their planet may glow like a Christmas tree ornament. Dyson has even proposed looking specifically for infrared emissions (rather than radio and TV) to identify these Type II civilizations."

"Perhaps the only serious threat to a Type II civilization would be a nearby supernova explosion, whose sudden eruption could scorch their planet in a withering blast of X-rays, killing all life forms. Thus, perhaps the most interesting civilization is a Type III civilization, for it is truly immortal. They have exhausted the power of a single star, and have reached for other star systems. No natural catastrophe known to science is capable of destroying a Type III civilization."

[FreedomAngel82]

49. Interesting

I book marked the site so I can read more later. Something else I wonder about is parallel universes. I think I've been to one once but I don't know. Could've been just a dream for all I know. :shrug:

[Rosco T.]

63. yeah, Parallel Universes are an interesting topic...

.. and the theory that sometimes they 'cross over'.

There are thousands of people that remember news reposts over several days that Nelson Mandella died in prison, yet know perfectly well he didn't. And others that have remembered that Columbia landed safely, yet know all to well what really happened.

[jayfish]

73. And Yet Our Government...

will let this amazing tool do a Sky Lab while pouring billions into a horribly flawed dinosaur.

Jay

[Son of California]

8. This Existence is Infinitely Mysterious

and anyone who thinks they have it figures out is a either bafoon or a Ultra-Conservative Christian -but is that an oximoron?

[Must_B_Free]

10. The greatest indicator

is the fact that we have left the planet ourselves. We are aliens to other heavenly bodies.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

13. According to Douglas Adams...........

"It is known that there is an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the product of a deranged imagination."

Makes sense to me.

[Bassic]

142. Yay for Douglas Adams!

So long and thanks for all the fish!

[Maru Kitteh]

15. Millions of worlds.......... The biggest question that comes to my mind is

Why am I stuck here?

[FreedomAngel82]

51. Everyone is here for some reason

To learn, to grow as a soul or perhaps to help someone else or just this planet in general. We all have our own missions here on our time on this planet.

[EST]

92. Learn somethirg or have fun or both.

The enlightenment and incipient enlightenment that occasionally flashes across these boards is sometimes astounding and even awe inspiring.

[SteppingRazor]

123. We do?

Should we not entertain the notion that it is actually possible that life is quite meaningless, that there is no purpose, and no light at the end of the tunnel? It may be bleak, but it seems equally likely as anything else.

[Carni]

59. No shit...and then I think and why NOW to have to deal with the bush reich

Then it all gets too *Stephen King/The Stand* and I start getting REALLY depressed!

Hey at this point--whoever or whatever wants to land here in my yard to pick my ass up, be my guest.

Jabba the hut or something of that sort couldn't be any more unattractive (or much worse) than this particular regime!

Calling all aliens: Probe away!

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. But would beings so advanced make simple mistakes

and get seen by us? Here's a question: we put lights on aircraft so we can see them, to avoid crashes. Why do UFOs have them? If they want to be seen, why don't they do things a bit more openly? Why the occasional glimpses that might get explained away?

On edit: post #13 has reminded me that Douglas Adams has, of course, an anwser for me:

"A teaser? Teasers are usually rich kids with nothing to do. They cruise around looking for planets which haven't made interstellar contact yet and buzz them."

"Buzz them?" Arthur began to feel that Ford was enjoying making life difficult for him.

"Yeah", said Ford, "they buzz them. They find some isolated spot with very few people around, then land right by some poor soul whom no one's ever going to believe and then strut up and down in front of him wearing silly antennae on their heads and making beep beep noises. Rather childish really." Ford leant back on the mattress with his hands behind his head and looked infuriatingly pleased with himself.

[SteppingRazor]

124. Or more importantly...

Would beings that are so intelligent and have such advanced technology realy give a damn about us in our far end of the galaxy with our tiny brains and only a minimal comprehension of space travel?

[Kenergy]

18. I've seen one...it changed me n/t

[Henny Penny]

41. I have seen one and it did not change me... n/t

[FreedomAngel82]

52. What's all that like?

:shrug: I've experienced weird things but never a UFO. I don't know if I want to.

[Henny Penny]

118. Well I suppose it depends on the person and the situation.

I was being driven by my mother near our house and I saw something that I thought was the moon when it is very low in the sky and orange and seems larger than usual, (Like happened this june).

And I said to my mother "Wow, look at the moon tonight... " then I looked to her in the driver's seat for her response and she started to say "wow!.." but in turning to see her response I saw the actual moon in its normal position, small and silvery as usual.

So we started speculating as to what it could be, getting closer all the time when it moved downwards in a straight vertical drop behind some trees and houses in our local park. By the smooth movement I said that it had to be a hot air balloon of some kind. We rounded a corner that I knew would bring the object into view again and I was absolutely confident that we would see men with ropes and activity of some kind- but nothing, just a large moon like orange sphere or disk sitting at the top of some mature trees.

We were quite close, about 20m away. We were astonished! I said to my mother "quick stop the car, we have to see what this is..." and she said "No way!!", and stamped her foot on the accelerator and we shot off down the road.

We didn't have a camera and we didn't discuss it with anyone. Don't ask me why, it was just a really strange thing that we could not explain.

[Amonester]

147. I know that feeling! Thanks! We're not alone. ;-) (N/T)

[Kenergy]

58. It didn't have any impact on you at all??????????

[Henny Penny]

117. I mean that I had an open mind about such things before hand

and still have.

[JimmyJazz]

19. I have no proof, but I think it's incredibly egotistical on our part to

think that in this amazingly vast universe, ours is the only planet with intelligent (and I use that term loosely at the moment) life.

[w13rd0]

20. I don't question...

...the possibility of "life" elsewhere in the universe. Given that we are finding that "life" is far more robust and diverse than we'd imagined, I know that there is life elsewhere in the universe. The question we REALLY are asking though: Is there MIND, SENTIENCE, elsewhere? The presence of bacteria on Mars or some microbiotic organism on an asteroid doesn't make me feel less alone in the universe. The existence of another entity elsewhere, with the desire and ability to eventually or presently communicate with the human species...that's another question.

[punpirate]

35. The Drake Equation...

... is worth looking at in this regard:

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

Cheers.

[marions ghost]

47. what's the conclusion then?

given the variables

[punpirate]

68. Kind of have to do the math with a spread in variables...

... Carl Sagan modified the "L" variable based on several different assumptions--was the intelligent society war-like and destroy itself before it became technologically proficient, did the civilization become technologically proficient and destroy itself with its technology (such as our nuclear weapons), or did the civilization survive its technological revolution and then was able to explore its corner of the universe, or did it achieve a level of technical expertise which made it possible to explore all of the universe.

