The UFO Thread :)

[thwhtGuardian]

I'm not one to hang a "Truth is out there" poster on my walls, though I do think there must be other life somewhere out there in the universe, but one thing to think on in regards to possible visitation is this: We literally can't even imagine how faster than light technology would actually work, so if a race had that kind of technology would we even know they were there?

Think of it this way, if we were to say somehow discover time travel tomorrow and then traveled back in time and observe George Washington with a drone we bought off the shelf at say Target, if George Washington saw it up in the sky would he even know what it was or would he just register it as a bird? I'm going to say the latter as he'd have no other frame of reference to compare it to...and that's with only two hundred years of technological advancement. So just imagine a species with an even greater jump on us technologically speaking, would we(like our hypothetical George Washington) just think nothing of them if we even saw them simply because we had no frame of reference for what we were looking at?

[Kirby101]

Sounds like you are talking about Clarke's Law and advanced science seeming the same as magic.
Here is the problem. Clarke's Law has become moot because of scifi writers like him, Asimov and all that followed. We can in fact imagine FTL, we see it all the time in books, movies and comics. Hard Science Fiction writers and theoretical physicist have imagined these things and how they can work. It doesn't look like magic, it looks like advanced science based on what we know and discoveries that could happen.
We have a frame of reference for anything people say aliens might be capable of.
It's fun playing "what if" but with zero good evidence for alien visitation, it is premature to try to figure out who "they" are, or why "they" are here. It is just pure science fiction.

[thwhtGuardian]

Sounds like you are talking about Clarke's Law and advanced science seeming the same as magic.
Here is the problem. Clarke's Law has become moot because of scifi writers like him, Asimov and all that followed. We can in fact imagine FTL, we see it all the time in books, movies and comics. Hard Science Fiction writers and theoretical physicist have imagined these things and how they can work. It doesn't look like magic, it looks like advanced science based on what we know and discoveries that could happen.
We have a frame of reference for anything people say aliens might be capable of.
It's fun playing "what if" but with zero good evidence for alien visitation, it is premature to try to figure out who "they" are, or why "they" are here. It is just pure science fiction.

We can imagine that it could work, and of course we've seen it in sci-fi books, shows and movies hundreds of times but we have no idea how to actually do it or what a faster than light craft would actually look like so, no I don't think we have a good frame of reference for what such a technology would look like.

Am I saying that I think there are all kinds of such crafts buzzing around right now and we don't know it? No, but I do think that if a craft did visit and it didn't want us to know then we wouldn't simply because of the gulf between our capabilities and any race with the ability to traverse the stars.

[Kirby101]

We can imagine that it could work, and of course we've seen it in sci-fi books, shows and movies hundreds of times but we have no idea how to actually do it or what a faster than light craft would actually look like so, no I don't think we have a good frame of reference for what such a technology would look like.

Am I saying that I think there are all kinds of such crafts buzzing around right now and we don't know it? No, but I do think that if a craft did visit and it didn't want us to know then we wouldn't simply because of the gulf between our capabilities and any race with the ability to traverse the stars.

I understand you are having fun speculating about this. But wondering why we don't see something there is no evidence for is sort of like wondering why all the unicorns are invisible.

[thwhtGuardian]

I understand you are having fun speculating about this. But wondering why we don't see something there is no evidence for is sort of like wondering why all the unicorns are invisible.

It's not like that at all actually, it's more like saying that I don't much believe the various UFO stories because it seems to me that if a species were technologically advanced enough to actually travel the cosmos like we fly around the planet in planes then I don't think we'd even know what we were looking at if they did actually come here.

Whether they've actually traveled here or not is completely immaterial to the thought that I don't think we'd be able to really fathom the level of technology required to travel the stars any more than someone in the past would know what a drone is or understand the internet or television.

[Kirby101]

I hope you are just doing fun scifi speculation and not saying that the lack of evidence is itself evidence.

"There is nothing there, and here is why we don't see the being behind there being nothing there."

[thwhtGuardian]

I hope you are just doing fun scifi speculation and not saying that the lack of evidence is itself evidence.

"There is nothing there, and here is why we don't see the being behind there being nothing there."

I don't really get the misconception here, I'm saying that I don't really believe in any of the close encounter type stories that have been told over the years.

I do think there is definitely other life in the universe, as if it happened here and in so many different ways and forms then simple math says it would happen elsewhere too.

Whether there are other intelligent, technological civilizations like our own out there though?

Who can say? We certainly haven't found any evidence thus far but our search is young and very limited by our current technological abilities. On top of all that the universe is a very, very big place so if I was a betting man I wouldn't bet against there being other civilizations like ours out there somewhere.

The only real "what if" I think I've put forward is that I think it's possible that we might have been visited and didn't even know it simply because we don't have an understanding of the technology needed to go from one star to the next in the span of hours or days and thus might have mistaken such a traveler as something else.