That's one way to estimate the variables, to base them on our own time and degree of development.

As I recall, from about thirty years ago, plugging in a variety of numbers produced a spread of possibilities from the most pessimistic--about 20,000 developed worlds with civilizations with at least our level of technological sophistication--to several million, with more optimistic variables. Still, not too many in a pretty big place. :) Then again, we're probably not alone, either. :)

One interesting thought experiment would be, in this regard, to look at where we might be if homo erectus appeared at the same time as earlier dinosaurs. If we had taken the same amount of time to develop, perhaps three million years, to the point we have today, but destroyed ourselves as a result of that development, our society would have extinct for more than a hundred million years.

The Drake Equation enables one to take such effects into consideration. There may have been many societies which sprang up elsewhere in the universe, but for one of several reasons may not have survived, and we would have no evidence of them--except for any electromagnetic signals they may have created which might reach us from a hundred million light-years away.

Cheers.

[rman]

114. that it's rather unlikely that we're alone

[shraby]

22. I saw one about 20 years ago....

I was at my Mother's who has a home way out in the country. Nearest neighbor is a mile away. At the house was my Mother, my 2 sisters-in- law, 5 children my mother had, my 4 children, my husband, my 2 sister-in-law's 4 children. The kids ages were about 14-2, with 5 of them being between 14 and 10.
The kids were outside playing at dusk and they ran in and wanted the binoculars to look at the airplane outside back of the house (west). By the time we figured out what they wanted, the "plane" had moved around to the east side of the house. There is an apple orchard about a hundred feet from the patio door on the east side of the house, and the "plane" was hanging near the nearest tree to the house, about tree top level. I hung there like a helicopter for about 5 minutes but there was no noise from it. If it had been a helicopter there would have been plenty of noise as close as it was. We watched it through the binoculars (my husband hogged them), but we all got to see it. There were lights inside the thing toward the front, but by then it was too dark to actually see the full outline of it, so I don't know what it was shaped like. After about 5 minutes of them watching us and us watching them, it took off over the apple trees headed east. That's the last we saw of it.

[Quixote1818]

23. The only problem is most are millions of light years away

Their would have to be some kind of worm hole for any other life forms to come visit us. I have absolutely no doubt that millions of civilizations have been born and died through out time and yet the light that left their planet at the time those civilizations existed could be reaching earth right now. If we had a telescope strong enough perhaps we could see those civilizations, buildings and spacecraft, long, long, long after it has vanished.

[WilliamPitt]

45. Three dimensional thinking

Scientists say that we use 10% of our brains. Instances of precognition, telekenesis, etc. are examples of a few using just a bit more.

Imagine a species that uses all of its brain. Able to escape the three dimensions of our world with an exertion of mental effort. Could space, or even time, be folded in such an effort? Possible.

It isn't just about technology. The greatest machine ever to exist is mind, and ours could well be puny by example.

[FreedomAngel82]

55. Oh yes

You can probably do astral projection as well. Only thing is if you aren't used to it then it'd make you very tired, but I'm sure if advanced people's could do it and have all the energy they could know how to conserve their energy so they don't get weak etc.

[JHB]

94. Will, actually it's everybody BUT scientists who use that 10% number...

You can probably Google for the whole story, but that "we only use 10% of our brains" wasn't coined by scientists, it was coined by some headline writer somewhere.

I seem to have missed the UFO threads that sparked your comment Will, but just who is arguing against life elsewhere (except for the Fundies)? Just about every astronomer I know or know of thinks life exists elsewhere. They're just skeptical that the things people see that get grouped as UFOs are vehicles or some more general manifestation of those other beings.

[Pachamama]

95. When I spent time in the Amazon Rainforest, the various tribes I spent

time with said that they have long been visited by the others. They said that they are in a energy/light form and have been with us for as long as they can remember. One of the Shaman's told me that they "shapeshift" and can take many forms and appearances.

On your comment about 3 dimensional thinking and the use of our brains: The Shaman's talked about this...when I tried once to explain through an interpretor who spoke Quechua to the Shaman about what I did in "my world" for a living (they always wondered why a young woman like me who was not married or had no children was in the Amazon) and when I explained working in hi-tech and the internet, the Shaman just shook his head and seemed to understand about how the internet, email worked etc. I found this incredible, especially since he had never been out of the Amazon nor ever seen a computer. He then explained that he and others communicated this way...that our brains are about energy and you need to know someone's "address" to connect to them (like we know eachothers email address or website for example). He said some call that telepathy but he said we all have that ability, we just forgot how to use it.

Interesting stuff, especially when I consider that it was this very same Shaman who in 1997 warned me of the Great Wars that were going to be coming that would be fought over Pachamama's Blood (Oil) and that there were some very evil men with dark dreams that would be taking over. After the 2000 election debacle, I am absolutely convinced that this is who and what I was being warned of.

They believe actually that the "Real" world is the dream state....and what we (here in the north as they say) think of the "Waking World" is really the dream world. They say that we need to "change the dream"....before the nightmare takes over.

Remind me Will when we have a chance to meet up again for me to tell you more about the revelations and wisdom I learned while in the Amazon from the various tribes, the Achuar, the Schuar and the Huarhani indians.... :hi: Better yet, maybe we need to go down there someday!

[Cleita]

146. About the real world being the dream world, I remember

reading an article a few years back in "Scientific American" magazine that quantum physics scientists theorize that our existence here in this dimension is really just a hologram of our real existence.

[EST]

99. Scientists say nothing of the sort.

This japped up conundrum grew out of ignorance and a complete lack of mental discipline more than fifty years ago. (Some sources have attributed it to several different religious leaders - making it doubly suspicious)
Recent research has indicated that we do, in fact, use all or very nearly all our brains. The nature of nature does not allow a lot of useless protoplasm to lie around and the brain is constantly being rewired, even in adults. This is long term biology, of course, and has not yet been researched sufficiently to figure out the likes of bush&co. They are probably in a unique category designed to force the ethical growth of society.

[rman]

115. "we use 10% of our brains" - urban myth

google it

[jim3775]

24. Thats nothing, lookup the Higgs Field.

The God Particle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_field
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/grid_pr.html

[Rosco T.]

25. As I said before, it would be the supreme arrogance of the Human Race...

.. to think that we are the only intelligent life in the universe. Or to think that where ever life is would necessarly be behind us in devlopment.

The same goes for the arguement that if they're out there, why bother with us? Good question, but then maybe they have and we just have it recorded in history as a 'myth'...

Gives me an excuse for some of my favorite quotes -


"That ant meets another ant and asks, what was that?...There are things in the Universe billions of years older than either of our races .... They are a mystery and I am both terrified and reassured to know that there are still wonders in the Universe, that we have not explained everything." -- Ambassador G'Kar, Babylon 5,"Mind War"

Science fiction. You're right, it's crazy. In fact, it's even worse than that, it's nuts. You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an airplane, you know you get people to go in, and fly around like birds, it's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon? Atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right? Look, all I'm asking is for you to just have the tiniest bit of vision. You know, to just sit back for one minute and look at the big picture. To take a chance on something that just might end up being the most profoundly impactful moment for humanity, for the history... of history. -- Ellie Arroway, Contact

I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right? -- Ellie Arroway, Contact

... and as much as I despise Shrub and everything he stands for.. and despise him even more for sticking the Space Program out as a diversion for everything else... it's something we have to do.. nevermind the things that have come out of space research (like the internet you are using to read this thru or the small computer sitting in front of you).. there are still important things to do yet..

Reporter: So, Commander, after all you've just gone through, I have to ask you the same question a lot of people back home are asking about space these days. Is it worth it? Should we just pull back, forget the whole thing as a bad idea, and take care of our own problems, at home?

Sinclair: No, we have to stay here. And there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics, and you'll get ten different answers. But there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us - it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao Tzu, Einstein, and Morobutu, and Buddy Holly, and Aristophanes, and all of this - all of this - was for nothing. Unless we go to the stars. -- Commander Jeffery Sinclair, Babylon 5, "Infection"

[AuntPatsy]

26. Good post..

[pitohui]

27. did you read the threads, spielberg's statement is incorrect

don't make arguments based on an authority said it when the authority is a film director and not an authority

there are exponentially more photos and videotape of ufos than there ever were in the past, mexico city incident alone generated a huge number

spielberg's statement is wrong, wrong, wrong and should not be repeated as proof of anything

i don't believe ufos are the space brothers but to say there are fewer photos today is a blatant lie or, to be kind, an error by someone who thinks he is too big to check into the facts

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

29. Sure... You notice the upper right hand corner of the picture is blocked

out?

Mmmm.. Hmmmm.

I have the unredacted photo. The stars spell out "NO LIFE HERE... MOVE ALONG. gwb"


That kinda answers everything, eh?

[VelmaD]

30. One of my favorite quotes...

I don't remember who said it but I still love it, "The proof that there is intelligent life in the universe is the fact that it hasn't tried to contact us." *snort*

On a more serious note, it is an infinite universe filled with wonders we can't begin to imagine. To think we are the only "intelligent" life is egotism, pure and simple. We are part of a magnificent universe...but only a part.

I hope in my lifetime to have contact with beings from another world...I'm not holding my breath or anything...but I still think it would be incredible to meet someone from another planet and try to communicate and find common ground. Then again, until we can manage to get along with other people from this planet I'm not sure we're ready for "aliens".

I want to believe. :)

[tavalon]

60. I love that quote!

I'm currently reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann and I ended up skipping to the last section because the first part was a chronicle of the human race's stupidity and it was getting just too depressing. He isn't saying anything I don't already know but seeing it all together like that is just too much.

Yeah, I think they're out there but I don't really think they need to bother with us just yet. They should wait and see if we make it out of our global adolescence.

[Ellipsis]

34. Well spoken

Stated much more eloquently then Mel Famie, but then... there was the beer that made Mel Famie walk us! ( had to be there). We all could listen to one another a little more.

Content in my spirituality, (fortunate in that regard), it seems we spend way to much time concerning ourselves with unknown facts, if known, wouldn't affect our daily lives.

This old alter boy sees the Milky Way every night, I never tire, taking it in. I can not tell you how fortunate I am to inhale the evening stars in my seclusion on the farm. The more I take in them perty lights, the more things seem to make sense. It's hard to articulate. It's an osmosis thing.


Thanks Chuck.

[Ready4Change]

36. I'm certain there is life out there. Certan some is sentient.

What I'm not certain of is whether any of that life is near enough for us to ever encounter it. Whether we will ever interact with other intelligences.

Frustratingly, odds are we wont find any such intelligences my lifetime, unless they come to us. May not even find other life in this solar system.

However, the scariest, loneliest though I have about all this is that the human race may die out without having seriously TRIED to encounter these things.

Like an ape on a shoreline, looking out over the ocean, but never stepping into it.

[VelmaD]

39. Oh, that is a terrible, sad thought

:(

[Desertrose]

54. maybe if the ape would quit pounding his chest...

he'd get some company.

Just a thought :)

[Cleita]

37. Maybe we need a UFO forum.

I personally think a lot of it is about people looking for religious answers but whom am I to look down my nose at what other people believe? Maybe we are being visited from another dimension, if not another galaxy, and science has proposed that there are other dimensions that we can't sense.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Yes there is life out there

It is called the Drake Equation

The Drake Equation was developed by Frank Drake in 1961 as a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in our galaxy. The Drake Equation is:
N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

The equation can really be looked at as a number of questions:

N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy

Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion.

fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them

Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems?
Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%.

ne is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life

Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life?
Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.

fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves

Question: On what percentage of the planets that are capable of sustaining life does life actually evolve?
Answer: Current estimates range from 100% (where life can evolve it will) down to close to 0%.

fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves

Question: On the planets where life does evolve, what percentage evolves intelligent life?
Answer: Estimates range from 100% (intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve) down to near 0%.

fc is the fraction of fi that communicate

Question: What percentage of intelligent races have the means and the desire to communicate?
Answer: 10% to 20%

fL is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live

Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet's life does the civilization survive?
Answer: This is the toughest of the questions. If we take Earth as an example, the expected lifetime of our Sun and the Earth is roughly 10 billion years. So far we've been communicating with radio waves for less than 100 years. How long will our civilization survive? Will we destroy ourselves in a few years like some predict or will we overcome our problems and survive for millennia? If we were destroyed tomorrow the answer to this question would be 1/100,000,000th. If we survive for 10,000 years the answer will be 1/1,000,000th.

When all of these variables are multiplied together when come up with:

N, the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.

The real value of the Drake Equation is not in the answer itself, but the questions that are prompted when attempting to come up with an answer. Obviously there is a tremendous amount of guess work involved when filling in the variables. As we learn more from astronomy, biology, and other sciences, we'll be able to better estimate the answers to the above questions. Many of these questions will be addressed in depth in future issues of Enigma.