Does that mean I think we've definitely been visited?

No, and I don't think I've said that either.

All I'm saying is that I don't think interstellar travel would look like a flying saucer, or the Enterprise or the Milllenium Falcon, but rather like the concept of the internet or the appearance of a drone to someone from our not too distant past we would have no concept of the kind of technology used to travel the stars and likely wouldn't know it even if we ever saw it. And I don't think there's anything really outlandish about that.

To put it another way, when a chimpanzee looks up and sees a 747 fly over its head does it understand what it just saw and heard?

In this situation we're the chimpanzee in comparison to the hypothetical civilization capable of interstellar travel.

[Kirby101]

Thanks TWG, that makes clear what you were saying.

[useridgoeshere]

I believe there are other planets with life. It doesn't make sense to me that we're the only ones.

However, I don't believe that any have ever made it to Earth. It's fun for movies and TV, like superheroes, but I'm not a big believer that the speeds needed to make it feasible are or will ever be possible to achieve. Physics and all that. We haven't sent people to the Moon in over 50 years. We're nowhere near sending people to Mars. So if the government secretly has a spacecraft capable of interstellar flight, they're doing a piss poor job of figuring out how it all works.

And frankly, I don't believe our technology is all that advanced or has taken surprising leaps. I do love watching, reading, and listening to old science fiction when they talk about the late 20th or early 21st century. We're definitely slackers compared to where we were supposed to be, especially when it comes to space travel.

[Kirby101]

To put it more in perspective. Advanced intelligence is not a necessary by product of evolution. Evolution works on survival, there is no goal of sentience. Life has been on this planet for 4 billion years, humankind, maybe 300,000 to 400,000. Civilization, maybe 10,000. If not for an asteroid, dinosaurs might still dominate Earth and we would still be shrew size creatures scurrying about their feet. If the Earth's whole time were a day, this is what life looks like.


So life elsewhere, most likely, technological civilization, not inevitable.

[babyblob]

This thread has given some good views. Thanks to those who have posted so far, I am enjoying the back and forth. And I enjoyed the vid Mets posted so thanks for that.

[numberthirty]

One thing I want to address. The conspiracy theory that "the Government" has the proof but keeps it secret because it would cause a panic. That is pure hogwash. 50% of the public already believes in UFO aliens. We have had 100 years of science fiction with stories about aliens. The public is fine with the idea, there would be no panic. This canard is just an excuse for conspiracy theorist to defend the shear lack of evidence of any visitation. Thousands of scientist and workers and multiple administrations (not to mention their foreign counterparts) have kept this one secret, where they could not keep any other. Bullshit pure and simple.

I don't know if it is actually as simple as all of that...

In a country where "In God We Trust..." is on it's money?

I don't know if I would say "Panic...", but any hard proof that humans are not the creator's sole project is absolutely something that I could see the government in question doing it's level best to keep hidden away.

Never mind what it would mean in Middle Eastern countries that are still running things seriously "Old School..." in terms of just how much of a role religion plays in the way that countries run.

Not that I am in the "I Want To Believe..." crowd, mind you.

Just that I absolutely see a clear reason that the US government would deny it until no other option remains.

[Catlady in training]

Is there life elsewhere in the universe? Sure, why not? But the probability that it would be on a similar level of advancement as humans of Earth is IMO very low. It could be similar to life here on Earth thousands of years ago, or thousands of years in the future (and we have no idea how that will look either), or even some completely different life form, outside of our comprehension.
Question is, even if there were aliens on a similar level as us and knew about our planet, would they even bother to come here? We're not exactly giving off a very welcoming vibe. To think that everyone in the universe would be interested in us is IMO quite self-centered, though that itself is very human-like.
It would be more funny if, somewhere in the database of some advanced alien race, there was a note next to the entry about Earth saying something like: "Don't bother, it's a planet full of idiots, we're just watching from afar and taking bets when they self-destruct."

[babyblob]

I take a different view. I dont think it is self centered of humans to think alien forms if they knew of us are visiting/watching. Part of life is wanting to learn and explore, it makes sense that another civilization would feel that way as well.

So if a group of aliens did know of us and had the ability to get here why would they not do it. To watch us for many reasons. To learn about a new group, to watch us to see if we are a threat to them, to watch us as a cautionary tale of war and ignorance (I think any civilition advanced enough for this tech has left that behind them), maybe they just think we are entertaining maybe they would view us as so far below them we are some kind of space zoo.

There are a good many reasons why an alien race would want to watch us.

Just like I hope if we ever make contact with an alien race our first instinct would be to learn from them.

But I hope such contact waits a couple generations as right now our first instinct would be to take them over.

[Riv86672]

There’s no way we’d be taking THEM over.
Any civilization advanced enough to get here is going to be Europe, and we’ll be the Native Americans.

If we’re lucky.