You can even try it here

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

Sooner or later we will find life out there, as we are right now in the midst of early preparatory Deep Space Rsearch, and we are also looking for Earth Like planets. You think that if we find a terran world around oh I don't know, Barnard Star, Epsilon Eridani or Alpha Centauri B we will not try to find out if they have life? The problem is the crossing is not that easy, but we can and probably will achieve it if we don't kill each otber before the next century is out. How? they may use a light sail, Ion trust, or nuclear propultion, but we will.

[Pepperbelly]

40. Spielberg is full of shit ...

There ARE video and pictures. Tons of them. Quite a few that stand up to intense scrutiny by real experts like Bruce Macabee, an optics specialist doing defense research as his day job.

[newswolf56]

42. Thanks for posting this astonishing revelation. About UFOs, as a...

newspaperman I have always kept an open mind about them. Having seen one myself -- a 1959 sighting that was witnessed by hundreds -- I don't doubt they exist. I know too many credible people who claim to have seen them.

But I make no pretense of knowing what they are.

I do know this: there are eerie floating-light phenomena associated with certain geographical locales -- two such places are Brown Mountain in North Carolina and Clinch Mountain in East Tennessee -- and aboriginal folk tales from centuries before Columbus indicate the lights have been seen there since ancient times. If memory still serves me well, the Cherokee believe the lights are malevolent spirits. Which suggests at least some UFO reports are due to forces of nature we do not yet know or understand: aerial foxfire, st. elmo's fire, marsh gas or emissions from ancient graveyards, methane from the coal beds, some other misidentified biological, astronomical or meteorological phenomena -- indeed that is the explanation that most often (but not always) gets my vote as the closest approach to the UFO reality.

As to the other theories -- top-secret military aircraft, alien astronauts (whether from light-years away or from another dimension), unmanned scout-craft from some Mother Ship -- I remain mostly agnostic.

But I absolutely reject the contention of the von Dannikenoid Cult that patriarchy and its alleged civilizations are the legacy of Gods from Outer Space (which, if I remember correctly, is the exact title of one such manifesto). I regard this as a particularly cunning, especially reactionary effort to shore up the crumbling foundations of Yehvehistic religion and patriarchy in general by inventing the notion we were "saved from barbarism" by the intervention of some cosmic ubermenschen -- master-race benefactors we "primitive" humans viewed as gods.

The worst part of such a viewpoint is not its absolute untruth -- about which more in a moment -- but rather the psychological fact that once one has acknowledged an ubermenschen, one must also acknowledge der Fuhrerprinzip: which includes the right of the master race (or its representatives) to rule everyone else with absolute tyranny and utter mercilessness. Therefore, if Yehveh was really a spaceman...

It's called "theocracy," and I don't want to go there, even hypothetically.

The archaeological truth of course is far different from what von Danniken and his cultoid colleagues claim it to be. There is increasing and increasingly compelling evidence (Gimbutas et al) that the advent of patriarchy approximately 5000 years ago has been much more of a curse than a blessing: the destruction of a remarkably stable, remarkably accomplished human society, truly global in expanse, that had lasted at least 25,000 years (Marshack et al) and perhaps even twice that. The 3,000 years of mathematical and astronomical observation mirrored at what we call Stonehenge is truly breathtaking. The builders of Stonehenge, who were indeed part of that vanished human society, actually taught us something modern astronomy did not know: that solar and lunar eclipses operate in 56-year cycles (see Hawkins, Stonehenge Decoded). And the Stonehengers acquired this knowledge not from cosmic ubermenschen but from the very human, infinitely painstaking process of observation and notation described by Marshack in The Roots of Civilization.

Most significant of all, however -- and I suspect this is what the von Dannikenoids truly despise -- is the ever-more-unassailable probability that all these ancient cultures that did so much with unassisted human skill seem to have been matriarchies, not patriarchies. Moreover these ancient peoples universally worshiped a goddess, not a god -- and based on the evidence (again Gimbutas et all) -- she was everywhere the same, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Americas.

I think it no coincidence at all that -- just as the outlines of this tragically lost world were becoming visible through archaeology and mythology -- the von Dannikenoids began to clutter our vision with space junk.

[Frederik]

62. One of von Däniken's influences

is Hans Horbiger, who influenced Hitler's worldview as well, and who was one of the early Nazi theorists. I agree, beware of the hidden agendas in the UFO subculture. This is a huge topic (as is, of course, the phenomenon itself, but that is a mostly, if not necessarily wholly, separate topic).

Some of the early UFO contactees in the US (40s-50s) belonged to a milieu connected to a certain William Dudley Pelley, who had been the leader of the fascist Silvershirt movement in California in the 1930s. He had been persuaded by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the world was ruled by a Jewish conspiracy, and of course he rooted for, and I think was sponsored by, Hitler during WWII.

Those early contactees all claimed to have met tall, blond, Aryan aliens from the planet Venus.

Pelley was also connected to the "I Am" movement, an occulto-fascist movement which would metamorphose into one of those Christian Nazi militia groups.

Interestingly, one of the contactees who met this "Venusian", or at least claimed to have done so, was the founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, rocket genius and occultist Jack Parsons.

[newswolf56]

74. Thanks but too bad I thoroughly discredited my argument...

by failing to check for the correct spelling of "von Daniken." All the worse because I thought of doing it, then foolishly and in haste decided to trust 35-year recollection (even though I know I have far from a perfect memory for name-spellings). And of course now it's too late to edit my original post. Grrrrrrr....



Edit: another spelling error, this one due to arthritic typing.

[Maple]

154. Von Daniken

never said anything about aliens bringing us patriarchy.

He simply said aliens had been here long ago, and were remembered through cave drawings and the like. Stonehenge was part of his books actually, along with a lot of other 'pre-historic' artifacts.

Since the aliens haven't been seen since, that we know of, I doubt you need to worry about any 'master race'.

[newswolf56]

155. The "Yehveh as alien" argument (and hence the notion of patriarchy...

as a sacrosanct byproduct of alien visitation) is implicit in the interventionist theories of von Daniken and his disciples. As to their alleged "evidence," every bit of it is (A) deliberately misrepresented and (B) can therefore readily be explained by other, far more rational (non-interventionist) means.

And then of course there are all these earthly geopolitical expressions of the divine/alien interventionist ethos: the Wars of Indian Extermination, the Banana Wars, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, the Nazi aggression that started World War II, etc. ad nauseum.

[stellanoir]

43. you clearly have bees in your brain to think this way

:hi:

[Ellipsis]

57. Alien... ...Bees

and they are using them to shoot models! How cruel!

http://www.dpchallenge.com/forum.php?action=read&FORUM_THREAD_ID=241382

[EST]

102. Given one of the earlier posts, 'twasn't the problem of the bees,

but of the sons of bees...

[Rosco T.]

44. Saturn's Moon Iapetus from Cassini (warning large pictures in here...)

To quote the original Battlestar Galactica "there are those that believe that life here, began out there"...

This is a high-res shot of Saturn's Moon Iapetus



see that strange 'ridge' in the picture?

a closer look



by estimates, that 'ridge' is about 60,000 feet tall, it runs ALL THE WAY around the moons and is PRECISELY on the moon's equator.

geologists say "nature dosen't make straight lines", how about three of them... (a closer view of the 'ridge')



yes, there are 'things' out there.. and not that far away...

draw your own conclusions... but a 'seperated at birth' picture is fun nonetheless..



I'll invite you to read more on this strangeness at

http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm

I don't necessarly agree with everything on that site (and some of the directions he goes with his theories), but when he's using real NASA pictures, it makes you wonder what's out there...

[newswolf56]

86. Thanks for posting this too. I read the entire associated text,

am also aware of the alleged ruins on Mars, and despite my skepticism about UFOs (see above), take it as a truth (based on the experience of a journalism career spanning 45 years) that politicians at all levels (and hence government itself) lie whenever it suits them. I am especially distrustful of the federal government, which routinely lies about everything: literacy levels, unemployment statistics, protection from sexually transmitted diseases, the funding of various programs, the safety of pharmaceutical drugs and agricultural chemicals, just about anything you can name (and sometimes for reasons so trivial as to defy description). Which is to say that on a topic as threatening to Yehvehistic religion as extraterrestrial life (or even the ancient remains thereof), truth is the very LAST thing I would expect from ANY Christian/Islamic/Jewish government -- least of all THIS government, dominated as it is by the Christofascists and their Yehveh-uber-alles orthodoxy, especially given their implacable antagonism toward science -- official antagonism of a sort unseen since the Inquisition. I would therefore especially expect the malicious suppression of any new knowledge that might advance a progressive (and hence anti-Yehvehistic) view of the world and the cosmos.

That said, looking at the photos of the alleged ruins on Mars combined with the increasingly probable hypothesis that Mars once supported an oxygen-rich atmosphere and an ecosystem similar to Earth's, I could not but wonder if perhaps Mars was the "Eden" of so many ancient myths -- destroyed by high-tech human folly. That might explain not only the sudden appearance of Homo Sapiens Sapiens in a world hitherto inhabited by Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis but the immediate and intense obsession of the newcomers with mapping the skies and calculating the relationship of sun and moon (again see the works of Alexander Marshack). Some interesting views of Mars are available here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.08/mars.html?pg=1&topic=mars&topic_set=

But -- if I may be fanciful for a moment -- the views of Mars suggest a civilization that rose, fell, was abandoned: the same pattern we have witnessed on our own planet. In contrast, the images of Iapetus suggest a ruin left by an ancient war -- one in which screams of unspeakable horror may yet still echo.

[FreedomAngel82]

46. I've always wondered myself

I think so. Maybe not how we are though in bodies and the like but life in general out there. When we die our spirits return to the afterlife and thus life in space. ;) But like us as humans? I don't know. I do get weird feelings with that though.

[Guaranteed]

48. Great post.

We'll never know until they show up. :)

[A-Schwarzenegger]

50. If there is anybody out there ...

we're their aliens. And I like that.

[Desertrose]

53. don't see the hurry to decide one way or the other

new info coming in all the time...what leaks out is not believed most of the time.

There either are other beings out there or there aren't.

Why they'd want to contact us is beyond me. Bunch a squabbling kids that make bigger & nastier weapons, don't take care of and totally trash the place where they live, not to mention how they treat all their brothers and sisters on the earth the and still don't try too hard to get along.

Hell....I'd stay way clear of this planet if I wasn't a native!!

[uncle ray]

80. pre-emptive strike

they heard about *. either that or they sent him.

[La Coliniere]

56. Makes you wonder.

Saw a few things in the night sky I couldn't identify. Oh sweet mystery of life.....

[tavalon]

61. What I would like to know is

if there really are little green aliens coming to visit and even picking up a human or two here or there..............

why are they so damn interested in our butts? :)

I mean really, don't they have 'em too?

:evilgrin:

[Jose Diablo]

64. Viewing scenes from the Hubble telescope seems to make

all our troubles, wars, disputes everything so inconsequential.

And to see all the other worlds, an uncountable number of them actually, it would seem to indicate there must be other intelligent life out there someplace.

Yet consider this. What if we are the only ones. What if this planet is the only place in the entire universe were life has emerged from simple organic compounds.

Doesn't this place an enormous responsibility on us, we humans, to preserve this planet, and also look at each other with more respect.

I personally do not believe UFO's are visitors from other worlds. I do believe UFO's exist, for I have see one.

It was flying very slowly from the east just after sunset with flashing lights around its perimeter. And as it got closer and closer, I finally discovered it was a small plane, a Cessna I think, towing an advertising banner with lights. But for a while, it was unidentified and I could not determine what it was, so my mind played tricks and my imagination attempted fit what I was seeing with something I could recognize.

As for abductions, I cannot believe those that claim being abducted. I believe they believe, some of them anyway. And for those that believe, I would say they had to be hallucinating or having a vivid dream.

However, it should also be pointed out that historically, even long before current events there are accounts of strange encounters with others, not humans. In those times though, these people say they saw and heard God or an angel. Do we believe the prophets of old, or say they are crazy too?

Are these 'encounters' more about us, and what WE really are. Are dreams real? Or is reality the dream? What are we, and what can our mind do?

[undeterred]

65. What happened to the galaxies in the upper right hand corner?

Did the neocons destroy them already? :evilfrown:

[HeeBGBz]

66. I had a book published on my experiences on this subject

Some really weird shit was happening to me and it was a large part of my life for a while.

Then I sort of pushed it all away. Things stopped happening and the experiences seemed more distant. The book (my one real accomplishment) seemed more an embarrassment to me. People with their jokes and comments just got too much.

Now, I just wonder what the fuck it was. Sometimes I think it was an experiment on me. Not by aliens but by persons unknown. I hear about MKultra and it creeps me out.

I get all tinfoily and wonder if some shadowy sinister humans could implant entire memories that were clear enough to have me totally convinced something had occurred. I wonder if it was an experiment in group mind control.

And if it were my delusion, why would it just stop? If it were a delusion, would it not worsen with age?

Anyway. That's enough ammo/info that I need to share. Toast me, if you will.

[Jose Diablo]

77. I won't flame you but here is an interesting link

It discusses naturally occuring hallucinogens. This one is Ergot, a fungus that grows in wheat and barley. The link discusses how the Salem witch trials persecuted women that had concourse with demons, but a strong case can be made that the women were actually under a hallucinogen simular to LSD.

http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Claviceps/

Ergot (Claviceps purpurea)

One of the most fascinating of the natural hallucinogens comes from a fungus called ergot, which grows on the grains of grasses, especially rye (Secale), but occasionally on barley (Hordeum), wheat (Triticium), and several wild grasses. An infected grain produces a hard, black, spur-like structure called a sclerotium. In fact, the name ergot comes from the French word argot, which means spur.

Ergot has been known and used for many centuries, and it was even described in an Assyrian tablet as the "noxious pustule in the ear of grain." In ancient times ergot was also known as "mad grain" and "drunken rye." Then later in European history, there were periodic plagues, which had many symptoms, depending on the dosage of ergot. The possible effects were (mild to severe): (1) burning and convulsions, (2) hallucinations with imaginary sounds, (3) gangrene and loss of limbs, (4) permanent insanity, and, occasionally, (5) death. The initial burning sensation led to the Latin name ignis sacer, which means holy fire. This human malady was so horrible that in 1093 a religious order was founded in southern France to help those afflicted; St. Anthony was the patron saint, so the malady, now called ergotism, was then named St. Anthony's fire.

It is now fairly widely thought, based on the research of Linnda Caporael (1976) and later Mary Matossian, that the seven girls and women tried in the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials in 1692 were suffering hallucinations and other symptoms of ergotism (convulsive ergotism). Similar eruptions of ergotism also occurred in Essex County and Fairfax County, Connecticut. In that year, the weather was damp and cool, and rye plants of New England would have had much ergot, which forms sclerotia under those cool, moist conditions. Infants died from consuming contaminated mother's milk. A famous outbreak of ergotism occurred in Sologne, France in 1777, when 8000 people died of gangrenous ergotism. The last major outbreak was 1951.

<snip>

The psychoactive ingredient in ergot is LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide. The activity of this compound was accidentally discovered in 1943 by Dr. Albert Hofmann, an organic chemist, who hallucinated when he got some of this substance on his skin. Hofmann experimented on himself to study the effects of this colorless, odorless, and tasteless substance.


I am not saying agents of the government have not 'experimented' on people without their knowledge, but a simpler explaination could be you came in contact with a natural LSD, maybe a fungus in you air ducts at home for example.

When I think back on some of things I have seen others do, I've wondered if there were demons in operation in this world. But a simpler explaination would be people's mind being poisoned from a naturally occuring hallucinogen, like ergot.

[HeeBGBz]

78. On a continuing basis? Over years?

If it was a one-time experience, maybe. But it wasn't.

[beam me up scottie]

67. What do UFOs have to do with intelligent life in the universe?

Why are you unable to separate the two?

Just because one doesn't believe we're being visited by little green men with a fondness for anal probes doesn't mean that they believe we're alone in the universe.

To think that aliens would bother to spy on us is arrogant and more than a little paranoid.

[Domitan]

85. Let's suspend disbelief & assume that there are "aliens" for a hypothesis

Say there are aliens with the capacity to explore the far reaches of the universe with help of sheer intelligence and technology, it would not be shocking that they'd bother to "spy on us". Not because we're very significant in the grand scheme of existence...but for the reasons we study mice and fruit flies. I'm reminded of Nagilum from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

*now we may return to mundane reality where our lives are not influenced by lingering apprehensions that E.T. is lurking amongst us*

[beam me up scottie]

91. They're that technologically advanced and yet

they need headlights on their vehicles and prefer to use anal probes?

Sorry, that's just too funny!

[lazarus]

69. There could well be life elsewhere in the universe

but that has nothing to do with UFOs giving farmers anal probes.

[wli]

70. very doubtful that UFO's are extraterrestrial in origin

They're probably mostly made-up, mistaken identification of conventional phenomena, unusual meteorological phenomena with optical effects, or military aircraft.

[Greylyn58]

71. One of my favorite quotes on this subject

is from the movie "Contact"

When the main character Ellie is little she says to her dad:


Ellie Arroway: Dad, do you think there's people on other planets?

Ted Arroway: I don't know, Sparks. But I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space.

That's what I think. With all the galaxies, suns and planets out there it would be "an awful waste of space" not to mention just plain arrogant of us to think we are the only ones here.

As to whether we've been contacted yet, I don't know. I just hope that they are much more evolved and intelligent than we are. :)

[jayctravis]

72. That is *so* my new desktop background. (n/t)

[supernova]

75. I think it might be two separate questions

You're unbidden question is "Is there life on other worlds?"

Well, quite possibly yes. With every little bit we learn about the universe and the processes that create life, us IOW, we learn that these processes are not so unusual. That in fact they might be quite common.

So, it is reasonable to assume that life, perhaps even intelligent life equivalent to us, exists on other worlds.

What might or might not be the case, is are they capable of interstellar travel? And are they aware of us and want to investigate us?

I don't know. It is quite thrilling to think about the possibility. But if their rate of development is anything like ours, we might both have a long way to go before we finally meet.

[KittyWampus]

76. And None Of That Universe, Including Earth, Is Bound By Space & Time

Reality is non-local.

Anyone trying to cite physics to debunk the possiblity of space travel is starting from a position already outdated by Physics but indicative of the Materialist bias prevalent amongst Westerners.

[Emperor_Norton_II]

83. Um... what?

I understand all of those words seperately, but when strung together like that they make little sense. Could you clarify?

[jayfish]

81. Some Interesting Info On FTL Travel

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/FTL.html#conclusion


<SNIP>
A famous proposition for global FTL travel is to use wormholes. Wormholes are shortcuts through space-time from one place in the universe to another which would permit you to go from one end to the other in a shorter time than it would take light passing by the usual route. Wormholes are a feature of classical general relativity but to create them you have to change the topology of space-time. That might be possible in quantum gravity.
<SNIP>


http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw33.html

<SNIP>
The satisfying instability of wormholes has now been called into question. Last Fall a paper by Michael Morris, Kip Thorne, and Ulvi Yurtsever was published in the conservative and prestigious journal Physical Review Letters which changes all this. The authors describe how an "advanced civilization" might: (a) create a large wormhole; (b) stabilize it to prevent its re-collapse; and (c) convert it to a time machine, a device for traveling or at least communicating back and forth in time. This remarkable paper, which borders on science fiction in its approach, has a very serious purpose. There is presently no well-established theory that can accommodate both quantum mechanics and the physics of strong gravitational fields within the same mathematical framework. The paper of Morris, Thorne, and Yurtsever is a vehicle for guessing, in a rather unorthodox way, what restrictions a proper theory of quantum gravity might place on the physics of wormholes. The authors demonstrate that general relativity contains within its framework mechanisms that appear to permit both faster-than-light travel and time travel. If these physical calamities are to be averted, the authors argue, it can only be done through a proper theory of quantum gravity.
<SNIP>


Pretty cool stuff IMHO.

[Name removed]

82. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ian David]

84. That's very funny, but satire belongs in the lounge please. Thank you. n/t

[beam me up scottie]

88. Argh!

What did I miss?

[Spock_is_Skeptical]

87. that is really a fantastic image... and very beautiful.

[eridani]

89. In My Father's house there are many mansions--

--if it were not so, I would not have told you.

Although most life in the universe is probably lithotrophic bacteria---

[stepnw1f]

90. ...and if you are a Fundie, then you believe...

rather than know, you are the center of that factually large universe.

Crazy is crazy. Isn't it just miraculous?:sarcasm:

[Astarho]

96. Maybe they're coming

to see the Type 0 civilization that has discovered all the secrets of the universe and will tell them that their highly advanced interstellar ships are impossible.

Or may be they need more of these:

It's a buncha-muncha-cruncha human!

[kestrel91316]

98. When I look at this and try to comprehend it and fail ....................

that is when I think there must be a God behind all of it, and we are just a tiny part of the plan. And there are certainly others like us and others different from us out there among the stars.

A pity they are too far away for us to ever know or meet.

[BiggJawn]

100. I don't discount there could be other life "out there". What I DO discount

Is that they're frail looking pale creatures with big luminous eyes, traveling in craft that look like car hubcaps, and they kidnap us and stick things up our butts.

[beam me up scottie]

104. I love your way with words.

:evilgrin:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

105. It would be amazing if there WEREN'T life elsewhere in the universe

However, the nearest star is four light years away, which means that it would take four years to get there traveling at the speed of light, which is about 66 million miles an hour.

I just googled the speed of the Saturn rockets that powered the flights to the moon, and they traveled at about 24,000 miles an hour.

At that rate, it would take 2,700 years to reach the nearest star.

The aliens would have to have some unimaginable technology to reach our little planet.

[FlaGranny]

148. Your post reminds me of a science

book my Daddy owned when I was a kid. I believe it was written in the very early 1900s - sometime beween 1900 and 1915 is my best recollection. It was a book on astronomy. One passage I particularly remember was a sentence about how long it would take us to reach Mars traveling on a train going at 40 miles per hour (I don't remember the actual time it would take). When they wrote that book, they couldn't really imagine going faster than the speed of a train, and the ridiculous amount of time it would take to travel to Mars made the thought of going there ridiculous to contemplate. :-)

[beam me up scottie]

106. If you want more pictures like Deep Field

check out the Hubble thread in the Science Forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=8211&mesg_id=8211

[Skip Intro]

108. Beautiful.

Great post.

We are soooooo sure everything that is conforms to our widest perception of that which is. We are the end all be all. Not.

Obviosly not.

[shadowknows69]

109. I think Spielburg is off base

there is a lot of amateur video every year with mysterious lights and a good chunk of that is never really debunked. Obviously its also not proven to be alien space craft but look at it this way. If a civilization could perform the unlikely task of efficient interstellar travel I think it would be a small thing for them to all but irradicate any evidence of their presence.I've never been able to snap a picture of an F-117 stealth fighter but I know they're out there only because my government eventually got around to admitting we had them. Before that they we're just lights in the skies of arizona, new mexico and nevada. Lights that a lot of people used to take video of and mistake for aliens.

[dissent1977]

111. Yes, we know very little about what exists outside our own galaxy...

In fact we know very little about our own galaxy. We are just starting to learn about Mars, and the other planets we know even less on. Now there is strong evidence that our own galaxy is not well suited for life outside of Earth, it would be incredibly stupid to say that other galaxies do not have planets that are well suited for life. There is almost certainly life out there somewhere. As far as UFOs go though, I am pretty skeptical. I think there may be some government produced aircraft that we don't know about, but I don't think the government is covering up the existence of extraterrestrial life. If they were researching a new type of aircraft they may go to great lengthes to keep it secret, but I don't think they have any real reason to go to such lengthes to hide the existence of aliens. People say they do it to prevent panic, but I don't buy that. I think the government would like to tell us there is life out there, they have actually spent billions searching for it on Mars. They just don't have the hard evidence to show us at this point. There almost certainly is life out there, but it is unlikely to be found in our own galaxy.

[jbnow]

116. Oh I will miss the Hubble

The word awe is misused but some things just bring you to your knees with wonder. Space is one.

Simply the stars at night, far from city lights gives you the sense of such vastness that your soul aches, we can't begin to embrace it. With the Hubble views you see more of that beauty you sensed.

Is there intelligent life out there? Of course. Earth is so young in the scheme of things.

What we don't know far exceeds what we do know when it comes to the universe, but we can't really begin to even grasp it's vastness. Thanks for reminding us of a sense of it.

I haven't seen UFO posts. I haven't seen a UFO and I haven't been abducted. I don't know abductees nor studied the phenomenon, but I have heard many are very sane and have thought about what a bitch it would be to have that experience, to know you have and be mocked and told it can't be true.

I do know people who have seen UFOs and in some cases so did the police and the airport radar and many cameras. I know someone who was part of the Phoenix experience, gazing in awe with her whole neighborhood, with this silent huge thing going impossibly slow then impossibly fast. Those weren't made up, they can't be explained by what we know but it doesn't prove there are aliens visiting. I just have no reason to think they have not.

We might not know, but we surely don't know enough to mock the idea.

But I do love space...and hope all my tax money went straight to the Hubble. Most worthwhile thing NASA has done.

[GoBlue]

121. According to theoretical physics...

time travel is possible. So maybe some UFOs maybe from our future. I must add that it would be irrational and arrogant to conclude that our world is the center of intelligence in the universe. The mere fact that George W. Bush is the leader of the 'free-world' pretty much makes that fact not theory.

[SnoopDog]

125. It would be equally amazing that there are UFOs as if there is not.

Are we really alone in the Universe?

Or, someday, do we have 'company'?

[SheepyMcSheepster]

127. either humans are capable of mass delusions or there is something out ther

we have two choices:

a. humans experience mass hallucinations

b. humans experience unexplained things that happen outside of our minds.


the problem is we still don't know where our mind stops and "reality" begins.

the bottom line is there is definitely something going on that we don't know the origin of.

[smoogatz]

130. Jung said that either

a.UFOs exist, and sentient, highly advanced aliens are routinely traveling across inconceivably vast reaches of space to visit our tiny blue speck of a planet, out of all of the other gazillions of planets in the universe, or

b.A significant percentage of the population really WANT them to exist, and therefore assume that any unexplained lights in the night sky are, in fact, spaceships from distant planets.

Humans routinely convince themselves that all sorts of untrue and impossible things are facts. We've invented ghosts, werewolves, fairies, witches, whole pantheons of gods and goddesses, thousands of creation myths--our capacity for invention and belief is endless. Hundreds have witnessed bleeding crucifixes, images of the Virgin in the clouds (and on stucco walls, rusty Chevrolets and scorched flour tortillas); thousands claim to have witnessed yogis levitating; and of course you can't forget the miracles of Christ. It's no surprise that at the dawn of the space age, that talent for religious invention should be touched by our fascination with space travel and technology. That said, I'm not suggesting it couldn't happen--but I have a hard time believing that advanced life forms would bother coming here, of all places.

[StayOutTheBushes]

128. What you said.....or the lens was dirty.

[Name removed]

131. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Zorra]

133. "I come in peace"

;-)

[Johonny]

134. well

I think it's probable that we are indeed alone in the universe. Since complex life is rare (if not unique) and the distance between them insurmountable I think it's safe to say Aliens are not visiting us.

A good read on the subject is
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
by Peter Ward, Donald Brownlee


I always wonder why Aliens that can travel the vast expanses of the universe have to use anal probes when even we have MRIs

[Terran]

135. LOL, I've posted this picture a couple of times at DU...

and never generated 133 responses! Oh well, it's Will Pitt, whatcha gonna do? Thanks for posting this, Will, and getting people to discuss. I remember how utterly floored I was when I first saw this and understood what it was. It really puts our struggles in perspective.

And remember folks, if there is a God out there, what's in this picture is less than a grain of sand in her sandbox...but it's still *her* sandbox and she loves everything in it.

[tx_dem41]

136. I think I see some of Skinner's Swedish Fish in deep space!

:)

[welshTerrier2]

137. What about the Coneheads ???

no one really believes they're from France, do they ??

[Kraklen]

138. This is why the UFO people piss me off.

I'll place good money that there's lots of neat new people out there.

And the search for their radio transmissions is as valid a scientific project as any.

But then you've got nuts who are claiming that the aliens are here and they've been abducting them, and they have the magically ability to disappear any time an unbiased observer shows up. Makes the legitimate search look bad.

[Mutley]

145. String Theory - Suggesting the existence of 11 dimensions, and infinate

universes.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/

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

http://superstringtheory.com/

If this theory proves to be correct, it would suggest that it is nearly impossible for there not to be life somewhere out there.

[rman]

152. even if it's not correct

(and it most likely is not the final answer, as most string theorists will admit)

Anyway, even this single universe has galaxies plentyfull as grains of sand on the beach, and within each galaxy stars also as plentyfull as grains of sand on the beach.

It doesn't really need to be multiplied by infinity, it's A LOT of possibilities either way.

[RSchewe]

149. Re: "Multiply that dot a billionfold and you have the universe"

I would say more than that...

Multiply that dot a billionfold and you have the universe, filled with light and stars and worlds. Could there be out there an intelligence greater than ours, an intelligence that laughs at our physics, an intelligence that looks at the three dimensions we exist in and giggles at our immaturity?

I think the question that needs to be asked is:

Does the Universe continue infinitely?

If it does, there must be life just by chance. What kind? Who knows?

UFOs and all that Area-51 speculation is cool for movies, but I doubt that the accounts of abductions and sightings are true. These are most likely misinterpretations of unusual experiences.

I think some people enjoy that paranoid feeling a little too much.

[Hissyspit]

150. It is perfectly plausible that life on Earth is an absolute fluke.

A unique situation. Reality is made up of patterns AND uniquenesses. If that is true the number of galaxies in the universe was not really a factor. Statistics tells us probability/odds, but that is all. There is either other intelligent life out there (depending on your definition of intelligent life) or there is not.

[RSchewe]

151. If you look at infinite possibilities, you can have a flounder to go...

with that fluke.

[lovuian]

157. Very Interesting guys!!!

love the pictures!!!

[librechik]

158. Sorry, Will--Evidence of UFOS has increased by many hundreds

since the invention of personal camcorders. For example, in Mexico dozens of unrelated strangers gave video taped the same UFO event from different perspectives. There was a big flap over Mexico City about 10 years ago and more and more since. VCRs are improved evidence as well. Rather than just word of mouth we now have some recorded evidence to analyze.

Take a look at these videos from Mexico last year and tell me what you think they are. Remember, personal dated video is a bit difficult to fake; it's the Polaroid camera of tape media since ordinary people don't tend to have the equipment or expertise to alter tape. As a result the clips are very interesting and show eerie similarities around the globe and over time. The 2005 Mexican video here

http://www.rense.com/internal/GuadBig.mpg

is amazingly similar to a 1952 sighting over the Capitol Building



which has documented radar confirmation, apparently.

Of course we can't say what they are, we don't know. But don't you think an administration which says it's interested in national security would be curious about such sightings (a large percentage over military bases, BTW) at least? After all, at one point we were oblivious to microbes--until we developed the technology to see them. Maybe UFOs are a similar thing.

[Pithlet]

160. That picture is, well, amazing doesn't cut it.

Every time I see that picture I get chills. I do believe that there is other life out there. Millions of light years is a vast space to cover, and the odds that a civilization happened to advance to that extraordinary level of ability in time to contact us, a civilization that has been here such a short period of time, just a blip cosmically speaking, seems unlikely. Even if several or more did so. I don't know if it's impossible; I just don't think it's likely. We haven't even been around for a million years, still a tiny blip of time.